What does Translation mean? - A language-critical-criteriological Sketch

From the perspective of linguistic pragmatics taken here, a concept is neither an arbitrarily deployed instrument nor does it represent classifications of 'reality' that are simply given; rather, it is a means of distinction deeply rooted in cultural practices and experiences. What are the particular distinctions that give contours to the concept of `translation' and make it attractive for a plethora of applications in cultural studies, epistemology, and the theory of science? This paper examines one aspect of the concept `translation' through linguistic pragmatics and criteriology in order to identify the point at which 'translation' says something other and more than, for example, the concept of transfer a term under which, in many definitions, translation is subsumed. Alongside definition and purely descriptive approaches to conceptual history, the paper thus seeks to outline a third, Wittgensteinian way of working on concepts.