Translation clearly qualifies as an institutional practice, and translations as institutional facts. Among the kinds of human institutions that are required for its existence are language or other conventionalized modes of communication and a range of communicative practices, i.e. conventionalized means of achieving various social objectives (some of which may also be institutional facts). At present, in some areas of translation activity, we may observe institutional facts at an even higher level, such as education, qualification schemes, employment, and professional organizations. Although these are not necessary for translational activity, they are part of its practice in many of the cultures we know today, and demonstrate the iteration of institutional facts in the creation of more complex systems.

If we allow that translations are institutional facts, then it should be possible for us to account for the structure of these facts in terms of the framework outlined by Searle (X counts as Y in C). This may be done as follows. The X term in our case must be a text or communicative artifact of some kind (e.g. a signed text, a pictorial or audial representation). Note that the X is an iterated institutional fact: "text" is the Y term in a prior institutional fact incorporating an X term which is a brute fact, i.e. marks on stone, papyrus, or paper, a pattern of light on a computer screen, or movements of hands in space. Returning to the case of "translation", the Y is the status of "translation", and C is the context in which the status pertains. In Translation Studies, the C context is usually taken to be a cultural configuration at a specific point or period in time, for example, in historical studies such as Pym's (e.g. 1998, 2007) and the excurses in Toury (1995), to mention just two.

The function assigned by the Y term in the case of "translation" is whatever function(s) a particular culture assigns to artifacts (Xs) labeled with the linguistic status indicator of the word translation, traduction, übersetzung, etc. In other words, in any given context (C ), there are artifacts or practices that are singled out using such an indicator.

The notion of collective intentionality in institutional facts and its relevance for the notion of "assumed translation" was addressed in a previous discussion (Halverson 2004). The concern there was in responding to critical comments raised by Komissarov (1996) on the issue of the various types of identifying claims that might be put forward regarding translation. In that paper, I linked collective intentionality to Toury's "target orientation", i.e. the claim that translations are facts of a target culture (1995:23ff), and I brought in a proposal regarding a division of intellectual labor to account for the varying legitimacy of identifying claims (i.e. who says it is a translation, and who is entitled to say so?). In short, the argument is that through collective intentionality, identifying claims of certain groups (professional translators, recognized bilinguals) are accepted as legitimate identifications.

With regard to constitutive rules, a translation exists by virtue of following specific rules regarding, at the first level, linguistic practice, and at the next level, collectively agreed practices for the creation of this specific type of communicative artifact or event. Such rules will probably have to do with the relationship of the translation to a pre-existing text, though this remains to be shown. It is on the grounds of this type of rule that Toury's pseudotranslations would be invalidated, presumably. If the required constitutive rule is violated, the attempt at function assignment will be denied. We do not know precisely what the constitutive rules are for translation in every culture, at every possible time. But once we accept that there are such rules, then the search for descriptions of them becomes central to the empirical enterprise.

As regards the emergence of this particular institutional fact, obviously the origins must be sought in historical contexts. The artifacts identified with a relevant Y term may or may not have been the same kinds of artifacts identified by a current, perhaps related or derived term, e.g. translation. For example, there is etymological evidence to suggest that there were two alternative Y terms, at least, in Old English for what seemed to be the same phenomenon (see Halverson 1999: 200ff). The investigation of translation history is engaged in seeking insights in this domain, and problems of this nature are a concern (see e.g. Pym 1998, 2007). For our purposes here, it is important to note that there is no doubt of the institutional status of translation even in its inception: human institutions have always been a prerequisite. The particulars of its historical development represent important empirical questions.

The question of the maintenance of this institutional fact is also complex. At Searle's diachronic level, the account of how institutional facts are maintained and passed on from generation to generation becomes a crucial story about the transmission of cultural knowledge. In order to take a closer look at the dynamics of translation, we must make use of Searle's critical (and criticized) concept of "the Background" and investigate the place of Y terms in it. First, however, we must consider what is entailed in studying translation as an institutional fact.

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