  Such views, however, take for granted a view of communication, or of translation, which is very far from Quine’s. For Quine, the criterion of successful communication, whether or not it involves translation, is fluent interaction, verbal and nonverbal: “Success in communication is judged by smoothness of conversation, by frequent predictability of verbal and nonverbal reactions, and by coherence and plausibility of native testimony.” (1990a, 43) This is a third person or external view of language and communication, as required by Quine’s naturalism. From this point of view, talk of synonymy and of ideas in the mind is simply a theoretical gloss which is (at best) in need of justification. Quine doubts that the gloss is justifiable; scepticism about the theorizing, however, is not scepticism about the data. Smooth communication certainly occurs, sometimes in cases where different languages are involved. Quine says nothing that casts doubt on the idea that successful translation (by his criterion) is possible; his claim, indeed, is that it may be possible in more than one way.