The classic statement of this thesis can be found in his 1960 book Word and Object, which gathered together and refined much of Quine's previous work on subjects other than formal logic and set theory.
[3] This view is endorsed by Hilary Putnam, who states that it is "the most fascinating and the most discussed philosophical argument since Kant's Transcendental Deduction of the Categories".
Quine uses the example of the word "gavagai" uttered by a native speaker of the unknown language Arunta[a] upon seeing a rabbit.
But these questions can only be asked once the linguist has mastered much of the natives' grammar and abstract vocabulary; that in turn can only be done on the basis of hypotheses derived from simpler, observation-connected bits of language; and those sentences, on their own, admit of multiple interpretations.
[1] The situation is made worse when more abstract words are used, not directly attached to public observation: Thus, translating some native utterance as, say, "Pelicans are our half-brothers" is a much more contextual affair.
[8] Quine considers the methods available to a field linguist attempting to translate a hitherto unknown language he calls Arunta[a].
The key point is that more than one translation meets these criteria, and hence that no unique meaning can be assigned to words and sentences.
[10] However, Quine argues, because of the indeterminacy of translation, any attempt to define 'analyticity' on a substitutional basis invariably introduces assumptions of the synthetic variety, resulting in a circular argument.