I am, rather slowly, eating a packet of mentos. On the side of the pack it states that mentos are "chewy dragees". A quick check of the internet informs me that dragees are either sugar coated medications or those little silver balls you get on the top of cupcakes. Well mentos are definitely not silver balls but unless they're a cure for not suffering diabetes I don't really get the medication part of the first definition.
It is entirely possible that something has been lost in translation. Lost or deliberately omitted. One of the most efficient ways to lie is to tell nothing but the truth. We have it on the authority of Wittgenstein himself that it is impossible for two people to communicate with each other, even in the same language, with no possibility of misunderstanding. Wittgenstein's position on this would have slightly more credibility if he hadn't previously written a book stating that you could. That's the great thing about philosophy. In any other discipline being completely wrong would make you look like an idiot, in philosophy it merely opens up fruitful avenues of enquiry.
I should mention that my knowledge of Wittgenstein is derived solely from what a friend of mine has told me about him on those rare occasions when I was bothering to listen. If anything I said is wrong you can put it down to a failure of communication. When we start trying to translate into other languages things get even worse. It amazes me that the human race manages to communicate at all. Things aren't helped in Australia where the teaching establishment seems determined to drag all students down to the educational level of their teachers.
Despite all of the obstacles sufficient information seems to get past our self created filters to, if not actually inform, then at least give a context for our ignorance. Of course there are certain areas when the withholding of information is the object of communication as with most government announcements. I went to a communications course at work recently where the whole topic was how to efficiently make oneself understood. Since I work for a solicitors firm such a course is desperately needed.
About halfway through the course I realised that what we were actually being taught was how to write a childrens book. That is, a book along the lines of "See Spot Run" rather than Harry Potter. I work for a large law firm that services huge corporate clients and the best method of communication is still "See Spot Run". Despite this the communications course is pretty much a work in progress. I plan to take my newly acquired knowledge and write a childrens book. If Chopper Reid can do it surely I can.
While I'm labouring over "See Spot Run; the Adventure Continues" I will sit and eat my chewy dragees while the "medicine" in them makes my teeth fall out. Incidentally, those silver balls on the top of cupcakes, the US FDA has deemed them unfit for human consumption. In another breakdown of communication I continue to do so without any ill effects so far.
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I used to agree with you about Wittgenstein, who must often be awarded the Knights' Cross with the Oak Leaf Cluster for obscurity: but on the other hand he can write:- 'In the world everything is as it is, and everything happens as it does happen: in it no value exists - and if it did exist, it would have no value.' True enough. But don't let him go on any longer than that. I also like your comment: 'sufficient information seems to get past our self created filters to, if not actually inform, then at least give a context for our ignorance'. The thing is I think that we actually relish our ignorance. The answers are all there - to philosophical questions they are usually inside us rather than in the empirical world, and for the rest, there's Google. How often do you think, when someone asks you something, 'For goodness sake go and look it up on Google?' And much of it's in the mould of 'See Spot Run', which is thoughtful.
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