A system that allows both the sender and the audience to make a connection between what is presented in an expression and what the expression is really about, i.e. a code, must be presupposed if the message is to be successfully understood. In this article, it is argued that across languages, inexact linguistic equivalents render understanding difficult, if not impossible. For iconic expression - pictures and other illustrations - a prcess called filtering is considered the equivalent of linguistic nontranslatability. Filtering occurs when different audiences do not perceive the same signification from the same picture, i.e. when images cannot be understood the same way from culture to culture.