In this paper, the author examines Grice’s theory of meaning and finds that, in applying his cooperative principle to literary texts and translations, difficulties arise from his postulate that understanding a speaker’s utterance requires an audience’s prior understanding of the words used. There is thus no place for a mediator of messages and Grice’s mechanism does not in itself provide a satisfactory theory of translation because of its crucial distinction between literal and non-literal meaning, which may not coincide between languages. The author discusses a possible solution to this difficulty.