Following the advice of Vermeer and Snell-Hornby about giving more attention to Schleiermacher's views on language and interpretation when approaching his classical lecture on the two methods of translating, I shall here argue that his text is multilayered, with his National Translation Project above his epistemic insights into language and understanding. I propose that we invert the hierarchy, looking at hermeneutics in a way informed by the philosophy of language from the later Wittgenstein, as well as taking into consideration some major positions in contemporary translation theory. Ultimately, the paper deals with different conditions of possibility: that of the interpreter for translation and that of the conception of language for translation theory.