How did Donald Davidson argue against strong linguistic relativism?

Donald Davidson challenged strong linguistic relativism—the idea that different languages embody mutually unintelligible conceptual schemes—by arguing that interpretation is fundamentally impossible without a shared conceptual framework.12

His argument rests on the necessity of attributing beliefs and desires to others during the process of translation or interpretation. Davidson contended that for such attributions to be coherent, one must assume that speakers are generally correct about the world most of the time. Consequently, one cannot assign meaning to another person's utterances unless one already shares a common conceptual scheme with them.1

Because interpretation requires this commonality, Davidson concluded that it is impossible to view one's own conceptual scheme as merely one of many alternatives. By demonstrating that a shared conceptual foundation is a prerequisite for understanding others as "thinking" beings, he argued that linguistic relativism is untenable, thereby also removing the threat of linguistic idealism.1