Translational Ontology: A Meta-Ontological Framework for the Conditions of Describability

This paper proposes Translational Ontology, a meta-ontological framework investigating the formal conditions under which ontological description is possible at all. Rather than advancing a new first-order inventory of what exists, the framework shifts focus to the structural constraints presupposed by any ontological claim. The central thesis is that translation, understood in a formal and non-linguistic sense, is a necessary condition of describability. What is described can never fully coincide with its description. From this starting point, the paper introduces interconnected concepts: Qualions as minimal units of describability, Response Fields as loci of interaction, Translation Resistance as the formal impossibility of complete identity, and Homeostatic Regression as a dynamic constraint preserving stability without teleology. The notion of an Infinite Phase grounds distinction itself as a pre-distinct transcendental condition. Shared Qualion Fields and Dual-Mode Existence explain hierarchical organisation while avoiding reductionism and strong emergentism. The framework is applied to dissolve the mind–body problem by reframing it as a category error arising from the conflation of descriptive modes with ontological kinds. Situated in dialogue with Kantian transcendental philosophy, process thought, and East Asian relational traditions, Translational Ontology offers a systematic account of why relational and non-substantialist ontologies recur across philosophical contexts. The result is not a new metaphysics of being, but a metaontology of describability. This paper is a conceptual preprint and does not present an empirical or testable theory.