Interpretation vs Explanation

Question

Are the two words the same? Interpretation and Explanation

Nona the brit · Accepted Answer

I would say that explanation relates to facts but interpretations relate to opinions.

CalifJim · Answer

What's your interpretation of X? asks you to say what you think X means.
What's you explanation of X? asks you to tell me something that will help me understand X.

They are not the same.

CJ

Scandza · Answer

Hi there, I hope my opinions to be useful:

An explanation is the logical (non-contradictory) arrangement of facts translated into a simpler language. An example of this is a scientific theory that has been tested and proved. Its general rule is to be simpler than the phenomenon itself (Remember Occam's Razor: "entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem", or "entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity").

An interpretation is the act of fleshing out these facts by putting them into relatively fixed contexts. For instance, quantum mechanics hasn't yet reached a final explanation, nevertheless it has several interpretations (Copenhagen, Many-Worlds, Hidden Variable, etc) that sometimes contradict themselves despite having the same theoretical backgrounds. Interpretation has more to do with speculation and subjectivity though some explanations suffer from the same problem.
In my personal point of view, an interpretation tries to find a "goal" or "aim" to the given data while explanations are usually content in describing these data.

Interpretation vs Explanation

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