Hofstadter is trying to draw a conceptual distinction between "understanding" (generating language by drawing from a full interiority of human subjective experi

Hofstadter is trying to draw a conceptual distinction between "understanding" (generating language by drawing from a full interiority of human subjective experience), and mere "translation" (based on looking at words). But analyzing how words are used is a great way of working backward into something that gets closer and closer to human subjectivity. Some neural net trained on how words are used would start to model concepts that reflect "under the hood" human experiences that generate language. Maybe it's not 'enough', and a robust translation engine would have a sense of irony, jealousy, favorite foods, etc that it would need to rely on to translate things, and maybe that set of concepts to be obtained via something other than training on words. But I don't think there's a clear conceptual line to be drawn. Studying the way we use words can get us a loose approximation, maybe even a good one.