In mathematical logic, cointerpretability is a binary relation on formal theories: a formal theory T is cointerpretable in another such theory S, when the language of S can be translated into the language of T in such a way that S proves every formula whose translation is a theorem of T. The "translation" here is required to preserve the logical structure of formulas.

This concept, in a sense dual to interpretability, was introduced by Japaridze (1993), who also proved that, for theories of Peano arithmetic and any stronger theories with effective axiomatizations, cointerpretability is equivalent to Σ 1 {\displaystyle \Sigma _{1}} -conservativity.