TALAL ASAD

The Concept of Cultural

Translation in British Social
Anthropology

Introd uction

All a nthro pologislS aTe fa milial' with E. B. Tylor's fa mo us defl-

nlUon of cu lture: "C ulture or Civiliza tio n, take n in its wide ethno-
g ra phic sense, is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief,
a n . morals, law, CU SLO Ill , a nd any other ca pabilities and habi ts ac-
quired hy man as a me mber of society." It wo uld be interesting to trace
h ow a nd when this no tion o f cuJlure. with its e n umeration of "ca pabil-
ities and habits>! a nd its emphasis on what Lin ton called social heredity
(focus ing on the process oflearning), was transform ed into the notion
of a text-that is, into something resembling an inscribed discourse.
One obvious clue to this change is to be found in the way that a no tion
of language as the precondition of histo rical contin uity a nd social
learnin g ("cu ltiva tion") came to dominate the perspective of social an-
thropologists. In a general way, of course, such an interest in la nguage
predates Tylor, but in the nineteenth and earl y twentieth cen turies it
tended to be central to varieties of nationalist literary th eor y and edu-
cat.ion (d. Eagleton 1983 :ch. 2) rather than to the oth er human sci-
ences. Wh e n a nd in what ways did it become crucial for British social
anthropology? ) do not intend to attempt such a histor y here, but
m erely to remind o urselves that the phrase "the transla tion of cul-
tures," which increasingly since the] 950S has hecome an almost banal
d escriptio n of the distinctive task o f social an th ro pology, was not al-
ways so m uch in evide nce. I want to stress that this apparent shift is
not identical with the old pre -Fun ctio nalism/Functiona lism periodiza-
lion. Nor is it simply a matter o[ a direct interest in language and
meaning I.hat. was previously lacking (Crick 1976). Bronislaw Mali-
nowski, one of the founders of the so-called Functiona list school,
wrot.e much o n " primitive language" and collected enorm ous quan-
 TAL.o\L ASAD
ciues of linguistic material (proverbs, kinship terminology, magical
spells , and so on) for a nthropological analysis. Bu t he never thought
of his work in term s of the tran slation of cultures.
Godfrey Lie nhard o's pape l' " Modes of Thought" (1954) is possibly
o ne of the earliest- certainly one of the most subtle-examples of the
use of this J'lolion of translation explicitly to describe a centrall3sk of
social anthropology. "The problem of describing to others how menl-
bers oC a remote tribe think th en begins to appear largely as oue of
translatio n, of making the coherence primitive thought has in the lan-
guages it really lives in , as clear as possible in our own" (97). This state-
ment is quoted an d criticized in the article by Ernest Gellner that 1
analyze in the next section, and 1 shall return to it in the contexl of
Gell ner's argu ment. H ere 1 draw attention briefly to Lienhardt's use of
the word "transla tion" to refer not to linguistic matter per se, but to
"modes of thought" that are embodied in such matter. lt may not be
wit hout sign ificance, incidenta ll y, that Lienhardt has a background in
English li terature, that he was a pupil of F. R. Leavis's at Cambridge
before he became a pupil and co llaborator of E. E. Evans-Pritchard's
at Oxford.
Oxford is, ofcQul'se. falDous as the anthropological cf Llterin Brit-
ai n most self-co nscious abou t its concern with "the transiariull of cul-
tures." The best-k nown introductory textbook to emerge from that
center, J o hn Beattie's Othe>' Cullures (1964), emphasized the centrality
of the "problem of translation" for social anthro pology and distin-
guished (but did not separa te) "culture" from "la nguage" in a way that
wa s beco ming familiar to anthropologists- th ough not necessaril y
therefore e nti rely clear (see Pl' · 89- 90).
1t is interestin g to fi nd Edmund Leach, who has neve r been associ-
ated with Oxford, employing the same notion in his conclusion to a
historical sketch of social anth ropology a decade later :
Let me recapitula le, We started by emphasiz.ing how diffe re nt are "we
or.hers" - and made th em no t o nly differem but re mote <1nd inferio r. Senti-
mentall y we then LOo k rh e opposite track and arg ued lh al all human bein gs
are alik.e; we ca n understand T rob riand ers o r the Baro tse beca use th e ir mo ti-
vations are just the same as Our ow n; bu t thaI didn't wo rk eithe r, ·« he oche rs"
remained o bstinately othe r. Bu t now we have co me to ~ee then the esse lllial
_ problem is o ne o f Iranslali o n. T he lingu ists have shown us that alllransialio n
is difficult. and that pedecLtranslation is usuall ,· i1npossible . And yet we know
that for practical purposes a w le rably sa ti sfactory tra nslation is always pos-
'I sible even when th e ori g in al ''lext'' is hig hly abstruse. Languages are differe nt
but not so differem as aU that. Loo ked at in this way social anthro po logists are
engaged in establi shing a methodology for the trallslation o f cul tural lan-
guage. (Leach ' 973:77 2)
The Concept of Cu ltural T rans lation
Even Max Gluckman (1973:905), responding shortly afterward
to Leach , accepts the centrality of "cu ltural translation ," while propos-
in g a very different genealogy for that anthropological practice.
Yet despite the general agreement with which this notion has been
accepted as part of the sel f-defini tion of Britis h social anthropology, it
has received litr..1e systematic examination frOll] within Lhe profession.
One partial exception is Rodney Needham 's Belief, Language, aruiExpe- 1, '''I .
r;ence (1972). This is a compl ex. scholarl y work that deserves extended I
treatme nt. Here , ho wever, J wish to concentrate on a shoner text, '
Ernes t Gellner's "Co ncepts and Society," which appears to be fairly
wide ly used in undergraduate courses at British universities and is still
available in several po pular collections. 1 propose, therefore, to devote
the next sectio n to a detailed examinaLion of (hal essay and then to
take up some po ints that emerge fro m my discussion in the sections
that follow.
A Theoretical Text
Gellner's "Co ncepts and Society" is concerned with the way in
which Functio nalist anthro pologists deal with problems of interpret-
ing and translating the discourse of alien socie Lies. His basic argument
is that (a) conte mporary anthro pologists insist on interpreting e..xoti,f
concepts and beliefs within a social context, but that (b) in doing so
the y ensure that apl?arentl y absurd or inco herent asse rtions ar~ al ~
ways given an acce ptable meaning, and that (c) wlli1e the con textual I
method of interpretation is in principle valid , the "excessive chaJity"
that usually goes with it is not. The paper contains several diagrams
lntendedto fix and clarify the relevant cultural processes visually,
Gellner introduces the problem of interpretation hy reference to
Kurt Samuelsson's Religion, and Economic Actiun (1961), which is an
economjc historian's attack on the Weberi an Protes tant-ethic thesis.
Samuelsson takes issue witb the fact that Weber and his supporters
have reinterpreted religious texts in a way that. e nables them to extract
meanings that confirm the thesis. Gellner presents this example merely
to bring out more sharply the contrasting position of the Funct.ionalist
anth l'Opologist:
I am not conce rned , nor competent, r.o argue wh ether Samue[sson's emp loy -
ment, in this particular case, of his tacit principle that one must not re-
interpret the assertions one actually finds, is valid. Wh at is relevant here is
tha t if such a principle is made explicit and generalized, it would make nOn-
sense of most sociological swdies of the relationship of belief and co nd uct. We
'14 TALAL ASA D
shall find anthropologists driven LO employ th e ve ry o p}X)site p,-inciple, th e
insistence rathel- than refusa l of comexruaJ re-interpre(atio n. (:w)
BUl this mod est disclaimer of com petence allows too many inter ·
esting questions 10 drift by. To begin with. it calls for no g reat compe-
tence to note that Samuelsson does not hold to Ihe principle thaI one
must never reinterpret. Nor does be insisLlhal there is netler a signifi .
cant con nectio n between a religious text and its socia l context, but
on ly that the concl usion the Weber thesis seeks to make can not be es-
tablished . (See . e.g., Samuelss<)n 196, :69.) There is, furthermore. a
real contrast that Gellner might have picked up between the Samuels-
so n example and the typical anthropologist's predicamenl. For eco-
no mie historians and sociologists involved in the Weber debate. his-
torical texts are a J>rimary datum in relatio n to which the soc~a.l
.£~llexts must be reconstructed . The anthropological fie~dworker be-
gi ns with a socia l situation witbi n which some thing is said , and jt is l~e
cu ltural significance of these enu nciations that must be reconstructed .
This is not to say, of course, that the historian ca n ever approacb bjs
archival material without some conceptio n of its historical COntex l, or
that Ihe field worker ca n define the social si tuation inde pendentl y of
what was said within it. The contrast, such as it is, is o ne of o rie rlla-
tion, which follows from the fact tha!, the historia n is given a /lJXt and
the ethnographer has 10 construct one.
I nstead of investigating this important comrast, Gellner rushes
alo ng to define and commend what he calls "moderate Functional-
ism" as a method. which
consists of the in sistence on the facl (h aLconcepts and beliefs do not ex ist in
iso latio n, in tex ts or in individual loinds, but in [.he life of men and socielies.
l'he activities and institutions. in the co nteXl of which a word o r phrase or se t
of pbrases is used , must be known before lh al word Or those phrases car) be
und erslOod , before we can reall y speak of a concept or a belief. (22)
This is well pUt. a nd, even if it has been said before, it is worth
restaling. At this point the reader might expect a discussion of the dif-
ferent ways in which language is encou ntered by the ethnographer in
the fielcl, how unerances are produced, verbal meanings organized.
rhetorical effects attai ned, a nd culturally appropriate responses elic-
ited. After all, Wittgenstein had alread y sensitized British philoso-
phers to the complexity of language- in-use, and J. L. Austin had set
up distinctions between the different levels of speech production and
rece ption in a way that foreshadowed what anthropologists would
later call the ethnography of speaking. But Gellner had previously re-
jected the suggestion that this philosophical' movement had anything
of value to teach (see his polemic in Words o.nd Things (959), and like
other critics. he always ins isted that iLS concern with understa ndin g
The Concept of Cul tural TranslaLion
everyday language was merely a disguise for defending established
ways of speaking about the world , for denying thaI it was possible for
such speech-ways to be illogical or absurd. Gellner has always been de-
termined to maintain 'he distinction between defending and explain-
ing "concepts and beliefs" and to warn against the kind of anthropo-
logical translation that rules out a priori the critical distance necessary
for ex plaining how concepls ac[uaUy function, fo r "to understand Ihe
working of the concepts of a society," he writes. "is to understand its
institu tions" (p. 18; see also note. on the same page).
This is why Gellner's brief stateme.nt about moderate Funclional-
ism quoted above leads him immed iately to a discussion of Durkheim's
Elementa.ry Fort/IS of the Religious Life, which , besides being "one of Ihe
fountainheads of Functionalism in general" (22), is co ncerned to ex-
plain rather than to defend concepts- to explain. more precisely, "Ihe
compulsive nature of our c3legorial conce plsll (22) in terms of cerrain
collective processes. Thus:
Our co ntemporary invocations of the funclional. social-context approach to
the study and intel'preration of concepts is in various ways very different from
Durkheim's. Durkheim was not so much conce rned to defend the concepLS of
primitive societies: in lheir sening. {hey did not need a defence. and in the
sellLng of modern and changing soc.ielies he was nOl anxioliS r.o defend what
was archaic, nor loath (0 suggesl lhat some imellectualluggage might well be
archaic. H e was real ly conce rned lO explain the compUlsiveness of what in
practice did not. seem to need any defence (and in so doing, he claimed he was
so lving the problem of knowledge whose solution had in his view evaded Kant
an d olbers, and [0 be solvin g it. without falling intO either empiricism or apri·
orism). Wh ether he was successfu l I do not pro pose to di scuss: for <t var iety of
reasons it seems to me thar he was not. (23)
tt is clear th at Gelln er has recognized the basic project r Elemen-
tary Forms- namely, il s attempl to explain the compu lsive nature of
sociaJly defin d concepts- but he moves too haslily from a cons id era-
tion of what might be involved in such a problem to a dismissal of
Durkheim's attempt at explanation. The possibility thal a p" iori de- ,
nunciation niay not furthe r the purposes of explana tion any bener
than defense docs not seem to be envisaged in "Concepts and Society."
Instead , the reader is reminded, by way of quotation from Lienhardt,
that the contemporary an thropologist typically "appears to make it a
condition of a good translatio n that it conveys the coherence wbich he
assumes is there to be found in primitive thought" (26). So we have
here what I think is a mislead in g comrast-Durkheim's alt mpr to ex-
plain verSus tbe contemporary anthropologist's attem pt to defend. I
shall return to this point later, but he re I want to in sist that LO argue
for a form of coherence by which a discourse is held tog-e .h or is not
ipso facto to justify or defend tbat discourse ; it is mel'ely to take an
 TALAL ASAD
essential step in the prohlem of explain ing its clJ'mpuisiveness_ Anyone
familiar with psychoanalysis would take this point quite easily_ We
might put it another way: the criterion of abstract "coherence" or
"logicali ty" (Gellner tends 10 use Ihese and other terms intel-change-
ably) is nOl always, and in every case, decisive for accepting or reject-
ing discourse _This is because, as Gellner himself correctl y observes,
"Language functions in a variety of ways o the r than 'referring lO ob-
jects" (25)- Not every utterance is an assertion. There are many things
lhat language-in-use does, and is inlrndf!d to do , which explains why we
may I-espond positively to discourse that may seem inadequate from a
narrow "logical" point of view. The fu nctions of a particular language ,
the in tentions of a particular discourse, are of course part of what
every competent ethnographer tries to grasp before he can attempt
an adequate translation into his own language.
Gellner does seem half-aware of this pOiIll, but quickly brushes it
aside in his eagerness to displ.y to Functio nalist a nthropologists their
"excessive charity" in cullural trans lalion.
The situation , facing a social anthropo logist who wishes to interprel a con-
ce pt, asserLion or doctrine in an alien cuhure. is basically simp le. He is, say.
faced with an assenion S in the lOu'l l language. He has at his disposallhe large
or infinite set of possible semences iu hi:'\ own langu age . .
He may nOl be wholly happy abouL this sit.uation , but he cannot avoid it.
There is no third language which could m~iate between the naLive language
and his own , in which equivalences could be stated and which would avoid the
pitfalls arising from the faCl that his own language has its own way of han-
dling the world. which may not be those of (he native language swdied 1 and
which consequently are liable to disLOrllhat which is being translated .
Naively, people sometimes think lila I realil)' itself cou ld be this kind of
mediator and hthird language." . .. For a variety of powerful reasons , this is
of co urse no gocxl. ('4 - '5)
Again , this sensible statement might eem to some readers to sup-
POrt the demand thaI the ethnographer must try to reconstru ct the
various ways in which the "native language" handles the world , con-
veys infomHltion, and constitutes ex perience, before lranslaLing an
alien discourse il1lo Ihe language of his et hnog.-aphic lext. But Gell-
ner's accoun t proceeds in a different. and very dubious, direclion.
Having 100Hed an equivalem English sel1lence , he cOl1linu es . the
anthropologist notices thaLjt inevitably carries a value connotation-
that it is, in other words, either Good or Bad_ "1 do not ,ay 'true' or
'false', for this only arises with regard to some types of assertion. With
regard to others , other dichotomies. uch as 'meaningful' and 'abs urd '
or 'sensible' or 'silly' might apply_ J deliberately use the 'Good ' a nd
'Bad' so as to cover all such possible polar alternatives, whi chever
might best apply to the equiva lent of S" (27).
The ConcepL of Cultural Trans lation 147
Have we not gOt here some very curious assumptions. which no
practiced translator would ever make? The first is that evaluative dis- I
crimination is always a lI1 aller of choosing between polar alternatives .
and second, tl,at evaluative distinctions are filully reducible to "Good "
and "Bad:' Clearly neirher of these assumptions is .ccept.ble when
stated as a general rule. And then there is the suggestion thaL Ihe
trans lator's task necessarily involves matching sentence for sentence.
But if th e skilled translato r looks first for any principle of coherence
in the discourse Lo be tra n slated , and then tries to reproduce that co-
herence as nearly as he can in his own language, there cannot he a
general rule as to what units the translator will employ- sentences,
paragraphs, or eve n larger units of discourse. To tUfn my point
.round: the appropriateness of the unit employed itself depends on I
the princi pie of coherence.
But Gellner's parable of the anthropologist- translalOl-requires the
assumption that it i selllences lhat the latter matches, because that
makes il easier to display how the sin of excessive charity occurs . Hav-
ing made an initial equivalence between a sentence in the local lan-
guage and one in his own . the ',,"hropologist notices that the English
sentence carries a "Bad" impression. This worries we anthropologist
because, so runs Gellner's parable, an ethnograp hic account giving
such an impression might be thought to be disparaging the natives he
has studied , and to disp.rage Olher cultures is a sign of ethnocen-
trism, and ethnocentrism in turn is a symptom of poor anthropology
according to the doctrines of Functionalist anthropology. Functional-
is [ method requ ires that sentences ah."ays be evaluated in terms of
their own socia l contexL. So the worried anthropologist reinterprets
the original sentence, with a more fl exible and ca refu l use of th e con-
textual method, in order to produce a "Good " translation.
The sin of excessive charity, and the contextual method itself, al-e
together linked. Gellner writes. to the relativistic-functionalist view of
thought that goes back to the Enlightenment:
The (unresolved) dilemma. which Ihe thought of Ihe Enlightenment fa ed .
was between a rdaLi vislic-fu nctionalist view of thoughl. and the abso lUlist
claim s of e nlightened Reason . Viewing man as part of nature , t'lS enlightened
Reason requires. it wished 10 see his cognitive and eva lu ative activities as parts
of natuJ'e too, and hence as val'yingl IcgiLimatel)', rrom organism to organism
and context to contexl. (This is the relativistic-functionalist vi ew.) BUL at the
same lime in recommending life according to Reason and alUre. it wished ;J[
the very leafii t to exempt this view itself (and. in praclice. som e others) from
such a re lat ivi sm. (3 1)
Typicall y, Gellner's philosophical formulation presents this " unre- I
solved di lemma" as an abstract opposition beLween two concepts- "a

l
rclativi.:stic-functionalisl view o f thoLlght" and "the absolutist claims 2f
enlightened Rea son ." BUI how do th ese [\\'0 "concepts" ~() rk as h cor·
re lates of ... the institu tions of [Western 1 society"? (cf. Gellnc.·, p. 18).
It wo uld not be d ifficu lt to a rgue ,hat the claims of "enlighte ned Rea-
son" ;ue flWlenaLly more successful in T hird World coumries than
many relativistic vie ws , fhat th ey have exerted greate r Clulhon'ty than
th e latter in th e developme nt of industrial econo mies and the form (l -
lion of nation stales. We shall have occasion to discuss this furth e r
when exam inin g translat ion as a process of power. The point is lhal
"the absolutist claims of enlig'htcned Reason" are in e ffec t a.n institu-
rionalizedforce. and th at as su h it is by de(mitioo commillec1 to adva'11c-
ling inw and appro priating alien territory. and that its o ppone nts
(whether explicitly relativistic o r not) are by definit.io n defensive. Thus
when Gellner continues on the same page to characterize this abstrac t
di1emnla in the atLitudes of an thro po logists, he fails to consider what
I
hcu'lUr~1 trans lation" migla invo lve when it 1S considered as in still! ·
tio nalized practice g iveil the wid er re lationship or u nequftl ocieties.
For it is nOlthe abstract log ic of what individual Western aIHh ropo lo-
gists say in their e thnogra phies, but the concrete logic of what their
coun tries (and pe rhaps they th e mselves) do in th eir re lations with th e
Third World th at should form Ule starting point for th is panicular
discussion. The dilemm as of "rela tivism" appear differently depend-
ing on whethe r we lhitlk of abstracted understanding o r of historicall y
!!:ilUated practices.
H owever, Gellner says he is not in p.-inciple against an thropologi-
cal relativism. "My main point abo ut tolerance-engende ring con-
textual interpre tation," he writes, "is that it ca lls for caution" (32). But
why such cautio n is reserved for "tolera nce-engel'ldering" as o pposed
to intolerance-engenderin g contextu al ioterpretations is nOl ex-
plained . Afte r all, Gellner insisted earlier that a ll translated se nte nces
are bound to be received e ithe r as "Good" or as "Bad ." Wh y should we
be suspicious only of those thm appear "Good" ? I r "it is the prior de-
te rmination that 5 , th e indigenous affirmation. be interpreted favour-
ab ly. wh ich de termioesjust how much context will be taken in to con-
sideration" (33), can we pe rha ps escape this vicious circularity by
ad o ptin g an u.nsJ1Itpalltetk a ttitude' Gellner does not address himself
direc tl y to this pas ibilit y here, but one must assume thal it ca nno t be
a solution, es pecially in view of the claim tha t "there is noth ing [sicJ in
the naWre of thin gs or socie ties lO d ictate visibl y just how muc h con-
text is relevant to any given ullerance . or ho w lh e context should be
described " (33).
--- Yet can thi s last remark be mea nt seriously? Not.hing?! H o w. th en ,
is communication even be tw een individuals in th e sa me socie ty e ve r
T he Conce pt o fCuhural Translalion ' 49
possible? Wh y does one ever say to foreig ners that th ey have mis-
unde rstood so meuling they heard or saw? Does social learning pro-
duce no skills in th e discrimination of relevant contex ts? T be answe rs
to th ese q uestions sho uld be o bvious, and the y are connected with the
fact tha t the a nthropologist's translation is not merely a matter of
matching se nlences i.n th e abst rac t. but of leantillgJ.!!.live !l1Iotherform.gJ ~
-'ife a nd to speak ano ther kind o f language. Which contexts a re rele-
v vatH in differe nt d iscursive events is some thin g one learns in the
course o f li ving. and even th o ug h it is ofle n ve r), di fficu lt to verbali ze
that knowledge, it is still kn owledge about someulin g " in the na ture of
society," about some aspect of Jivin g, that indicates (although it does
not "d ictate") JU St how much co ntext is releva nt to any g iven utte r-
ance. T he point, of course. is not that the ethn ograph er ca nn ot kn o w
what context is appropriate for givin g sense to typica l s ta t.e m e nts , 0 1-
lha t he is induced to be more charitable tha n he should be in tra nslat-
in g th e m. bUl that his alte mpLS attransladon may mee t with proble ms
rooted in th e lingu islic materials he works with a.nd the socia l co ndi-
tions h e works in -boul in the field and in his own society. More on
this later.
The latter ha lf of Gellner's essay is de voted to examples from eth-
nographic studies in ord er to display, fi rst, excessi"e cha rity in tra nsla-
tion , and the n, the explana tory adva ntages of taki ng a critical look a t
the logic of alien religious di course.
The first set of examples comes h'om Evans-Pritcha rd's Nu~,. Reli-
gion (1956), in which odd-sou ndi ng initial translations of Nu er reli-
g ious discourse. such as th e nOLOrio liS statement that "a twin is a bi rd;"
are re inte rpre ted. "This kind of sta tement," Gellner observes,
"a ppears to be in conRict with lhe principle of ide ntity o r non-
contradiction, or wilb commo n sense, or wi th manifesl obse rva ble
fac t: human twins are not birds, and vice versa" (3 4). According to
Gellner, Evans-PritChard's reinterpretation absolves Nue r thoug ht
from the charge of " pre-logical mentality" b y an arbi trary use o f the
contextua l method. T he appare nt absurd ity is reinterpreted to deny
tha t Nue r beliefs conAicl wi th manifest fact by relating the meaning of
the "a bsu rd" ta te ment to "logical" behavior. Gellner indicates how
this is d one by quoti ng (with the deliberate omission of o ne significant
sentence) from Evan - Pritchard :
no contradiction is involved in the statement which, o n the contrary, appears
quite sensib le and even true. to o ne who presents the idea {Q hi mself in the
Nuer lan guage and withi n Iheir syslem of religious th ough t, (H e does not
then take th eir statements aboul [w in s any more literally than they make and
und erstand the m th emselves.] They are not saymg thal alwtn has (I. beak.je(Ithe,s,
and so forth. Nor in.lheh· e.ve·rydaJ "elations as iwms do Nuers speak of them l IS birds 01'
 TALAL ASAD
acllowards them as though. they were birds. (35, Semence in brackets omiued by
Gellner; emphasis supplied by Gellner.)
At this point Gellner breaks off the quotation and inteJjects in
mock despair: "B ut what, then, would count as pre-logical thought?
Only, presumably, the behaviour ofa totall y demented person, suffer-
ing from permanent hallucinations, who wo,,[d treaLsomeLhing which
is perceptibly a human being as Lhough it had all the attribuLes of a
bird " (35). So eager is Gellner to nail lILLerances that must count as
expressions of "pre-logical LhoughL" (why is he so eager?) Lhat he does
not pause to consider carefully what Evans-Pritchard is trying to
do. In facL, Evans-Pritchard de vOLes several pages to explaining this
strange sentence. It is plain Lhat he is concerned to explain (in Lerms of
Nuer social life), not to iILS1ify (in terms of Western ommonsense, or
Western values). The aim of Lhis kind of exegesis is certainly not LO
pe"suade WeSLern reade "s LO adopL Nuer religious pracLices. Nor does
it rule OUL the possibiliLY Lhat individual speakers mak" mistakes or
ULLer absurdiLies in thei,' religious discourse when employing their
Lraditional ways of Lhinking. I t is not clear, therefore, why Gellner
shou ld point LO Lhis example from Nu.er Religion to substantiate his
charge ()f excessive d,arity on the part of Functionalist anthropolo-
gists. Evans-Pritchard is trying to explain the coherence Lhat gives
N uer religiolls discourse its sense. n O( LO defend lhat sense as having a
universal Status-after all, Evans-Pritchard himself was a Catholic
both before and after his monograph on Nuer religion was wriLLen.
Now whether Evans-Pritchard succeeds in explaining the basic co-
herence of uer religious discourse is. of course, another question.
Several British an th ropologists-for example, Raymond Firth ( ' 965)
-(Lhough not, to my knowledge. any Nuer themselves) have disputed
aspects of Evans-Pritchard's interpretation. But such disagreements
are still abollt different ways of making sense of NlIcr religious dis-
course. not about too much or tOO liule "charity" in translation. In fact
cont rary to Gellner's allegations, Evans-Pritchard's exegesis does make
quite explicil apparenl "contradictions," or at leasl ambiguities. in
Nuer concepts-for example, between the notion of "a supreme and
omnipresent being" and Lhat of "lesser spirits," both of which are cate-
gorized as kwolli. And iL is precisely because Evans-PriLchard insists on
keeping the different senses of kwolll together as parts of "one co n-
cept" a nd does not treat them as homonyms (as Malinows ki might
have done by relating the word to different contexts of use) that
the Nuer concepL of spirit might be said to be "conrradictory." But
whether lhe identification of ambiguities and "contradictions" in the
basic conceptual reperLoire of a language provides obvious ev idence
of "pre-logical LhoughL" is, of course, a different issue- l would sug·
The Concept of CUILU rat Translation 15'
gesL that only someone Wilh a very naive understanding of what was
invo lved in translaLion could think thaL it does.
Yet Genner's discourse Lypically evades the issues iL seems to be
raising, in a style thaL seeks LO hurry the reader along over a series of
archly phrased disclaimers:
1 do nOI wish to be misundersLOod : I am not arguing (har Evans-Pritchard's
account of Nuer concep ts is a bad one. (NOI' am I anxious to revive a doclrine
of pre-logical mentality a.la L~vy~ Bruhl.) On the contrary, '- have the greatest
admiraLion for it. What I am anxious to argue is that contex tual interpreta-
tion. \vh ich offers an account or whal asse n..ions "really mean" in opposition La
whaL lhey seem (0 mean in isolation. does not by ilSe lf clinch maners. (3 8 )
Now who would have claimed it did ? Cenain ly Evans-PrlLChard does
not. In any case the opposition between a "contexLUal inle1'pretaLioon
and one that is not contextual is enLirely spurio us NOIhing has mea n- . ~.
in g "in isolation." The problem is always, what kind of conLext? I e.' ,.
But that is somethin g Gelln er never discusses, except by suggest-
ing lhalthe answe.r IllUSl involve a \'icious circularity- or by uttering
repeated warnings against "ex.cessive" chadlY (when is charity not "ex-
cess ive"?). He appears unaware LhaL for Lhe translator the problem of
determining the relevant kind of Context in each case is solved by shill
in the use of the langt,ages concerned, not by an a priol; "attilude" of
inLolerance or tolerance . And skill is something thaL is learned-that
is. something .that is necessarily circular, but not viciously so. We are
dea ling not wilh an abstract matching of two selS of sentences, but
with a socia l practice rooted in modes of life. A trans laLOr may make
mistakes, or he may knowingly mi represent something- much as
peop le make mistakes or lie in everyday life. BUl we cannot produce a
general principle for identifying such Lhings, panicular\y nOL Lhrough
warnings to be careful of "the contextual meLhod of inlerprelation."
And so to a nother of Gellner's charming disclaimers: "To say all
this is not (0 argue for a scepti cism or agnosticism concern in g what
members of alien languages mean , sUllless to argue for an abstent ion
from lhe contextual method of interprelalion. (On the conLrary, (
shall argue fOI' a fuller use of' it, full er in the sense of aJlowing for the
possibility that what people mean is sometimes absurd .)" (39). The
charm of this Statement consists in Cellner's cheeky appropriation of
hjs opponent's method (0 strengthen his own distinctive positioll,
BUI before thal is done, we are given further examples or the
tolerance-engendering contextual melhod aL work in Leach's Polttical
Syslems of High/mul Bu.rma. Thus acco"din g to Leach , Kachin state-
tnents about [he supernatural world are "in th e last analySis. nothing
more than ways of describing the forma l relationships lhat exist
belween real persons and real groups in ordinary Kachin society"
 TALAt. ASAD
(quoted o n P. 40). At this poin t Gellner intervenes: " It is possible (0
•discern what has happened. Leach 's exegetic PFocedures have arso
I ~aved the K ~chins fJOIn being cred ited with wbat uley appca1' (0 be say-
ing" a nd (hl!.~ made it possible "to attribute ..!.n eaning LO assertio ns
which mig ht otherwise be found to lackit" (4 1). Gellner goes on to
linsist that he is not concerned [Q dispute Leach 's interpreta tio ns. but
merely "to show how the Tange of context, and the ma nn e r in which
the con text is seen, necessa rily affect the iluerpretalion" (4 1). This is a
sig nifican t remark~ because it is indeed not Leac.h's reductio nism LO
which Gelln er o bjects (we shall find him insisting on it himself later in
connectio n with Be rber religious ideology) but to the fact thaI this ex-
ample of reductionism - which Gellner misleadingly calls "conte.x-
I tualism"- seems to defend, rather than to attack, th e cu ltural dIS-
course co ncerned .
Gelln er's demonstration of how "the uncharitahle may be 'co ntex-
tualist' in the second , d eepe r and better sense" (42) begins by present-
ing a fi ctilious word in a fictitious society-the word "boble," used in a
way remarkably like the E nglish word "noble." Thus we are wid that it
can be a pplied to peo ple who actually display cenain hab itual forms
of co nduct, as well as to peo ple who occupy a particular social status
irrespective of their behavio r. "But the point is: the society in questio n
does not distingllish two concept.s, boble (a) and boble (b). It o nly Uses
t~e wOTd boble to llt court" (42). Tbe logic of bobility is then analyzed
furth e r to show h ow
OOIDility is a conceptua l device by which (he privileged dass of lhe socie ty in
qu es tion acq uires some of the prestige of certain virtues respected in th a l so-
ciety, without the inconve nience of oeed ing ro practice it, thank.s to the fac{
that (h e same word is app lied ei the r to practitioners of those \lll'lues or JO oc-
cupie rs of fa vo llred posirions. It i s~ at th e sa me time. a manner o f "einforcing
th e a ppeal of those vinues, by associa lio g lhem , through the use of th e sa rn e
appellation. with presti ge a nd pOlve r. But a ll this needs to be said, and to say il
is to bring out the inte rna l logica l inco he re nce of rhe co ncepl~all incohe r-
ence which . indeed, is socia ll y runctional. (42)
In fact ~he concept of"bo bility" is not shown to be incoherent-eve n if
it be accepted ,h at the ambigu ity of the word allows it to be used in
political discourse to consoli date tbe legitimacy of a ruling class (and
therefore. in principle, also to undermine that legitimacy). Gellner's
satisfied conclu sion to his fi ctional example is surely far too hasty:
" What this shows, however, is that the over-chad table interpreter, de-
termined to d efend the concepts he is investigating from the charge
of logical incoherence, is bound to misdescribe the social situation . To
make sense ~f the concep' is to moire nonsense of the society" (42 , emphasis
-
added) . Clearly the word "bobility" makes sense to its lIsers in panicu-
- Do the Be rbel'S believe that God endows their "saints" \\. ith disposi-
The Co nce pt o f C ultura l Translation 153
lar stateme fllS (or they would not use it), and it m,a kes sense also, a l- I
thou g h- of a different kind, to Gellner, who states that by deceiving ilS l
usel-s it somehow upholds a socia l structure. Sense or nonsense~ li~
truth or fa lsehood, a pplies 1.0 s.ta.tem~e·nlS and not to abs_~racl concepts.I
There seems to me no e vid ence here of a "nonsensical" concept, be-
cause lhel'e is no analysis of socially situated state~:nents.
But there is also a more imponam failu re evident in this example: I
the lack of any attempt to explore its coh~Ten~-that which makes its
t.'· . .
social effect such a powerful possibility. Of' course, political discourse
employs lies, half-truth s. logica l tricke ry, and so on. Yet that is not I
what gives it its cornpulsiue d~r~c ler any more than the use of true or
~ear statements does} and com pulsive ness iSj?recisely what is in volved
in Gellner's example. It is not the abstract logical status of concepts
that is relevant here, but the way in which specifiC political discourses I
seem to mobilize or direct the behavior of people within given cultural
~tua [ions . The compulsiveness of "bobility" as a political concept is a
feature not of gu llible minds but of coherent discourses and practices.
T hat is why it is essentia l for a translato r of po werful political ideolo-
gies to attempt to convey somelhing of this coherence. To make non-
se nse of the concept is to make no nsense of the society.
Gellner's final example (omes fro.m his own fieldwork among th e
centl-al Moroccan Berbers, and is inte nd ed to cli nch the argument
(hat an uncharitable contextualisl makes betler sense of the society he
d escribes by emphasizing {he incohe re nce of its co ncepts: "Two con-
cepts are relevant," he writes , 'i baraka and agu.rTo'm (pl. 'i gunamen).
Bat'aka is a word which can mean simply 'enough', but it also means
plenitude, and above all blessedness manifested amo ngst oth e r things
in prosperity and ('he power to cause prosperity in others by super-
natural means. An agurram is a possessor o f' baraha." (43).
19u:n-amen- translated as "sain ts" in Gelln er's later writin gs (e.g.,
I g6g) - are a fairly privileged and influential minority in the tribal so-
ciety of central Moroccan Berbers who act as foci of religious va lu es
and also as n1ediators and arbitrators amongst the tribal popu latio n
wilh whom they live. "The local belief is that they are selected by God.
Moreover, God makes his choice manifest by e ndow ing those who m
he has seJected with certain characteristics, includil1g magical powers,
and great generos ity, prosperity, a consider-the-lilies attitude, paci-
fism , and so forth" (43).
This is Gellner's "translation. " But his too-fluent lise of a religious
vocabulary with strong. and peT haps irreleva nt, Christian overtones
must prompt d oubts and questions at this point . What precisely are
the behavior and discourses translated here as "a consider-th e-lilies a t-
titude," " makes his choice manifest," and "endowin g," for in stance?
'54 TALAL ASAD
tional charaCle'ris(ics such as "great generos,ity and pacifism," or do
tbey take it ralher that these characteristics are conditim'l.S of saintli-
ness, of the closeness of igurra1ll.en lO God? Do the Berbers really be-
have as though religious and moral vi:rt-u,(!s were " manifestations" of
d,vine choice? What do they say and how do they behave when people
faillO display the virtues they ought lO have? By whom is an agurra1ll.'s
behavior conceptualized as a "consider-the-lilies atLitude," given that
he has both family and property, and that this fact is taken by the Ber-
bers to be perfectly in order' Gellner does not give the reader the
relevant evidence for answering these important questions, whose sig-
nificance for his tra_n slation will emerge in a moment.
The realilY of the situation is, however, that the ig;turamcn are in fact se-
ICClCd by the surro unding ordinary tribesmen who lise their services, by being
ca lled to perrorm Iho~e services and being preferred 10 the rival candidates
for their performance. Whal appears (0 be vox Det is in reality vox populi.
Moreover, Lhe maHer or the blessed characterislics, lhe stigmala {sic] of
agurmm-hood is more complicated. II is essemiaJ lhat successfuj candidates to
ng'Urram status be o 'ediled with rhese charaClerislics, bUL it is equall y essential,
al any rale wilh regard to some of them. that1.hey s hould nOI really possess
them. For instance, an agzt1"Tam who was extremel y generous in a consider-
the-lilies spiril would soon be impovetished a nd , as such . fail by another cru -
cial test, thal of prosperity.
There is here a crucial divergen ce hetween concept and reality, a divel'-
gence which moreover is quite essential for the working of the social system.
(43 -44)
It is not at all clear from tbe account given by Gellner what is
meant by the statement, "The loca l belief is that they are selected by
God"- "selected'J for \\o·hal exactly? For being arbitrators? Butarbitra-
tion must be initiated by one or other member of the tribal society,
and thal fact can hardly be unknown to the tribesmen. For beiog pa-
cine? BUl pacifism is a virtue, not a rewa rd . For worldly success and
prosperity? But that cannOl be a local definition of saintliness, or the
FJ1ench colonial rulers would have been rega rded as more saintly than
a n y agu:rram.
lL is really no grea[ explanatory achievement for a European an-
thropologist to inform his agnostic andlor modern European readers
tbal the Berbers believe in a particular kind of direct intervention of
the deity in their affairs, that tbey are of course mistaken in this belief,
and that this mistaken belief can have social consequences. In this
kind of exercise we do not learn what they believe, but only that what
they believe is quite wrong: 1hus, the Berbers believe that God "se-
lecls" igmTa1llen; we know God does nol exist (or if some of us still "be-
lieve" he does, we "know" he does not intervene directly in secular his-
[Ory); ergo the "selector" must be another agent whom the tribesmen
The Concept of Cultural Translation '55
do not know as the agent-in fact , the surrounding tribesmen them-
selves. The igurra'fnen are "selected" (for a particular social role? for a
moral virtue? for a religious destiny?) by the people . The "selection"
appears to be vox Dei and is in reality vox pop;.tli. Or is it?
In reality the social process described by the anthropologist as "se- I
lection" is the locus of a vox only 'if it is pretended that that process
constiLUtes a cultural text. For a text must have an author-the one
who makes his voice heard through it. And if that voice cannot be
God's, it must be someone else's-the people's. Thus Gellner the athe-
ist insists on answering a theological question : who speaks through
history, through society ? [n this particular case, the answer depends
on the text containing at once the "real," unconscious meaning and its
appropriate translation. This fusion of signifier and signified is espe-
cially evident in the way in which the Islamic concept of bara.ka is made
to sound remarkably like the Christian concept of grace as portrayed
by an eighteenth-century skeptic, so that the conditions defining the
agu,nam's baraka are referred to with a knowing Gibbonian smile as I
"stigmata"-and by that deft sign, a portion of the Berber cultural
text is at once constructed (made up) and designated (shown up)
within Gellner's text, as exquisite a union of word and thing as any [Q ,
be round in all his writings.
But society is not a text that communicates itself to the skilled
reader. It is people who speak. And tbe ultimate meaning of what
they say does not reside in society-society is the cultural condition in
which speakers act and are acted upen. The privileged position that
Gellner accords himself for decoding the real meaning of wbat the
Berbers say (regardless of whal they think they say) can be maintained
only by someone who snpposes that translating otber cultures is es-
sentially a matter of matching written sentences in two languages,
such that the second set of sentences becomes the "real meaning" of
the first-an operation the anthropologist alone comrols, from field
notebook to printed ethnograpby. In other words, it is the privileged
position of someone who does not, and can afford not to. engage in a
genuine dialogue with those he or she once lived with and now writes
about (cf. Asad, ed. 1973' 17).
In the middle of his article, when discussing anthropological rela-
tivism. Gellner complains that "anthropologists were relativistic, toler-
ant, contextually-comprehending vis-a.-vis [he savages who are after
all some distal Ice away. but absolutistic, intolerant vis-a.-vis their imme-
diate neighbours or predecessors, the members of OUr own society
who do not share their comprehending outlook and are themselves
'ethnocentric' ... " (31).
Why have 1 tried to insist in this paper that anyone concerned
with translating from other cultures must look for coherence in dis-
 TALAL ASAO
courses, and yet devoted so many pages to showing that Gellner's text
is largely incoherent? T he reason is quite simple: Gellner and I speak
the sanle language, belong (0 the same academic profession, live in
the same society. In talUng up a critical stance toward his text I am
CO!lItStin what he says, not translo.ling it, and the rad ical difference be-
tween these two activities is precisely what I insist on. Still, the purpose
of my argument is not to e.xpress an attitude of "intoleran ce" LOward
an "immed iate neighbour," bu t to try and identify incoherences in his
text that call fo r remedy, because the a nth ropologica l task of transla-
tion desen'es to be made mOre cohere nl. The purpose of this criti-
cism, therefore, is to fu rthel' a coll ecti ve endea vor. Critic izin g "savages
who are after all some distance away," ill an ethnograph ic monograph
they ca nn o t read, d oes not seem 1.0 me to have th e same kind of pur-
pose. In order for criticism to be responsible , it must always be ad-
dressed to .someone who ca n Contest it.
The J nequality of Languages
A carefu l read in g of Gellners paper shows that although he
raises a number of imporLa nt questions, he nOt only fails to answer
them, but misses some of the most crllcial aspects of the problem with
which the ethnographer is engaged. The most interesting of these, it
seems to me. is the problem of what one migh t call " unequal lan-
g uages" - and it is this 1 want now to disc uss in some detail.
All good translatio'n see ks to reproduce the structure of an alien
discourse within the translator's Ow n la nguage. How th at s tru Cture
(or "cohe rence") is re produced wi ll, of course , depend on the gen re
co nce rne d (" poetry/' "scientific analysis," "narra ti ve," ClC.), on the re -
sources of the (ranslator's language, as well as o n the interests of the
translator and /or his readership. All successful tra nslation is premised
on the fact thaI it is addressed within a specific language, and there-
fore also to a specific set of practices, a specific form of life . The fur-
ther that form of life is from the o riginal, the less mechanical is (he
reproduction . As Waller Benjamin wrote: "The language of a transla·
Lion can-in fact must- let itself go, so thaL it gives voice to the intenlio
( \ of the o riginal no t as reproductio n bu ( as harmony, as a supplement
to the language in which it expresses itself, as its o,,'n kind of intentia"
( 1969: 79)· It is. incide nlally, 1'01' the reader to evaluate thaI in/en/io,
not fo r the translato r 10 preempt the evaluation. A good translation
sho uld always precede a critique. And we can turn this aro und by say-
in g that a good critiqu e is alw ays an "internal" critique -that is, o ne
based o n some sha red understanding, On a joint lire, which it aims to
Tbe Conc~pl of Cultural Translali on 157
e nla rge and make more coherent. Such a critique-no less theln the
object of criticism-is a point of view, a (contra) v"rsion, having only
provisional and limited authority.
What happens when the languages concerned are so remote that
it is very difficu lt to rewrite a harmon ious inlenlio? Rudolf Pannwitz,
quoted in the Benjamin essay on which 1 have just drawn, makes the
following observation:
Our translations, e"en the best o nes, proceed fmm a wrong premise. They
wa m to tum Hindi, Creek, English imo German instead of tu rning Cenmll1
into Hindi, Greek. English. Our u'anslaw rs have a far g reater reverence for ~
the usage oflheir own language {han for the spirit of th e foreign wo rks ... I
The basic error of th e tra nslator is thaLhe preserves the Stale in wh ich his OW Il
. lang uage happens to be inslead of allowing his lang uage LO be powerfull y af· I
feeted by the foreig n lOngue , Particularl y when Lrans bning from a Janguage
very I'emote fl'om his own he must go back to the primal e lemenLIi of language
itself and penetrate to the paim where work, image, and lone convt: rg'e , H e
mu st expand and deepen his language by means of th e foreign language.
{lg6g:8o-811
Tbis call to transform a language in order to trans late the coher-
ence of the original, poses an interesting challenge to the pel'son satis-
fied with an absurd-sounding translation on the assumption that the
original must have been equall y absurd: tbe good translator does not
immediately assume that unusual d ifficulty in conveying the sense of
an alien discourse denotes a faull in the latter, but instead critically
exam ines the normal Slate of his o r her own language. T he relevant
question thel'efore is nOt how tolerant an allit'Ude the t ranslator ought
to display towa rd the ori ginal au tho r (an abstract eth ical dil emma),
bu t ho w she ca n test the tolerance of her Own language for assu min g
unaccustomed forms,
But this pushing beyo nd the limits of one's habiLUa l usages, this
breaking dow n and reshaping of one's own language through the pro-
cess of I ranslation, is never an easy business. in pan because (if 1 may
'pe allowed a hypostatilation) it depends on the willingne s of the
translator's lallgvage to subject itself to this transform ing power. 1 al·
t ri bu te, somewhat fictitiously, vol ition to the language because I want
to emphasize that the mailer is largely something the translator can -
not determine by individ ual activity (any more than the ind ividual
speaker can affecl Ih e evolution of his or her language)- that it is gov·
erned by institutionally defi ned power relations between the lan-
guages / modes of li fe concerned. To PUI it crudely: because the lan- 'I
g uages of Third World societies-including, of course. the societies ~
that social a nlilropo togists have tradi tio nall y studied-are "weaker" in
relation to Western lang uages (and today, especially to English) , they
are more lik e ly to submit to fo rcib le Iransfor mal.i o n in the translation
 TALALASAD
pr ocess than the otne r way aro und . The reason for this is ,fi rst, that in
their poli tical-eco nomic relations with T hird World cou ntl'ies, West-
ern n ali ons h ave lb e greater ab il ity LO m anipulate th e laue r. ~nd, sec-
ond, Western languages produce and deploy desired knowledge mo~e
readily than Third Wo rld languages do. (The knowledge that Third
World languages deploy more easily is not sought by Western societies
i.!!..quite the same wa y, or for the same reason.)
Take modem A rabic as an example. Since the early nineteenth
century (here has been a growin g volume of ma(eri al translated from
£mopean languages - especially French and English -in to Arabic.
This includes scien tific texts as well as "social soence:' "history," "phi-
losoph y," and "litera ture." And from ,h e nineteenth century, Arabi c
as a language has begun as a result to undergo a transformatio n (lex-
ica l, grammatical , se mantic) that is far mare radica l than anything
to be identified in European languagcs-a tran sfo rmation that has
pushed it to approx im ate to th e latter more closely than in the past.
ISuch transformations signal in equalities in the power (i.e., in the ca:
pacities) of the respective languages in relatio n to the dominant forms
Iof discourse that have been and a re still be ing translated . There are
varieties of knowledge to be learnt, but also a host of models to be
imitated and reproduced. In some cases knowledge of tbese models is
a precondition for the production of more knowledge; in other cases
it is an end in itself, a m ime tic gesture of power. an expressio n of d e -
si re for trans form at ion. A recog·nitioll of lhi s we ll-kn own fact reminds
us that industrial capitalism ,ransforms nO t onl y modes of production
but also kinds of knowledge and styles of life in the Third World . And
with ,hem, forms of langu age. The result of half-tra nsformed styles
of li fe wi ll make for am biguities, which an unskillfu l Western trans-
lator may simplify in the di rection of his Own "strong" la ng uage.
What does this a rg ument im ply for the anthropological concept
of cultural translatio n' Th at perh aps there is a g reater stiffness in eth-
no graph ic lingui stic conventio ns, a g rea le r intrin sic res ista nce than
can be overcome by individual ex periments in modes of ethnographic
representation .
In his perceptive essay "Modes of T houg ht," which Celln er criti-
cizes for making over-charitable a"umptions abou t the coherence of
" primitive thought," Lienhardt has this to say:
When '. . . e li ve with savages and speak their languages learning 1.0 re present
j
th eir experience r.o ourselves in their v. .·ay. we come as near to th inking li ke
lhem as we ca n withoul ceasing to be ourselves. Eventually. we lry to re present
t.h e ir conce ptions sys te matica ll y in the logical construe(s we have been brought.
up to use: and we ho pe, at best, thus ro reco ncile whal ca n be ex.pressed in
their languages, with what can be expressed in ours. We mediate between
their habiIs of thou gh t, which we have acC]ui red with them. and those of our
The Concept of Cultu ral Trans lation 159
own societ Yi in doing SO~ it is not finally some m ysterious "primiti ve phi.l oso- I
phy" that we are exploring, bu t the funher pmentialities of our thought and
hlOguage. ( 1954 : 96-97)
In the field , as Lienhardt rightly suggesrs, th e process of translation
ta kes place at the very moment the ethnogra pher engages with a spe-
cific mode of li fe-just as a child does in lea rnin g to g row up witbin a
specific cullure, He learns to find his way in a ne w e nvironme nL , and a
ne w language. And li ke a child he needs to verbalize explicitly what
the proper way of d oing things is, because that is how learning pro-
ceeds. (Cf. A. R. Luria 0 11 "sy nprax ic speech" in Luria a nd Yudo vich
' 97 J : 50.) Wh en the child /anthropologist becomes adept at ad ult
ways, whaL he has learnt becomes i:mplicit-as assumptions informing
a sh ared mo d e of li fe. with all its resonances and areas of uncla rity.
But learn ing to live a new m ode of life i~ Ilot th e sa me as learning
abo ut another mode of life. Wh en anthropologists return to their
cou ntries , they must write up "their people," and they must do 0 in
the conventio ns or rep resentation already circumscribed (al ready
"wrillen aro und ." " bounded ") by their discipline. institutional life, 1
a_~ d wid e r society. "Cultural t~ans la tion" must accomm odate itself LO a
d,ffe re nt lang uage not o nl y In the sense of English as opposed to
Dinka, or English as opposed to Kabbas hi Arabic, but a lso in the sense
of a Bri tish , middle class, academ ic game as opposed to the modes of
li fe of the "tribal" Sudan . The stiffness of a powerful established
Structu re of lifeJ wi th ils owo disc ursive games. ils OWIl "s Lro ng" lan-
gu ages, is what among o ther things flllally determines the effective-
ness of the transla tion . T he trans lation is addressed to a very specific ') f
audience. which is waiting to read about anoth e r mode of life and to j
manipulate the text it reads accord ing to e5la blished ru les, not to
learn to liw a new mode of li fe.
If Benjamin was ri gh' in propos ing that translation may require
n Ot a mechanica l repro duction of the origina l but a harmoniza tion
with its inlenlio, it fo llows lhat there is no reason wh y this should be
do ne o nl y in the sa me mode. Indeed, it cou ld be a rgued that "trans-
latin g" an alien fo rm of life, another cultu re, is not always don e best
thro ugh th e representational discourse of ethnography, that und er
certain conditions a dramatic performance. the execution of a dance.
or the playiLlg of a piece of music might be mo re apt. These would all
be producl£o rts of the origin a l a nti not mere interpretation s: trans-
fo n ned in sta nces of the original . not authoritat ive textu al represenLa-
tio ns of it (cr. Hollander '959). But would they be thought of by most
social an thropologists as valid exerc ises in the "translation o f culture "?
1 think no t, because Ihey all raise an entirely differe nt dimension of
th e relationship be tween the anrh ropological "work" and iLS audience,
160 ' rAlJ/\L AS AD
the question o f diffe relll uses (practices). as opposed merely to d iffer-
ent '",ilings and readings (meanings) of that work. And as social a n-
thropologists ,,,,'e are trained to translate other cultural langu ages as
texts, not to ~n lroduce or e nlarge <:ultural capacities, learnt from
other ways of living, int o ou r own. It seems to me very likely t.hat the
notion of culture as text has reinforced this view of our tas k, because it
facilitates the assumption that transla tion is esse.."tiolly a matter of ve r-
bal represe ntation.
Reading Other Cultures
This inequ ality in t.he power of languages , lOgether with the
fact th at the anthro pologist. typically writes about an illite rate (or at
any rate non-English-spea king) population for a largely academ ic,
English-speaking audience, e ncourages a tendency I would now like
to d iscuss: the tendency lo read the implicil in alien cultures.
According to many social a nthro pologists , the object of ethno-
graphic o'anslation is no t the historica lly situated speech (that is the
rask of the folklorist or th e linguist). but "culture," and to transl ate
culture the anthropologist must first read and then rei nscribe the im-
plicit meanings that lie be neath /within / beyo nd situa ted speech . Mary
Douglas puts this nicely:
The anthropologi!'it wh o draw s O UI th e whol e scheme of t.he cos mos wbich is
implied in [the obse rved] practices does r.he primitive culture grea[ violence if
he seems lO present the cos mology as a systematic philosophy suhscribed to
co nsciously by indi vid uals.. .. So th e primitive wodd \·iew which I h ~ve de
fined above is I'arely itself an object of co memplation and speculation in the
primi(ive culture. It has evolved as the ap pa.lla.ge of mile!" SOci,,1} instilutions.
To this extem ilis produced indirecll y. and to this extent the primilive culture
lHust be raken to be un awa re of ilselF, un conscio us of its own co nditions.
(!g66 :g ' )
One difference between the ant.hropologist and the linguist in the
matter of trallslation is pe rhaps this: lhat whereas (he latter is imme-
diately faced witb a specific piece of discourse procluced within the
society studied, a discourse dlal is Ihen lex tuali.z ed, the fo rme r m us t
co nstru c t the di scours e as a cultural text in terms of mea nings implicit
in a range of practices . T h e construction of cultural discours e a nd its
tral)slation thus seem to be facets of a single act. This point is brought
Ollt in Douglas's com mentS on her Own translations of th e meanings of
the pangolin cult among the Lele:
There-are no Lele books of theology or philosophy to stale the rneanillg of th e
cult. The metapb ysical impl kilti o ns have not been expressed \.0 me in sa man y
The Co nce pt o f Cultural Translation ,6 \
words by Lcle. nor did I even eavesdrop a conversation between divin e rs
covering this g rou nd .. ..
What kind of evide nce for the mea ning of this f ult, 0 1' of a ny cull, ca n be
sensibly d em a nded ? I r ca n have man y diffe re m levels a nd kind s of mea ning.
But lhe one on which l ground my argumelll is the mean ing whic h e me rges
ou t of a pan ern in which the parts ca n incontestably he shown to be regularly
relaled . No o ne membe r o f ule socie(y is necessarily aware of the wh ole pat-
tern. any more than spea kers are able LO be explicit aboul the linguistic pal-
terns they employ. ( '966: '73-74)
I've suggested elsewhere (Asad '983a) that the attribution of im- I
plicit mea nings lO an alien practice regm'dless oj whelher lh. are acknowl-
edged by its agenls is a characteristic form of theological exe rcise, with
a n ancient history. H ere I want to note that referen ce to the linguisli
I
patterns produ ced by speakers does not make a good analogy because
linguistic paUents are not meanings lO be translated. the y are rules lO
I;>~ systematicali y described and a nal ysed. A native speaker is awa re of
how such patterns should be produced even when he can not verbalize
th a t knowleclge explicitly in t he form of rules. T he a pparent lack of
a bility to verba lize such social knowledge does not necessarily consti-
LUte evidence of unconscious meanings (cf. Dummett 198 , ). The con-
ce pt of "unco nscious mea ning belongs to a th eor y of the repressive
U
unconscious. suc h as Freud's. in whi ch a person may be said to ·'k.now"
something unconsdou sly. I
The business of ide mifyi'2ll unconscious meanings in the task of
"cultural translation" is therefore pe rhaps belter compared lO the ac-
t[vjty of the psychoanalyst th a n lO that of the linguist. Indeed British
anthropo logists have sometimes presented their work in precisely
M
these terms. Thus David Pocock, a pupil of Evans-Pritchard's, writes:
In shoH, the work of the social anrhropo logis.l may be rega rd ed as a highly I
co mplex act of transl ation in which author and translator collabora te. A 11l00' C
precise analogy is that of th e relati on between the psychoanalySl and his s ub-
ject. The analyst enters th e private ",to dd of hjs subject in o rd e r lO lea rn the
granuna l-of hls pri vate la ngua ge. I f the ana lysis goes no furth e r it is TlO differ-
em in kind from th e understa ndin g which may exist between any two people
who kn ow each ot he r wen .[!] It becomes scientific to the extent thallhe priva te
language ofintimalc und ersLanding is translated into a puhlic language. how-
ever speciaillcd from th e layma n's pelnt of view, which in this case is the la n-
guage o~ psychologisLS. BUl th e particular act of translation does f1 0l disto n
[he pri vate experie nce of th e subject and ideaU y it is. at least pOleruiall y. ac·
cep table lO him as a !icie ntific representation of it. Similarly. lhe model o f
Nuer political life which e merges in Professor Evans-Prilchard's work is a sci·
entific mod e l meaningful to his fellow.sociologists as sociol ogi~ts, a nd it is
effective because il is j)(Jf811flaily acceplaple 10 Ihe Nue1· in some ideo.l situalign in.
which they could be su.pposed 10 be interested in themselves as -men living in society, The
collaboration of nawral scientists may from. this point of view be see n as devel·
 'TALAL ASAD
oping language enabling certai n people to comm unicate \,,..ith increasing su b-
tle[y about a di~linct area or natural phenome na which is defined b y lhe name
of the particular science. Their science is, in rhe litera l meaning of the term ,
thei,' commonsense, Iheir common meaning. To move f,·om this common
sense to the 'Ic:om mon sense" of fh e wider public iovolvcs aga in an act of
translation. The situation of social anthropo logy, or sociology in genet'al, js
nO( a t thi s le vel so very diffe rent. The difference lies in the fact lhat so-
ciologicaJ phenomena are objectivel y studied onJ y to [he extent thallhejr su b-
jective meaning is taken into accou nt and thal the people studied are poten-
tially capable of sharing tht" socio logical co nsciou sness that the sociologist has
of them. (196 1: 88 - 89; emphasis added)
I have quoted this remarkable passage in full because it states very lu-
cidlya position ,ha t is, 1 think, broadly acceptable to many anthropol-
ogisr.s who would otherwise consider themsel ves to be engaged in very
different kinds of enterprise . I have quoted k also because the nature
of the collaboration between "author and translaLOr" is neatly brought
out in the subsequent reference to the psychoanalyst as scientist: if the
a nthropological Iranslator, like 'he a nalyst, has final aut hority in de-
term ining the subject's meanings-it is then the former who becomes
the 'rea.l a.uthor of the latter. In this view, "cultural translatio n" is a
matter of determining implicit meanjngs-n ol the meanings the na-
I tive speaker act ually acknowledges in his speecb, not even the mean-
ings the native listene r necessarily accepts, but those he is " potentially
capable of shari_ng>' with scientific authority "in some ideal situation H
: sen ling societies- for example, television films produced in the West
it is when he can say. for example, with Gellner, that vox Dei is in real-
ity vox poPu.li, that he utters the true meaning of his traditional dis-
course. an ~sse ntial meaning of his culture. The fact that in lhat I' ideal
situation" he would no longer be a Muslim Berber tribesman, but
something coming to resemble Professor Gellner, does not appear to
worry such cultural translators.
I This power to create meanings for a subject through the notion of
the " implicit" or the " unconscious," to authoriu lhem, has of course
been discussed for the ~nalys t-analysand relationship (e.g., recently in
Malcolm 1982). It has not, 1.0 my knowledge, been considered with re-
gard to what the cultural translator does. There are, of course, impor-
tant differences in the case of the anthropologist. It may be point.ed
out that the Janel' does not impose hjs tra nslation on the members of
the society whose cultural discourse he unravels, that his ethnography
js therefore notauulorita tive in the way the analyst's case study is. The
analysand comes to the analyst, or is referred lO the latter by those
with authority over him, as a patient in need of help. The anthropolo-
gist, by contrast, comes to the society he wants to read, he sees himself
as a learner, not as a guide, and he withdraws from the society when
he has adequate information to inscribe its culture. He does not con-
The Concept of CullUral Translation
sider the society, and ne ither do its members consider themselves to
be, sick: the society is never s~bject to the anthropologist's authorily.
But this argument is not quite as conclusive as it may seem at first
sight. It remaius the case that the ethnographer'S translation/repre-
sentation of a particulaT cu lture is inevitably a textual construct, that
as representation it cannot normally be contested by the people to
whom it is attributed, and that as a "scientific text" it eventually be-
comes a privileged element in the potential store of h.istorical memory
for the uonliterate socie.ry concerned. In modern and modernizing
societies , inscribed records have a greater power LO shape. to reForm ,
selves and institutio ns than folk memories do. They even consrrllct
folk memories. The anthropologist's monograph may return, reu·ans-
lated, inlo a "weaker" Third World 'language. In the long run, there- I
fore, it is not the personal autho rity of the ethnographe.·, but the so-
cial authorit.y of his ethnogra~h~ th!.'t matlers. And that authority i§.
inscribed in the in stitutionalized forces of indu§trial capitalist societY..
(see page 158 above) , which are constantly tending to push the mean-
ings of various Third World societies in a single direct.ion. This is not
to say that there are no resistances to this tendency. But "resistance" in
itself indicates the presence of a dominant force.
I must stress 1 am not arguing that ethnography plays an y gTeat
role in the reformation of other cultures. In this respect the effects of
ethnography cannot be compared with some other forms of repre-
that are sold to Third World coun tries . (That a nthropologists recog-
nize the power of television is reAected, inddeula liy. in the increasing
number of anthropological films being made for the medium in Brit-
ain.) Still less can the effects of ethnography compare with the polit.i-
cal. economic, and military constraints of lhe world system. My point
is only that the process of "cultural translation" is inevitably enmeshed
in conditions of power-professional, national, international. And
among these conditions is the au thority of ethnographers to uncover
the implicit meanings of subordinate societies. Given that that is so,
tbe interesting question for enquiry is not whether, and if so to what
extent, anthropologists should be relativists or rationalistS, critical or
charitable, toward othe r cultures, but how power enters into the pro-
cess of "cultllrallranslation," seen both as a discursive and as a non-
discursive practice.
Conclusion
For some years I have been exercised by this puzzle. How is it
that the approach exemplified by Gellner's paper remains attractive to
 TAlALASAD

1I so many academics in spite of its being demonstrably fau lty? Is it per-

I : haps because they are intimidated by a style> We kno w, of course. that
anthropo logists . like other academics. lea rn not mere ly to use a schol-
1 1 arl y la nguage, but to fear it , to ~d m ire i[, to be ca plivated by il. Ye tlhis
does nol q uite an swer the questio n because. it does no t te ll us wh suc h
~ schol a rly style sho uld capture so many intelligent peo ple. lnow put
fo rward this tenta tive solutio n. What we have here is a sLyle easy to
leach , to learn, and to reprod uce (in examinatio n answe rs, assessmen t
essays . a nd d issertatio ns). It is a style that facilita tes the tex tua lizatio n
o f o ther cultures, thal e ncourages th e constructio n of diagram matic
answers to co mplex cultural qu estions, and that is \.."e ll suited co ar-
ra ngin g fo reig n cultural co ncepts in clearly marked hea ps of "se nse"
or "no nsense." Apart fro m be ing easy to teach and to imitate, this style
pro mises visible results tha t ca n readil y be graded . Such a style must
su rely be at a pre mium in an established uni ve rsit y d isciplin e lh ~ t as-
I1 pi res to standards of scie ntific o bjectivity. Is the popula rity o f this style .
the n, no t a re Aection of th e kind of ped agogic insti tutio n we inhabit?
Al tho ug h it is now man y yea rs since Gellnn's paper waS fi rst pu b-
lished , it represe nts a d octrinal positio n tha t is still po pular tod ay.
1 have in mind the sociolog ism according to which religio us ideologies
are saicll.o gel the iT rea l mea ning fro m the politica l o r economic struc-
ture, a nd the self-confirming methodology acco rding to which tb is re-
d ucti ve sema ntic pr inci ple is evide m to the (au tho ri tative) anth ropolo-
gist a nd no t to the people being written abo ut. T his position therefore
ass umes that it is no t onl y possihle but necessary fo r th e ant hropolo-
gist to aCl as translato r and crilic at o ne and th e same time. L rega rd
this positio n as unte nable, and think. that it is relations and practices
of power lhat give it a measure of viability. (Fo r a critica l discussio n of
this position as il relates to Islamic histor y, see Asad Ig80.)
T he positive point I have tried to make in the course of my inter-
rogatio n of Gellner's text has to do with what I have called the inequal-
ity of la nguages . I have pro posed that the an thropological enter prise
of culturallra nslation may be vi tiated by the fact that there are asym-
met ri a l tendencies an d p ressures in the languages of dominated alld
do minan t societies. And I h ave suggested that anth.-opologists need to
exp lo re the e processes in o rder to determine how fa r they go in de-
fi ning the possibilities and the limits of effective tra nslatio n.

II In add iLio n to the members of the Sama Fe seminar who disc ussed an ea rl y d raft
of th is art icle- and especia ll y Pau l Rabinow, who comme llled o n it at le ng th- I wis h to
lh an,}:. Ta nya Baker, Jo hn Dixon, Rodney Need ham. and Keilh N ield fo r lheir he lpful
criticism.