Contextual Translation — Concepts and Practices among the Mekeo of Papua New Guinea1

Abstract

ABSTRACT The use of indigenous terms in descriptions of non‐Western peoples has been debated since Bohannnan and Gluckman argued about this issue. This controversy has recently been resuscitated in debates about the work of Stephen and Jones. Stephen has suggested that we use literal meanings to understand local Mekeo positions and practices, while Jones finds that the terms ‘chiefs’ and ‘sorcerers’ are now so ‘technicalised’ that they serve as better equivalents for discussing local phenomena. By contrast, the argument in this article is that concepts taken from one cultural system cannot be unequivocally used to name practices in other systems and that literal meanings should be interpreted in the context of an entire cultural system. Official positions of authority, for instance, constitute prototypes of the conceptual universe that govern meaning in a given place, and hence their roles and names may not be directly translatable between systems.