ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses to demarcate some of the intellectual concerns which stimulated various types of translation but also may have neglected other potential expressions of translation. Under Boas and his students, American historical anthropology stressed particularism which was closely connected to theories of relativism. Radin's ethnography of the Winnebago goes further in denying all categories and generalizations. If Radin is simply the passive scribe of the tribe, enumerating cultural things the way people gave them to him, then one is left to read 500 pages of text with virtually no conclusions. Kroeber, however, was simply warning that the "heavy greasy hand" of the anthropologist in regard to explanation and interpretation must always be scrutinized, since it violates the very subject it treats. Translation is a combination and exchange of representation and self-effacement, one where difference is paramount and the contradictions can only be noted but not resolved, since there is no resolution in translation.
