The phrase, 'translation of culture', which has been mostly used by anthropologists, sometimes means to understand a culture by the conceptual category of one's own culture and value, to interpret the culture, and, to grasp it as a pattern. And this results in the creation of pure 'culture' with clear boundaries and makes the difference between 'one's own culture' and 'the other culture' clear. I think it is possible to apply the concept of 'translation of culture' to the case where one manages to interpret one's own culture by contrasting it with different cultures.
The purpose of this paper is to identify how King Rama VI (r. 1910-1925) interpreted his own culture as a result of his contact with European culture and thought, and what he created as a result of this interpretation by examining how he translated English words such as 'civilize', 'socialism', and 'socialist' into Thai language. In this paper, I use 'culture' as my analytical concept.
Rama VI defined the word 'civilize' to mean "to act according to religious discipline and Buddhist law (thamma)" and argued that 'civilized' members of his nation (chat) were people who acted according to religious discipline and Buddhist law. His purpose of this interpretation was to restrain people who had received European thought and who began to criticize the despotic monarchy. Rama VI had recognized that 'Thai nation' had its own inherent culture such as Buddhist culture. And so he tried to emphasize this inherent culture. When he emphasized the word 'Thai', he sometimes contrasted it with the word 'Western (farang)'. Therefore, it is possible to say that he created 'Thai culture' by contrasting it with the 'Western culture.
Rama VI defined the word 'socialism' as "a belief of Maitreya", one of the millenarian thought of Buddhism and criticized that it was just a Utopian dream which could not come true. He defined 'socialists' as "people who show their power by creating disturbances" and branded them as dangerous or troublesome people. His purpose of this interpretation was to restrain Chinese citizens who had been awakened by nationalist thought of China and who had sometimes gone on strike. From 1914, He showed his hostile feeling toward 'Chinese (khon Cin)'. Both 'socialist' and 'khon Cin' were used to represent 'others' that is people who were different from 'Thai people (khon Thai)'. At the same time, Rama VI insisted that speaking Thai language and swearing allegiance to the King were crucial to being considered 'Thai'. Both King's definition of 'others' and his definition of 'Thai people' made it possible to make the category of 'Thai people clear.
Therefore Rama VI created 'Thai people' and 'Thai culture' as a result of the translation of English words which had a background of European culture and thought. I think that this process is an example of the process of 'translation of one's own culture'.