Allow hap ha, dear friends. Before I begin, I better put this up a bit, or someone will come and say, put this up a bit. I wanted to make three very brief points. The first is that this paper is the application of intellectual practice not derived from the writings to the defense and the understanding of the faith, or at least my understanding of the faith. I think it's important as scholars, and as academics, and as lovers of Baha'u'llah, that we recognize the limits of these intellectual practices. But we recognize also that contributions that we can make from our areas of love and our areas of research are the gifts of Baha'u'llah. The second point I would like to make is that all of the talks that I have had, the pleasure and the privilege of attending, the devotions that we have that have so inspired and uplifted us, all of these have been through the vehicle of language. And many of the writings and the utterances that we have heard in English have been the result of the translations of Shoghi Effendi. Therefore, the quality and the nature of his translations are of the first importance. We rely on utterance. It is the creative word of God. It is therefore, I think, increasingly important for us to understand what his translations mean to us. The third point I would like to make is about the presentation, the visual presentation. The theoretical framework that I use is unfamiliar. I would venture to guess to virtually everybody. And although I'm hoping that the paper is clear and accessible, nevertheless I find it's easier when you encounter new ideas to be able to read versions of them. And so the presentation which accompanies this is really a cut down, textual version, overhead note, so to speak, of the points that I'm going to make. Something I would also like to point out is that in going along with a very common practice in pragmatics, which is the discipline of linguistics I work in, in this paper, rather than having he, and you don't know, am I speaking of the communicator? Am I speaking of the hearer? Because we are blessed with two genders in our pronouns in English. He is used to refer to the communicator, and she is used to refer to the hearer or reader. Now I say this because otherwise you think I was mixing up my pronouns and couldn't tell the difference. So the fundamental issue that I want to explore is the status of the translations of Shoghi Effendi. Criticisms of the Guardian's translations have been based on various arguments. They all arrive, more or less, at the same conclusion. That when we approach the writings of the Baha'i Faith in translation, we can decide for ourselves what the meaning is. Now at one level, this is entirely true. Bahá'u'lláh has told his followers to meditate upon that which hath streamed forth from the heaven of the will of thy Lord, he who is the source of all grace, that thou mayest grasp the intended meaning, which is enshrined in the sacred depths of the holy writings. We could hardly be expected to obey this injunction if we were not capable of discovering these intended meanings for ourselves and the writings are filled with similar injunctions, as well as assurances to us, that the comprehension of the utterances of the birds of heaven is in no wise dependent upon human learning. It depends solely upon purity of heart, chastity of soul, and freedom of spirit. Abdul Baha's descriptions of the rational soul as the distinguishing feature of the human being and Bahá'u'lláh's explanation that every individual has his own unique capacity, which is his duty, it's his duty to exercise to its fullest, these assure us that we are intended to read, meditate upon, and understand the writings for ourselves. However, there are two important qualifiers to this command and both of them are derived from the principle of the covenant. The first qualifier is that no individual Bahá'u'llh may insist upon the rightness of her understanding of the writings. This sanction derives from the fact that as finite beings, we are evidently incapable of comprehending the whole of the divine intention. Only the manifestations of God are endowed with the capacity to do so and indeed, their authority to do so is the fountain head of their revelation. The second qualifier is that authoritative interpretation, that is an understanding that may be insisted upon, may issue from the manifestation of God or from those he has explicitly designated as capable of doing so. Now as I've mentioned, both of these qualifiers follow from the principle of the covenant and this principle asserts and describes the station of the manifestation of God. The manifestation of God by virtue of this station is authorized to name a successor and to define his role. Bahá'u'lláh explicitly named Abdul-Bahá as his successor and in numerous tablets, but especially the Kitab-e-Aqdas and the Kitab-e-Aht described his role. Abdul-Bahá in his will and testament named Shoghi Effendi as the guardian, a form of successorship and defined his role. Nowhere in either of these testaments will we find that translator of the writings has been included in the attributes of successorship. However, in both, we are told that questions, that is to say issues of interpretation, may be referred first to Abdul-Bahá and then after his passing to the guardian. The question before us then is not whether any given interpretation of Shoghi Effendi is better or worse than an interpretation by anyone else but whether or not translation is part of the role of the guardian. There are several assertions on which objections to Shoghi Effendi's translations are typically based and for those of you to whom this is new, I apologize for shocking you. In simplified form, they look something like these. Shoghi Effendi did not possess the requisite educational qualifications to allow him to produce authoritative interpreter as translations, he was not a scholar. Shoghi Effendi's personal and cultural context severely limited and affected his capacity to understand and translate the writings and thus produce authoritative translations. He was in that case a man imprisoned by his time. In order to accommodate the personal and contexts of the target audience, English speakers, Shoghi Effendi had to produce simplified or inadequately powerful translations of the writings. Shoghi Effendi misunderstood the original texts and so could not produce authoritative translations. And finally, Shoghi Effendi's ability to produce authoritative translations was utterly compromised by his intent to broaden the appeal of the Baha'i Faith while maintaining personal control over the direction and development of the faith. Now, this last one is inarguable. It is an ad hominem criticism. It can only be answered by pointing to the Will and Testament of Abdul Baha. If Abdul Baha explicitly designated an unworthy person as his successor and the guardian of the Baha'i Faith, then the covenant as a binding protective force effectively ceased with the death of Baha'u'llah and there is nothing more to be said. If, however, Abdul Baha's station is accepted, then he could not have named an unworthy person as the guardian and so Five has no standing as an objection to Shoghi Effendi's understanding of the writings of the faith. There is one last objection, however, which I will identify here and which I would like to use as the basis for pursuing the rest of my thoughts on this subject. Shoghi Effendi's translations fall outside his authority as authorized interpreter of the writings. Now I've chosen this last argument as my starting point because it's pivotal to understanding at least some responses to the other four, the first four. If Shoghi Effendi's authority does not extend a translation, then in fact, any of those criticisms may be justified. It will be a matter for specialists in languages, in history, in cultural studies, in religious studies to decide which of his translations are acceptable and which are not. Now I propose to draw on my own specialty, pragmatics, a subdiscipline of linguistics, first to argue that the guardian's authority extends specifically to translation and then to answer in some general terms the kinds of objections which have been outlined above. The basis of my reasoning is a theory in pragmatics. I'm now going to take you through a brief overview of pragmatics, the theoretical framework I am using, and then lead into a discussion of Shoghi Effendi's translations in the context of that framework. For the theoretical aspects of this, I'm relying on two key texts. Relevance Theory, this is the Relevance Theory text, Relevance, Communication and Cognition by Sperber and Wilson, and Translation and Relevance, Communication and Context by Ernst August Gut. I'd like to mention that the second book is specifically on translation, of course, but it is written by a scholar in biblical translation and it is for this reason that I've found the book so useful. When we consider the matter, we see that problems arising out of interpretation and translation are concerned with questions of authority. When two interpretations of an utterance or a text, both equally compatible with the evidence of the text contradict one another or are inconsistent with one another, we choose the one we believe is more authoritative. The authority we attribute to the translation is a reflection of the degree to which we think the translation conveys the intention of the writer. That is, we believe the translator has properly interpreted the original text. Translation in this way becomes part of the general discussion of the interpretation of texts, which is one definition of pragmatics. Now, in pragmatics, the notion of intention is closely linked to the concept of authority. Gut in his book on translation argues that only a translation that optimally conveys and preserves the intention of the original text can be considered authoritative, he says. The focus of relevance theory-based translation is on the comparison of interpretations, not on the reproduction of words, linguistic constructions, or textual features. A translation that does not preserve these intentions is actually saying something quite different from that which was intended by the person who wrote the original text. An authoritative translation of the writings must therefore adequately and faithfully convey the divine intention or meaning. It must not add the translator's own thoughts. It must not misrepresent the meaning which the manifestation of God has intended should be discovered through reading the text. From a theoretical point of view, therefore, questions about the interpretation of sacred texts are formally identical with questions about the interpretation of non-sacred texts. In both cases, readers of these texts rely on universal, inferential, or cognitive strategies of interpretation. And while these are generally adequate, they have one drawback. The strategies that we use when we read do not guarantee that the interpretation we arrive at is correct. So you might ask, what is the use of such a strategy? And this is where relevance theory, the description of the strategy, comes in. I'm going to beg your indulgence as I take you through a very quick run-through of the theoretical framework. Relevance theory is a theory of pragmatics, the interpretation of utterances, and is based on a few basic assumptions. First of all, every utterance has a variety of possible interpretations. Not all of these may occur at once, some occur later, and some take a very good deal of effort to think up. Relevance theory claims that there is a single, general, exceptionalist criterion for evaluating these interpretations, that is, for deciding which among all of them is the one the speaker intended and is therefore the one we should choose. This criterion is powerful enough to exclude all but at most a single interpretation at any given moment so that having found an interpretation that satisfies the criterion, the reader can stop. Ah, yes, I know what he means. Because there is never more than one such interpretation at any given time for any given reader. In relevance theory terms, therefore the first interpretation consistent with the principle of relevance, which I'll explain in a minute, is the only one consistent with the principle of relevance. It's the one the hearer should choose. Now, no aspect of relevance theory has been so misunderstood as that last claim. To claim the uniqueness of an interpretation at any given moment for any given reader is not to assert that the text has a single unique meaning. Notice I've put them in capital letters. Rather, since the interpretation of these texts consists in fact of a large set of assumptions, ideas, feelings, emotions, responses, an interpretation may be said to comprehend many meanings held at varying degrees of strength or salience. All that I am claiming and all that relevance theory claims is that the constitution, the makeup of this set of assumptions is uniquely determined at any given time by any given reader. And I would argue this situation follows from the nature of thought. It's just not possible for people to hold two or more incompatible sets of assumptions, truth conditional assertions about a single entity at the same time and entertain them all as true or possibly true. Clearly, the limits of this, for example, is tested by or are tested by Cohen's, Zen Cohen's. Nevertheless, even these, you are not intended to entertain a contradiction but to use the contradiction to find a higher meaning. It's entirely possible for a person with a sophisticated or highly developed capacity for making interpretations to construct a reading which at any given time highlights any number of these. Any subset of the entire set of assumptions that make up the whole interpretation. I'm gonna take a very quick diversion to illustrate this. At any given moment, as you were sitting here, there are a great many things that you can think about. You can think about the chair you're sitting in. You can think about what you're looking at. You may be trying to follow the things that I'm saying. You may be remembering breakfast or thinking that you wish you'd had some. You may be deciding that last night's supper was a really bit too rich or you may be thinking, well, I've got to leave, no, I've got nothing. You may also be casting your mind back to previous things or imagining things in the future. You don't think about all of them at the same time but you can represent all of them and that's what an interpretation is. It's this large set of things that you can draw from at any given moment to go back to the paper. Relevance theory assumes that human cognition in general and not just communication is relevance oriented, that is, it's aimed at picking up information that is relevant. But the concept of relevance is unproductive unless it can be quantified and it can. The relevance of something we are talking about and in this case we are talking about the writings can be quantified by balancing effort and effect. Something is relevant if the cognitive effects we achieve when we process it are large. The more effects it has the more relevant it is and this is pretty obvious. However, it takes effort to process any information no matter how we receive it and the more effort we have to expend on achieving these effects the less relevant the information will be. So it's always a balancing act and we are always doing this. Finally, relevance theory has to explain how we determine the acceptability of an interpretation after all of it's just a matter of getting the most effects for adequate effort we'd be no further ahead than when we started. There'd be no way of evaluating interpretations or translations, however. Sperber and Wilson argue that every utterance starts out as a bid, whoops, there we go. Took you through that one very quickly. Every utterance starts out as a bid for the hearer's attention and so it comes with a sort of guarantee. What's the guarantee? That the speaker has something to convey which she believes it is worth the hearers or readers' while to entertain. The point of expending all this effort therefore is to locate the interpretation the speaker or writer intended us to arrive at and given the evidence she provided and what he, sorry, what he can assume about his audience. This is roughly what Sperber and Wilson call the principle of relevance. And it is what guides interpretation, the interpretation and evaluation of utterances and this is what it is. Every act of ostensive communication communicates the presumption of its own optimal relevance and I'm sure these words will be burned into your brain and so on. Nevertheless, what this means is that when we read a text, we are looking to construct or arrive at an interpretation that in the circumstances is the one which we believe the speaker or writer would have thought it most likely to have been most relevant to us. Relevance theory in this way brings authorial intention back into the consideration of interpretation and translation. However, the notion of authorial intention and relevance theory is both specific and flexible. One of the problems in literature in general and in literary theory particular is that authorial intention has meant that intention is a single highly determinate interpretation or set of interpretations and which is the single or only interpretation of the text but there's no reason to accept this definition as true and in fact relevance theory rejects it. Instead, intention and relevance theory more closely resembles a continuum. At one end of this continuum an utterance may convey a single highly determinate proposition such as your coat's on fire. At the other end we have a very wide range of very weak implicatures consisting of a wide range of weakly communicated implications and these are what implicatures are. They are assumptions that follow from or supplied as context for the processing of the evidence of the text. They're what we use to make sense of the text and what we get out of it. They are called implicatures not implications because when we arrive at it we think ah, this is what the speaker meant. Because implicatures are implicitly communicated they are much weaker than the explicit ones. For instance, consider the impression conveyed by Mary's response when Peter asks her what she's thinking about, what do you think?  Clearly there's no reason to suppose that she is communicating a single highly determinate proposition but equally she had something in mind she wanted Peter to recognize or else she would not have produced the utterance. This something consists largely of these weak implicatures, human life as opposed to the possibility of life on Mars, the meaning of life and so on. Now if you can bear with me for just a few more minutes we'll finish constructing the groundwork for an understanding of Shoghi Effendi's authority. I will be able to explain also my understanding of his decision that future translations into languages other than English are to be made not primarily on the basis of the Arabic or Persian texts but from his translations into English. I'd like to stay with Mary for a minute but better yet cast your mind back to a favorite poem or play or story or novel. The richness of your favorite text is a reflection of your feeling that there were very many very subtle things being said or suggested by the author. Things that you found very hard to put into words. I'll come along here. These impressions which are often very many weekly conveyed ideas or notions or ideas were the hardest to explain but they were often what the point was so that anyone who read Moby Dick and thought it was about wailing hadn't read the book that Melva was trying to write. For an example from scriptures I want you to think about the directive in the gospels when someone asks Jesus how many times should I forgive my brother and he says 70 times seven. Now the strongest, the explicit thing is you get your brother, you start counting. When you reach 490 he's run out. The weak implicature, one however which is still true and which is still intended is that your brother is not your biological brother but your brother in spirit and of course since we have the oneness of humanity we are all brothers and sisters and that you should stop counting, you forgive. These are the weak implicatures. It's a typical example of how weak implicatures are critical to our understanding of scripture. Now in translating a work of scripture from the original language into a second or target language the translator has a challenge. All translations are interpretations of the text expressed as descriptions of the translator's understanding or interpretation of the text expressed in the language other than the original. A direct translation therefore claims to preserve and present the intentions communicated by the original text. It's based on the translator's understanding of how the author has presented evidence for his intention and how he causes certain effects or lines of interpretation to arise. A good translation is therefore a good interpretation, one which closely resembles the one the writer had in mind when he wrote the text. Furthermore, a good or acceptable translation allows the reader in the target language to arrive at the interpretation which the writer intended. To that extent therefore translation is an act of communication between translator and target audience in which the translator is expressing the thoughts he believes were intended by the original. Gut notes that direct translations preserve all the linguistic properties of the original and so give the audience the possibility of reconstructing for itself the meaning intended by the original communicator. Errors in translation therefore are linked to errors of interpretation. Crucially, direct translation is possible only when the context in which it's processed is the one intended by the original communicator, not one that the audience may happen to bring. Consequently, the translator must ensure that his translation allows the audience to construct the context intended by the writer or speaker. In the case of Shoghi Effendi's translations, this amounts to claiming that his translations allow the reader to construct the context and arrive at the interpretation intended by Bahá'u'lláh, Abdu'l-Bahá, the Bob. Now an error in this translation may give rise to some appalling results and may give rise to implications which had never have occurred in the original or it may rule out implications which the writer intended which are now impossible. Relevance theory provides a way to discuss these problems and to understand what the station of the guardianship actually means in these questions. Let's return to the question of the writings and aren't you grateful? Shoghi Effendi's translations and the institutions of the faith. The most obvious thing about the writings is that they communicate a huge range of implicatures from very apparent to very subtle. When we read the writings we should be aware the interpretation we arrive at may not completely match the one which Bahá'u'lláh or Abdu'l-Bahá or the Bob intended our interpretations may be impoverished or in some other way an adequate subset. This means that all of our interpretations are provisional, non-exhaustive and non-authoritative and this is unavoidable given the nature of inference and the fact that any utterance can give rise to so many interpretations. Nevertheless, an authoritative interpretation claims to preserve the full range of effects or at least it claims that a reader in the target language can potentially derive an interpretation that contains virtually all the implicatures available to a reader of the original. Therefore, to say that translation is dependent on what the translator believes was the intended interpretation of the original is to assert that an authoritative translation preserves intentions. So what sort of intentions are we talking about? The intentions communicated by sacred scripture concerns some of the most fundamental assumptions a human being can hold and they affect the behavior of believers in two major ways. The writings may prescribe certain actions for believers and these often produce outward changes in their lives as the result of explicit directions of the writings. But there are inner changes that occur as the result of weak implicatures of the text. These also will ultimately produce outward changes in the lives but these are not the result of the explicit ordinances in the writings. It is these weak implicatures which make up most of the assumptions communicated by the writings but which are and as we have seen, these require that each believer meditate on the writings and discover how to apply these intended meanings or implied meanings to their own lives. An authoritative interpretation or translation therefore conveys the weak implicatures not just compatible with those intended by the author but is nearly identical with them as possible. And at this point, I'd just like to show you something from a writer on translation. The idea, not a Baha'i, the ideal translator is one who is fluent spiritually as well as linguistically in the language from which he is translating and equally fluently, fluent spiritually as well as linguistically in the language into which he is transposing the original. Indeed, even the possession of such spiritual and linguistic fluency in the ideal translator is of dubious value if the translator is not of the same visionary orientation as the person he is translating. So an authoritative translation or the author of one claims that reading the translation will produce the full range of intended effects that the original would have done. This is an enormous claim and under normal circumstances would be rejected. But if we examine the meaning of the guardianship, we can see that this kind of claim is supported by the writings themselves, particularly the will and testament of Abdul Baha'i. And if we look at this, we have two very important sections. All my loving friends, after the passing away of this wronged one, it is incumbent upon the Aqsaan, the Afnan of the sacred loathe tree, the hands of the cause of God, and the loved ones of the Abhah beauty to turn under Shoghi Effendi, as he is the sign of God, the chosen branch, the guardian of the cause of God, he unto whom all the Aqsaan, the Afnan, the hands of the cause of God, and his loved ones must turn. He is the interpreter of the word of God. And then it is incumbent upon you to take the greatest care of Shoghi Effendi. Whoops, this is what happens. Ah, there we go. For he is after Abdul Baha'i, the guardian of the cause of God, the Afnan, the hands of the cause, and the beloved of the Lord must obey and turn unto him. Beware lest anyone falsely interpret these words. Tanan is given the right to put forth his own opinion or express his particular conviction. All must seek guidance and turn under the center of the cause and the house of justice. And he that turneth unto whatsoever else is indeed in grievous error. These are long quotations, but they establish several things. First of all, they establish the identity of guardian as Shoghi Effendi. They show that one of the most fundamental attributes of guardianship is interpreter of the word of God. They establish the primacy of the guardianship over the descendants of the central figures of the faith, the hands of the cause, and even the house of justice. They strongly indicate that the center of the cause, Abdul Baha'i's center, title and station also means the point towards which the believers must turn after his passing. And this point is explicitly identified with Shoghi Effendi. Finally, the texts warn against any attempt to falsely interpret these words to look for hidden or obscure meanings that would contradict the evident meaning of the text. I'd like you to compare these passages with, or this passage was one quoted, this is provisional translation by Sayedi, through their idleness and sloth they have made faulty interpretations of all the laws of God. So we have the authority of the writings themselves for regarding Shoghi Effendi's interpretations as consistent with the divine meanings. Since that's what interpreter of the word of God most evidently means. And since in this case authority rests initially on the authority of translation, rests on the authority of interpretation, we can have every confidence that the guardians' interpretations are authoritative. To put it another way, the interpretations made by the guardian consist of a set of assumptions which comprehend those which Bahá'u'lláh intended. His interpretations may not or do not exhaust the possibilities but they will not convey anything not intended by Bahá'u'lláh, the Bab or Abdu'l-Bahá. Now this is a very comprehensive claim. What does it claim about his translations? Well I want to put up again some of the objections that we looked at earlier and what we notice is that in the light of the writings themselves we can simply dispose of number four. I don't think it requires any discussion. I'd like to deal however with one to three since they address not his interpretations but his translations and they all rest in my view on a flawed understanding of how translation works and a too limited interpretation of the term interpreter. In the framework we've been looking at the author of an authoritative translation provides his reader with an interpretation that allows the reader to derive the same effects as she would have done from the original. Given Shoghi Effendi's station as guardian we must conclude that the interpretations that formed the basis of his translations are protected so his translations are equally protected. The capacity to give guidance is meaningless if it applies only to utterances in the original language of the text since it would limit guidance to these speakers of Persian and Arabic. So what does this mean about his translations? It's not enough to say they're protected from error. Shoghi Effendi's interpretations may not be flawed but this is not the same thing initially at least to saying that his translations are equally without flaw. Without necessarily disputing Shoghi Effendi's understanding critics who adopt the positions I've looked at may weaken the claim to say that the translations lead to errors in others' understanding of the writings. Each one of the objections takes an aspect of this. The first objection is that his, the guardian's education was inadequate. The second draws attention to the time, place, and culture in which the guardian worked. Claims that these determined the kinds of translations he was capable of producing. The third turns these, shifts these attributes or limitations onto the target audience. The believers of this period, so the argument goes, were so primitive in their understanding of the faith so much prisoner of their times that in order to reach them the guardian had to stoop to their level so to speak. While he may have been capable of a higher vision the believers were not yet ready and to reach them he had to adapt the message to their limited capacities. Now the last is the weakest claim and indeed the weakest in general. It implicitly contradicts the definition of guardianship without foundation. It limits the scope of the guardian to the practical and technical leadership of the Baha'i community. This limitation deprives him of the spiritual leadership which is explicitly associated with the guardianship and attempts to reduce the station of guardian to papacy or stewardship. Again critics may not accept the terms of Abdul Baha's will but they cannot both accept his will and at the same time argue against his provisions. I'm gonna come back to the point about spiritual leadership in my closing remarks but for now I'd like to explain why none of these arguments have merit in the theoretical framework I've been developing. First of all I've mentioned that the translator may act as a communicator but he's not conveying his own thoughts. Also that the faithfulness of the description is dependent on the degree to which the interpretation approaches a good understanding of the original text. And finally that the faithfulness of an interpretation can be measured by the degree to which it allows the target audience to experience the full range of implicatures. There's one last factor that I would like to introduce. The writings are not like ordinary texts in two very specific ways. First as Nadar Saidi points out in logos and civilization, the authentic meanings of the sacred texts are determined by the conscious intention of its author. Originarily texts make manifest all sorts of meanings which though consistent with those intended by the writer were not foreseen and ordinarily could not have been foreseen by him. Novelists and poets in particular often speak of the fact that their readers discover meanings which they themselves were unaware of but which they endorse. Since the author of the divine text is all knowing he can in fact be said to have consciously intended deliberately intended every true meaning of the text. This knowledge is given to the author alone and to quote Saidi again, the covenant of interpretive authority he has established. Moreover, he is the only one who knows which of these interpretations are not intended even though they're consistent with the evidence of the text. That is to say, only he has the authority through the attribute of his absolute knowledge to detect false interpretations. Secondly, except in rather special circumstances the writers of most texts don't know who their audience will consist of. This is obviously true of poets, novelists, and so forth. This means that as these writers put together their texts they have to make certain assumptions or guesses about their audience. But the divine author does not need to guess. And his audience is not limited, it is universal. That is, the writings are aimed in very special ways both at humanity in general and at every individual soul. This is one of the meanings of divine unity as it applies to the sacred texts. They are infinitely various and infinitely one. If this were not true there would be no point in enjoining the believers to read the writings daily in order to advance their unique spiritual journeys. The writings would be reduced to a set of platitudes which act as a platform for individual consciousness raising without any connection to a central truth. Or on the other hand, they could be reduced to a set of directions which allow groups of human beings to conduct their lives in a less barbaric manner. But the claims of the sacred texts and not just those of the Baha'i faith is precisely that they are for the redemption of humanity and the unique guidance of the human soul. It's precisely on this basis that they and the divine authors invite scrutiny of their nature and of their claims. Now, given these two unique attributes of sacred texts it becomes permissible to describe what is claimed for the translations of Shoghi Effendi. They are descriptions of authoritative interpretations. They express these interpretations so as not to falsify even the weakest of the implicatures which the source text gives rise to. They preserve the attributes of the sacred texts which means that no readings inconsistent with those intended by the divine author will be derivable from the translation. Every reader will be able to construct the interpretation which the divine author intended for him alone. The interpretation will have the intended effect on the individual soul, an effect identical with that which would flow from reading the text in the original language. This is not the same as saying it would have the same ideas. It has the same effects. These readings will have the intended effect on the community of believers. Again, identical with that flowing from the original text. Finally, the translation preserves the universality of the source text. It makes them accessible to every potential reader. These are the claims advanced for the translations of Shoghi Effendi. I derive all of them from the provisions of the Will and Testament of Abdu'l-Bahá. The description is new and it derives from relevance theory. I've used this description in part because it clarifies what we are asked to accept of Shoghi Effendi as guardian. And because it makes clear that the arguments that we have looked at are groundless in the way that they have been advanced. These arguments or descriptions also explain for me why it is the English translations rather than the source text which the guardian asked should be the basis for future translations. The English translations preserve the full effects of the original sacred text but provide also for audiences whose context is very different from that of the Arabic and Persian readers. An authoritative guide to decisions about the meaning of the texts. So for instance, where one critic takes issue with Shoghi Effendi's translation of an Arabic word as wisdom rather than reason. He argues that, he says that the guardian's choice is in terms of the sentiments and disposition of the Baha'is of the period between the world wars. Sayidi points out that readers of Arabic might also have understood that a wider meaning of this term was used. Precisely to preserve what as guardian he knew were Baha'u'llah's true intentions. Shoghi Effendi chose the word which would guide the readers to the interpretation consistent with the full meaning of the revelation of Baha'u'llah. Critics have thus quarreled with the translation of Shoghi Effendi on two grounds because they believe his translations narrow the scope of possible readings of the original texts, which in many instances is exactly the case. And because they believe that his translations rule out lines of interpretation consistent with the linguistic evidence of the source texts, which is also true. Perhaps the examples which spring most readily to mind are interpretations of passages about membership on the House of Justice and the general prohibition on homosexual activity. What the provisions of Abdu'l-Baha'u'llah's will and testament make clear however is that these actions are fully consistent with his authority as guardian. What I am saying is a little different. The critics have got the wrong end of the stick. I would like you to look at this particular passage. Way not the book of God with such standards and sciences as are current among you for the book itself is the unerring balance established amongst men. In this most perfect balance whatsoever the peoples and kindreds of the earth possess must be weighed while the measure of its weight must be tested according to its own measure. Did you but know it? Now for many years I had no clue what this meant. But in the course of thinking about the guardian and translation and the writings and their effects I've come to an understanding that I'd like to share with you. Like all interpretations by non-authoritative people which is to say all of us, it is provisional, non-exhaustive and of course non-binding. Some scholars have argued they can gauge the accuracy of Shoghi Effendi's translations by comparing hints with the ones they arrive at. If they refine reductions or alterations they use these to make claims about the guardianship. But this passage in the most holy book suggests that this approach is fundamentally flawed instead of using our own understanding of the texts as a way of determining Shoghi Effendi's fitness as translator. We must begin with what the texts say about themselves about the manifestations and about his authorized successors. The evidence which these texts provide themselves provide tell us that Shoghi Effendi in his capacity as guardian is protected both in his interpretations and in his explanation of the writings. Therefore no interpretation, explanation or translation made by the guardian can contradict the intentions or falsify the intentions of the divine author. They may well privilege one reading over another but it is not the words of the texts which are the final authority, it is the covenant. And in this case the covenant is realized in the station and person of Shoghi Effendi. Now what implications follow from these thoughts specifically for the development of the institutions it has not gone unnoticed that the specific shape of many of the institutions of the faith and the seeds of future branches of the administrative order are specified in the guidance, interpretations and translations of Shoghi Effendi. The world order of Bahá'u'lláh was his life's work. This order is inherent in the writings of the Bab, Bahá'u'lláh and Abdu'l-Bahá and increasingly spelled out at each stage of the development. It was the task of the guardian, one among many of the tasks he undertook in his life to provide through his translations the basis on which the nascent institutions of the faith could construct the pattern of a future world civilization to do so required unimpeachable spiritual authority. That authority is granted Shoghi Effendi through the provisions of the will and testament of Abdu'l-Bahá. Abdu'l-Bahá's authority to so designate a successor is provided through the Kitab-e-Aht, the will of Bahá'u'lláh himself. Bahá'u'lláh's claim to authority of course is based both on his successorship to the Bab and his own claims to be the manifestation of God for this day and the promised one of all ages. Each one of us has a choice to make about these claims. However, having accepted the claims of the Bab and of Bahá'u'lláh, then the twin duties outlined in the first paragraph of the Most Holy Book make clear we must also accept whatever has been ordained by them. The acceptance of the ordination of Abdu'l-Bahá is center of the covenant. The ordination of Shoghi Effendi is guardian of the cause of God flow from the covenant and in their turn protect and guard it. There is therefore no substantial theoretical grounds on which to, there's no merit to the objections and substantial theoretical grounds on which to reject these arguments. On the other hand, there should be complete clarity about the nature of their translations, their characteristics, their relationship to the covenant, their role in the development of the world civilization which is the mission and theme of the revelation of Bahá'u'lláh. The translations of Shoghi Effendi represent a unique moment in human and religious history. They represent the first time that authority, succession and the preservation of the scriptures of a revealed religion have been explicitly and authentically brought together by the founder of the faith. I've chosen to describe the guardian's translations in relevance theoretic terms because I believe this approach allows us to grasp the magnitude or at least begin to grasp the magnitude of the claims associated with his work. It also permits answers to some of the criticisms of his work, whether these are of specific translations or arguments against his authority to make them. A relevance theoretic approach also sheds light for me at least on why future translations will be made primarily from his translations into English rather than from the original texts. Furthermore, I find that this description illuminates the station of the guardianship and institution which is still not well understood or appreciated. Finally, the attributes of trustworthiness and faithfulness, attributes of service are united in this description with the attribute of authority. I would suggest that this underlines a recurring theme, the recurring theme of governance in the revelation of Bahá'u'lláh that the authority of all the institutions is a function of their capacity to serve both as the beloved of the Lord and of all of humanity. Thank you.


If you've been following the Winner Home series on Afternoon Express then you'll know that the houses are complete and the entries are closed. All that's left now is for the judges to give their final verdict on which duo gets crowned the season's best designers. Plus, one lucky viewer will win their choice of one of the three completed homes, each valued at over 3 million rand. Catch our live Grand Finale at 4pm this Friday the 10th of November on SABC3. The stage is yours.