“[The innate traits] … set the limits that [the teacher] cannot surpass… The child does not inherit ideas, habits, and sentiments… but [the child] inherits… natural intelligence (al-dhakāʾ al-ṭabīʿī).” With these lines, the well-known educator and co-founder of the Arab College in Jerusalem, Ahmad Samih Al-Khalidi (1896–1951), promoted a ‘scientific view’ of educational issues in Palestine under the British Mandate. While preparing his handbooks for Arab teachers, Al-Khalidi translated several works on the development of mental abilities from the British psychological canon. In his own writings, he sought to apply these theories with the specific aim of modernising the Palestinian nation, which he believed needed to meet the requirements of “modern civilisation” (al-madanīya al-ḥadītha).
Focusing on Al-Khalidi’s pedagogical writings, my paper will argue that his academic work on ‘intelligence’ operated on several levels of translation: the creation of an Arabic psychological vocabulary to transmit what he regarded as the ‘latest achievements of science’; the adaptation of this knowledge to the practical tasks faced by Palestinian teachers under British colonial rule; and, most importantly, the organisation of this knowledge within naturalised social constructs such as civilisation, nation, and the ‘intellectual elite.’ Based on this case, the paper proposes viewing ‘translation’ as a multidimensional process of social and political (re)framing of scientific knowledge.