This article explores the debate occasioned by the publication of Abdullah al-Ghadhami's 2000 book Cultural Criticism in Arabic. None of his reference books in Arabic dealt with the concept of cultural criticism, compared to several seminal English references in the field. This demonstrates his reliance on English books with which he interacted to produce his own critical knowledge about cultural criticism, knowledge that came to widely reverberate in the Arab world. The question this article poses is not just what is translated about cultural criticism but also the impact these translations have on common critical knowledge about cultural criticism in the Arab world.