“Tathāgata in Translation” explores a failed CIA effort to win the hearts and minds of Asian Buddhists in the early Cold War. Its focus is an unpublished 1953 screenplay on the life of the Buddha, conceived as a psychological warfare tool to promote U.S. bloc-building efforts in Asia. Envisioned as a Hollywood-style epic, The Wayfarer would convince Asian Buddhists to reject Communism and help the CIA forge ties local Buddhist leaders.
To examine its failure, I analyze The Wayfarer's interpretative ambiguity through a close reading of three scenes. I then frame the screenplay as a Translation Zone, in Emily Apter’s sense—a battleground for interpretative dominance. By relocating The Wayfarer from a CIA back office to a wartime frontier, we see that American efforts to court Asian Buddhists failed not from poor execution, but because they became sites of resistance where local actors adeptly re-purposed them to suit their own goals.