Modes of Censorship: National Contexts and Diverse Media

Modes of Censorship and Translation articulates a variety of scholarly and disciplinary perspectives and offers the reader access to the widening cultural debate on translation and censorship, including cross-national forms of cultural fertilization. It is a study of censorship and its patterns of operation across a range of disciplinary settings, from media to cultural and literary studies, engaging with often neglected genres and media such as radio, cinema and theatre. Adopting an interdisciplinary and transnational approach and bringing together contributions based on primary research which often draws on unpublished archival material, the volume analyzes the multi-faceted relationship between censorship and translation in different national contexts, including Italy, Spain, Great Britain, Greece, Nazi Germany and the GDR, focusing on the political, ideological and aesthetic implications of censorship, as well as the hermeneutic play fostered by any translational act. By offering innovative methodological interpretations and stimulating case studies, it proposes new readings of the operational modes of both censorship and translation. The essays gathered here challenge current notions of the accessibility of culture, whether in overtly ideological and politically repressive contexts, or in seemingly 'neutral' cultural scenarios.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements, 1. Assessing Boundaries – Censorship and Translation - An Introduction, I. DICTATORSHIPS, 2. Fascism, Censorship and Translation, 3. Tailoring the Tale - Inquisitorial Discourses and Resistance in the Early Franco Period (1940-1950), 4. On the Other Side of the Wall - Book Production, Censorship and Translation in East Germany, 5. Translating – or Not – for Political Propaganda - Aeschylus’ Persians 402-405, II. THE CENSOR ON STAGE, 6. Good Manners, Decorum and the Public Peace - Greek Drama and the Censor, 7. Anticipating Blue Lines - Translational Choices as Sites of (Self)-Censorship Translating for the British Stage under the Lord Chamberlain, III. SELF-CENSORSHIP, 8. Semi-censorship in Dryden and Browning, 9. Examining Self-Censorship Zola’s Nana in English Translation, IV. CENSORSHIP AND THE MEDIA, 10. Seeing Red Soviet Films in Fascist Italy, 11. Surrendering the Author-function - Günter Eich and the National Socialist Radio System, 12. Take Three: The National-Catholic Versions of Billy Wilder’s Broadway Adaptations, Notes on Contributors, Index

About the Author :
Francesca Billiani is Lecturer in Italian Studies and member of the Centre for Translation and Intercultural Studies at the University of Manchester. She is author of Cultura nazionali e narrazioni straniere and co-editor of a forthcoming volume that traces the influence of the Gothic and Fantastic genres in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Europe. Contributors: Francesca Billiani, Siobhan Brownlie, Giorgio Fabre, Jacqueline Hurtley, Katja Krebs, Matthew Philpotts, Matthew Reynolds, Chlöe Stephenson, Gaby Thomson-Wohlgemuth, Gonda Van Steen, Jeroen Vandaele, J. Michael Walton.

Review :
Original and innovative ... these very detailed case studies range from the analysis of institutional censorship to self-censorship and present groundbreaking findings on the study of the relationship between censorship and translation. (Gianfranco Tortorelli) This is sure to be a key text in the debate on censorship in translation in Europe. The extensive use of primary sources provides rich material for the case studies, and the range of contexts explored is both impressive and innovative. (Jeremy Munday) This book invites reflection on the manifestations of censorship, the institutions and individuals enmeshed in it, the values purportedly safeguarded by it, and the tensions, ambivalences and ironies modulating it. As a result, we come a step closer to a critical vocabulary adequate to deal with the sometimes crude, sometimes subtle acculturation that is translation. (Theo Hermans)