Christopher Rundle

The Censorship of Translation in Fascist Italy

Abstract The purpose of this essay is to begin an examination into how the fascist regime reacted to the high number of translations which were being published in Italy; in particular translations from English during a period, the 1930s, when Britain was often a political antagonist and Anglo-American culture in general was seen by the regime as a harmful and decadent influence on the Italian people. The article focuses on non-periodical publications: this means that the figures given do not take into account, for example, the many translations which were published in literary journals.

Translation as an approach to history

It is my experience that the more historical our research, and the more embedded it is in the relevant historiography, the less obviously enlightening it is for other translation scholars who are not familiar with this historiography; while the more we address other scholars in translation studies, the less we are contributing to the historical field of our choice. Or to put this another way: the more we immerse ourselves in the historical field of our choice, the more the other scholars of this field become our natural interlocutors and the less we have in common with other scholars in translation studies.This paper explores the relationship between the study of history and the study of translation history, with a particular focus on the contribution that translation history can potentially make to more general historiography.

Publishing Translations in Mussolini's Italy: A Case Study of Arnoldo Mondadori

Using extensive archival research this article looks in detail at how Arnoldo Mondadori, the most important publisher of translations in Italy in the 1930s, negotiated the complex political situation and the often unpredictable censorship that was applied. It provides a fascinating insight into both the efficiences and also the inconsistencies of Fascist cultural policy and censorship.

Translation and the History of Fascism

Recent research has placed cultural policy and practices at the very centre of our understanding of fascism,1 revealing much about the ideological frameworks of fascism as well as the institutional tools that were used to manage public perceptions and ideological change. However, within this growing body of work, one important aspect of cultural policy has been largely ignored, and that is translation, whether literary, cinematic or non-fiction.

An Interdisciplinary View of Censorship: Case Studies of Italian Fascism and Beyond

Censorship is a theme that is enjoying a degree of popularity at the moment, as will be apparent from what follows. To some extent this may be due to widespread disillusion in societies which considered themselves bastions of civil liberty and freedom of speech, and which are coming to the painful realization that they are, in fact, subject to previously unimagined levels of censorship and manipulation of information. To study the ways in which censorship was organized in the past is clearly a useful way of opening one’s eyes to what is taking place around us today. Just as importantly, however, recent interest in censorship may also be the result of the increasing interdisciplinarity of historical and cultural studies and the way in which new material and insights are emerging as a result. This review looks at two books on censorship: one from within Italian Historical Studies by a British scholar, and the other from within Translation Studies which includes an array of international scholars from different disciplinary backgrounds. What I hope will emerge is the way in which these two books, which appear to be very different on the surface, actually complement each other very well. What I also hope will emerge to the readers of this journal – and it’s as well at this point to make my own

The Subtitle Project. A vocational education initiative

Abstract This article discusses the pedagogical relevance of a research project into professional subtitling practices in Italy which is coordinated by the author at the University of Bologna. The key feature of this initiative relates to its collaborative dynamics: research is carried out by students writing their final dissertations, working together as a team and pooling their resources and findings. The author contends that taking part in this collective enquiry-based experience is as important for the students as the actual results of their investigation and discusses in detail the pedagogical benefits of this approach. The article begins by describing the inception stages of the project, conceived as an attempt to capitalize on the traditionally high weighting of the final dissertation within Italian degree programmes – and hence on the important amount of effort that students are likely to put into it. After describing the pedagogical and research tools used in the project, the paper goes on to present the results achieved in the first 2–3 years of the project’s life; illustrate how the students’ work has influenced the author’s teaching practices as a subtitler trainer; and evaluate the implications of this experience for translator training in general.

Stemming the Flood: the Censorship of Translated Popular Fiction in Fascist Italy

ABSTRACT In this article I will show how the hostility towards translation in Italy during the Fascist regime, and in particular in the 1930s and the early 1940s, was principally motivated by a hostility towards popular fiction and its dramatic impact on the Italian publishing industry. I also want to show how, when the regime eventually intervened against translation, its main objective was to restrict the flow of popular fiction and protect the masses from its perceived harmful influence. In conclusion, I shall argue that the history of translation and of popular fiction in this period are inextricably linked, and that an examination of this theme can provide significant insight into the evolution of Fascist cultural policy.

Translation in Fascist Italy: ‘The Invasion of Translations’

If there is one thing that to my mind characterizes the history of translation in Fascist Italy, it is that this was dominated by an idea of translation rather than the activity itself. The discussion on the subject of translations developed from an aesthetic question in the 1920s, centring on the contribution that literary exchange could potentially make to the modernization and popularization of Italian literature, with the fear expressed in some more culturally conservative quarters that this process, if left uncontrolled, could lead to its impoverishment, to a characteristically Fascist ideological debate in the 1930s which was dominated by the symbolic value attributed to translation as a phenomenon and by the concern that Italy was the weak partner in an international struggle for cultural expansion and that its cultural prestige was being threatened by translation. In this chapter, I intend to focus on the debate that arose around the question of translation in the 1930s and on the way in which the attitude of the regime towards translation evolved from a silent tolerance to an active hostility — an evolution that is, in my opinion, directly related to the regime’s increasingly imperialist political agenda.1