Modes of Censorship

National Contexts and Diverse Media

Francesca Billiani

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317640325
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

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and transnational approach and bringing together contributions based on primary research which often draws on unpublished archival material, the volume analyzes the multi-faceted relationship between censorship and translation in different national contexts, including Italy,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.

Assessing Boundaries – Censorship and Translation

An Introduction

FRANCESCA BILLIANI

University of Manchester, UK

Abstract: This introductory chapter offers a critical and methodological assessment of the phenomenology of censorship and translation. It provides overarching definitions of both but also traces their interfaces and points of friction. Taking the key ideas of the (in)visibility and (inaccessibility of a translated text in a censorial context as my point of departure, I analyze Bourdieu ‘s notion of censorship, Foucault’s account of the relationship between power, knowledge and sexuality, Bhabha’s assessment of national textuality, and their application to the study of translation and censorship. This is followed by a discussion of each chapter from the volume in relation to the specific methodological problem it raises, setting it within a broader methodological framework The discussion draws together the various common threads that run through the individual case studies, which are based on an examination of different national contexts and diverse media, and attempts to synthesize their commonalities and specificities within a coherent framework¹.

Central to the changes [in the world of writers and intellectuals] has been the deepening of an unresolved tension as to whether writers and intellectuals can ever be what is called nonpolitical or not, and if so, how and in what measure.

(Said 2005: 15)

Whether caught in the act of performing their public role, or a private one, translators and intellectuals alike play a significant part in addressing political problems, directly as well as obliquely. Given the labyrinthine political configuration of contemporary society and its disregard for political commitment, in fact, the meaning of the intellectual’s and the translator’s public roles could hardly fail to be a matter of considerable contention. Needless to say, consideration of the role of the writer and the intellectual in shaping political, cultural and aesthetic discourses has fostered extensive academic reflection, and in various ways this has had an impact on the field of Translation Studies (Bermann-Wood 2005; Venuti 1998, 2004). This critical configuration is particularly important for the investigation of the phenomenology of the relationship between censorship and translation that this volume attempts to assess.

In general, scholars in Translation Studies have consistently underlined the importance of linking the linguistic study of translation with the investigation of broader cultural, aesthetic and political discourses, such as those articulated by institutions (universities, publishers and the media) which circulate in the target culture. These contributions have emphasized the value of embedding the study of translation within extra-textual discourses, with a clear view to bringing out the specificity of national contexts and media (Baker 2006; Baynharn-De Fina 2005; Bermann-Wood 2005; Harvey 2003; Simon-St-Pierre 2000; Spivak 2005; Tymoczko 1999; Venuti 1998a; 1998b). This approach has enabled researchers to discuss translation not only in relation to linguistic structures but also with regard both to the ideological, cultural and aesthetic discourses generated by a certain cultural system and to the cultural capital each text enjoys in the target culture. Censorship itself must be understood as one of the discourses, and often the dominant one, produced by a given society at a given time and expressed either through repressive cultural, aesthetic and linguistic measures or through economic means.

Drawing on these critical assumptions, this volume explores the phenomenology of the relationship between censorship and translation, with the intention of bridging the gap between linguistic analysis and cultural history and theory. It ranges widely in its analysis of the varied operative modes of censorship, seen both as an institutional and a self-imposed act. It also proposes new readings of the ways in which censorship operates in conjunction with the specific nature of each translatory act as well as the nature of the institutions which sustain and promote this censorship. The individual chapters focus on how censorship manifests itself in national contexts – which are, to a more or less significant degree, ideologically loaded – as well as in communication media which address a large audience, such as cinema and radio. Specifically, and more importantly, this book investigates how censorship operates in its attempt to repress intellectual freedom and manipulate information. The multifaceted nature of censorship emerges not only from examples taken from dictatorial regimes, but also from those set in seemingly ‘neutral’ scenarios. Such an analysis, therefore, demonstrates the polymorphous nature of censorship and its slipperiness when applied to translations, which, on account of their dual textual nature, can be easily manipulated by different agents at various stages of their textual production. Ideally, if censors long to act in an invisible fashion in order to preserve a seemingly ‘natural’ order of things, translation, by contrast, works in such a way as to achieve a form of visibility for the foreign culture within the target culture (Boase-Beier-Holman 1998; Gambier 2002; Gouanvic 2002). The main question this volume asks is: to what extent does censorship, when applied to translation, succeed in producing new textual spaces and generating new sites of meaning?

1. Defining censorship and translation

I am aware that the term ‘censorship’ carries a heavy significance and usually refers to blatant forms of repression. In this volume, however, the term covers both overt and diluted forms of control since it describes the multiple cultural and linguistic locations at which censorship meets translation. Nonetheless, the broad and overarching definition of censorial intervention in translations to which these chapters subscribe is as follows: censorship is a form of manipulative rewriting of discourses by one agent or structure over another agent or structure, aiming at filtering the stream of information from one source to another. Because translation often, though not always, makes the source culture visible within, and accessible to, the target culture, translated texts tend to attract censorial intervention; they voice the presence of the Other from within (Sturge 2004). Among the fundamental aspects of the study of translation, therefore, are not only the visibility or invisibility of the translator, but also the notions of the visibility and accessibility of the cultural, aesthetic, political and ideological capital that translated texts enjoy and produce in the target culture (Gouanvic 2002; Inghilleri 2005). Censorship is instead an act, often coercive and forceful, that – in various ways and under different guises – blocks, manipulates and controls the establishment of cross-cultural communication. Primarily, it aims to guide the coming into being of forms of aesthetic, ideological and cultural communication. By mainly withholding information from certain groups, often dominated and subaltern ones, to the advantage of dominant sectors of society, censorship functions as a filter in the complex process of cross-cultural transfer encouraged by translations. Moreover, censorship operates largely according to sets of specific values and criteria which are established by a dominant body over a dominated one; the former can often be identified with the visible face of legislating institutional powers, or more specifically with those social conventions that rule one’s freedom of choice and expression, both at a public and personal level. In so doing, both censorship and translation establish a power structure that sustains and shapes their respective, often intertwined operational modes (Sammells 1992; Saunders 1992).

To provide a wide-ranging and sound understanding of diverse patterns of censorial operation, a study of censorship and translation must engage with the theoretical debate on how power relations, discourses and a national textuality are created, made public (or kept hidden), and eventually circulated in one form or another in various cultural spaces. In addressing the problem of translation and censorship, a few studies have paved the way for this type of engagement (Boase-Beier-Holman 1998; Bonsaver-Gordon 2005; Sturge 2004). Existing work on censorship has argued for the need to assess the phenomenon not only from its overtly repressive angle, but also in response to the ambiguous status of a translated text; at the same time aspiring to be faithful to its original and yet prone to productive manipulations. Indeed, more than other texts, a text to be translated allows translators a greater degree of paradoxically productive freedom. In view of these considerations, this volume complements existing studies by not only understanding censorship as both a repressive and ‘productive’ tool, but also by comparing and contrasting its varied phenomenology across national contexts and media. The common analytical focus of the case studies is respectively on how textual strategies are deployed, on how dominant and subaltern discourses circulate, and on how power structures are put in place when censorship acts upon translation. Specifically, this study assesses the role, status and location of censorial agents; the structural limitations and targets which bound censorial bodies and institutions; the range and breadth of the circulation of translated and censored texts; and their degree of public or personal resonance.

Like many editors in the field, I am aware that the selection of contributions seems to incline towards a European perspective on the phenomenon. Editing such a collection carries risks and limitations: some planned essays were not eventually written, some locations, regrettably, could not be covered. Nonetheless, the chapters in this volume cover a wide variety of manifestations in diverse national contexts and media. To give breath and depth to this study, this volume is organized thematically rather than chronologically (see also Jones 2001: xi). Each section focuses on the one hand on some of the central issues which define censorship in conjunction with translation, and on the other on certain specific operative censorial modes which are then framed according either to a thematic thread (dictatorship and self-censorship), or specific media (theatre, cinema and radio) (Alger 1996, Jones 2001: xiv). Section One, Dictatorships, engages with the study of censorship under dictatorships, scrutinizing the key issue of the role played by the State, and Nation-state, the Church and various other institutions such as the publishing business in allowing, or not allowing, the circulation of translated texts. Sections Two, The Censor on Stage, and Four, Censorship and the Media, investigate the relationship between censorship and translation as articulated in different media: cinema, theatre and radio. Communication media in general, and above all mass media, address a rather large and socially diverse audience which, more so than in the case of literary texts, needs to be kept under control and organized in its tastes and opinions by a visible, and invisible, censorial power. Section Three, Self-censorship, centres on the role played by self-censorship, seen both as a social phenomenon and as a literary device. Overall, the raison d’être of this collection is to show that censorship intervenes in and manipulates texts in such a way as to legitimate or de-legitimate them in respect to the context into which the censorious power seeks to insert these altered texts.

This research makes extensive use of primary material taken mostly from national archives in order to draw conclusions regarding the politics of censorship in the context of translations, as well as the reception and circulation of censored translations in the target culture. The correspondence between such diverse cultural agents as the publishers, the Lord Chamberlain, various Ministers, Mussolini and the translators themselves (Thomson-Wohlgemuth; Krebs; Vandaele; Fabre; Hurtley – all this volume) sheds light on the process by which a certain aesthetic, ideological and cultural understanding of reality is shaped and, more importantly, shared. Furthermore, by analysing the narratives encapsulated in the correspondence between different cultural agents, we can understand how a community negotiates its own identity and textuality as well as its cultural and aesthetic paradigms, which, in the specific case of translations, can act as either subversive or conservative forces. Similarly, documents on censorship allow us to see how restrictions on knowledge are imposed within a certain structure, who the agents in this manoeuvre are and what positions they occupy within the structure itself (and indeed how these positions of dominance and subordination can fluctuate). Moreover, archival material gives a clear insight into the way in which discourses are produced and circulated, thereby placing the study of translation in its cultural and national context.

2. Translation and censorship: Pierre Bourdieu’s structural censorship

The acclaimed critical turn in Translation Studies of the mid 1990s has prompted researchers to investigate the cultural and sociological impact of translations on their target culture (Derrida 1985; Hermans 1999; Munday 2001; Spivak 2005). The latter is understood both in terms of the location of texts within a given culture, and of the role played by translators and interpreters themselves in shaping cultural, aesthetic and ideological discourses as well as in creating interpretative communities (Baker 2006; Niranjana 1992; House-Rosario Martin Ruano-Baumgarten 2005). A major contribution to this paradigmatic shift derives from the work of Michel Foucault and Pierre Bourdieu (Inghilleri 2005).² Specifically, Bourdieu³ argues that to understand fully how censorship operates, one needs to take into consideration its relationship with the habitus of the field in which it circulates. In Distinction (La Distinction 1979; English translation 1984) Bourdieu defines the habitus as “both the generative principle of objectively classifiable judgements and the system of classification (principium divisionis) of these practices”; in other words as “a creative and organizing principle” ([1979] 1984: 170). In this respect, the habitus is both an empirical and theoretical principle which accounts for the social formation of taste and judgement as well as for its transnational and universal significance. Indeed, Bourdieu encapsulates the dual nature of the habitus when he writes that it is “not only a structuring structure, which organizes practices and the perception of practices, but also a structured structure: the principle of division into logical classes which organizes the perception of the social world is itself the product of internalization of the division into social classes” (1984: 170). In other words, the habitus is a principle, or structure, according to which both practical configurations and abstract representations of cultural practices can be articulated. Thus it is to be understood as “a structuring and structured structure”, as an empirical and universal practice, which circulates in a given field of cultural production. Specifically, Bourdieu’s notion of structural censorship, as expressed in ‘Censure et mise en forme’ (1982), relies on this definition of habitus. Bourdieu writes that what constitute structural censorship is

Une censure constituteée par la structure même du champ dans lequel se produit et circule le discours. Plus ou moins “réussie” selon la compétence spécifique du producteur, cette “formation de compromis”, … est le produit de stratégies d’euphémisation, consistant inséparablement à mettre en forme et à mettre des formes: ces stratégies tendent à assurer la satisfaction de l’intérêt expressif… dans les limites de la structure des chances de profit matériel ou symbolique que les différentes formes de discours peuvent procurer aux différents producteurs en...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Acknowledgements
• Table of Contents
• 1 Assessing Boundaries – Censorship and Translation An Introduction
• 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
• 6 Good Manners, Decorum and the Public Peace Greek Drama and the Censor
• 7 Anticipating Blue Translational Choices as Sites of (Self)-Censorship Translating for the British Stage under the Lord Chamberlain
• 8 Semi-censorship in Dryden and Browning
• 9 Examining Self-Censorship Zola’s Nana in English Translation
• 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