Translation Under Fascism

In the fascist regimes of the mid twentieth century---this volume focuses on Italy, Germany, Spain and Portugal---translation was a carefully, though not always successfully, managed cultural practice. Translation policies attempted to steer public perceptions and promote or brake ideological change.

Translation Under Fascism examines translation policies and practices under fascism within their historical context---from publishers' biographies, institutional constraints, censorship and long-term literary trends right down to the textual choices made by translators and editors in individual translations. All these aspects of a translation history allow insight into the workings of international cultural exchange in times of dictatorship, and are of interest equally to translation scholars and historians of culture in the periods concerned.

The spectrum of translation policies and practices presented here indicates different paradigms, different obsessions and different institutional farmeworks, but also shared rhetorical motifs such as the ideas of translation as a cultural weapon and translation as a form of cultural contamination.

Christopher Rundle is a tenured researcher in translation at the University of Bologna, Italy, and Honorary Research Fellow in Italian and Translation Studies at the University of Manchester, UK. He is the author of Publishing Translations in Fascist Italy (2010) and co-ordinating editor of the online translation journal in TRAlinea (www.intralinea.it).
Kate Sturge is Visiting Senior Lecturer in Translation Studies at Aston University, Birmingham, UK. She is the author of studies on translation in Nazi Germany, including `The Alien Within': Translation into German during the Nazi Regime (2004) and on translation in ethnography. She co-edits the journal Translation Studies (www.tandf.co.uk/journals/rtrs).