The Translator's Choice. "Gulliver's Travels" and Fascism
Abstract
This paper studies censorship and self-censorship during the fascist regime and the fine boundary between the two. It focuses, in particular, on the accuracy and adequacy of Gulliver's Travels’ translations in fascist Italy and analyses how responses to the fascist 'revision' system changed depending on law, patronage, and material conditions in which the translators worked (Bassnett, Lefevere).
Jonathan Swifts’ novel was perceived in the beginning just as a critique of the ‘perfidious Albion’ (Gregori). This superficial reading explains why Gulliver's Travels’ was able to evade censorship and being published in its first unabridged edition precisely during Fascism (1933 Formichi, 1934 Taroni).
Examining the translations issued during the regime we identify different translation strategies that can be interpreted respectively as acts of submission or of resistance to the dominant thinking (Tymoczko). This in turn allows us to discuss more in general the role of ideology as an explicit (censorship) or implicit (self-censorship) component of the translation process.
Downloads
References
Billiani, Francesca, "Traduzioni e identità nazionale nell'Italia degli anni Venti e Trenta", La fabbrica del libro, 2 (2004), http://www.fondazionemondadori.it/cms/culturaeditoriale/201/20042, online (ultimo accesso 08/01/2015).
Bonsaver, Guido, Censorship and Literature in Fascist Italy, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2007.
Brambilla, Cristina, "Attilio Barion: l'impegno nella divulgazione delle edizioni popolari", Stampa e piccola editoria tra le due guerre, Eds. Luisa Finocchi - Ada Carla Gigli Marchetti, Milano, Franco Angeli, 1997: 18-27.
Fabre, Giorgio, "Fascism, Censorship and Translation", Modes of Censorship and Translation. National Context and Diverse Media, Ed. Francesca Billiani, Manchester, St. Jerome Publishing, 2007: 27-59.
Graziano, Alba, Il Linguaggio dell'ironia. Saggio sui 'Gulliver's Travels', Roma, Bulzoni, 1982.
Gregori, Flavio, "The Italian Reception of Swift", The Reception of Jonathan Swift in Europe (2005), Ed. Hermann Josef Real, London, Bloomsbury Academic, 2013: 17-56.
Holquist, Michel, "Corrupt Originals: The Paradox of Censorship", PMLA, 109.1 (1994): 14-25.
Knight, Charles, The Literature of Satire, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Lefevere, André, Translation, Rewriting, and the Manipulation of Literary Fame, London, Routledge, 1992.
Milic, Louis Tonko, A Quantitative Approach to The Style of Jonathan Swift, Paris, Mouton & Co., 1967.
Moore, Marianne, Collected Poems, London, MacMillan, 1961.
Ní Chuilleanáin, Eiléan - Ó Cuilleanáin, Comarc - Parris, David (eds.), Translation and Censorship. Patterns of Communication and Interference, Dublin, Four Court Press, 2009.
Pagetti, Carlo, La Fortuna di Swift in Italia, Bari, Adriatica Editrice, 1971.
Rundle, Christopher, Publishing Translations in Fascist Italy, Bern, Peter Lang, 2010.
Id., "Il ruolo/la invisibilità del traduttore e dell'interprete nella storia", Il Traduttore Nuovo, 1-2 (2004): 63-76.
Id., "Publishing Translations in Mussolini's Italy: A Casa Study of Arnoldo Mondadori", Textus, 12.2 (1999): 427-442.
Swift, Jonathan, A Tale of a Tub and Other Works, The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Jonathan Swift, vol. 1, Ed. Marcus Walsh, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Id., Gulliver's Travels, The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Jonathan Swift, vol. 16, Ed. David Womersley, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2012.
Id., Gulliver's Travels, trad. it. I Viaggi di Gulliver, Ed. Carlo Formichi, Milano, Mondadori, 1933.
Id., Gulliver's Travels, trad. it. I Viaggi di Gulliver, Ed. Luigi Taroni, Sesto San Giovanni, Edizioni A. Barion della Casa per le Edizioni Popolari, 1934.
Thackeray, William Makepeace, Swift, the English Humorists of the Eighteenth Century, London, Harper&Brothers, 1867.
Gentzler, Edwin - Tymoczko, Maria (eds.), Translation and Power, Amherst and Boston, University of Massachussetts Press, 2002.
Venuti, Lawrence, The Translator's Invisibility. A History of Translation, New York, Routledge, 1995.
Copyright Notice
You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work, and to adapt the work. You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).
