Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Translation and censorship

2010; Routledge; Volume: 4; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/14781700.2011.528683

1751-2921

Sergi Mainer,

Translation Studies and Practices

Abstract This article examines the 1940 translation of Robert Burns into Spanish. The edition was published a year after the end of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), in a country which had been governed by a left-wing democratic coalition and now was ruled by a repressive dictatorship. Despite being printed by one of the new publishing houses set up by the regime, the 1940 translation recontextualized Burns's poems to challenge official discourses. By examining the difficult conditions under which literature was produced and the translators’ deployment of different literary strategies such as self-censorship and the rearrangement of individual poems, this article demonstrates how Robert Burns: Poesía gives a voice to those who lost the war and to the suppressed minority cultures of Spain. More generally, it reveals how dissident ideas within the regime were expressed through literary translation as early as 1940. Keywords: Robert Burnstranslation from ScotsSpanish Civil War1940s Spaincensorship of translationself-censorship Notes 1. In fact, during Franco's dictatorship, poetry was the literary genre with the most potential to be subversive. Whereas 25% of drama and 17.11% of novels were severely affected by censorship, only 9.6% of poetry was. Likewise, 57.89% of drama and 60% of novels were not affected by censorship at all in contrast with the much higher 83.4% of poetry (Abellán 1980 Abellán , Manuel L . 1980 . Censura y creación literaria en España (1939–1976) . Barcelona : Ediciones Península . [Google Scholar], 83–4). This is consistent with the fact that when the censors allowed Catalan to be published again, in 1946, it was in the form of poetry (Manjón-Cabeza 2008 Manjón-Cabeza , CruzDolores Dolores 2008 Poesía de Posguerra en Barcelona . Revista de Literatura 70 141 63 [Crossref] , [Google Scholar], 143–4). Probably because it sells less than novels, poetry appears to have been disregarded by censorship as a means of political subversion. Yet for the very same reason, it was ideal to express dissent with the established government. 2. “I see her in the dewy flowers, / I see her sweet and fair; / I perceive her in the harmonious little birds, / I perceive her charming the air.” 3. “The crystalline waters around us fall, / every happy little bird talks about love, / the scented winds around us blow, / while I walk with my Davie.” 4. It is noteworthy that in the 1998 translation, probably to make these lines sound more idiomatic, the second anaphora is lost: “la oigo en la melodía de los pájaros / la escucho encantar el aire” [I hear her in the birds’ melody / I listen to the way she charms the air] (Burns 1998 > Burns , Robert 1998 Caledonia y otros poemas . Trans. Juan Manuel González and José Fernández Bueno Zaragoza Olifante-Ibercaja [Google Scholar], 35). 5. Cristina Gómez Castro suggests that both writers and translators often deployed “an unconscious system of self-censorship” under Franco's regime (2009, 142). 6. The Battle of Culloden (1746) meant the final defeat of Charles Edward Stuart, popularly known as Bonnie Prince Charlie, against the Hanoverian army, led by the Duke of Cumberland (the “Lord” in l. 17). This is a popular Jacobite song, which most editors ascribed to Burns, although he merely improved an original folk song (Burns 2001 Burns , Robert 2001 . The Canongate Burns Andrew Noble and Patrick Scott Hogg . Edinburgh : Canongate Books [Google Scholar], 892). 7. The Battle of Bannockburn (1314) was the decisive battle of the Scottish Wars of Independence against England.