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Representations of black people in the Slovenian translations of Karl May’s novels

2017; John Benjamins Publishing Company; Volume: 15; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1075/forum.15.1.07tru

2451-909X

Janko Trupej,

Gender Studies in Language

Abstract The article discusses how black people were portrayed in the Slovenian translations of the novels Winnetou , Old Surehand and Der Schatz im Silbersee , which have all been translated into Slovenian several times; the analysis thus reveals how translation strategies have changed over the decades. The comparison shows that the strategies in translations published in the 1930s were somewhat different from those in the post-World War II period, when the Slovenian territory was part of socialist Yugoslavia; because of the unacceptability of racist views during the socialist period, some racist passages of the original texts were censored in the translations. A substantial amount of neutralization of pejorative racial terminology occurred in both pre- and post-War translations, and translators in both eras also used similar strategies for translating black people’s sociolect. The interventions in the translations have somewhat affected how the translated works can be interpreted.