The thesis researches and compares the influence of official state censorship on the translation of foreign literature in the Soviet Union and in Francoist Spain. After the civil wars, totalitarian regimes were established in both countries, which led to the introduction of a new censorship apparatus to control all literary production, including translated literature. Foreign literature was particularly problematic for the regimes, as it could contain elements that contradicted the state ideology and the way of life that the regimes wanted to impose on the citizens. The Soviet Union and Spain were two ideologically opposed systems, therefore the aim of the master's thesis is to investigate how the ideological oppositions were reflected in the selection and censorship of translated literature. The research also based on translation theory, more specifically the cultural turn in which the theorist André Lefevere argues that translation is influenced by different “patronages”, “poetics”, and “ideologies”. Furthermore, the research is limited to the definition of censorship that existed under the totalitarian regime. The thesis focuses on the historical and political circumstances that influenced translation and on the development of the censorship system, with an emphasis on the censorship of foreign literature. The various actors involved in the censorship process are also investigated. In the last part, the impact of censorship is analyzed and illustrated by the translations of For Whom the Bell Tolls, 1984, and Jane Eyre, which show that the censorship apparatus was inconsistent and unpredictable in both countries, and that Spanish and Soviet readers read slightly different versions of the novels as a result of censorship interventions, which reflected the ideological contradictions and are still available to be read by the public today.
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