Political correctness, sensibility towards taboo, and censorship during translation

[RamonaQ]

Political correctness, sensibility towards taboo, and censorship during translation

The title of this topic says it all. How much do translators actually censore while translating? How much attention should be paid to political correctness when translating to English from some little no-name language where that's not an issue?
How much attention should be paid to respecting taboo of the target audience?

For instance, at the Bologna fair I was shocked to hear how in one book that an Italian translator translated from Spanish, she OMITTED a whole teen sex scene, and she turned all joints into ordinary cigarettes. Because teen sex and drugs are taboo in Italy and not in Argentina? But with this act, that fictional character is just not the same anymore. Or are children's books a category for themselves since most children's books are chosen and bought by adults, and not by the children themselves?

[hdw]

For instance, at the Bologna fair I was shocked to hear how in one book that an Italian translator translated from Spanish, she OMITTED a whole teen sex scene, and she turned all joints into ordinary cigarettes. Because teen sex and drugs are taboo in Italy and not in Argentina?

In that case, maybe Italian parents should stop their impressionable teenage children reading about their prime minister.

Harry

[Eric]

Harry has a point. In a country where Prime Minister ParlousPhoney is in every newspaper, and no doubt on TV too, and where any teenager can get hold of the information about his bimbosity, such censorship as RamonaQ describes will not actually work.

I think that a translator who eagerly takes on a job such as that one and allows the book to be published in censored form (the more old-fashioned English term is "bowdlerised" when sex is involved) is either desperate for money, or has allowed the publishing house to cut out the naughty bits out of sheer weakness.

A translator should not collude with censorship as authors did and do in totalitarian states. Italy, even under Berlusconi, is not a totalitarian state, so the translator has no excuse. In Soviet Russia you had a choice: either accept censorship of parts, or the book was simply not published. I wonder if there are any EU standards for censorship of sex for young people, or whether this comes under the subsidiarity rule, so that every EU country does what it likes.

[Eric]

I think one basic rule is: if you strongly object to the contents of a book, such as "Mein Kampf", Gaddafi's "Green Book" (great work of fiction, no doubt...), or books by Sade, then don't translate them. But it amazing how tempting money can be.

[Eric]

The thought struck me that we often focus on (and in my case, mock) political correctness, conformism, and censorship in our liberal European countries. But it isn't really in what is now Sleepy Old Europe where the real politically correct battles are being fought.

Some countries simply censor every utterance that might be critical of the government, and block those parts of the internet which local people might try to access.

Some countries are highly puritanical and there are whole areas of sexual behaviour that are censored out of both the media and literature.

Some countries maintain that there is only one acceptable religion, so that no other religion is allowed time on TV or radio, or long discursive articles in the press. The minorities have to cringe and hope they don't get persecuted.

So Europe is, in fact, doing jolly well really. Let's be smug about it. But I would say that all those people who keep lecturing us liberal Europeans about women's rights, homophobia, racism, and so on, over here should travel around the world a bit and try to lecture people publicly in Iran, North Korea, the Maghreb, Pakistan, China, Russia, etc., etc., and then, with a stop-watch, count the minutes before they are harassed, arrested, deported, beaten up, etc. If they are murdered, someone else will have to hold the stop-watch.

So I feel that censoring out teenage sex is at the trivial end of the censorship spectrum, compared with depriving the populations of large countries of a fair view of the world, that is not simply the party line of the ruling party.

[Eric]

How do the rest of you, the ones belonging to the non-translating classes, know that we translators are not conspiring to keep the rest of you ignorant of key world facts?

[Eric]

I see that no one here has any opinions on this important subject - because almost none of you translate.