Translation and Interpreting Studies. The Journal of the American Translation and Interpreting Studies Association - Volume 15, Issue 3, 2020

This article aims to show that not only was translation in the cultural Cold War used to manipulate ideologies across the Iron Curtain, but it also played a decisive role in establishing socialist structures in satellite states, including those involved with the transfer of knowledge, thus giving a louder voice to translators as vital and yet underrepresented agents. Specifically, we examine the translators of the journal Sowjetwissenschaft (published in the GDR) to shed light on the identities of the translators and their role in the transfer of knowledge within the Socialist bloc. Individual scientific translators are investigated in greater detail to reveal their importance in establishing and preserving socialist structures and discourses during the cultural Cold War.

Although the selection and publication of foreign literature in the USSR was subject to state control, many foreign works were able to reach the Soviet reader, thanks to the clever strategies employed by editors, literary advisers, critics, and translators. This was particularly true in the case of foreign literature written by Western authors, which underwent more rigorous control and often required incisive cultural and ideological domestication in order to comply with the aesthetics of the Soviet literary canon. Through the analysis of a corpus of published and unpublished Soviet critical texts, this article sheds new light on the Soviet system of cultural production by taking into account the strategies implemented, at different levels, by cultural operators, and in particular by critics. This article focuses on the Soviet reception of Western anti-mimetic novels by Italo Calvino and Kurt Vonnegut, illustrating the strategies of critical domestication to which they were subjected.

The article deals with selected aspects of the cultural appropriation of post-Stalinist Soviet poetry by Anglo-American poets and translators. The article focuses on Yevgeny Yevtushenko and Andrei Voznesensky, two eminent representatives of Russian lyric poetry of the “Thaw.” English translations of Yevtushenko’s and Voznesensky’s poems are discussed in relation to Cold War issues and imagery, such as the themes of the Second World War, the Holocaust, and the rediscovery of America. The article demonstrates that the Soviet-Russian authors and their Anglo-American translators appealed to their governments and audiences over the moral and aesthetic barriers imposed by the Cold War. The opportunity for independent, liberal, romantic, or leftist English-speaking authors to collaborate with the post-Stalinist Russian poets of the Thaw was made possible by the latters’ willingness to break the cultural isolation of the Soviet Union after Stalin’s death.

Ideological expectations coupled with opportunism, personal advancement, friendship, and the political and ideological loyalties held by those who served as patrons for publishing translations were the factors that informed decisions about what would be translated in the Cold War years between 1945 and 1989. This article considers the choices made by publishers Frederick A. Praeger, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, and Vanguard Press when publishing the fiction and non-fiction of Milovan Djilas and Miroslav Krleža, writers from Yugoslavia. The backstories behind the publishing of the translations lie at the intersection of the public and private spheres of culture, and demonstrate how ideological agendas interlace with personal bonds, loyalties, aspirations, and ambitions.

This article examines the way the Cold War shaped the field of interpreting in Turkey. Turkey became part of the anti-communist bloc, and one outcome of this Turkish-American partnership was the influence that a constellation of American and Turkish organizations exerted on the nascent field of interpreting. Through open-ended interviews with selected interpreters, the article seeks to shed light on the way the Cold War impacted the practice of interpreting. By drawing on Lewin’s (1947) concept of gatekeeping, it is suggested that the US-led anti-communist campaign of the Cold War affected the topics that were interpreted, the common language pairs, and interpreters’ lexical choices. The Cold War, thus, became a “gate” through which the interpreted topics, languages, lexical choices, and even the interpreters – all of which were instruments of the regime – had to pass through.

William Faulkner is an interesting case for the history of American cultural diplomacy. Although the State Department hailed him as a Cold War warrior, it had difficulty sponsoring his “modernist” novels in a book program that promoted American ideals during the Cold War. In this article I examine how the Franklin Book Programs arranged for some of Faulkner’s novels to be translated into Arabic and Persian by using sources from the Program’s archive and an interview with a former Franklin editor. The analysis is framed by Faulkner’s rise in status from a marginal to a major world writer. I also assess the cultural forces that led to his inclusion in Franklin’s list of publications. The analysis reveals a tension between American idealism and Cold War imperatives, further challenging the propagandist reading of the program and calling for a more nuanced understanding of the dynamics of the cultural Cold War in the region.