Unwelcome Contents in Slovene Translations in the Socialist Era

In socialist Slovenia any works or passages directed against the Partisan and Resist­ance movement, revolutionary activity, new political order and (in the first years after the Second World War) the Soviet Union were prohibited. In addition to this, all religious, and in particular Christian, elements in the texts were not welcome. Trans­lations for an adult readership were rarely altered, while those for juvenile readers represented an efficient way of ideological influence that allowed the Communist Party to use the authority of the original author to transfer and emphasise its atheis­tic convictions, and at the same time leave that indoctrination hidden. After a brief outline of the historical and philosophical reasons for ideological changes after the Second World War, the chapter identifies a few cases of prohibited translations and describes how the communist nomenclature influenced the actual text in translations: the ideological adaptations of translated texts were introduced either by editors or by translators. On the one hand, the editors influenced the final text of translations through the selection of translators or instructions given to them prior to the trans­lating task, or else through amendments made to already published translations. On the other hand, some translators practiced self-censorship and altered their trans­lations to meet the expectations and the dominant ideology themselves during the translation process. These interventions (which are exemplified by the excerpts taken from Cinderella and Bambi) were the result of either the worldview of the translator which was in line with the new ideological context, or a way the translator attempted to avoid sanctions.