The Representation of Black People in Slovene Literary Translation

The article addresses the representation of black people in Slovene literary transla­tions from the middle of the 19th century to the beginning of the 21st century. In the translations published in the period until the end of the Second World War, explic­itly racist discourse about black people was not censored, pejorative terms for black people were almost completely neutralised, and grammatically incorrect discourse was used relatively often when translating African-American Vernacular English. To a certain extent, the latter translation strategy was also present in some translations from the socialist period, although black characters’ sociolect was standardised more often. During this period, negative terms for black people were often softened, and especially in translations of children’s or juvenile literature explicitly racist discourse about black people was sometimes censored. In the post-socialist period, such inter­ventions on the macrostructural level of texts are less frequent, the most negatively marked Slovene terms are often still not used when translating the most pejorative terms for black people, while either colloquial or standard Slovene is mostly used when translating black characters’ discourse.