Gender, Translation, and Censorship

Abstract

After the “cultural turn” in the 1980s, translation was redefined as a cultural transfer rather than a linguistic transposition. Key translation concepts were revised, including equivalence, correction, and fidelity. Feminist approaches to translation emerged, for example, the recovery of texts lost in patriarchy. Following the death of Franco and the transition to democracy, Spain initiated a cultural expansion. The advent of the Franco regime after the civil war (1936-1939) resulted in years of cultural involution and the abolition of rights for women attained during the Spanish Second Republic (1931-1939). Severe censoring prevented the publication of literature—both native and foreign (through translation)—that contradicted the principles of the dictatorship. This chapter will examine the link between gender, translation, and censorship, materialised in Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness (1928), the first English novel to tackle lesbianism and transgenderism, an example of translation in cultural evolution.