This thesis explores Englishness and its representation in translated children’s literature in Russia during the Soviet period (from 1917 until 1991) and the post-Soviet period (from 1992 until 2015). It focuses on Russian translations of English children’s classics published between the late-Victorian period and the Second World War. It studies how Russian translations of English children’s literature construct literary portrayals of Englishness in varied socio-cultural and historical contexts. It investigates the complex processes involved in re-creating national specificities of English literary texts in Russian culture. The Anglo-centric essence of Englishness – or ‘dobraia staraia Angliia’ [good old England] – is expressed to a greater degree in the classics of English children’s literature. It is this particular idealised Englishness that is represented in the Russian translations. This thesis demonstrates that various manifestations of Englishness are modified in Russian translations and that the degree of modification varies according to changes in the political climate in Russia. A significant role is played by ideology – of a prevailing political nature during in the Soviet Union and a commercial ideology in post-Soviet Russia. The first chapter lays the theoretical foundation for the whole thesis and outlines the methodology adopted. Chapters 2 and 3 set out the contextual background for understanding Englishness by focusing on the question of Englishness perceived from English and Russian perspectives, and discussing the main tendencies of representing Englishness in both cultures. Chapter 4 presents the historical background by highlighting the political and cultural circumstances in which Russian translations were made. The second half of the thesis (chapters five, six and seven) focuses on the analysis of the representation of Englishness in Russian translations. Chapter 5 discusses which English children’s books, published between the late-Victorian period and the Second World War, were selected for translation and at what point between 1918 and 2015. Chapters 6 and 7 present the case studies in this thesis. These provide an analysis of how different manifestations of Englishness were translated and, taking into account the Soviet and post-Soviet historical contexts, examine why they were translated in certain ways.

Recent developments in translation studies since the 1990s have focused on the ideological implications of translation, seeing the role of the translator as an interventionist and a mediator. This new paradigm overcomes the idea that translation is a mimetic task that consists merely of transferring meaning from one language to another, but rather it is associated with political processes which may involve domination, oppression, submission or resistance amongst social groups and communities. Recognition is given to the capacity of translation to forge social and cultural change. Postcolonial contexts have proven to be particularly fertile for the study of ideological issues related to translation insofar as they reflect a situation of inequality between language communities. In these contexts, translation can be used as a political artefact either to perpetuate colonial domination or to fight against it. As a result, the 1990s have seen the emergence of postcolonial translation theories. These new theories are not only applicable to contexts that are most commonly identified as postcolonial, but to any type of situation where there exists inequality between the two systems in which translation takes place (e.g., in subaltern cultures where the practice of translation can become a means of resistance against a situation of cultural domination and a channel of self-definition). In this regard, the situation of Galicia in the 1920s and 1930s is paradigmatic and it offers invaluable grounds for the study of translation when used as an ideological instrument in the struggle for the search and construction of a national identity. During this period a group of intellectuals, widely known as Xeración Nós, emerged in the region concerned with the articulation of a nationalist discourse based on the cultural and political differentiation of Galicia with regard to the rest of Spain. Their nation-building project was a response to a situation of cultural oppression, long imposed by the Spanish state represented by Castile, and it was based on the concepts of Celticism and Atlanticism. Resorting back to the alleged Galician ancestors, the Celts, they strove to establish affinities with the other so-called Celtic nations of Northern Europe, particularly Ireland, in order to include Galicia within the Celtic mythological tradition and, by extension, within a new Atlantic civilisation opposed to the Mediterranean one which they associated with Spain. Within this well planned ideological agenda, translation of Irish literary texts played an essential role as it was used as a political tool to establish the abovementioned affinity with Ireland. From the selection of the texts to be translated to the actual discourse strategies used by the translators, translation became a process of appropriation and manipulation to support ideological ends. Focusing on the translations of the Irish poet and playwright W.B. Yeats, the most translated Irish writer of the period and profoundly admired by the Galician intelligentsia, this thesis intends to explore how translation was used in a subversive and manipulative way to show Galicia’s distinctiveness and to build a national identity resisting cultural domination. Therefore, I will demonstrate the capacity of translation to shape cultures and to aid and support cultural and social change.

In its function as a mediating body between the political decision-makers and the population, the media have the potential to influence the public opinion and subsequently, policy making. Representations of political discourses are opinion-shaping instruments and often not mere reflections of a given reality; they incorporate implicit and explicit, conscious and unconscious evaluations. In cross-cultural contexts where information travels across languages the media are highly dependent on translation. Despite its central role, media translation as part of the political process has only recently gained visibility in Translation Studies (TS) and remains widely neglected outside the discipline. Current research in TS often prioritises either the textual analysis or, more recently, the identification of the shaping factors in the news production process, and often fails to address diachronic aspects. This thesis investigates the translations of Goebbels’ speeches as published in the French and British press during the interwar period. It combines a synchronic and diachronic textual analysis, inspired by CDA with an in-depth study of context which draws on socio-historical research and the analysis of archival material. Thereby, the thesis is able to link the textual makeup to a wide variety of socio-political and historical variables via the concepts of ‘framing’ and ‘agenda-setting’. In doing so the thesis demonstrates on the one hand, how translation can function as a means of discourse mediation and, on the other hand, it provides evidence that ideology and political expediency alone cannot explain all textual changes introduced by the translator-journalists. Moreover, describing the development of the media images not only allows to add a translational perspective to the reception of the Third Reich but also contributes to a better understanding of the varying influence of contextual factors. The results of the diachronic analysis show that throughout the interwar period the British media published very little about Goebbels and, up until late in 1938, reports focused on the peaceful intentions he expressed. In contrast, Goebbels was frequently reported on in France and the regime was early on represented as an aggressor. Whilst trends in the quantity mirror the differing economic conditions of the newspaper markets, the quality, i.e. the actual realisation, of the media images seems to be a reflection of the differing socio-political positions of France and the United Kingdom after WW1. The development of the images clearly illustrates that the political ideology of appeasement was finally overridden in the UK in 1938 when political expediency forced the government to take a different course of action. However, the study of the editorial correspondence of the Manchester Guardian brings to light that the mosaic of factors influencing the news production process is more complex. The intervention of the involved governments, personal convictions of the foreign correspondents and the editors, spatial and temporal restrictions, issues of credibility, etc. all impacted on the particular make-up of the media texts. The synchronic textual analysis, on the other hand, reveals that the range of framing devices through which the media images were established was largely determined by text type conventions. The strategies applied range from selective-appropriation of text, repositioning of actors and labelling, to audience representation. The analysis clearly demonstrates that intersemiotic translation, i.e. the representation of the speech context, is equally important as inter- and intra-lingual instances of translation.

For English-language audiences, twentieth-century French literature is often identified with a variety of literary movements tied to the political left. In spite of its lesser visibility, the French literary right enjoyed considerable prestige during the first half of the twentieth century. This thesis employs methodologies from translation studies in order to study how the French literary right has been translated, or not translated, into English. Case studies devoted to three seminal writers of the right, including Charles Maurras (1868-1952), Pierre Drieu la Rochelle (1893-1945), and Roger Nimier (1925-62), demonstrate that right-wing committed literature was a central mode of literary production from the 1910s to the 1950s and that this current of writing is underrepresented in English-language translation and scholarship. A number of literary and cultural asymmetries separating English-language literature from French literature have contributed to this situation, such as the phenomenon of literary engagement in French literature and France’s strong anti-liberal intellectual tradition. Using systems theory this thesis argues that these differences between the French and Anglophone literary systems have contributed to the lack of representation accorded to the French literary right, which is manifested in the selection, presentation, and translation of texts by right-wing authors such as Maurras, Drieu, and Nimier. When translations of texts by these authors do exist, a number of translation patterns emerge. These patterns and distortions have ramifications for the construction of literary canon and for our understanding of twentieth-century literary history and the role ideology plays in influencing high- and low-level translation decisions.

This graduation thesis with title Interpretations of Josef Švejk in The Contexts of Czech and International Literary Science has an aim doucment and analyze interpretation models of Josef Švejk in the novel The Good Solider Švejk by Jaroslav Hašek. In base the materials gain the figure of Josef Švejk will be assess in context of Czech esthetic and ideal discourse. In graduation thesis will be put big emphasis on sence of language. From this reason is a part of this thesis dedicate to liguistic analysis.

La presente tesi ha come scopo l’analisi della traduzione per il doppiaggio dell’umorismo costruito su argomenti tabù (quali ad esempio riferimenti al sesso, alla sessualità, all’obesità, al consumo di alcol e droghe) presente in quattro sitcom americane, nello specifico Friends, Will & Grace, How I Met Your Mother e 2 Broke Girls. In particolare, partendo dalla teoria della riscrittura proposta da Lefevere (1992,) la ricerca mira ad identificare casi di censura e manipolazione presenti nella traduzione in italiano dei suddetti testi audiovisivi. Con un approccio traduttivo descrittivo, i dialoghi trascritti dall’inglese sono stati confrontati con la loro traduzione in lingua italiana e i risultati dimostrano che censura e manipolazione all’interno della traduzione per il doppiaggio sono due fenomeni esistenti pur non essendo sempre possibile distinguere tra i due dal momento che non solo i vari specialisti coinvolti nel doppiaggio, quali traduttori, direttori del doppiaggio, doppiatori, adattatori, ma anche gli organi afferenti al patronato (Lefevere 1992) possono in qualche modo influire sull’atto traduttivo stesso. Un confronto diacronico tra le sitcom prese in esame dimostra tuttavia come fenomeni censori e manipolatori nella traduzione dell’umorismo tabù siano oggi in diminuzione rispetto al passato, probabile segno di una mutata ideologia nella cultura di arrivo. / The purpose of the present thesis is to analyse the translation for dubbing of humour based on taboo topics – such as, for example, references to sex, sexuality, obesity, alcohol and drug addiction – present in four American sitcoms, namely Friends, Will & Grace, How I Met Your Mother and 2 Broke Girls. Moving from the theory of rewriting introduced by Lefevere (1992), the present research aims to identify cases of manipulation and censorship in the Italian translation of the above-mentioned audiovisual texts. Following a descriptive translational approach, the English dialogues have been compared to their Italian translation. Results show that censorship and manipulation exist in the translation for dubbing even though it is not always possible to distinguish between the two. Indeed, not only the several specialists involved in the dubbing process, such as translators, dubbing directors, dubbing actors, adaptors, but also the powers linked to patronage (Lefevere 1992) can influence in several ways the translation process. However, a diachronic comparison of the analysed sitcoms demonstrates that censorial and manipulative phenomena in the translation of taboo humour are decreasing compared to the past, and this is probably due to a change in the receiving culture ideology.