Censorship(s) in Translation: Constraints and Creativity

Abstract

As an intellectual, creative, and cultural practice with a high potential of introducing dissident and subversive ideas to a culture, translation has historically been subjected to various censorial mechanisms in countless contexts and time periods. Translation as a vessel of the foreign content, which frequently implies damage to the native culture, attracts the attention of the censor. The means of these censorial mechanisms range from monitoring and regulating translation products at micro levels to prosecuting, jailing, and even murdering translators, with the purpose of establishing a domain within which the translator is allowed to produce.