Julia Lin Thompson
This book offers a fascinating picture of how state censorship affected children’s literature translation in post-Civil War Spain. Focusing on the Spanish translations of Mark Twain’s children’s classics The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the author traces the evolution of the censorship system of the Francoist regime and its impact on Spanish children’s literature during the years after the Spanish Civil War. Drawing on the regime’s censorship laws, official censors’ records, and textbooks, she not only examines the censorship imposed on the translations of Twain’s works, but also offers insights into the intricate connections between state censorship and the regime’s educational aims. The book gives a revealing analysis of the ways in which the highly bureaucratic censorship apparatus operated under Franco’s dictatorship, outlining the flaws and fallacies within it, as well as the strategies adopted by publishers and translators to resist the power of the state. While centred on Francoist Spain, the book also explores broader themes of ideology, censorship, and translation, making it a valuable source for scholars of translation studies and Hispanic studies, as well as those with a wider interest in literature, history, and cultural studies.
