ABSTRACT
The processes of translation and censorship can be defined as having conflicting objectives. On the one hand, the aim of a translation is to render a text understandable to a foreign audience. This is a method, therefore, which facilitates access that was previously hindered because of a linguistic barrier. Censorship, on the other hand, implies controlling what will be understood or made accessible to the audience. In general, this can be defined as a form of restriction, or, in contrast to translation, a method which denies access to certain texts. This chapter will explore how these apparently contrasting processes acted in Fascist Italy in conjunction with the importation of Soviet films to produce rather surprising results: Italians demonstrated that the translation of cinema goes far beyond purely linguistic parameters and, ultimately, can become the process by which one nation interprets and deciphers the cinematic achievements of another for purely self-serving ends.
