Censored Translations of Novels and Films of the West in Franco’s Spain (1939-1975)

Abstract

This Ph.D. thesis presents a descriptive study of the incidence and effects of Francoist censorship on the translations of the Western genre in narrative and film during the period 1939-1975. The research follows the Descriptive Translation Studies paradigm as its epistemological foundation, and adopts the postulates of the TRACE Project for its methodological basis. The study presents a panoramic view of the incidence of censorship on the translations of the novels and films of the American West and determines the impact that the translations of the genre had on the Spanish cultural polysystem in Franco’s regime. To this end, two catalogues of censorship files were compiled, one for narrative and one for films, that were representative of the genre for the time span of the study. Quantitative and qualitative analyses were performed on the data obtained from the catalogues and subsequently on a corpus of intersemiotically coupled parallel texts. The analysis revealed that the overall incidence of censorship on the genre was not excessively draconian, but was higher for films than for narratives. Differentiated periods of censorship were found to exist, with a greater incidence between 1966 and 1973. As a preliminary norm, the Franco regime permitted the entry of the Western model, but in an attempt to control the product from the very start, promoted the emergence of an autochthonous narrative, that is, pseudotranslations of the West. The censorship system, together with self-censorship, or the censorship of fear, fettered the genre in both the narrative and the cinematographic medium so that the model of the Far West that penetrated the Francoist culture was that of a domesticated West.