Political and Ideological Translation Practice: Italian and English Extracts of Hitler’s Mein Kampf

Our research analyses two short unauthorised translations of extracts that were prepared by the respective Foreign Offices of the UK and Italy – the two countries Hitler had indicated as his potential allies against France – in the midst of the tense diplomatic atmosphere of the 1930s. These translations were initiated by two differing ideological perspectives but with similar purposes – informing the respective country’s politicians of Hitler’s programmatic objectives – which led to opposite political decisions. The two texts only represent small digests of Mein Kampf, consisting of selected passages which had been re-organized under different section headings in correspondence with themes that the translation agents deemed most relevant and worth reading. By observing the selection process, the passages that coincide and those that differ, and the comments that were inserted to guide the reader, we can understand the translators’ judgements of the German source text and how it influenced their translation choices. We believe that this case represents an interesting exception in the realm of Translation Studies, given the amount of material at our disposal and, at the same time, the richness of information concerning the context and discourses surrounding these translations events. Our approach is not purely linguistic, as the discussion takes into account the challenges and shortcomings posed by formalist-structural attempts at translation description, and we will make extensive reference to specific situational and discursive constraints that shaped the production of these extracts. We would thus like to further argue for a renewed acknowledgment of theoretical concepts centred on the establishment of well-grounded semantic and pragmatic-discursive categories in translation description. Our aim is then to observe the translation and editing strategies performed in a specific context and by translation agents who were clearly deeply influenced by the historical situation surrounding them. Our observations, somehow made simpler by the obviousness of the respective positions of the agents, will reveal strategies and patterns that will also prove useful to scholars observing translation choices performed in less ideological environments.