Innovation in Language Learning
From Charles Dickens to George Orwell – Translational Techniques and Cultures in the German Democratic Republic
Martina Jauch, Trier University of Applied Sciences (Germany)
Abstract
In an atmosphere of competition and cooperation, translators in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) during the 1950s and 1960s would be heavily censored and encouraged to translate works promoting the socialist Soviet cause. Racism proved a welcome topic for translated works from the US or other Anglophone countries as it would have aided in illustrating the downfall of Western society to the population of the GDR. Translators had to adjust their independence in translating, the higher cause of culture and adopt a more pragmatist view in order to pass the “print permit process” of the government. Nonetheless, not only did the situation improve in the late 1960s to normalize literary relations with the Federal Republic of Germany, but the literary marketplace changed to accommodate both Eastern and Western German literary works. The Eastern German marketplace, which previously fostered a culture of “socialist sister nations”, such as, Hungary or the Czech Republic, now encouraged the role of translators as “active agents”, who were supported in their time, self-image and mutual relationship by the publishers. Yet there are unexplored questions of how creatively the translators adapted Anglophone literatures, why certain works were chosen, and how the language was adjusted to the expectations of East German readership. This chapter intends to close this research gap in analyzing the British translations published in this “second world” (Berndt/Wells 19) and their ideological tendencies of interpretation. In presenting a variety of translational approaches, this essay focuses on the works of Charles Dickens – who was part of GDR school curricula and widely popular – and George Orwell, a highly controversial author not available until the 1980s in the GDR. They illustrate the slow acceptance of British literary translations at the beginning of the socialist state to an acceptance of thematic similarities, translators’ and editors’ efforts, and the belief in the “servantship to the author” on the part of translators.
Keywords: GDR, Translation, Culture, Marketplace, British Literature
REFERENCES
[1] Berndt, Katrin and Andrew Wells (2024). The ‘Second World’ in Contemporary British Writing. V&R unipress.
