Resisting Foreign Penetration: the Anti-translation Campaign in Italy in the Wake of the Ethiopian War

During the 1930s Italy published more translations than any other country in the world. This phenomenon has tended to be seen in terms of the influence on Italian culture of translated American literature, and of its contribution in the construction of a cultural myth of America. It is my belief that this was not the "decennio delle traduzioni" just because of the way in which writers like Pavese and Vittorini used the activity of translation as a means to resist the cultural climate of the time, or because of the popularity of contemporary American fiction; but also for the reason that a taste and a market for popular fiction was catered to using translations and that consequently translations became a cultural and political issue. In 1928 there was already talk in the press and in the periodicals of the time of an "invasion of translations". This perception of translated literature as a form of cultural invasion was to persist throughout the 1930s. A conflict of interests soon developed between writers and intellectuals on the one hand, who either felt threatened by or simply disapproved of the influx of foreign literature in translation, and the publishers and some intellectuals on the other, who saw translations has an excellent source of income and as a healthy form of cultural exchange. The more politically active writers, lead by F. T. Marinetti, president of the Authors and Writers Union, made concerted efforts to have some form of barrier put in place which would hinder this growing flow of translations, arguing that Italian writers should be allowed to exert some form of quality control over what was imported. Up until the war in Ethiopia, the regime and in particular the Ministry for Popular Culture remained unreceptive to the appeals of the Writers union and took no action to hinder translations and enforced no specific measures aimed at translations. Furthermore, the Ministry maintained a cordial and collaborative relationship with the publishers and their official political body the Publishers Federation. After the war in Ethiopia, and particularly in the wake of the campaign for Autarky which followed the imposition by the League of Nations of economic sanctions, this situation changed. The Authors and Writers Union took up the campaign against translations and the Publishers Federation with renewed vigour appealing for cultural Autarky to be imposed on literary imports in the same way as Autarkic measures were being implemented over other imports. The post-war climate of heightened nationalism and xenophobia, as well as Italy's vision of itself as having now joined the ranks of the colonial powers made translation a sensitive political issue. It is quite clear from the debate that ensued between writers, publishers and members of the regime, that translation was perceived as a form of cultural colonialism and it became imperative in the eyes of many that Italy cease to be such a "receptive" nation, a quality clearly equated with cultural weakness, and instead become a nation which exported its cultural products with greater success, "penetrating" other "tributary" nations in a way that befitted its status as a world power. In contrast to the campaign that took place in the first half of the decade, this second wave of anti-translation fervour clearly placed publishers in a very difficult position. Even they were forced to recognize that translations were now a "problem". It became increasingly difficult to maintain that their commercial interests, which depended heavily on translations, did not contrast with those of the nation. Eventually the regime, which had never approved of the translation industry but had never actually taken steps to hinder it, now began to consider translations a political problem. In the wake of the anti-Semitic laws and the purges that followed, the first measures specifically aimed at translations were implemented.