Introduction—Ideology, Censorship, and Translation

This study examines the translation of children’s literature under state censorship during Franco’s Spain (1939–1975), with specific reference to Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885). At the same time as it lays a particular focus on the production of translations for children during post-Civil War Spain, this study is also shaped by a concern with ideology, censorship, and war-time literature in a more general sense. This study addresses specifically the following questions: What were the major ideological constraints to which the Spanish translations of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn were exposed during the post-Civil War years in Spain? How were such constraints imposed in the process as the translations were produced? To what extent were the translations and their publications affected by such constraints?