Translation and the Cold War

Abstract

This chapter considers how translation was used by the authorities in both the USSR and the West to shape the image of the ‘other’ in various aspects of the cultural Cold War, in projects largely funded by or connected to government. It examines how translation and translators played a role in both cooperation and competition between East and West, while at the same time engaging with translation on their own terms and with their own agendas. Samantha Sherry has identified how the USSR’s attitude towards the West was a complex combination of a rejection of Western free markets, capitalism and bourgeois culture but at the same time emulation of high culture and technological superiority. Sherry’s examination of the translations of Orwell remind us that as an interface between cultures, at the juncture of literature, culture, language and politics, translation should not be seen reductively as a solely political activity, even in the heavily politicised context of the Cold War.