Between the end of the Civil War in 1949 and the fall of the seven-year military dictatorship in 1974, Greece underwent a series of political and social transformations. State censorship was also consistently imposed on cultural products, including cinema, throughout this period, with possible implications on the way in which foreign films were being subtitled into Greek. Despite a growing body of literature on how Greek cultural production was informed by the socio-political agenda of the time, the role of film translation practice in these censorial mechanisms still remains uninvestigated. The present thesis thus aspires to examine the extent to which the subtitling of films would also be pressed to the service of preventive (self-)censorship during this period. Drawing on the thus far underexplored subtitle files submitted to censorship Boards for screening approval, as well as on original copies of censored films, paratexts and interviews, this study aspires to yield insights into the censorial mechanisms utilised by censorship Boards and industry actors, placing for the first time particular emphasis on the Greek subtitles of foreign films. Specifically, the present study will first investigate how the interplay between film translation and state censorship played out in practice and gauge the extent to which the agents who were involved in film translation succumbed to state censorship or engaged in an act of self-censorship to secure screening permissions for imported foreign films. By focusing on ideologically subversive political and social realist films that were (re)screened during this period, this study will therefore explore the linguistic representation and/or reconstruction of the political and social Other of the time through subtitling practice. Informed by the central premise of New Censorship Theory, which envisages censorship as a multi-layered and productive, rather than merely repressive act imposed by concrete governmental institutions (Post 1998, Bunn 2015), this thesis seeks to deliver a horizontal study of the film (translation) censorship process, by equally emphasising the different stages and diverse actors involved in it. An adapted version of the analytical tools and categories of socio-narrative theory, as applied in Translation Studies by Baker (2006) and Harding (2012b), is also intended to reveal how the (counter-)narratives disseminated through selected foreign films were mediated in subtitling, as well as the strategies that both state and non-state actors would employ in order to frame and promote ideologically subversive films. The degree of agency and status of film translation agents in the censorship apparatus, and by extension their role in the making of post-war Greek history, the evolution of the Greek language, and the formation of the post-war Greek national identity will ultimately be revealed. Finally, this study will showcase whether and how the means of imposition and purposes of subtitling censorship evolved and/or changed in the historical and geopolitical context under scrutiny, allowing for the identification of (dis)continuities in the way in which the latter was being enacted both during a state of âcachecticâ democracy (1949-67) and under a military dictatorship (1967-74).
Re-narrating Otherness through Audiovidual Translation: Subtitling and Censorship in Post-war Greece
Iliadou, K. (Author). 7 May 2024
Student thesis: Phd