Prison literary translations as a vision on cultural democracy
Prison literary translations as a vision on cultural democracy

Summary/Abstract: Within the context of this article, I will observe the phenomenon of the impact of translation on Albanian literary culture. The main focal point of this paper will be the relation of the literary translator with the phenomenon of literature itself, in particular, when the translator is held in prison, as it happened in the monist period in Albania. Having been held in totalitarian prisons, many literary translators have retained their love for non-ideological literary knowledge and aesthetics through the translation of literary works that are intended only in their communicative but not receptive vision to the pertinence of translation. With the actual examples, we will reveal how the process of translation has been seen as a cultural democratizing power even in the darkest times of totalitarianism, monism and the literary rule of the soc-realist scheme in the literary culture. Thus, literary translation has constantly been seen as a cultural receptive, dialogic and promotional process. This phenomenon is explained by the existence of smaller cultures in the Southeast Balkans, but alike by the various ideological constraints present in this region, primarily during the second half of the twentieth century.

• Details
• Contents