Translation of Censored Texts
This article refers to a contemporary event with weighty political consequences: Pope John-Paul II’s first visit to Poland in 1979. All of the Pope’s homilies and their translations were available to journalists in press rooms. The Pope had clearly (self)-censored his texts, since he knew that they would be read by the authorities prior to his arrival and even the Pope was not permitted to speak freely in Poland. One of the characteristics of his style consisted in introducing his ideas subtly through the use of innuendo, implied meaning, non speak and allusions, clear to native speakers of Polish but less so to non-native speakers. Having worked as an interpreter for Figaro journalists during this event, the author now has at her disposal this unpublished material. Basing her analysis on about thirty of the Pope’s texts, the author has attempted to describe some of the characteristics of censorship applied to them, as well as the linguistic operations that were applied while translating the homilies to give the target reader access to the full meaning of the (self)-censored source-language texts.