The reception of science fiction and horror story anthologies* in the last years of Francoist SpainCensoring aliens and monsters in translation**

Cristina Gómez Castro University of Cantabria

An official system of censorship was established during Franco’s dictatorship in Spain in order to control the cultural sphere in the country for the duration of the political regime. In the seventies, the publishing market consisted mainly of mass literature, and the translation of anthologies of science fiction narratives and horror stories from North America was an important part of this process. These stories originated as pulps, published with titles such as Weird Tales or Terror Tales, and it is a difficult task today to trace the English versions from which they were translated, mainly due to the fact that different tales by differ-ent authors are included in these magazines. The anthologies had to follow the same control procedures as other narrative material and were closely scrutinised regarding aspects such as sexual morals and language, two of the most contro-versial issues during the time of the dictatorship. Some of them encountered problems because of their depiction of sexually charged scenes or immoral attitudes. This article offers a brief depiction of the kind of anthologized material translated at the time, together with an examination of some of these files, with a descriptive aim in mind. Whether they were censored or authorised or not, the main objective of the publishers of these kinds of anthologies was achieved since, thanks to them, both genres became well known in the country and encouraged Spanish writers to engage in the production of similar material, in a process of pseudotranslation that confirms their importance in the recipient culture.

* In this study, an anthology is considered a collection of short works such as short stories or short novels published in a single volume.

** Research for this article has been undertaken as part of the TRACE program, funded by the regional government of Castilla y León, Spain [LE020A09] and the Ministry of Science and Innovation [FFI2008-05479-C02-01/FILO]. The acronym stands for Traducciones censuradas/Censored translations. URL: http://trace.unileon.es; http://www.ehu.es/trace/

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Introduction

The final years of the Francoist dictatorship in Spain (1970s) were a period of political change and of a slow evolution in the censorship legislation that affected all cultural products at the time. Mass literature dominated the market during this period and a considerable portion of it was made up of translations of science fic-tion narratives and anthologies of horror stories from North America.1 These had originally been published there as pulps, with titles such as Weird Tales or Terror Tales, which makes it difficult today to trace the English versions from which they were translated, due to the inclusion in these magazines of various tales by dif-ferent authors. When these anthologies entered the censorship system they were closely scrutinised regarding aspects such as sexual morals and language, two of the most controversial issues during the time of the dictatorship. Some of them encountered problems because of their depiction of sexually charged scenes or immoral attitudes. This article provides a brief description of the kind of anthol-ogy material translated at the time, together with an examination of some of the files, with a descriptive aim in mind. Whether they were censored or authorised or not, the main objective of the publishers of these kinds of anthologies at the time was achieved since, thanks to them, both genres became well known in the country and encouraged some Spanish writers to engage in the production of similar material, as a process of pseudotranslation that confirms their importance in the recipient culture.2

1. Francoist censorship in the seventies: A system slowly falling into decline

The last years of Franco’s dictatorship saw society gradually become more liberal and its system of control less and less effective. The law in force at the time was the Law of Press and Print, approved in 1966. This law replaced the legislation that had been functioning in the country since 1938, following the victory of the nationalist party in the Civil War. The system of censorship changed as a result of the new legislation and from that moment on control was based mainly on

1. In this article, mass literature is understood to be a form of production whose main aim is to entertain the reading public, presenting no traces of literary or intellectual pretensions.

2. Pseudotranslation is used here in the sense given to it by Gideon Toury: “(…) it is texts which have been presented as translations with no corresponding source texts in other lan-guages ever having existed (…) that go under the name of pseudotranslations or ficticious translations” (1995: 40).

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two procedures: voluntary submission or previous consultation (which implied the issuing of a censor’s verdict) and the archiving (“depósito”) of the printed work without the need for a ruling by the censor. This new method of function-ing implied more responsibility on the part of the publishers, who started to exert a kind of preventive censorship or self-censorship that would gradually become more and more widespread.

Throughout the censorship period, the most controversial issues were those related to sexual morals, religion, political beliefs and the use of improper lan-guage.3 During the seventies, the criteria dealing with politics and religion became less important due to changes taking place in Spanish society, but those concerned with sexual morals and improper language still involved a constant battle with the censors, as we shall see in the case of the anthologies.

2. Science fiction and horror story anthologies during the seventies

Spain was a country that depended very much on translations for a long time and they still represented an important part of the country’s book industry profits in the seventies. During this decade, publishing houses started to make use of reprints of previously successful works and of science-fiction and horror story anthologies. New ways of promoting books by means of ads on TV and original campaigns contributed to the success of many books that became authentic best sellers at the time. The selection of material was thus mainly based on economic criteria. This was the decade of Love Story, The Godfather, The Exorcist, Jaws, etc. As in any other competing publishing industry, market expansion depended on the publication of these and similar best sellers.

By the time science fiction and horror story anthologies were common in the Spanish literary market, it may be said that the kind of mass literature devoted to the science fiction genre had been present in the country for a long while. However, works of this kind written by national authors had always been scarce, and by no means constituted a continuous and prestigious flow of production.4 At most, the success of this genre was mainly due to one of the most prolific Spanish

3. According to Abellán (1980: 88) these were the areas to which the censors paid the closest attention when examining which works to publish.

4. As stated by various authors, “(…) las obras de anticipación, en letras hispanas, sólo han sido salvas al aire de unos pocos francotiradores, en modo alguno una corriente ininterrumpida y prestigiosa” [Science Fiction works, in the Spanish literary tradition, have been shots fired into the air by a few snipers, by no means a continuous and prestigious flow] (my translation). (V.V.A.A. 2000: 121).

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writers of the time, José Mallorquí, who introduced the horror story genre to Argentina and then did the same in Spain, adding it to science-fiction anthologies. He was the man in charge of the collection entitled “Futuro”, which became quite popular at the time, but mainly included translations and few nationally-produced texts (Álvarez Macías 1972).

The anthologies that began to be sold in larger numbers at the time were composed of tales translated from English into Spanish and taken from differ-ent North American magazines, known at the time as pulps, due to the kind of material they used in their publications. The stories were taken mainly from the magazines Weird Tales, Horror Stories, Terror Tales or The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. These magazines had a long tradition in the North American literary market; the latter magazine is still in print and includes a long list of cult authors in its publications.5

The compilations published in Spain did not seem to follow any particular order, which makes it very difficult to trace their English versions. The people in charge of compiling these anthologies were often professional translators who were commissioned to do so by the publishing houses and ended up writing their own stories in the genre as a result of the practice they had acquired by translat-ing them, as was the case with some other genres, such as the Western. However, the impact of these publications on Spanish readers did not equal that of other genres, making the phenomenon of pseudotranslation less noticeable in the case of these anthologies.

3. Science fiction anthologies and censorship

As previously stated, the research on which this study is based refers to the 1970s in Spain, and therefore covers nine years, from 1970 until 1978. Fifty three cen-sorship files relating to science fiction anthologies translated from English can be found for these years in the Official Record Bureau where the censorship files are kept today, known as AGA (Archivo General de la Administración), located in Alcalá de Henares, Madrid, Spain.

The stories included in these anthologies feature authors such as Larry Niven, Dean Koontz and the famous Isaac Asimov. The most famous anthology was entitled “Ciencia Ficción” and was published by Bruguera in the “Libro Amigo” collection, which contained two hundred and ninety six titles. A foreword was usually included for each story, often written by the translator or compiler of the

5. Current URL of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.the publication: http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/

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anthology, containing a value judgment on the story, generally for the purpose of attracting a favourable verdict from the censors.

The behaviour of the censorship boards towards these compilations was no harsher than that shown towards other mass publications: out of 53 censorship files, 29 of them were directly archived in the Administration without any kind of judgment on the part of the censors. 18 were authorised without any problems, and only 6 were subjected to any kind of cuts, as can be seen in Figure 1.

Censorship of science fiction anthologies

0

10

20

30

40

Anthologies

ArchivedAuthorisedWith cuts

Figure 1. Science fiction anthologies and censorship

The cuts to the stories mainly concerned sexual matters and the use of improper or indecorous language, as can be verified in the following examples. Number 14 in the “Ciencia Ficción” collection, published in 1975 (file number 7101–74), includes the story entitled A Meeting of Minds, written by Anne McCaffrey and translated by I. Roger and C. Estilles,6 describing a clan of human telepaths who have to confront a powerful extragalactic brain. When the book was submitted to the censorship board for examination, some cuts were advised, such as the fol-lowing, in Table 1:

Table 1. Example of cut to a science fiction story

English (ST) Spanish (TT)

“His is a true mind, a brilliant and powerful mind” she defended haughtily.“That’s fine for fireside chats, but no damned good in bed” (p. 21)

Él es una mente auténtica, una brillante y poderosa mente- respondió su hermana defendiendo a aquel ser misterioso que había encontrado en el espacio.– Todo eso sólo sirve para comentarlo junto al fuego, pero no para el matrimonio. (p. 140)

6. These two names are given for the translation of the whole anthology, without any specifica-tion of authorship of particular stories.

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The censor’s mark refers both to the use of the swearword, “damned”, which has been cut in the Spanish version, and the allusion to “bed”, which has been asepti-cally replaced by a much more neutral word in Spanish, “marriage”. When faced with the task of translating controversial passages, translators sometimes under-took a pre-emptive clean-up of the language and story that paved the way for publication and also led to a softening of the work, resulting in no further inter-vention on the part of the authorities. This was the case in some scenes or passages in other stories included in the same anthology, such as Initiation, by Joanna Russ. This story is defined in the foreword as “probably, the most beautiful tale in the anthology” (my translation) and deals with how an ordinary man enters a new mental and superior reality, aided in his journey by a community of telepaths. Innocent as the theme may seem, the story includes several examples of scenes that could have been controversial due to their nature. Two examples of these and of the translator’s practice regarding them appear in Table 2.

Table 2. Example of prior softening techniques by the translator in a science fiction story

English (ST) Spanish (TT)

(…) a spot barely contained by the strong walls of his chest that were so used to swimming, walking, wrestling, to struggling in bed. (page 71)

(…) una raya, simplemente, encerrada entre las fuertes paredes de su pecho tan acostumbrado a soportar los más duros ejercicios físicos. (page 11)

Unable to enter her without losing his balance, he half- came, half- didn’t against her belly. (p. 95)

Ø

(p. 46)

In the first example, the translator opted for commuting the content of the passage, which clearly makes reference to a sexual act, to a neutral expression (“the hardest physical exercises”). However, the second instance illustrates one of the most com-mon translation techniques used: elision of the problematic content. This elision is complete because it eliminates the whole content of the scene: instead of soften-ing it, the translators decide to omit it altogether and thus avoid possible future cuts or marks inflicted by the censors. All these techniques had the main aim of domesticating the publication for the recipient culture, in an effort to gain the approval of the official control system, and with it the financial profit that ensued.7 The remaining few examples of cuts found in this genre affect the same two areas.

7. If, when translating, the translator opts for modifying the text in such a way that it becomes closer to the characteristics and conventions of texts in the target culture, it is better accepted and sometimes domesticated, whereas if the text produced still presents similar textual conven-tions to those of the source text that are alien to the target culture, foreignization is the key word (“foreignizing” vs. “domesticating” in Venuti’s terminology, 1995).

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The two-fold nature of these mass publications made them the perfect target for the censors: as a mass literary product which was going to be read by many people, they had to ensure that they did not include anything really offensive, but at the same time they served as a means of gradually integrating new trends into literary production, since they were leading the sales, and banning them would have represented a serious financial risk for the publishing industry.

4. Horror story anthologies and censorship

Censorship files for the same period can be found in the A.G.A. for 14 anthologies of horror stories. In this case, the stories included were those by authors such as Ambrose Bierce, Charles Birkin or the famous H. G. Wells, and they sometimes dealt with lurid details that had to be handled with care by the translators.8

The most famous anthology at the time in Spain was “Antología de Relatos de Espanto y Terror” by the publishing house Dronte, which also included stories from the North American pulps. The covers of these anthologies were frequently considered controversial due to the scenes they depicted, and it was commonly said that Admiral Carrero Blanco, the right-hand man of General Franco, used to condemn them for their audacity.

As can be seen in Figure 2, and as was the case with the SF anthologies, the behaviour of the censorship boards towards these compilations was quite lenient, although a little more strict than for the former: out of 14 censorship files, 7 of them were directly archived in the Administration without any kind of judgment from the censors. One was authorised without any problem and 4 were subjected to some kind of cuts to their content. In this case, we also find the option of Administrative or Official Silence in which the censors did not explicitly disap-prove of the content of the anthology but at the same time placed the responsibil-ity for publication on the publishers. This last formula became common during the final years of the regime and is an indication of the gradual liberalisation of the country.

As with the Science Fiction compilations, the nature of the cuts in this case had a good deal to do with sexual morals, starting with the front cover of the anthologies. For example, when the “Antología de relatos de espanto y terror 19”, (1973) (file number 11.191–73) was submitted for evaluation, the censors only seemed to object to a few pages of some of the stories, but suggested that the

8. As Lázaro stated, with regard to horror stories: “(…) se da rienda suelta a la crueldad, la bestialidad, la locura y a las pasiones más bajas (…)” [cruelty, bestiality, madness and the lowest passions are given free rein] (my translation) (2008 : 199).

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front cover should be changed. The picture on the front cover of the anthology (Figure 3) featured a werewolf and a woman with part of her dress askew, showing part of her right nipple. Innocent as it may seem, the authorities at the time con-sidered that it should be changed for a more anodyne one. The new cover included a screaming woman in a similar position to the original, but without any sexual connotations (Figure 4).

Figure 3. Original cover of the anthology Antología de Relatos de Espanto y Terror 19 9

9. This cover has been taken from the documents in the censorship file for the anthology found in the A.G.A. (file number 11.191–73).

Censorship of horror and terror tales anthologies

0

2

4

6

8

Anthologies

ArchivedAuthorisedWith cutsAdministrativesilence

Figure 2. Horror story anthologies and censorship

Censoring aliens and monsters in translation 225

Figure 4. Final cover of the anthology Antología de Relatos de Espanto y Terror 19

Apart from the reference to the cover, a few cuts were advised for other stories. For example, in the case of the story entitled The Old Woman Upstairs, written by Allan Hillery and translated as La vieja de arriba by José Manuel Álvarez, the cen-sors indicated that some scenes should be deleted in the Spanish version, which the translator had already softened in the process of translation.

Figure 5. Example of a cut to a story included in the anthology Antología de relatos de espanto y terror 1910

10. The extract belongs to the galley proofs for the tale in the censorship file for the anthology found in the A.G.A. (file number 11.191–73).

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In this case the complete scene has been deleted due to its strong sexual charge; it describes how a man and a woman flirt and actually begin sexual intercourse. The cut was designed to deliberately domesticate the story to suit national moral requirements.

On the other hand, the Administrative Silence or Official Silence issued for some other anthologies indicated that the authorities had become more lenient towards this kind of mass publication, since they did not explicitly oppose what they would have objected to before. This was the case with the anthology entitled Relatos de misterio e intriga 4 published in 1973 by the publishing house Dronte. The anthology included six stories, which, in the words of the censor, “could be accepted for archiving” (file number 2622–73). As an indication, he referred to two pages in which the word “puta” [bitch] appeared, but did not directly order their elimination, allowing the responsibility for publication to pass onto the publisher, considering that, despite the possible offences it included, there still was some advantage to publishing the anthology.

5. Conclusions

The publication of SF and horror story anthologies was a common feature of the Spanish literary market of the 70s, since it had already exploited the republishing of previous successful works. As a rule, the stories included in these anthologies were taken from different North American magazines, and were not published in any kind of chronological order. The most prolific publishing houses involved in this kind of publication were Bruguera and Dronte and the books were sold as part of the stream of mass literature that dominated the market at the time. Therefore, their main objective, which was to provide cheap entertainment for the reading public, was fulfilled, whilst the translations served as a testing ground for the Spanish translators who had to render the tales into Spanish. Subsequently some of the translators and compilers of the stories started their own writing career in the terror, horror and science fiction genres but did not achieve the success that writers of the Western or detective genre had enjoyed a few years earlier. That was the case, for example, with José Mallorquí and his “Futuro” collection.

Even though these anthologies did not represent a serious danger for the Francoist regime, which was already in its final years, they sometimes received warnings in the form of cuts or Administrative Silences. Some were able to be pub-lished after changes to the front covers or some of the stories. However, whether censored or authorised or not, this kind of compilation had a beginning and an end and fulfilled the main objective of acquainting the Spanish reading public with the genres and their leading writers whilst also helping the literary market

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to re-launch itself in difficult times. Their influence on the contemporary Spanish literary market was the result of a clear cultural planning strategy: in discussing it in this article, attention is drawn to a kind of anthology that lies outside the canon11 but without doubt is part of the culture of many different societies and also deserves to be studied. The replicability of such a study in different censorship contexts could lead to a more comprehensive picture of how this kind of anthology fared under various regimes in other countries and thus open up several paths for further research.

References

Censorship files

Antología de relatos de espanto y terror 19. Censorship file number 11191–73.Ciencia ficción. Selección 14. Censorship file number 7101–74.Relatos de Misterio e Intriga 4. Censorship file number 2622–73.

Primary sources

Porges, Arthur y otros. 1973. Relatos de Misterio e Intriga 4. Barcelona: Dronte. Saphiro, Neil y otros. 1975. Ciencia ficción. Selección 14. Barcelona: Bruguera.Sinclair, W. y otros. 1973. Antología de relatos de espanto y terror 19. Barcelona: Dronte.

Secondary sources

Abellán, M. L. 1980. Censura y creación literaria en España (1939–1976). Barcelona: Península.Álvarez Macías, J. F. 1972. La novela popular en España: José Mallorquí. Sevilla: Universidad de

Sevilla.Lázaro, A. 2008. “La narrativa inglesa de terror y el terror de la censura española”. In Tiempo de

censura, Eduardo Ruiz Bautista (coord.), 197–232. Gijón: Trea.Toury, G. 1995. Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Venuti, L. 1995. The Translator’s Invisibility. London, New York: Routledge.V.V.A.A. 2000. La novela popular en España. Madrid: Robel.

11. On another type of anthology that lies outside the canon, children’s literature, see Baubeta (in this volume).