Language, Individual & Society, Volume 15, 2021

Abstract: Latvians were introduced to Ernest Hemingway’s literary work in the second half of the 1950s. These were the years of Latvia being under Soviet rule with all the consequences that that implied: Sovietisation, propaganda of Soviet ideology, powerful and extensive apparatus of Soviet censorship controlling and influencing all spheres of human activity. Both physical and intangible expressions of culture were controlled and monitored by the Soviet officials. Considered as one of the most efficient tools of Soviet propaganda, literature was on a special account. As a result, internal and external structures of original and translated texts underwent a thorough censoring process. The choice of foreign authors accepted for translation was dictated by the guidelines of the Communist party and dependent on a quite changeable socio-political course taken in the metropolis - Moscow. To be on a safe side and avoid ‘the red pencil of censorship’, Latvian translators used to consult Russian translations of foreign literature, especially in the first two decades of Soviet occupation (1940s - 1950s). The present study examines some tendencies in translation policy related to Anglophone literature in Soviet Latvia of the 1950s basing on the first Latvian publication of Ernest Hemingway’s novel A FAREWELL TO ARMS - the work which was chosen by the authorities to introduce the American writer to a Latvian reader. Being one of the first Hemingway’s works translated in Soviet Latvia it demonstrates a general mechanism of introducing a foreign author and their literary heritage to the Soviet reader. Using the comparativist approach the first Latvian publication of the work is contrastively examined and juxtaposed with later Latvian edition and with the text in the original language. Additionally to the internal structure of the text, external structures (text selection, interpretation, facts) are also studied as an indivisible part of the translation policy.