British Women Translators and their Practice of Censorship in Nineteenth-Century Translation

Abstract

This article shows how and why censorship was practiced in translated and edited texts of two British 19th-century translators, Sarah Austin and her daughter Lucie Duff Gordon. They were recognised translators from the German and French languages, Duff Gordon eventually receiving more credit for her writing than translation. As mother and daughter, they were obviously influenced by each other and both probably could have contributed more to the history of translation if it were not for one’s fear of publicity and the other’s health. They were not only mediators between the cultures (German, Egyptian and English), languages, texts and minds of the time. They also made substantial contributions to British society and the intellectual circles of the age, not only through their translations, but also with the aid of their cross-cultural ideas in the fields of writing and thought production where women were considered inferior for many centuries and in the domains where only men had a substantial social voice. This paper shows that both women had power and freedom with the decision-making process to introduce censorship into their translations as well as their writing.