Servile self-translation for Nazi Germany

Abstract

This article contributes to the intersection of translation studies and fascist studies by shifting attention to translation as a component of cross-regime interaction within the cultural diplomacy of fascist “New Europe” as a network of power asymmetries and its underexamined East-Central European periphery. The study proposes František Miko’s expressive system, developed within the Nitra School, as a heuristic tool for tracing hierarchy-related expressive shifts in the German translation of a Slovak propaganda reportage (ST 1940; TT 1941), initiated by the Propaganda Bureau of the Slovak State, a German satellite state from 1939 to 1945. The stylistic reconstruction of the translational negotiation of power asymmetry offers insight into Nazi soft power and into the under-researched cultural diplomacy between a Slavic “protected state” and its “protective power” with an anti-Slavic ideology. Since Germany’s self-presentation to collaborating satellites as a tolerant and inclusive center contrasted with its domestic self-image of racial superiority, the reconstruction of initial norms reveals the degree to which Slovak propagandists standardized and leveled Slovak national self-expression in line with Germany’s domestic discourse, and the degree to which Nazi soft power allowed its satellite to preserve proud self-expression through interference even within German cultural space.