Investigating translation as a tool for national image construction under the Nazi-reign.

Approaches, methods, sources and the relevance of case studies.

Ine Van linthout

In the imperialist context of the Nazi regime, literature was considered a powerful instrument to manipulate the way other nations were perceived. Not surprisingly, its instrumentalization for national image construction aligned with Germany’s foreign policy. With respect to Flanders, which the Nazi regime envisioned as a future part of the Greater Germanic Reich, literature was deployed as a tool to create and propagate a close bond between the Flemish and the German. One form was the staging of Flemish-German encounters in the fictional world of a novel or a short story. Another was the strategic use of translated Flemish literature, which will be the topic of my proposed paper.

From a propagandistic point of view, the regime’s intentions were clear. Translated Flemish literature should be presented as an unmediated and therefore credible self-image of the Flemish, but in reality convey an image of ‘Flanders’ that suited her ideological and political claims. Yet, a straightforward realization of this intention was hampered by conflicting interests and inconvenient realities such as the difficult search for suitable Flemish literature and cooperative authors, persisting literary traditions, public taste, the translator’s backgrounds, the agency of publishing houses, deficient censorship, economic stakes, and military realities.

In my paper, I will discuss the struggle between intentions, pragmatic interests and realities in the case of translated Flemish literature under Nazi reign. I will specifically focus on my use of research methods and approaches, my use and assessment of sources and the contribution of this case study to a better understanding of the mechanisms at work when translation is used as a tool for national image construction in the context of a dictatorial regime and beyond.

MINI-VITA

Ine Van linthout is visiting professor at Ghent University (Belgium) in the Department of History and in the German section of the Department of Translation, Interpreting and Communication. Her PhD, which she obtained from the Humboldt University in Berlin and the University of Antwerp, was published by De Gruyter in 2011 under the title “Das Buch in der nationalsozialistischen Propagandapolitik”. Her main areas of research are propaganda, book history, identity and image construction, National Socialism, discourse analysis, cultural transfer and translation. She also founded and presides the German-Belgian cultural organisation dasKULTURforum Antwerpen, now an official partner of the Goethe-Institut.