It seems to be a general assumption that ideological or political changes in translations are due to some censorial intervention or immediate threat from outside bodies. The analysis of the actual circumstances of a translation, however, often shows an absence of direct repression. Still, in particular ideologically, politically or morally sensitive texts seem to experience considerable discursive levelling when they are translated. Indeed, many of these changes may be attributed to the restricted agency of translators within the orders of discourse rather than the workings of active, explicit censorship.

 The constraints on a translated text are multifold and include norms, economic pressures, working conditions, market expectations as well as textual, linguistic, translational and moral aspects. Censorship is only one factor, or rather it comprises them all when defined as all "operations of power that rule out in unspoken ways what will remain unspeakable" (Butler 1997: 130). From this perspective, censorship has to be seen as a complex intrinsic feature of hegemonic text production that has more to do with the status and the habitus of translators than the machinations of a specific sinister institution.

The panel will explore the operations of power and the processes of intervention but will also look into translators’ chances of agency and the possibility of resistant translation. There is also the question of strategic "self-censorship" when translators choose to remain in the domain of the sayable in defiance of the source text in order to have it circulated in the target culture at all. Abstracts for papers addressing (but not limited to) the following issues are thus invited:

• What makes translators change the text? How does censorship work? Where in the translation process may one locate censorial intervention? Are translators born self-censors? Or are they trained to be compliant?

• What are the workings of explicit, implicit and tacit censorship? Where in these processes is the place of self-censorship and translators' compliance? Where is the place of strategic self-censorship and resistant translation?

• What role do the working conditions and the social status of translators play?

Who are the censors?

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