Resisting Foreign Penetration in Fascist Italy: the Antitranslation Campaign in the Wake of the Ethiopian War

During the 1930s Italy published more translations than any other country in the world. This phenomenon has tended to be seen in terms of the influence on Italian culture of translated American literature, and of its contribution in the construction of a cultural myth of America. It is my belief that this was not the "decennio delle traduzioni" just because of the way in which writers like Pavese and Vittorini used the activity of translation as a means to resist the cultural climate of the time, or because of the popularity of contemporary American fiction; but also for the reason that a taste and a market for popular fiction was catered to using translations and that consequently translations became a cultural and political issue