Translation Amid Ideological Constraints and Poetic Freedom: The Case of Pablo Neruda and César Vallejo in Albanian

Abstract

This study investigates the translation and reception of Pablo Neruda and César Vallejo in Albania during the period of socialist realism, focusing on the ways in which translation functioned as a culturally and ideologically mediated practice rather than a neutral act of literary transfer. Closely embedded within the ideological framework and cultural politics of the socialist state, translation played a decisive role in shaping both the Albanian reception of these Latin American poets and the broader discourse on foreign literature in the country. The paper is grounded in a preliminary bibliographic survey of translations and critical responses to Latin American authors published in Albanian during the Cold War, a period marked by strict ideological control and the dominance of socialist realist aesthetics. Within this cultural environment, translation was a highly regulated process in which the selection of texts, translation strategies, and accompanying paratextual materials were carefully orchestrated to produce ideologically acceptable representations of foreign authors. Translators operated under significant institutional and political pressure to align literary works with prevailing socialist values, often resulting in selective translation practices or substantial modifications to the original texts. Such interventions frequently entailed deviations from the authors’ poetic complexity in order to foreground elements compatible with revolutionary discourse and socialist ideals. In the case of Neruda and Vallejo, text selection consistently privileged poems that emphasised political engagement, collective struggle and social commitment, while marginalising or excluding more personal, metaphysical or existential dimensions of their poetics. As a result, the translated works underwent a process of ideological filtering that profoundly shaped Albanian readers’ perceptions of these authors. This study examines how these translation practices contributed to the construction of a partial and often rigid image of Neruda’s and Vallejo’s literary output in Albanian culture, ultimately producing a simplified and, at times, distorted understanding of their broader poetic trajectories.