Smuggling the other

Abstract

The first Russian translation of J. D. Salinger’s novelThe Catcher in the Rye(1951) was produced in 1960 by Rita Rait-Kovaleva, a renowned translator of contemporary Western literature (English, French, German) in the Soviet Union. This essay examines Rait’s translation ofThe Catcher in the Ryein the context of the problem of censorship and translation, focusing on several instances of Rait’s translation of profanities and sex-related passages ofThe Catcher in the Rye. It demonstrates how the creative strategies of the translator not only helped her overcome censorship barriers but also transformed a foreign text into a new cultural model.