The present paper focuses on strategies of translating love scenes in historical romances from English into Romanian. Taking as point of reference Klaudy’s (2003) and Mossop’s (2017) translational models, I analyse excerpts from the first book in the Bridgerton series, Julia Quinn’s The Duke and I. Two opposing forces are at work in the translation of romances: explicitation, seen as a universal tendency in translation, and implicitation, dictated by restrictions on translating this particular genre. My analysis indicates that the preferred strategy in the published translation is implicitation.
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Not only is the translator faced with translating what Davies (2007: 63) has aptly dubbed “the unacceptable”, namely scenes built on what counts in many cultures as tabooistic imagery, but also with creating a new style in their target language. It is, for instance, the case of Polish (Paizis 1998: 10), where “sexual” language had to be coined by Harlequin translators (who adopted a “softened” variety), as there was no such ready-made model in Polish literature. I imagine that such must have been the case of Romanian after 1989, when, after the demise of communist censorship, there was a flourishing market for translated popular fiction romances and new publishing houses (such as “Miron”, which started its publishing activity in 1991) were set up to cater to the tastes of a starving new readership. (234)
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