1. Introduction
Amongst the various features and power(s) usually ascribed to translation, not enough light has been shed on its role as a form of censorship outside a political domain. Every act of translation implies making choices. In the same way, it also implies a project/plan within which those choices are made. The choices made and the changes carried out are not always required by language or cultural differences but frequently stem from different levels of the meaning making process, which might be of a more ideological nature. Hence, every act of translation bears a wider meaning than the mere linguistic one. Studying and describing translation thus entails considering the existing link between translation and its context and, more specifically, the link between it and censorship. As Billiani[1] maintains, political and cultural discourses and narratives are greatly influenced by writers, whose works might reach larger contexts because of the role played by translation in reducing, if not deleting, distances and language problems. The «phenomenology of the relationship between censorship and translation»[2] requires an in-depth investigation which, as it will be argued, should ideally start from the awareness that Translation Studies scholars have recently insisted upon, as regards the need to connect linguistic or translation studies to other extra-textual discourses, the latter often specifically linked to the media and to institutions.[3] Censorship is one of the possible factors that characterise a context or a society. Censorship can be endorsed through translation, which thus acquires political value. The aim of this article is to investigate the link, which binds censorship to translation, focussing specifically on the gender related domain. The research here presented is part of a wider project and focuses on the analysis of the translation of the renowned TV series Will & Grace, and namely on how some gender-related topics are dealt with as far as censorship and its political role are concerned.