the  Newspeak
expression) in tendency. In practice this meant that no book written before
approximately  1960  could  be  translated as  a  whole.  Pre-revolutionary
literature  could only  be subjected to ideological translation -- that is,
alteration  in  sense as well as  language. Take for example the well-known
passage from the Declaration of Independence:

We  hold these  truths to be self-evident, that all men are created
equal,  that they  are endowed  by their  creator with  certain inalienable
rights,  that among  these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among men, deriving
their  powers  from the consent of  the governed. That whenever any form of
Government becomes destructive of those ends, it is the right of the People
to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government...

It would have been quite impossible to render this into Newspeak while
keeping  to the sense  of the original. The nearest one could come to doing
so  would be to swallow the whole passage up in the single word crimethink.
A  full  translation could  only  be  an ideological  translation,  whereby
Jefferson's words would be changed into a panegyric on absolute government.
A  good deal  of the literature of the past was, indeed, already being
transformed  in  this way. Considerations  of prestige made it desirable to
preserve  the memory  of certain historical figures, while at the same time
bringing  their  achievements into  line  with  the philosophy  of  Ingsoc.
Various  writers,  such as Shakespeare,  Milton, Swift, Byron, Dickens, and
some  others  were therefore in  process of  translation: when the task had
been completed, their original writings, with all else that survived of the
literature  of

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