La Revolución Olvidada de los Fenianos: Linguistic Legacies of Fenianism in Latin America

During the Irish revolutionary period (1916-1923), Spanish-language Latin American newspapers routinely referred to ‘los Fenianos,’ even though the Fenian Brotherhood had largely faded by the 1880s. This article argues that this choice was deliberate, not erroneous, as translators – in line with the skopos theory of translation – prioritized cultural intelligibility for local readers over fidelity to English sources. Drawing mainly on Associated Press reports, which dominated the region’s international news after World War I, editors replaced unfamiliar terms like ‘Sinn Féiners’ with the historically recognizable ‘Fenianos,’ framing Ireland’s struggle as a continuous anti-colonial narrative dating to the 1860s. Unlike the Anglophone press, which treated Fenianism as a bygone movement, Latin American translations used the term as an active, functional equivalent for contemporary revolutionaries. This case study illuminates how translation practices shaped international perceptions of the Irish revolution, demonstrating the power of linguistic intermediaries in constructing historical narratives beyond the Anglosphere.