The condition of 'semi-censorship' occurs when a translation has been censored but its source text is still available in the target culture. This happened often in the Victorian period: the author gives examples from translations of Zola and Aristophanes, and shows that, broadly speaking, a semi-censored text is liable to be read with an eye to what has been kept out of it as well as what has been let in. Literary translations can make particular play with semi-censorship. Browning's Aristophanes' Apology deploys a variety of devices related to translation – euphemism, innuendo, transliteration – to give readers a sense of what has not been translated: this stretches the boundaries of the English language and of respectability. And semi-censorship is not just a Victorian phenomenon. Dryden exploited the variety of semi-censorship existing in his time to pursue a comparison between translation and desire: both longing for oneness with another; both condemned to fail.