Studying translation in the shadow of censorship means investigating the manipulative mechanisms used as an assault on original texts in order to alter their meaning and exclude the reader from the choices made in the source language. In strong nationalistic European environments, censorship in translation has been used as a powerful tool in order to help safeguard the nations' cultures from outside influences and promote the regimes' ideologies. The purpose of this essay is to examine the translation industry in Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany and Franco's Spain, and provide short examples of manipulative processes that translations have been subjected to, due to the imposition of strict censorship measures.