The main argument of the article is that literary translation assumed different roles in émigré periodicals: from serving educational purposes, through amplifying the diaspora’s cultural identity, to providing entertainment to their readership, and that all these roles con­formed to the political and ideological orientation and positioning of the newspaper and its editors. The article focuses on the newspaper Prosveta (The Enlightenment), a left-of-centre progressive newspaper published by the Slovene diaspora in the U. S., and the presence of literary translations in the period from its establishment in 1916 to 1933 when it began ap­pearing only five days a week and its circulation began to fall. We analyzed 5273 issues of Prosveta, identified all literary translations, and classified them into three categories. The results show that the choice of authors whose works were translated and published in the newspaper reflects the ideological positioning of the editors and newspaper, and blurs the dis­tinction between two categories of translated works: between the works selected for the educa­tion and those for the entertainment of Prosveta’ s readership.