The Translator’s Invisibility

“The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation” provides a thorough and critical examination
of translation from the seventeenth century to the present day. It shows
how fluency prevailed over other translation strategies to shape the
canon of foreign literatures in English, and it interrogates the
ethnocentric and imperialist cultural consequences of the domestic
values that were simultaneously inscribed and masked in foreign texts
during this period.
In tracing the history of translation, Lawrence Venuti locates
alternative translation theories and practices which make it possible to
counter the strategy of fluency, aiming to communicate linguistic and
cultural differences instead of removing them. Using texts and
translations from Britain, America and Europe he elaborates the
theoretical and critical means by which translation can be studied and
practiced as a locus of difference, recovering and revising forgotten
translations to establish an alternative tradition.
Lawrence Venuti is Professor of English at Temple University,
Philadelphia, and has been a professional translator for the past fifteen
years. He is the editor of “Rethinking Translation: Discourse, Subjectivity,
Ideology.”