Venuti and invisibility of the translator

1. “Invisibility”: is the term use to describe the translator’s situation and activity in contemporary Anglo-American culture. According to Venuti, invisibility being produced: • 1. By the way translators themselves tend to translate fluently into English. To produce an idiomatic and readable TT, thus creating an illusion of transparency. Fluency also depends on syntax that is not so “faithful” to the foreign text 2. By the way the translated texts are typically read in the target culture. Venuti and invisibility of the translator

2. The translator’s invisibility is thus a weird self-annihilation, a way of conceiving and practicing translation that undoubtedly reinforces its marginal status in Anglo-American culture. The concept of the translator’s “invisibility” is already a cultural critique, a diagnosis that opposes the situation it represents. Venuti discusses invisibility hand in hand with two translating strategy:

3. Domestication: This entails translating in a transparent, fluent, invisible style in order to minimize the foreignness of the TT. Schleiermacher’s description of translation: leave the reader in peace, as much as possible, and move the author towards him. • Reader Author

4. Nida: naturalness or dynamic equivalence: A translation of dynamic equivalence aims at complete naturalness of expression, states Nida, and tries to relate the receptor to modes of behavior relevant within the context of his own culture. The phrase “naturalness of expression” signals the importance of a fluent strategy to this theory of translation, and inNida’s work it is obvious that fluency involves domestication.

5. Foreignization: Entails choosing a foreign text and developing a translation method along lines which are excluded by dominant cultural values in the TL. Schleiermacher’s description of translation: the translator leaves the writer alone, as much as possible, and move the reader towards the writer. Writer Reader

6. Schleiermacher’s preferred strategy. Venuti: it sending readers abroad. It can restrain the violently domesticating culture values of English language world. Venuti called it minoritizing and resistancy: is a non-fluent or estranging translation style designed to make visible the presence of the translator: by highlighting the foreign identity of the ST and protecting it from the ideological dominance of the target culture.

7. Venuti: Foreignization is free from absolute obedience to target linguistic and textual constraints. Translations can be read as translations, as texts in their own right. The more invisible the translator, and, presumably, the more visible the writer or meaning of the foreign text.