1、The translators invisibilityA history of translation Lawrence VenutiChapter one InvisibilityI“Invisibility” is the term I will use to describe the translators situation and activity in contemporary Anglo-American culture. A translated text, whether prose or poetry, fiction or nonfiction, is judged a
2、cceptable by most publishers, reviewers, and readers when it reads fluently, when the absence of any linguistic or stylistics peculiarities makes it seem transparent, giving the appearance that it reflects the foreign writers personality or intention or te essential meaning of the foreign text-the a
3、ppearance, in other words, that the translation is not the translation, but the “original”.The illusion of transparency is an effect of fluent discourse, of the translators effort to insure easy readability by adhering to current usage, maintaining continuous syntax, fixing a precise meaning. What i
4、s so remarkable here is that this illusory effect conceals the numerous conditions under which the translation is made, starting with the translators crucial intervention in the foreign text. The more fluent the translation, the more invisible the translator, and presumably, the more visible the wri
5、ter or meaning of the foreign text.P4.A fluent translation is written in English that is current (“modern”) instead of archaic, that is widely used instead of specialized (“jargonization”), and that is standard instead of colloquial (“slangy”). Foreign words (pidgin) are avoided, as are Britishism i
6、n American translations and Americanisms in British translations. Fluency also depends on syntax that is not so “faithful” to the foreign text as to be “not quirt idiomatic”, that unfolds continuously ans easily (not “doughy”) to insure semantic “precision” with some rhythmic definition, a sense of
7、closure (not a “dullthud). A fluent translation is immediately recognizable and intelligible, familiarized, domesticated, not disconcertingly, foreign, capable of giving the reader unobstructed access to great thoughts, to what is present in the original. Under the regime of fluent translating, the
8、translator works to make his or her work invisible, producing illusory effect of transparency that simultaneously masks its status as an illusion: the translated text seems natural, i.e., not translated.The translators invisibility is also partly determined by the individualistic conception of autho
9、rship that continues to prevail in Anglo-American culture. According to this conception, the author freely expresses his thought and feelings in writing, which is thus viewed as an original and transparent self-representation, unmediated by trans individual determinants (linguistic, cultural, social
10、) that might complicate authorial originality IIP17Translation is a process by which the chain of signifiers that constitutes the source-language text is replaced by a chain of signifiers in the target language which the translator provides on the strength of an interpretation.P19.The German theolog
11、ian and philosopher Friedrich Schleiermacher. In an 1813 lecture on the different methods of translation, Schleiermacher argued that “there are only two. Either the translator leaves the author in peace, as much as possible, and moves the reader towards him; or he leaves the reader in peace, as much
12、 as possible, and moves the author towards him” (Lefevere 1977: 74). Admitting that translation can never be completely adequate to the foreign text, Schleiermacher allowed the translator to choose between a domesticating method, an ethnocentric reduction of the foreign text target-language cultural
13、 values, bring the author back home, and a foreignizing method, an ethnodeviant pressure on those values to register the linguistic and cultural difference of the foreign text, sending the reader abroad.I want to suggest that insofar as foreignizing translation seeks to restrain the ethnocentric vio
14、lence of translation, it is highly desirable today, a strategic culture intervention in the current state of the world affairs, pitched against the hegemonic English-language nations and the unequal cultural exchanges in which they engage their global others. Foreinizing translation in English can b
15、e a form of resistance against ethnocentrism and racism, cultural narcissism and imperialism, in the interests of democratic geopolitical relations.Consider Nidas concept of “dynamic” or “functional equivalence” in translation, formulated first in 1964, but restated and developed in numerous books a
16、nd articles over the past thirty years. “A translation of dynamic equivalence aims at complete naturalness od expression,” states Nida, “and tries to relate the receptor to modes of behavior relevant within the context of his own culture” (Nida 1964: 159). The phrase “naturalness of expression” sign
17、als the importance of a fluent strategy to this theory of translation, and in Nidas work it is obvious that fluency involves domestication.For Nida, accuracy in translation depends on generating an equivalent effect in the target-language culture: “the receptor of a translation should comprehend the translated text to such an extent that they can understand how the original receptors must have understood the original text” (ibid. 36). The dynamically equivalent translation is “interlingual communication” which overcomes the linguistic and cultural differences that impede it (ibid. 11).
