By Clara Carybé
 
The One-Liner
Translator’s invisibility and a good translation in a debate.
 
The Background
The man behind a theory. He is Lawrence Venuti. He was born in Philadelphia. Venuti graduated from Temple University. He has long lived in New York City. In 1980 he completed the Ph.D. in English at Columbia University.

Venuti is currently professor of English at Temple University and works in early modern literature, anglophone and foreign-language poetic traditions, translation theory and history, adaptation studies, and literary translation. He translates from Italian, French, and Catalan.
His translation projects have won awards from the PEN American Center (1980), the National Endowment for the Arts (1983, 1999), the National Endowment for the Humanities (1989), and the Guggenheim Foundation (2007). In 1999 he held a Fulbright Senior Lectureship in translation studies at the Universitat de Vic (Spain). In 2008 his version of Catalan writer Ernest Farrés’s book of poems, Edward Hopper, received the Robert Fagles Translation Prize.
 
The Premise
Lawrence Venuti is the scholar who first spoke of the translator’s invisibility concept. The more the translators strive to provide a good translation the more devalued becomes their work and more invisible they are. The translators see their translation devalued because their work and effort in translating is not perceived. In order not ensure that their translation disappears, the translators manipulate the target language, and it causes the reader to view the translated text as a work originally written in that target language. To do so, they use artifices that bring the translation near to the reader’s culture. This choice results in the transparency effect, a phenomenon that erases all the effort undertaken in a translation. It leaves the text with fluidity and easily comprehensible as if it were written in the target language causing the impression that the translation is the author’s very text and that the translated text was the original one. To achieve transparency, the translators manipulate the original text. They do so by using the current syntax and the vocabulary near to the reader’s culture. In a certain way, manipulating the results.
The concepts of manipulation and effect transparencies came into front because they discussed the concept of good translation. For some theorists, a good translation is one that does not have any linguistic or stylistic peculiarity that causes estrangement to the reader. The text translated in this way becomes transparent as if reflecting the personality and intent of the writer of the original.
 
The nemeses in our story
 
The translators are their nemeses.
The effort to achieve a good translation redounds in the translator’s invisibility. Ironically, the greater the translator's work to give fluidity to the text smaller the estrangement from the reader greater invisibility of the professional.
Invisibility as self-destruction.
The invisibility of the translator affects the copyright law because as long as the translators disappear, it is not necessary to pay them for their work and weakens the contract negotiations. The translator’s invisibility also brings to light the discussion about the domestication of the texts. To achieve a smooth and transparent discourse, texts that are more easily translatable are selected, and the foreign culture is devalued since it almost disappears, and the reader is not aware of the peculiarities of other peoples. The invisibility decreases the importance of the translator, and it leads to the translation’s economic exploitation.
It is important to mention that this discussion around the translator’s invisibility is restricted to literature. It is in this field that the translator theoretically has more independence to decide which strategy of translation to use. Theoretically because in reality the translator is compelled to one or other strategy depending on external factors as well such as the editor’s opinion of what is the best strategy to sell.
 
 
The hero and the twist
 
Our hero and nemeses are the same. Our twist is that the same professional that causes the problem is the same one to have the remedy for it. The foreignization means preserving in the texts the peculiar marks to the culture of the source language.
 
The resolution
 
Lawrance Venuti proposes to our hero to combat these domestication woes and all its consequences with the foreignization of translations. The foreignization means preserving in the texts the peculiar marks to the culture of the source language. If the translators cease to be transparent, it is possible that their work gains importance in the translation industry and as a consequence, they can fight for better fees.
 

 
THE SCRIPT
 
Date:    29/09/2018
Client:         Modllingua
Project:   Interview with Lawrence Venuti
 
 
 

 
http://modlingua.com/interns/1002-clara-carybe-brazilian-portuguese.html
 
 
 
References
 
Lawrence Venuti/. (n.d.). Retrieved July 28, 2018, from http://www.cla.temple.edu/english/faculty/lawrence-venuti/