THE ROLE OF

TRANSLATOR
• Venuti: the ‘invisibility’ of the translation
and the ethical consequences.

• Foreignization and Domestication

translation strategies.
 The ‘invisibility’ of the translator 
Venuti chooses this term to describe the translator’s
situation and activity in the British and American culture.
He sees Invisibility in :
1) Translators that tend to translate fluently into English to
produce a readable TT.
2) Translated texts that are typically read in the target
culture.

A good translation has to be fluent with a transparent

stucture and it has to reflect the personality and the
meaning of the ST.
According to Venuti the aim is to make the TT looks like the
original one.
 2 types of Invisibility:
 Domestication reduces the foreign text(TT) to receive
new cultural values from the ST. It makes the text
trasparent,fluent and it minimizes the foreigness of
the TT.

 Foreignization brings the reader into another

culture,new and foreign. This leads to a non-fluent
translation style, marking the presence of the
translator and also the foreign identity of the text.

Venuti links Foreignization to Minoritizing translation.

Minoritizing makes the translator visible too.
Ethical level Domestication (respect of the TL
culture values) and Foreignization (making the
foreign visible )
Discursive level  Fluency ( transparent reading
of the TL) and Resistancy(resistant reading of the
TL)

Domestication and Foreignization are ethical

choices, strategies toward a foreign text and
culture choosed by the translator.
Antoine Berman-Negative analytic and
deformation of translation:
Berman’s negative analytic attacks the homogenization of
the translation of literary prose.
He describes translation as a trial in two senses:
1)For the target culture in experiencing the strangeness of
the foreign text and word.
2)For the foreign text in being uprooted from its original
language context.
Berman thinks that the ethical aim of the translating act is
receiving the ‘foreign as foreign’. He considers that there is
generally a system of textual deformation: THIS
EXAMINATION OF THE FORMS OF DEFORMATION IS
TERMED NEGATIVE ANALYTIC.
Berman identifies twelve
‘deforming tendecies’ :
 1 Rationalization
 2 Clarification
 3 Expansion
 4 Ennoblement
 5Qualitative impoverishment
 6 Quantitative impoverishment
 7 The destruction of rhythms
 8 The destruction of underlying networks of signification
 9The Destruction of linguistic patternings
 10 The destruction of vernacular networks of their exoticization
 11 The destruction of expressions and idioms
 12 The effacement of the superimposition of languages
Berman’s Positive analytic is opposite to negative
analytic. The aim is to render the foreign in the TT. This
is about ‘literal translation’, where the word literal here
means attached to the letter.

 The position and positionality of

the translator:
Translators often consider that their work is intuitive and
that they must be ‘led’ by their language and listen to
their ‘ear’(says ). Feltsiner makes the important point
that much of the work that goes into producing a
translation ‘becomes invisible once the new poem stands
intact’.
Levine and her method consists in ‘destroying’ the
original form but reproducing the same meaning in a
new form.
The stance and positionality of the translator have
become central in translation studies but there are
authors like Maria Tymoczko who sees translator as a

neutral mediator
communication .
in the act of

She thinks that the ideology of a translation resides

not in the text translated but in the voicing and stance
of the translator.
 The sociology and
historiography of translation
Pierre Bourdieu,ethographer and sociologist,has provided his
concepts of:
1. Field of social activitythe translation and its
participants(reader,author,translator,editor)
2. Habitus or disposition of the individualthe identity influenced
by the family and by the education. It is linked to culture.
3. The capital divided in different typeseconomic(money) ,
social(family,friends),cultural(education) and symbolic(status).
4. Illusio
Sociology is a new important point in translation studies and its
relationship with translation underlines the translation practice
better .
 The power network of the translation
industry
Translators are not always free to choose translation strategies
because of the influence of the economy. Venuti lamented
that translators work to meet the demands of the readers
and in this way the profit is the least important. He
describes it as a form of repression by the industry.
Venuti thinks that for some authors, the process of writing
consists just in writing in English. He sees this like another
example of the cultural England’s hegemony.
 The reception and reviewing of
translators
There’s no just one model fot the analysis of the reviews in
translation, but Gérard Genette identifies Paratexts elements
which depend to the text.
He considers 2 kinds of paratexts 
1. Peritexts are always in the text in form of :
titles,subtitles,prefaces,dedications and epilogues.
2. Epitexts are not in the text.
The paratext is subordinated to the text, while the epitext is free
from the text.

If we adopt the analytical approach of reception theory, we can

analyse reviews Synchronically and Diachronically.
Synchronical analysis is the study of a single work in a specific
period of time. The Diachronical one is the examination of a
work over a longer time span.
 THE CASE STUDY:
 Garcìa Marquez and his ‘Doce cuentos peregrinos’ translated in
English by Edith Grossman in ‘Strange Pilgrims’.

 This book is almost overlooked as a work of translation and this

supports Venuti’s claim about the invisibility of translators.

 The suggestion is that Garcìa Marquez and the latin Americans

have had a recent profound influence on Europe and the USA,but
that magic realism may have been at the core of the
contemporary ‘literary spirit’ rendering Latin-America’s
contribution less vital.

 The translation is indeed mostly read as if it had originally been

written in English.
 SUMMARY
 This presentation has focused on the role of the (mainly literary)
translator.
 The fist part deals with Venuti’s invisibility refering to how in Anglo-
American cultures,the foreign is made invisible by the preference for
a ‘fluent’ TT and he discusses two stretegies:’domesticating and
foreignizing’.
 Berman also discusses the need for translation strategies that allow
the ‘foreign’ to be experienced in the target culture.
 The second part deals with the role of the translator ( the agents or
participants in the translation process in a network which plays out
power struggles over text).
 The translator as agent has become central .