The illusion of transparency

“Invisibility” is the term which is used to describe the translator’s situation

and activity in contemporary Anglo-American culture. It refers to two mutually
determining phenomena one is an illusionistic effect of discourse, of the
translator’s own manipulation of English; the other is the practice of reading and
evaluating translations that has long prevailed in the United Kingdom and the
United States, among other cultures, both English and foreign- language. A
translated text, whether prose or poetry, fiction or nonfiction, is judged acceptable
by most publishers, reviewers, and readers when it reads fluently, when the
absence of any linguistic or stylistic peculiarities makes it seem transparent,
giving the appearance that it reflects the foreign writer’s personality or intention
or the essential meaning of the foreign text — the appearance, in other words, that
the translation is not in fact a translation, but the “original.” The illusion of
transparency is an effect of fluent discourse, of the translator’s effort to insure
easy readability by adhering to current usage, maintaining continuous syntax,
fixing a precise meaning. What is so remarkable here is that this illusory effect
conceals the numerous conditions under which the translation is made, starting
with the translator’s crucial intervention in the foreign text The more fluent the
translation, the more invisible the translator, and, presumably, the more visible the
writer or meaning of the foreign text.
The translator's Invisibility has been a source of much debate – and
sometimes criticism – among translation experts. The choices made by the
translator during the process of translation are an essential part of producing an
adequate target text. They constitute an essential factor in interlingual
communication and, effectively, constitute the translator's voice. However, the
search for transparent translations attempts to silence this voice and seems to be
clearly linked to the subordinate role translation has traditionally had in the past.
This article discusses the concept of the translator’s voice starting with a brief

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reminder of what translation is and the role played by the translator in this process,
together with the influencing factors that are present in any translation. A
discussion then follows regarding how the search for transparent translations
attempts to silence this voice and the degree to which this is achieved.

The metaphor of illusion is originally rooted in the works of Czech

structuralists, in particular Jiří Levý’s The Art of Translation. Starting with the
acknowledgement that significant part of translation theory is normative, Levý
(2011) argues for a scientific inquiry into an art form. Because the criticism and
analysis of this art form depends on establishing philosophical views on the
definition of translation that remained “variable and historically conditioned” (17),
Levý (1965) seeks to theorize with a method that prioritizes “a rational analysis
[on translations] as opposed to subjective impressions” (quoted in Hermans 2009,
22). The argument for a rational analysis can easily make a student of translation
jump to a conclusion. Yet, we should be careful about how he works his way
through a certain paradigm. Here it should be marked that Levý was writing these
lines about ‘unscientific’ approaches to translation at around the same time when
Eugene Nida’s book titled Towards a Science of Translating was published in
1964 and James S. Holmes (1988) uttered the term “science of translation” (70) in
his 1972 manifesto paper: “The Name and Nature of Translation Studies.” Though
the originating line of thought can be easily distinguished from the then quite
overruling linguistic and humanities-based prescriptive approaches to translation,
Levý’s theorizing is not completely descriptive in nature. His conception of
translation as an art form is embedded in the title of his work, and his method of
(pre- )descriptivism rests on studying ‘aesthetics of translation’ based on norms
(Levý 2011, 17). A quick-witted critic that he is, Levý constructs his inquiry into
“the actual procedures corresponding to this a priori established goal” called
norms upon the concept of noetic compatibility (2011, 17). At first look a
rhetorical-sounding concept, noetic compatibility is defined as a single general
category that encircles special cases such as, in his own words, “[t]he aptness of

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the translation and the veracity of the imagery, the verisimilitude of the
motivation” (19). To put it more simply, a work of translation can be assessed on
the degree of its conformity to norms, its effect on the reader and its purpose.
Considering noetic compatibility as the measure of a linear scale, Levý
distinguishes between illusionism and anti-illusionism. Because the original
semiosis of illusio is inaccessible, he explains his argument through the agents of
methods, translators and works, as indicated by Zuzana Jettmarová in her
foreword to The Art of Translation (Levý 2011, xxii). As simple as it seems,
illusionistic methods demand “a work of literature to ‘look like the original, like
reality.’” The translator “hide[s] behind the original” and “create[s] a translation
illusion based on a contract with the reader,” erasing the traces of the acts of an
intermediary (19). According to Levý, readers of a translated work are already
aware of the fact that they are not reading the original, but they are prepared to
believe that they are reading a particular work4 and therefore, ask it “to preserve
the qualities of the original” (20). On the other hand, his conceptualization of anti-
illusionistic methods is intricate and indicates a notion of translation beyond the
structuralist categorizations. Anti-illusionistic methods let the work abandon the
portrayal of reality and in fact, “boldly play on the fact that they are offering the
audience a mere imitation of reality.” Translators reveal their role as observers,
comment on the text and address the reader with allusions. For Levý, parodies and
travesties constitute perfect examples of anti-illusionist translations. It is striking
that he clarifies his argument in positing that “[a]n abstract, athematic translation
would in fact be anti-translation” because a translation first and foremost has a
“representative” purpose. Moreover, illusionist translations, which are also
considered “normal” translations, should be criticized in terms of “[their] values
for the recipient, i.e., the distinctive or sociological functions of [their] elements”
(Levý 2011, 20). Apparently, Levý distinguishes the two types of translation
categories from a target-oriented perspective. Overall, it can be argued that this
lumper and parallel categorization can be considered imprecise for it reduces
“normal” translations to only one single definition resting on subjective criticism.
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However, recalling that, in order to minimize the overarching dominance of
equivalence, Levý also proposed his dual norms, namely “reproduction norm” and
“artistic norm” (60). The naming of the norms is a direct consequence of his
definition of translation as “a borderline case at the interface between reproductive
art [as a product] and original creative art [as a process]” (58). Yet, inasmuch as
he attempts to free criticism from the faithful/free dichotomy, the dual norms of
translation rest on the semantic and aesthetic values it conveys to the reader (61).
Hence, judgment on the “beauty—artistic excellence, the aesthetic value of the
translation as a work of the target national literature” (64) reverses the entire
argument for a rational analysis back to where it emerged and again renews the
quest for a descriptive approach to translation. Nevertheless, by applying what
Russian Formalists argued for the theory of poeticity, which can be summarized in
a nutshell that poetic features of a work of art could be separated from the content
and could be considered ‘a formal quality’ on their own, Levý’s theorizing
assumes an underlying concept of translation, which is implied in the inadequate
relationship between a sign and an object (Gentzler 2001, 84–85). For the ever-
changing meaning is interpreted in two referent worlds, that of the source and that
of the target, the concept of translation entails, as Edwin Gentzler puts it: “That
which is made manifest in the process and product of translation is the very
mobility of concepts, the mutability of signs and the evolution of the relationship
between the two” (85). How the later scholars of translation take on this notion of
translation in the quest for descriptivism will reveal competing arguments for
deciphering meaning in twentieth century literary theory and philosophy of
language.

Before the issue of the voice of the translator can be discussed, it is useful to
remember what translation is and the role a translator plays in this process. Hatim
and Munday (2004:6) define translation as “the process and the product of
transferring a written text from source language (SL) to target language (TL)
conducted by a translator in a specific socio-cultural context together with the

4
cognitive, linguistic, cultural and ideological phenomena that are integral to the
process and the product”. In a similar way, Lawendoski (cited in Seago 2008:1)
sees it as the transfer of “meaning” from one set of language signs to another.
Nida (cited in Basnett 2002) explains the process of translation as the decoding of
a source text (ST), the transfer of this information and its restructuring in a target
text (TT).

In this process, it is the job of the translator to replace “the signs encoding a
message with signs of another code, preserving (...) invariant information with
respect to a given system of reference" (Ludskanov, cited in Bassnett 2002:25).
Newmark (1987) establishes that in the process of decoding and recoding there are
a number of factors that need to be taken into account: on the one hand, the style
of the writer of the ST, the norms, culture and the framework and tradition of the
SL, and on the other hand the reader of the TT, the norms, culture, framework and
tradition of the TL. In the middle of these two there is the translator. To this, Nord
(cited in Munday 2001) adds the relevance of the role of the translation
commissioner, who will give information regarding the intended text functions,
the audience, the time and place of text reception, the medium, and the motive for
the translation. Nord also emphasizes the role of the ST analysis, which will
provide the translator with essential information regarding the subject matter, the
contents, assumptions, and composition of text, non-verbal elements, lexic,
sentence structure and suprasegmental features. All this information will provide
the translator with a number of possibilities as well as constraints when creating
the TT, and it is his/her job to transfer the ST into a TT by selecting phrases,
sentences and words considering their significance in their particular context and
taking into account aspects such as sociocultural environment, genre, field, tenor,
mode, etc. (Bassnett 2002).

In some occasions, the changes that a translator needs to make are

determined by the linguistic and cultural differences between the SL and the TL
over which the translator has no control. In other occasions, adaptation results
5
"from intentional choices made by the translator" (Trosborg 2000:221) in order to
produce a more adequate translation. These choices, whether obligatory or
optional, is what Hermans (cited in Hatim and Munday 2004:353) calls "the
voice" of the translator, that is, the underlying presence of the translator in a TT.
O’Sullivan (2003) concurs with this view and argues that this presence is evident
in the strategies chosen and in the way a translator is positioned in relation to the
translated narrative.

What is the translators’ need to know and be able to do in order to

translate?’ We are seeking, in other words, a specification of ‘translator
competence’. In this regard, Bell (1991) argues that the professional (technical)
translator has access to five distinct kinds of knowledge; target language (TL)
knowledge; text-type knowledge; source language (SL) knowledge; subject area
(‘real world’) knowledge; and contrastive knowledge. This means that the
translator must know (a) how propositions are structured (semantic knowledge),
(b) how clauses can be synthesized to carry propositional content and analyzed to
retrieve the content embedded in them (syntactic knowledge), and (c) how the
clause can be realized as information bearing text and the text decomposed into
the clause (pragmatic knowledge). Lack of knowledge or control in any of the
there cases would mean that the translator could not translate. Without (a) and (b),
even literal meaning would elude the translator. Without (c), meaning would be
limited to the literal (semantic sense) carried by utterance which, though they
might possess formal cohesion (being tangible realizations of clauses), would lack
functional coherence and communicative value (Bell, 1991). As Raskin (1987)
argues, given the goal of linguistics to match speaker’s competence, an applied
linguistic theory of translation should aim at matching the bilingual native
speaker’s translation competence. This would necessarily involve seeking an
integration between the linguistic knowledge of the two languages with specific
and general knowledge of the domain and of the world via comparative and
contrastive linguistic knowledge.

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One approach would be to focus on the competence of the ‘ideal translator’ (Katz,
1978) or ‘ideal bilingual’ who would be an abstraction from actual bilinguals
engaged in imperfectly performing tasks of translation … but (unlike them)
operating under none of the performance limitations that underlie the
imperfections of actual translation. This approach reflects Chomsky’s view of the
goal of the linguistic theory and his proposals for the specification of the
competence of the ‘ideal speaker–hearer’. Accordingly translation theory is
primarily concerned with an ideal bilingual reader–writer, who knows both
languages perfectly and is unaffected by such theoretically irrelevant conditions as
memory limitations, distractions, shifts of attention or interest, and errors (random
or characteristic) in applying this knowledge in actual performance.

An alternative to the ‘ideal translator’ model would be to adopt a less

abstract approach and describe translation competence in terms of generalizations
based on inferences drawn from the observation of translator performance. A
study of this type suggests an inductive approach: finding features in the data of
the product which suggest the existence of particular elements and systematic
relations in the process. We would envisage a translator expert system (Bell,
1991). A final alternative would be to deny the competence–performance
dichotomy and redefine our objective as the specification of a multi-component
‘communicative competence’ which would consist, minimally, of four areas of
knowledge and skills; grammatical competence, sociolinguistic competence,
discourse competence, discourse competence and strategic competence (Swain,
1985, Hymes, 1971). This approach would lead us (adapting Hymes’ definition of
communicative competence) to attempt to specify ‘translator communicative
competence’: the knowledge and ability possessed by the translator which permits
him/her to create communicative acts – discourse – which are not only (and not
necessarily) grammatical but socially appropriate (Halliday, 1985). A commitment
to this position would make us assert that translator must possess linguistic
competence in both languages and communicative competence in both cultures.

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 A few simple examples should illustrate some of the choices and strategies
that translators need to make, which confer them a voice in the resulting
translation, together with a brief explanation of the process of selecting a
particular strategy. In the localization project of a British software license
reselling company introducing their services in Spain, which involved the
translation of their website and related documentation, the translator decided to
keep a number of IT references in English (software, hardware, type of licenses).
In translational terms, this would be seen as a foreignizing strategy, or the use of
source text loan words in the target text. However, the translator was aware of the
acceptance of some of this terminology by the Real Academia Española (the
authority in Spanish language matters) and the perceived preference in Spain of
English terms in dealing with IT topics. In the translation of the home page, “Are
you taking advantage of the current exchange rate?” was rendered as “ Aproveche
la actual cotización de la libra esterlina”. This is an example of transposition,
where the interrogative sentence was changed into an imperative one, reflecting a
more direct style preferred by Spanish speakers. In another section, the webpage
referred to software licensing procurement explaining the process of insolvency of
British companies, including terms such as insolvency practitioners and case
managers. This required the adaptation not only of the specific terminology but
also of the process of company insolvencies in Spain in order to successfully
communicate the operational issues involved in the procurement of licenses.

Whether or not the translator choices in these examples are the most
appropriate may be open to debate, but what is clear is that the strategies
employed to produce the TT would not be visible to the target readers unless they
had access to the original ST and could understand the SL. Thus, using Hermans’
definition, the voice of the translator could only be heard through the contrastive
analysis of both the ST and the TT, that is through the “comparison of the
translation with the original and a verification of correspondences, grammatical,
lexical and often phonaesthetic" (Newmark 1991:23). This type of analysis would

8
reveal the strategies translators had to develop to produce the translation, the
constraints they faced, and the way they worked around those constraints
(Lefevere and Bassnett cited in O'Sullivan 2004). An alternative way to hear the
voice of a translator and assess the strategies employed would be through the
analysis of retranslations of the ST, particularly useful in translation of classic
works in different periods in history, which reflect the changes in tastes and norms
of the target culture and, therefore, where the presence of the translator becomes
apparent (Hatim and Munday 2004). Of course, it can be argued that the
translator’s ‘silence’ is simply an illusion, even if it is perfectly acceptable for that
to be the case in certain instances.

In other situations, the voice of the translator becomes more prominent, and
the reader becomes aware that what s/he is reading is a translation. A clear
example of this can be seen in the translation of a Spanish newspaper literary
article, where a translator’s note is added under the title of the book Marinero en
Tierra. This note explains that “this is a book by the Spanish poet Rafael Alberti
(1902-1999) published in 1924.” In this case, this was an optional choice the
translator made, as this information could have been conveyed through, for
example, a parenthesis in the main body of the text. Nevertheless, it is evident to
the reader that these are the translator's words and that this information did not
appear in the source text.

Venuti (1995) suggests another strategy available to translators that would

make them more visible to the reader, foreignization. This consists in adopting a
"non-fluent or estranging translation style designed to make visible the presence
of the translator by highlighting the foreign identity of the ST” (Venuti cited in
Munday 2001:147) and would entail a close adherence to the structure and syntax
of the ST, the use of calques and archaic structures, among other things. This
approach aims to resist the hegemony of English-language nations and is a
reaction to the trend of producing transparent and fluent translations, a concept
that is further explored below.
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 One final situation where a reader is aware of the presence of the translator
is bad translations. “Por favor, piense en los próximos pasajeros al utilizarlo” is
rendered as “Please, think in the next passengers while using it”. In this example
of reverse translation, it is obvious that the process of recoding suffers from a lack
of knowledge of the TL and the reader is well aware that s/he is reading the words
of the “translator.”

In all these examples even in the last one the purpose behind the selection
and application of translation strategies by the translator is to produce a TT that
“respects the norms of the target language, that has vis à vis sentence structure,
terminology, cohesion of the text and fidelity to the author and his/her intention"
(CIOL 2006:16). Venuti (1995), though, goes further and states that nowadays a
TT is deemed acceptable by readers, publishers and reviewers when there is an
absence of foreign linguistic or stylistic peculiarities and it reads fluently in the
TL. The Chartered Institute of Linguists (2006:12) seem to prove this point, as in
their criteria for assessing translations “reading like a piece originally written in
the target language” is regarded as what translators should aim for when
producing a TT. However, Venuti warns us (1995), the more fluent a translation is
the more invisible the translator becomes. Schaffner (1999:61) believes that the
expectation is that the translator will produce “a faithful reproduction, a reliable
duplicate or a quality replica" of the ST that is as good as reading the original,
thus rendering the translator “transparent.” This shows a trust in the integrity of
the translator and in his/her capability to produce a text that is as good as the real
thing and without whom intercultural communication would not be possible
(Hermans 1996). Interestingly, however, the expectation also is that a TT is most
successful when it is not obvious that it is a translation, requiring the translator not
to leave any trace of his work (Schaffner 1999:62). So it could be argued that, on
the one hand, the translator is--or should be--regarded as the central piece
allowing communication between languages and cultures to take place and that a
translation is deemed good when it reads as fluently as if it was written originally

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in the TL. On the other hand, however, for this to take place it is necessary that the
translator stays as invisible and quiet as possible, so that his/her choices and
strategies when producing the text are not apparent and the reader is not aware of
them. Thus, a translation is good when it does not read like a translation and when
it produces the impression of being an original.

This seeming paradox is what is called the illusion of transparency (Venuti

1995, Hermans 1996, Seago 2008). Following from the point made above, a
transparent translation guarantees integrity, consonance and equivalence and it is
as good as the original; this is why people can claim having read Dostoyevsky and
Kafka when what they have read in many cases is a translation of their work
(Schaffner 1999). The illusion of transparency is based on two premises: that the
difference between languages and cultures can be neutralized and that all
interpretative possibilities of a text can be summarized or exhausted in one
translation (López and Wilkinson 2003). This illusion, Hermans (1996:5) claims,
stems from the status that translation and translators have had historically, there
having always been a hierarchical difference between originals and translations,
between authors and translators, and translation having always been assigned a
lower status. And this has been expressed in stereotyped opposites, "creative
versus derivative work, primary versus secondary, art versus craft.” This lower
status is also evident in the fact that it was not until the middle of the 20th century
that translation started to be considered an academic discipline on its own merit
(Munday 2001).

Nevertheless, in this apparent illusion, the work of the translator is still very
evident as it is he/she who interprets the voices, perspectives and meanings of a
ST, intensifying or diminishing certain aspects of it and guiding the reader through
the nuances, style, or irony that may be present (Schaffner 1999, O'Sullivan 2003).
In the resulting product, the TT, there are always two voices present, the voice of
the author of the ST and the voice of the translator (O’Sullivan 2003), and
attempting to erase the translator’s intervention actually implies erasing the
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translation itself (Schaffner 1999). Hermans (cited in Hatim and Munday 2004)
concurs with this view and states that it is only the ideology of translation, the
illusion of transparency, that blinds us to the presence of the translator's voice
when reading a translation.

From time to time, it is necessary to remind ourselves of what translation is

and the crucial role translators have in the process of decoding a ST, analyzing
and interpreting it and recoding it in the TL. The production of the TT has a
number of influences, starting from the characteristics of the ST and the TT
(author/readership, function, register, SL/TL norms, etc.) and the requirements
established by the commissioner of the translation (intended text function and
readership, medium and motive, etc.). With all this information the translator
becomes the central figure that needs to make a number of choices and develop
strategies in order to produce an adequate translation. These choices and strategies
confer the translator a voice, as all the options the translation has selected will be
reflected in the final TT, and this was illustrated through a number of examples.
Some of these examples showed how the presence of the translator can sometimes
only be perceived through the contrastive analysis of the ST and the TT, thus
reducing the volume of that voice.

Translation 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. Because
meaning is an effect of relations and differences among signifiers along a
potentially endless chain (polysemous, intertextual, subject to infinite linkages), it
is always differential and deferred, never present as an original unity (Derrida
1982). Both foreign text and translation are derivative: both consist of diverse
linguistic and cultural materials that neither the foreign writer nor the translator
originates, and that destabilize the

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work of signification, inevitable exceeding and possibly conflicting with their
intentions. As a result, a foreign text is the site of many different semantic
possibilities that are fixed only provisionally in any one translation, on the basis of
varying cultural assumptions and interpretive choices, in specific social situations,
in different historical periods. Meaning is a plural and contingent relation, not an
unchanging unified essence, and therefore a translation cannot be judged
according to mathematics-based concepts of semantic equivalence or one-to-one
correspondence.

Appeals to the foreign text cannot finally adjudicate between competing

translations in the absence of linguistic error, because canons of accuracy in
translation, notions of “fidelity ” and “freedom,” are historically determined
categories. Even the notion of “linguistic error” is subject to variation, since
mistranslations, especially in literary texts, can be not merely intelligible but
significant in the target language culture. The viability of a translation is
established by its relationship to the cultural and social conditions under which it
is produced and read. This relationship points to the violence that resides in the
very purpose and activity of translation: the reconstitution of the foreign text in
accordance with values, beliefs and representations that preexist it in the target
language, always configured in hierarchies of dominance and marginality, always
determining the production, circulation, and reception of texts. Translation is the
forcible replacement of the linguistic and cultural difference of the foreign text
with a text that will be intelligible to the target language reader. This difference
can never be entirely removed, of course, but it necessarily suffers a reduction and
exclusion of possibilities—and an exorbitant gain of other possibilities specific to
the translating language. Whatever difference the translation conveys is now
imprinted by the target-language culture, assimilated to its positions of
intelligibility, its canons and taboos, its codes and ideologies. The aim of
translation is to bring back a cultural other as the same, the recognizable, event the
familiar; and this aim always risks a

13
wholesale domestication of the foreign text, often in highly self- conscious
projects, where translation serves an appropriation of foreign cultures for domestic
agendas, cultural, economic, political. Translation can be considered the
communication of a foreign text, but it is always a communication limited by its
address to a specific

reading audience. The violent effects of translation are felt at home as well as

abroad. On the one hand, translation wields enormous power in the construction of
national identities for foreign cultures, and hence it

potentially figures in ethnic discrimination, geopolitical confrontations,

colonialism, terrorism, war. On the other hand, translation enlists the foreign text
in the maintenance or revision of literary canons in the target-language culture,
inscribing poetry and fiction, for example, with the various poetic and narrative
discourses that compete cultural dominance in the target language.

Translation also enlists the foreign text in the maintenance or revision of

dominant conceptual paradigms, research methodologies, and clinical practices in
target-language disciplines and professions, whether physics or architecture,
philosophy or psychiatry, sociology or law. It is these social affiliations and
effects—written into the materiality of the translated text, into its discursive
strategy and its range of allusiveness for the target-language reader, but also into
the very choice to translate it and the ways it is published, reviewed, and taught—
all these conditions permit translation to be called a cultural political practice
constructing or critiquing ideology-stamped identities for foreign cultures, affirm
in go transgressing discursive values and institutional limits in the target-language
culture. The violence wreaked by translation partly inevitable, inherent in the
translation process, partly potential, emerging at any point in the production and
reception of the translated text, varying with specific cultural and social
formations at different historical moments. The most urgent question facing the

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translator who possesses this knowledge is, What to do? Why and how do I
translate? Although Ihave construed translation as the site of many determinations
and effects—linguistic, cultural, economic, ideological—I also want to indicate
that the freelance literary translator always exercises a choice concerning the
degree and direction of the violence at work in any translating. This choice has
been given various formulations, past and present, but perhaps none so decisive as
that offered by the German theologian 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 as possible, and moves the author towards him” (Lefevere 1977:74).
Admitting (with qualifications like “as much as possible”) 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 to target-language cultural values, bringing 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.

Schleiermacher made clear that his choice was foreignizing translation, and
this led the French translator and translation theorist Antoine Berman to treat
Schleiermacher’s argument as an ethics of translation, concerned with making the
translated text a place where a cultural other is manifested—although, of course,
an otherness that can never be manifested in its own terms, only in those of the
target language, and hence always already encoded (Berman 1985:87–91).9 The
“foreign” in foreignizing translation is not a transparent representation of an
essence that resides in the foreign text and is valuable in itself, but a strategic
construction whose value is contingent on the current target-language situation.

Foreignizing translation signifies the difference of the foreign text, yet only
by disrupting the cultural codes that prevail in the target language. In its effort to
do right abroad, this translation method must do wrong at home, deviating enough
15
from native norms to stage an alien reading experience—choosing to translate a
foreign text excluded by domestic literary canons, for instance, or using a
marginal discourse to translate it.

I want to suggest that insofar as foreignizing translation seeks to restrain the

ethnocentric violence of translation, it is highly desirable today, a strategic cultural
intervention in the current state of world affairs, pitched against the hegemonic
English-language nations and the unequal cultural exchanges in which they
engage their global others. Foreignizing translation in English can be a form of
resistance against ethnocentrism and racism, cultural narcissism and imperialism,
in the interests of democratic geopolitical relations. As a theory and practice of
translation, however, a foreignizing method is specific to certain European
countries at particular historical moments: formulated first in German culture
during the classical and romantic periods, it has recently been revived in a French
cultural scene characterized by postmodern developments in philosophy, literary
criticism, psychoanalysis, and social theory that have come to be known as
“poststructuralism.”10 Anglo-American culture, in contrast, has long been
dominated by domesticating theories that recommend fluent translating. By
producing the illusion of transparency, a fluent translation masquerades as true
semantic equivalence when it in fact inscribes the foreign text with a partial
interpretation, partial to English-language values, reducing if not simply excluding
the very difference that translation is called on to convey. This ethnocentric
violence is evident in the translation theories put forth by the prolific and
influential Eugene Nida, translation consultant to the American Bible Society:
here transparency is enlisted in the service of Christian humanism.

Consider Nida ’ s concept of “ dynamic ” or functional equivalence” in

translation, formulated first in 1964, but restated and developed in numerous
books and articles over the past thirty years. “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
16
culture” (Nida 1964:159). The phrase “naturalness of expression” signals the
importance of a fluent strategy to this theory of translation, and in Nida’s work it
is obvious that fluency involves domestication. As he has recently put it, “the
translator must be a person who can draw aside the curtains of linguistic and
cultural differences so that people may see clearly the relevance of the original
message” (Nida and de Waard 1986:14). This is of course a relevance to the
target-language culture, something with which foreign writers are usually not
concerned when they write their texts, so that relevance can be established in the
translation process only by replacing source-language features that are not
recognizable with target-language ones that are. Thus, when Nida asserts that “an
easy and natural style in translating, despite the extreme difficulty of producing it
is nevertheless essential to producing in the ultimate receptors a response similar
to that of the original receptors” (Nida 1964:163), he is in fact imposing the
English-language valorization of transparent discourse on every foreign culture,
masking a basic disjunction between the source-and target-language texts which
puts into question the possibility of eliciting a “similar” response.

The present trend that assesses translations depending on their fluency and
how close they are to reading like an original in the TL produces an interesting
paradox: the translator needs to employ strategies and choices (their voice) to
create a text that is a reliable and faithful reproduction of the ST but that at the
same time does not read like a translation. Moreover, the translator is trusted to
interpret a text in the SL and to recode it in the TL but his presence is not
welcome in the final text and needs to remain as hidden as possible. The most see
translation as the attempt to produce a text so transparent that it does not seem to
be translated.

A good translation is considered as like a pane of glass. You only notice

that it’s there when there are little imperfections — scratches, bubbles. Ideally,
there shouldn’t be any. It should never call attention to itself. This is what authors
call the illusion of transparency, the voice of the translator becomes nearly silent,
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and the reader has the impression that s/he is reading the original or a replica that
is as good as. This has its origins in the historical inferior status of translation.
But, however fluent and transparent a TT is and however quiet the presence of the
translator may seem to be, their voice can never be absolutely silent, since it is the
translation itself, with all its lexical choices, grammatical formations, textual
structure, that contains the voice of the translator.

List of References

BASNETT, S. (2002) Translation Studies London: Taylor and Francis

BAKER, M. (1992) In other words Oxon:Routledge

Barnard, M. (ed. and trans.) (1958) Sappho: A New Translation, Berkeley

and Los

Angeles: University of California Press.

—(1984) Assault on Mount Helicon: A Literary Memoir, Berkeley and Los

Angeles:

University of California Press.

CHARTERED INSTITUTE OF LINGUISTS (2006) Diploma in Translation:

Handbook and Advice to Candidates London: CIOL

HATIM, B. and MUNDAY, J. (2004) Translation: an advanced resource

book. London: Routledge.

HERMANS, T. (1996) Translation’s other London: UCL

LOPEZ, J.L. and WILKINSON, J. (2003) Manual de traducción. Barcelona:

Gedisa. Spain.

MUNDAY, J. (2001) Introducing translation studies. London: Routledge

NIDA, E.A. and de Waard, J. (1986) From One Language to Another:

Functional Equivalence in Bible Translating, Nashville: Thomas Nelson.

NEWMARK, P. (1987) Manual de traducción. Madrid: Catedra. Spain.

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NEWMARK, P. (1991) About Translation Philadelphia: Multilingual Matters

O’SULLIVAN, E. (2003) Narratology meets translation studies, or the voice

of the translator in children’s literature. Meta Vol. 48, No 1-2, pps. 197-
207

Schleiermacher, F. (1838) Sämmitliche Werke. Dritte abteilung: Zur

Philosophie,

SEAGO, K. (2008) The voice of the translator London: City University

London

SCHAFFNER, C. (1999) Translation and norms Philadelphia: Multilingual

Matters

TROSBORG, A. (2000) Discourse analysis as part of translation

training. Current issues in language and society. Vol. 7, No 3, pps. 205-
228.

VENUTI, L. (1995) The translator’s invisibility New York: Taylor and Francis

Zweiter Band, Berlin: Reimer.

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