#MondayReading: The Translator’s Invisibility

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As you know, last week we have launched a new category on the blog called #MondayReading where we propose a new reading every Monday. Last week we were talking about Terminological Approaches in the European Context; this week, we are very glad to start our Monday with a very good reading proposal: The Translator’s Invisibility by Professor Laurence Venuti.

#MondayReading - Termcoord

The Translator’s Invisibility provides an overview of translation from the seventeenth century to the present day. According to Venuti, the book “shows how fluency prevailed over other translation strategies to shape the canon of foreign literatures in English, and it interrogates the ethnocentric and imperialist cultural consequences of the domestic values that were simultaneously inscribed and masked in foreign texts during this period”.

The Translator's Invisibility - Laurence VenutiProfessor Venuti explains the history of translation by its translation theories and practices in order to counter the strategy of fluency and with a purpose of communicate the differences between language and culture. Thanks to a selection of texts from Britain, America and Europe Venuti prepares the theoretical and critical means by which we can study, analyse and practise translation.

Professor Laurence Venuti is currently professor of English at Temple University in Philadelphia (Pennsylvania, United States), an American translation theorist, translation historian, and a professional translator from Italian, French, and Catalan for the past fifteen years. He has also taught as a visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University, Columbia University, University of Trento, University of Mainz, Barnard College, and Queen’s University Belfast. and has been a professional translator.  He is the editor of Rethinking Translation about Discourse, Subjectivity, Ideology.

We hope you enjoy it! Stay tuned for our next #MondayReading!

 


Written by Olga Jeczmyk: Translator-Interpreter, Social Media and Content Manager as well as Communication and Terminology Trainee. Terminology Coordination Unit of the European Parliament in Luxembourg.

Sources:

  • CiteSeerX, (2017). CiteSeerX. Available at: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu (Accessed 13 Mar. 2017).
  • Venuti, L. (1995). The Translator’s Invisibility, Routledge New York.