Venuti's The Translator's Invisibility

According to Venuti, ‘invisibility’ in translation refers to:

• The translator not being credited on the book cover

• A cultural expectation that translations should read as if originally written in the target language

• The fact that most readers don’t know any translators by name

• A deliberate strategy where translators hide meanings in the text

Venuti argues that fluency in translation is problematic because:

• It makes translations too easy to read

• It is impossible to achieve in literary translation

• It privileges the source language over the target language

• It produces the illusion of transparency, erasing the translator’s work and the text’s foreignness

Domestication in translation means:

• Keeping all foreign words untranslated

• Translating word for word to preserve the original structure

• Rewriting a foreign text to conform to the values and expectations of the receiving culture

• Translating only texts from your own country

Which of these is TRUE about foreignisation?

• It deliberately retains elements of the foreign text’s otherness, resisting full assimilation

• It was invented by Venuti in 1995

• It aims to produce awkward, unreadable translations

• It is always better than domestication

Venuti uses the word ‘violence’ in translation to describe:

• The unavoidable dismantling of the source text’s signifying chain, plus the avoidable ethnocentric reduction of the foreign text to target-culture norms

• Arguments between translators and publishers

• Translations that contain violent content

• The emotional damage caused by translating and not being recognised

Schleiermacher’s famous distinction, which Venuti draws on, is

• Either the text is faithful or it is beautiful

• Either the translator brings the reader to the author, or brings the author to the reader

• Either the translation is visible or it is invisible

• Either the source text or the target text must be privileged