On The Visibility Of The Female Translator

The discussion on the translator's visibility provides a thorough and critical examination of translation from the seventeenth century to the present day. The term 'visibility' originates in a professional work on translation The Translator's Invisibility—A History of Translation written by the famous American scholar Lawrence Venuti. He indicates that the 'invisibility' is to make the translator invisible in the version, which is a kind of illusion of transparency. Such transparency requires that the translator should try her/his best to make the version fluent and easy to be understood. The fundamental aim of the term 'invisibility' used by Venuti in his book is to trace and introduce how the fluent translation strategy takes the leading position in so many translation strategies on the one hand and on the other hand, his aim is to challenge such fluent discourse to show how the translator is forced to be invisible in her/his version under the oppression of such fluency. As for the invisibility of the translator, what cultural and political factors are hidden? The identity of the translator in the long time translation practice has long been treated as the 'maid" and the translator has been long oppressed by the fluent translation strategy and exploited economically and politically; the payment and the authorship for the translator in the past are the best evidence for such oppression. While today with the promotion of the translation theories and practices opposite to the fluency, which aim to transit the linguistic and cultural differences in the source text rather than abolish them, the fluent translation strategy is being challenged and the translator is no longer silent to be an invisible person. In order to make his/her identity visible, the translator begins to fully exert their subjectivity in the translating process. Venuti also advocates a kind of translation strategy opposite to the...