The Translator’s Invisibility The Translator’s Invisibility provides a thorough and critical examination of translation from the seventeenth century to the present day. It 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. In tracing the history of translation, Lawrence Venuti locates alternative translation theories and practices which make it possible to counter the strategy of fluency, aiming to communicate linguistic and cultural differences instead of removing them. Using texts and translations from Britain, America and Europe he elaborates the theoretical and critical means by which translation can be studied and practiced as a locus of difference, recovering and revising forgotten translations to establish an alternative tradition. Lawrence Venuti is Professor of English at Temple University, Philadelphia, and has been a professional translator for the past fifteen years. He is the editor of Rethinking Translation: Discourse, Subjectivity, Ideology. Translation Studies General editors: Susan Bassnett and André Lefevere In the same series: Translation, Rewriting, and the Manipulation of Literary Fame André Lefevere Translation, Poetics and the Stage Six French Hamlets Romy Heylen Translation/History/Culture A Sourcebook Edited by André Lefevere Translation as Social Action Russian and Bulgarian Perspectives Edited and translated by Palma Zlateva The Translator’s Invisibility A History of Translation Lawrence Venuti London and New York First published 1995 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2004. © 1995 Lawrence Venuti All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Venuti, Lawrence. The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation/Lawrence Venuti. p. cm.—(Translation studies) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Translating and interpreting—History. 2. English language— Translating—History. I. Title. II. Series: Translation studies (London, England) P306.2.V46 1995 418' .02' 09–dc20 94–6477 ISBN 0-203-36006-0 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-37262-X (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-415-11537-X (hbk) 0-415-11538-8 (pbk) Contents General editors’ preface vii Preface and acknowledgements ix 1 Invisibility 1 2 Canon 43 3 Nation 99 4 Dissidence 148 5 Margin 187 6 Simpatico 273 7 Call to action 307 Notes 314 Bibliography 324 Index 345 General editors’ preface The growth of translation studies as a separate discipline is a success story of the 1980s. The subject has developed in many parts of the world and is clearly destined to continue developing well into the twenty-first century. Translation studies brings together work in a wide variety of fields, including linguistics, literary study, history, anthropology, psychology, and economics. This series of books will reflect the breadth of work in translation studies and will enable readers to share in the exciting new developments that are taking place at the present time. Translation is, of course, a rewriting of an original text. All rewritings, whatever their intention, reflect a certain ideology and a poetics and as such manipulate literature to function in a given society in a given way. Rewriting is manipulation, undertaken in the service of power, and in its positive aspect can help in the evolution of a literature and a society. Rewritings can introduce new concepts, new genres, new devices, and the history of translation is the history also of literary innovation, of the shaping power of one culture upon another. But rewriting can also repress innovation, distort and contain, and in an age of ever increasing manipulation of all kinds, the study of the manipulative processes of literature as exemplified by translation can help us toward a greater awareness of the world in which we live. Since this series of books on translation studies is the first of its kind, it will be concerned with its own genealogy. It will publish texts from the past that illustrate its concerns in the present, and will publish texts of a more theoretical nature immediately addressing those concerns, along with case studies illustrating manipulation through rewriting in various literatures. It will be comparative in nature and will range through many literary traditions, both Western and non-Western. Through the viii General editors’ preface concepts of rewriting and manipulation, this series aims to tackle the problem of ideology, change and power in literature and society and so assert the central function of translation as a shaping force. Susan Bassnett André Lefevere Preface and acknowledgements The Translator’s Invisibility originates in my own work as a professional translator since the late 1970s. But any autobiographical elements are subsumed in what is effectively a history of English-language translation from the seventeenth century to the present. My project is to trace the origins of the situation in which every English-language translator works today, although from an opposing standpoint, with the explicit aim of locating alternatives, of changing that situation. The historical narratives presented here span centuries and national literatures, but even though based on detailed research, they are necessarily selective in articulating key moments and controversies, and frankly polemical in studying the past to question the marginal position of translation in contemporary Anglo-American culture. I imagine a diverse audience for the book, including translation theorists, literary theorists and critics, period specialists in various literatures (English-language and foreign), and reviewers of translations for periodicals, publishers, private foundations, and government endowments. Most of all, I wish to speak to translators and readers of translations, both professional and nonprofessional, focusing their attention on the ways that translations are written and read and urging them to think of new ones. A project with this sort of intention and scope will inevitably come to rely on the help of many people in different fields of literary and critical expertise. Assembling the list of those who over the past several years read, discussed, criticized, or otherwise encouraged my work is a special pleasure, making me realize, once again, how fortunate I was: Antoine Berman, Charles Bernstein, Shelly Brivic, Ann Caesar, Steve Cole, Tim Corrigan, Pellegrino D’Acierno, Guy Davenport, Deirdre David, Milo De Angelis, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, George Economou, Jonathan Galassi, Dana Gioia, Barbara Harlow, Peter Hitchcock, Susan Howe, Suzanne Jill Levine, Philip Lewis, Harry Mathews, Jeremy