Viability of Visibility of Translator: Looking back and beyond Venuti

Abstract

In translation and cultural studies, the issue of (in) visibility of translator has taken its firm grounds especially after the publication of Venuti’s (1995) The Invisibility of Translator and its subsequent row of arguments and counter-arguments for and against the theoretical perspective as given in the book. The current research paper is an attempt to have an overview of Venuti’s and his critics’ arguments and add to the existing discussion of (in) visibility of translator, foreignization, and domestication of translation and projection and preservation of source culture during the act of translation by resisting the linguistic and cultural hegemony of English. This paper has, broadly, three main divisions of ideas: a firstly brief overview of Venuti’s arguments; secondly, a brief overview of Venuti’s most recent critics’ arguments like Pym, Tymoczko, Baker, Cronin, and Shamma; and thirdly the researchers own arguments about the issue based on the detailed analysis of previous literature. Conducting a close reading, as a popular method of analysis in qualitative research methodology, of the literature related to the issue of visibility of translator, the researcher has tried to suggest that the act of translation, during the voluntary act of foreignization, adds a concocted essence to the real spirit of the literary piece of work which neither remains beneficial for the assertion of the individuality of the source culture nor it helps very much in the resistance of the dominating language and culture. At the cost of aesthetic pleasure, the foreignization method also entails the sacrifice of literary meanings and effects.