Venuti between visibility and scandals: affiliation, contributions and criticism

Abstract

In Translation Studies, a name with international projection is that of Lawrence Venuti, an author who gained notoriety after the publication of The translator’s invisibility: a history of Translation (1995). Since the publication of this work, Venuti has shed light on the problem of the translator’s invisibility, which can be understood as an erasure not only of the translator’s activity but also of the marks of the translation process in texts in order to make the reader to have a false impression of reading “the original” and not “an original”. In the field of Literature, Venuti's postulates are frequently referenced in commented translation projects, in the analysis of translated texts, or discussions about the authorship of translated texts. In this article, we adopt a chronological perspective to discuss the construction of Venuti's theory in Translation Studies. With this purpose, we first approach Venuti’s theoretical affiliations and the relationship of his postulates with those of the philosopher Friedrich Schleiermacher (2010 [1813]); then, we discuss two of his main works and their contributions to Translation Studies; and, finally, we discuss the author's critical fortune within the discipline by presenting the criticisms made to Venuti by the authors of some of the central handbooks of Translation Studies.