THE VISIBILITY/INVISIBILITY OF TRANSLATION Roxana-Cristina Petcu Abstract: The present paper will examine the concept of ‘visibility / invisibility’ of the translator as proposed by Venuti (1995), while concentrating on he cultural differences, on the interface between the source culture and the target one as applied to a text selected from The Economist. 1. Venuti’s concept of visibility/invisibility Venuti (1995) used the term invisibility to describe the translator’s situation and activity in contemporary Anglo-American culture. In his opinion, invisibility is typically produces by (i) the way translators tend to translate fluently, to produce an idiomatic and readable target text, thus creating an illusion of transparency, and (ii) the way the translated texts are typically read in the target culture. Venuti maintains that a translated text (poetry, fiction, non-fiction) is judged acceptable when it reads fluently, when there are no linguistic or stylistic peculiarities and this makes the text transparent. Such a translated text gives the appearance that it reflects the foreign writer’s personality or intention or the essential \meaning of the foreign text, namely the appearance that the translation is not a translation, but the original. As Venuti says, such a view illustrates the idea that translation is a derivative, of secondary quality and importance, an act which should be concealed, as the author is of paramount importance, not the translator. Visibility/invisibility are discussed together with two translating strategies – domestication and foreignization. Domesticating means translating in a transparent, fluent, invisible style in order to minimize the foreignness of the TT, in other words “moving the author towards the reader” as Schleiermacher put it. Domesticating also means adhering to the literary formats of the target language by carefully selecting the texts that are likely to lend themselves to such a translating strategy. Foreignization means that the foreign text which has been selected for translation entails developing a translation method along lines which are generally excluded by the cultural values in the target language. In Schleiermacher’s view that means leaving the writer alone as much as possible and moving the reader towards the writer. Foreignizing is thus a non-fluent or estranging translation style which makes the presence of the translator visible by highlighting the foreign identity of the source text, while protecting it against the ideological dominance of the target culture. Venuti insisted on foreignizing or minoritizing, as he also calls it and listed a number of elements which are considered to be distinctive of foreignization: (1) a. close adherence to the ST structure and syntax; b. the use of calques; c. the use of archaic structures; d. the juxtaposition of archaisms and modern colloquial structures; e. spelling (when translating into a language where spelling is a problem). Nevertheless, foreignization also involves some domestication because it translates a ST into a foreign language, for a foreign culture and depends on the dominant-culture values to become visible when the translation departs from them. The major problem that Venuti retains in relation to domestication and foreignization is how much a translation assimilates a