TRANSLATOR INVISIBILITY AND ITS IMPACT ON READER AWARENESS IN WORLD LITERATURE: A QUALITATIVE STUDY OF ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS FROM URDU, PERSIAN, AND ARABIC

Abstract

World literature spreads across linguistic and national boundaries mostly through translation, the main way it finds its manner into other languages. Although central, translation is often practiced in the pretense of being transparent, which makes the translator remain unnoticed by the readers. The current paper explores the role of invisibility of a translator in creating awareness and cultural sense of the reader in world literature. The analysis of the selected literary excerpts translated into English of Urdu, Persian and Arabic text using the theoretical ideas of invisibility, domestication, and foreignization by Lawrence Venuti became the approach to the study. It deals with culture-related ideas, some symbolic images, and social stereotypes and explores the impact of translational strategy of fluency on ideological expression. Translator invisibility greatly minimizes the attentiveness of the reader to the mediation of cultures, such that the non-Western cultures are simplified and distorted to some extent. On the other hand, the foreignizing strategies and some paratextual elements increase the ethical approaches of engaging the source cultures without compromising readability. The paper arrives at the conclusion that translator visibility is the key to responsible reading and ethical circulation of world literature.