Although this polemic is chiefly targeted at universities and
publishers, it contains much of interest to any general reader
(except those of you who read everything in the original). The
scandals of the title are not primarily the errors of translators,
of whom the author is one, but the underrating of his profession
and 'the scandalous conditions under which publishing decisions and
literary evaluations are made with foreign texts'. Nearly half the
world's annual translation output is from English, but translations
account for only a few per cent of books published in English - the
cultural effects of this discrepancy are often overlooked.
Moreover, the foreign works chosen for translation tend to be ones
that reinforce existing stereotypes about the foreign culture and
do not jar domestic attitudes. Venuti also draws attention to the
'transindividual determinants' (linguistic, cultural and social
factors) that affect a translator's choice of words. Too often a
translation is praised - if it is noticed at all - for being
'transparent', when it cannot and, Venuti argues, should not be
that. (Kirkus UK)
Translation is stigmatized as a form of writing, discouraged by copyright law, depreciated by the academy, exploited by publishers and corporations, governments and religious organisations.
Lawrence Venuti exposes what he refers to as the 'scandals of translation' by looking at the relationship between translation and those bodies - corporations, governments, religious organisations, publishers - who need the work of the translator yet marginalize it when it threatens their cultural values.
Venuti illustrates his arguments with a wealth of translations from The Bible, the work of Homer, Plato and Wiggenstein, Japanese and West Arican novels, advertisements and business journalism.
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