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184 The Translator’s Invisibilityown project or where it conflicts with the translator’s intention. Assoon as Tarchetti’s theft is known and his deletion located, Shelley’stale enacts an ideological critique of his translation which revealsthat he imported her feminist fiction into Italy with some violence,suppressing her authorship and her construction of a feministliterary tradition. The antifeminist effects of Tarchetti’s textconstitute an egregious reminder that translation, like every culturalpractice, functions under conditions that may to some extent beunacknowledged, but that nonetheless complicate and perhapscompromise the translator’s activity—even when it aims to make astrategic political intervention.For the contemporary English-language translator who seeks formsof resistance against the regime of fluent domestication, Tarchettiexemplifies a foreignizing translation practice that operates on twolevels, that of the signified as well as the signifier. His discursivestrategy deviated from the dominant realism by releasing the play ofthe signifier: he amplified the discursive registers of Shelley’s fantasticnarrative, both mimetic and marvelous, and thus forced anuncertainty over the metaphysical status of the representation (is theelixir “real” or not?), preempting the illusion of transparency. YetTarchetti’s plagiarism also produced the illusion of his authorship: heeffaced the second-order status of his translation by presenting it asthe first Gothic tale written in the Italian of the dominant realistdiscourse, establishing his identity as an oppositional writer, fixingthe meaning of his text as dissident. Like the contemporary writer offluent English-language translations, Tarchetti was invisible to hisreaders as a translator. Yet this very invisibility enabled him to conducta foreignizing translation practice in his Italian situation because hewas visible as an author.Tarchetti’s translation practices cannot be imitated todaywithout significant revision. Plagiarism, for example, is largelyexcluded by copyright laws that bind translators as well asauthors, resulting in contracts designed to insure that thetranslation is in fact a translation, and that it does not involve theunlicensed use of any copyrighted material. Here is a sampling ofstandard clauses from recent translation contracts, 5 includingthose wherein the translator is termed the “author” of thetranslation:You warrant that your work will be original and that it does notinfringe upon the copyright or violate the right of any person or