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Invisibility 17multiple determinants and effects of English-language translation,the multiple hierarchies and exclusions in which it is implicated. Anillusionism produced by fluent translating, the translator’sinvisibility at once enacts and masks an insidious domestication offoreign texts, rewriting them in the transparent discourse thatprevails in English and that selects precisely those foreign textsamenable to fluent translating. Insofar as the effect of transparencyeffaces the work of translation, it contributes to the culturalmarginality and economic exploitation that English-languagetranslators have long suffered, their status as seldom recognized,poorly paid writers whose work nonetheless remains indispensablebecause of the global domination of Anglo-American culture, ofEnglish. Behind the translator’s invisibility is a trade imbalance thatunderwrites this domination, but also decreases the cultural capitalof foreign values in English by limiting the number of foreign textstranslated and submitting them to domesticating revision. Thetranslator’s invisibility is symptomatic of a complacency in Anglo-American relations with cultural others, a complacency that can bedescribed—without too much exaggeration—as imperialistic abroadand xenophobic at home.The concept of the translator’s “invisibility” is already a culturalcritique, a diagnosis that opposes the situation it represents. It ispartly a representation from below, from the standpoint of thecontemporary English-language translator, although one who hasbeen driven to question the conditions of his work because ofvarious developments, cultural and social, foreign and domestic.The motive of this book is to make the translator more visible so asto resist and change the conditions under which translation istheorized and practiced today, especially in English-speakingcountries. Hence, the first step will be to present a theoretical basisfrom which translations can be read as translations, as texts in theirown right, permitting transparency to be demystified, seen as onediscursive effect among others.IITranslation is a process by which the chain of signifiers thatconstitutes the source-language text is replaced by a chain ofsignifiers in the target language which the translator provides on thestrength of an interpretation. Because meaning is an effect ofrelations and differences among signifiers along a potentially