Discourse and text level

Visibility change

Alter how perceptible the author or the translator is in the text. Also called Change in translator visibility or authorial presence shift.

Reference/All techniques

Optional Text Chesterman (1997, Pr8)

What it is

A visibility change alters who is perceptible in the text. On one side stands the author, whose presence can be strengthened or dissolved: a first-person voice becomes an impersonal construction, or an impersonal report acquires an identifiable speaker. On the other stands the translator, who can step forward through a bracketed comment, a footnote, a gloss marked as such or a preface, or withdraw entirely so that the target reads as though no mediation took place.

Chesterman lists it as Pr8. The category is defined by presence rather than by content, and that distinction is what keeps it usable. Explicitation, notes and glosses, and information change all concern what the reader is told. Pr8 concerns whether the reader can tell that someone is telling them. The same sentence of background can be woven into the running text, leaving no trace of its origin, or set in brackets and attributed to the translator. The information is identical and the visibility is not.

Venuti's argument about the translator's invisibility is the context in which the category is usually read: the dominant English-language publishing norm rewards a fluent target text that conceals its own status as a translation, with consequences for how translators are credited and read. Chesterman's Pr8 is narrower and neutral, naming the operation without prescribing which end of the scale is right. Franco Aixelá's pairing of extratextual gloss, which stands outside the text, with intratextual gloss, woven in so as not to disturb the reader, is the same scale applied to a single item.

When it applies

  • The source item cannot be rendered without comment, and the comment must be identifiable as the translator's rather than the author's.
  • Certification or evidential use requires that every editorial hand in the document be visible.
  • The source uses an authorial first person the target genre does not sustain, or the reverse.
  • Features that cannot be reproduced, such as an illegible stamp or a handwritten insertion, have to be recorded as observations rather than smoothed away.

Examples

DE>EN

  • Source: Er wurde zum Beamten auf Probe ernannt.
  • Target: He was appointed a Beamter auf Probe [translator's note: a civil servant serving a probationary period before tenure].
  • Comment: The alternative, "he was appointed a probationary civil servant", conveys as much and leaves the translator invisible. The bracketed note tells the reader that a term is being handled rather than simply rendered. Both are defensible, and the choice between them is a visibility decision rather than a terminological one.

TR>EN

  • Source: A round official stamp, partly illegible, over the signature block.
  • Target: [Round stamp: Ministry of ... , remainder illegible]
  • Comment: The translator appears as an observer reporting what is on the page. This is standard in certified work and would be intrusive in a literary translation, where the convention runs the other way.

NL>EN

  • Source: Wij menen dat deze uitleg onjuist is.
  • Target: This interpretation is incorrect.
  • Comment: Visibility change on the author's side. The claim stood as the view of an identified party and now stands as an assertion by the text. The register is barely touched, which is what separates this from Pr4: the loss is a person, not a level of formality.

Watch out for

Both directions carry risk. Removing the translator produces a text that reads as an original and conceals every decision taken in it. Adding the translator interrupts the reader and, at length, supplies an interpretation the source did not authorize.

Certified and sworn translation deliberately inverts the literary default. The translator is named, the certificate is attached, notes are marked as the translator's, and features of the original are described rather than reproduced. The reason is not scholarly modesty: the document is offered as evidence of another document, so every intervention has to be attributable.

  • Keep the translator's voice out of the running text. A note that is not visually distinct will be read as part of the source.
  • Notes carry content, so a note is frequently also an information change. Both labels apply, and both tests have to be passed.
  • Where house convention forbids notes, raise the problem with the commissioner rather than folding the comment invisibly into the text.

References

  • Chesterman, A. (1997). Memes of Translation: The Spread of Ideas in Translation Theory. Benjamins Translation Library 22. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, Ch. 4. Revised edition (2016), Benjamins Translation Library 123, Ch. 4.
  • Venuti, L. (1995). The Translator's Invisibility: A History of Translation. London: Routledge.
  • Franco Aixelá, J. (1996). "Culture-Specific Items in Translation." In R. Álvarez & M. C.-Á. Vidal (eds), Translation, Power, Subversion. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, pp. 52–78, at 61–64.

Expectations this technique adjusts to

For the entries below the expectation sets a direction and not an endpoint. This technique makes the adjustment, and the entry says what the evidence for the direction is and what that evidence does not establish.

Editorial marks and brackets

Related entries

Notes and glosses Cultural filtering Information change

Translation that can be checked

Every Translyta delivery comes with a quality report and a terminology report, so the decisions described here are visible to your reviser instead of buried in the text.

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