Translators are the shadow heroes of literature,
the often forgotten instruments that make it possible
for different cultures to talk to one another…
Paul Auster
In 1992, Lawrence Venuti proposed, in the wake of Friedrich Schleiermacher and Walter Benjamin, a view of translation that "emerges as an active reconstitution of the foreign text mediated by the irreducible linguistic, discursive, and ideological differences of the target-language culture" (1992: 10). This "translation hermeneutic" lays bare the notion of agency, which, while akin to all translatory activity, is conventionally silenced in order not to disturb the illusion of the translator's transparency. Traditionally translators are denied bodies — and voices, and (copy)rights — and histories, so that one of the major cultural deceptions remains unshattered: that of the absolute equivalence between translated texts and their "originals". And an originality that probably derives from the human yearning to be unique.
In this paper, I shall look into a handful of 20th-century texts and their purported translations, in order to showcase that, contrary to popular perception, every act of translation is, must needs be, an authored inscription in the text. I would like to argue that, while this renders the texts different, it does not amount to either betrayal or counterfeit. It is rather the expression of its utter humanity.
