On Translator’s Visibility And Invisibility In Literature Translation

“The Tenth Man”, one of the representative short stories of Graham Greene, circles around the life of the main character, Chavel. When in prison, he gives all his property to Janvier in exchange for his life; when released, he gradually falls in love with Therese,Janvier’s sister, and finally he fights to death with Carosse, a great liar in the fiction. This short story accords with the common theme of Greene’s fictions, that is, humanity.In order to comprehensively analyze the translation of “The Tenth Man”, the author of the thesis employs Translator’s Invisibility and Visibility, which are put forward by Lawrance Venuti in The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation. These two translation strategies are generally relevant to the status of the translator. According to Venuti, “invisibility” refers to the strategy that the translator attempts to produce a text so transparent that it does not seem to be translated; if “visibility” is taken into account, the translator should take initiative to keep what the author wants to convey so that the readers can understand foreign cultures.This report attempts to probe and analyze the characterization in the translation of“The Tenth Man” from the perspective of translator’s invisibility and visibility. It can be divided into five parts. Chapter One is an introduction of the essay, describing the background of the novel, the plot and the theme of the novel, the characteristics of literary translation and the theoretical basis. Chapter Two discusses the process of writing this report, the difficulties and their solutions. Chapter Three analyzes in detail the characterization in the translation. Chapter Four discusses the fiction’s translation through detailed examples from the perspective of translator’s invisibility and visibility. Chapter Five serves as a conclusion. According to the analysis, the author of this thesis regards that both these two strategies should be taken into consideration in translation in order to improve the quality of the translated text.