“The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation” provides a thorough and critical examinationof translation from the seventeenth century to the present day. It showshow fluency prevailed over other translation strategies to shape thecanon of foreign literatures in English, and it interrogates theethnocentric and imperialist cultural consequences of the domesticvalues that were simultaneously inscribed and masked in foreign textsduring this period.In tracing the history of translation, Lawrence Venuti locatesalternative translation theories and practices which make it possible tocounter the strategy of fluency, aiming to communicate linguistic andcultural differences instead of removing them. Using texts andtranslations from Britain, America and Europe he elaborates thetheoretical and critical means by which translation can be studied andpracticed as a locus of difference, recovering and revising forgottentranslations to establish an alternative tradition.Lawrence Venuti is Professor of English at Temple University,Philadelphia, and has been a professional translator for the past fifteenyears. He is the editor of “Rethinking Translation: Discourse, Subjectivity,Ideology.”