The Invisible Translator: Do We Still Want to Be?

 For a long time, being a “good translator” meant disappearing.

Letting the text flow so naturally in the target language that the reader wouldn’t even notice there had been a translator — just the author, as if the book had always been written in Portuguese.

But… is this invisibility really a virtue?

This idea gained strength especially in cultures like the French and Anglo-American, which have historically valued translations that domesticate the text — that is, make the foreign sound familiar, smooth, without friction.
As if translation were some kind of magic trick with no mediator, and the translator a discreet ghost working backstage.

But authors like Lawrence Venuti and Antoine Berman have been telling us for decades:
This erasure is not neutral.
It has political and symbolic consequences.
When the translator vanishes, their work is devalued — and so is the act of crossing cultures, engaging with strangeness, and creating space for friction between languages.

Translation Is an Act of Intervention

Every translation is a reading.
Every reading is an interpretation.
And every translation choice — vocabulary, rhythm, tone — leaves a mark.
Pretending those marks don’t exist is denying the very nature of our work.

Of course, no one wants to be intrusive, to rewrite the author or drop a “translator feelings” comment in the middle of a novel.
But we also don’t have to pretend we’re neutral, robotic, or “transparent.”

We are experienced readers, relentless researchers, architects of language.
We are part of the machinery behind every published work.

What About in Mystery Novels?

Translating crime fiction and psychological thrillers, this issue comes up all the time.
A slight shift in a character’s line can completely change the perception of guilt or innocence.
Choosing to preserve a regionalism, a slang term, or an ambiguity can be essential to maintaining the original’s tension.

In these moments, invisibility doesn’t help — it hurts.
Because our work demands awareness, presence, and conscious decision-making.

And you know what? I like being present.
I like knowing that each sentence the reader encounters carries a piece of my listening, my effort, my interpretation.

Even though the work isn’t mine, I want to leave a trace.
Because it’s impossible for two translators to produce the exact same version of a book.
There’s always something personal in the choices we make.

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