The complex question of visibility and its counterpart, invisibility, has troubled the study and practice of translation for a long time. According to Kate Briggs, Thomas Mann’s English translator Helen Lowe-Porter described her own task as that of an “an unknown instrument: a tool to be used, a service provider, engaged in undressing and carefully redressing the literary work of art for the purposes of a new market … Like a lady’s maid” (Briggs 2018: 36). This fantasy of invisibility, whereby the voice of the sanctified author would be expected to pass through a translational “glasspane” (Kratz & Shapiro 1986) into a new language without the reader becoming aware that the text has been transformed through linguistic, cultural and stylistic shifts, is a phenomenon that Venuti already rose against in 1998. Venuti reminds us that if translators must adopt strategies of visibility, it is precisely because translation is “stigmatized as a form of writing, discouraged by copyright law, depreciated by the academy, exploited by publishers and corporations, governments and religious organisations” (Venuti 1998: 1). These strategies of resistance aim to counter the homogenising and hegemonic project of the West, which has only grown more productivist in the past 25 years with the advent of machine translation.

The conference Gender in the Spotlight: (In)Visibility in Translation will take place on 22– 23 October 2026 at the Maison de la Recherche of the Sorbonne Nouvelle (4, rue des Irlandais 75005 Paris, Salle Athéna) and aims to welcome a wide range of presentations and speakers. We accept 20-minute research papers (in English or French), as well as less traditional forms of contributions such as practitioner testimonies, performative readings, roundtables, workshops, etc. Abstracts (300 words) and short bios should be sent before 1 March 2026 to colloquegenretraduction@gmail.com, in English or in French.