Translator identities: A historical, systemic and critical approach

This thesis, which involves an analysis of translators? identities, focuses ondiscourse on translators within translation approaches and theories. It is arguedthat discourses of translators and translator-theorists are first shaped byhistorical, social, cultural and ideological characteristics of their period andwhen these discourses turn into practice they shape the culture of their ownperiod. Thus this thesis aims to display what kinds of translator image andidentity have been generated within the discourses on translator in the westerntradition of translation and to reveal that translators are in fact ?agents ofchange? in their culture. As for the theoretical framework of the thesis,Lawrence Venuti?s concepts of ?invisibility? and ?visibility? have beenemployed within the framework of Polysystem Theory and Critical DiscourseAnalysis have been employed as the methodological framework. An analysis ofan extended corpus on translation approaches and theories from the ancienttimes to the 21th century will provide clues about translators? discourses withinthese approaches and theories; and the role and status of translators in societyand various cultures? approaches to translation and translators. Thus anothergoal of this thesis is to offer a new method to study the history of translators.