ABSTRACT
The notion of the paratext was first introduced by Gerard Genette, a French literary critic and narratologist. Translation studies has also drawn on the notion of the paratext, albeit in a slightly different way from that originally envisaged by Genette. Although Genette’s study is structured in a way that foregrounds the material productions, a careful reading of his work indicates that the paratext itself is to be defined in functional rather than material terms. The theme of paratexts as sites where the translator’s presence and intervention can become manifest was first explored by T. Hermans and has continued to be a focus of interest. Hermans shows how, in translations which “work hard to look like originals”, paratexts are one of the elements which can “puncture the illusion” of originality. Links between paratextual research and research into the sociocultural and ideological contexts of translation could be argued to be a dominant characteristic of studies involving paratexts.
