text-indent: -9999px; revisited

Turns out, this works even better (and is more concise):

.hide-text {
    text-indent: 100%;
    white-space: nowrap;
    overflow: hidden;
}

As Zeldman put it:

• Really long strings of text will never flow into the container because they always flow away from the container.
• Performance is dramatically improved because a 9999px box is not drawn. Noticeably so in animations on the iPad 1.

(via Zeldman)