Simone De Beauvoir: The Second Sex

Abstract

This chapter is a reprint of a book review of the new translation of The Second Sex, which raises questions about its success in rendering Beauvoir’s thought into English. Siding with critical scholars like Toril Moi, Bauer argues that Borde and Malovany-Chevallier’s translation is disappointing. The translation obscures Beauvoir’s philosophical insights by too often sacrificing readability and clear renditions of Beauvoir’s reasoning to word-by-word translations of Beauvoir’s long sentences and uncommon stylistic choices. This is due to the inexperience of the translators, who, Bauer claims, had never before translated such French theoretical writing and had no experience dealing with the “conceptual and rhetorical challenges” of Le deuxiéme sexe. Overall, Bauer’s review echoes the long history of the discounting of and underappreciation of feminist work as reflected in translation practices that assume women’s interests, writing, and scholarship to be tangential to scholarly research.

Translating feminism in China

“…A twentieth-century classic and a pivotal analysis of women's oppression by men, TSS is 'a complex work of theoretical philosophy', as well as a brilliant and persuasive polemical work (Evans 1998: 1). Today it remains a foundational text in philosophy, feminism, and women's studies (Simons 1995, Lennon 2010, Mussett 2010, Bauer 2011. In this voluminous book, Beauvoir explores the historic situation of women and makes a scholarly and passionate plea for the abolition of the myth of the eternal feminine (i.e.…”

“…The longed-for new translation (by Constance Borde and Sheila Malouvany-Chevallier) came out in America at the end of 2009, but immediately received an even more severe criticism by Moi (2010), who claimed that the new translation was even worse. Later Bauer (2011) and Parker (2011) also expressed disappointment to the new translation. As it has nothing to do with the Chinese translations in question, I will not dwell on the new English translation here.…”