Retranslating, repackaging, and recontextualizing Simone de Beauvoir’s Le deuxième sexe in the Turkish context with an invisible feminist translator

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article analyzes the Turkish retranslation of Beauvoir’s Le deuxième sexe, translated by Gülnur Acar Savran and published by Koç University Press in 2019, with a focus on the receiving cultural context. The study aims to problematize the fact that the female translator of this ‘feminist retranslation’ is often overlooked. To examine the publisher’s motivations for retranslating this work, the paratextual elements are compared to the previous translation. The previous translation was published in three volumes, each with a different subtitle inspired by the second volume of the original text. Additionally, the use of photographs of women on the front covers and the emphasis on the scandalous nature of the text on the back covers did not promote its feminist content. The main argument is that the new translation reintroduces the source text as a feminist classic to a new readership in Türkiye, with the added benefit of the translator and publisher’s ideological and academic background, without giving due credit to the translator. My analysis on the paratextual level and the current discussion about Acar Savran's invisibility as a retranslator have led me to problematize the issue within feminist translation studies, referring to the double invisibility of women as translators.