The Impact of the New Translation of The Second Sex: Rediscovering Beauvoir

Abstract

...The new translation was published in 2009 in the United Kingdom and was made available one year later in the United States. By now, readers have had the time to reacquaint themselves with the work and have had the time to assess the new translation. The one important thing about it is that it is the first complete translation. Nothing has been left out of this one. This means that readers familiar with the previous translation have discovered entire and sometimes lengthy passages that they did not know about. If a new edition of the work in English had done just that, it would already be a good thing. But the translators have also aimed at fixing the problems of Parshley’s translation. In their “Translators’ Note,” Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier indicate that they have “translated Le deuxieme sexe as it was written, unabridged and unsimplified, maintaining Beauvoir’s philosophical language.” They also say that they “were keenly aware of the need to put the philosopher back into her text. To transpose her philosophical style and voice into English was the most crucial task we faced.” In order to do this, and lacking the philosophical training themselves, they secured the collaboration of a good number of Beauvoir scholars to look at their translation and offer advice, suggestions, and corrections. As they explain, they sometimes received contradictory advice and had to make decisions, entirely their own...