The Second Sex’s English translation distorted its existentialist philosophy
Evidence
English-speaking readers never even saw most of the latter. It was cut by its first translator in 1953, the zoology professor Howard M. Parshley, largely on the urging of his publisher. Only later, reading the work, did his editor ask him to go easy with the scissors, saying, ‘I am now quite persuaded that this is one of the handful of greatest books on sex ever written.’ It was not just omissions that were the problem; Parshley rendered Beauvoir’s pour-soi (for-itself) as ‘her true nature in itself’, which precisely reverses the existentialist meaning. He turned the title of the second part, ‘L’expérience vécue’ (‘lived experience’), into ‘Woman’s Life Today’ — which, as Toril Moi has observed, makes it sound like the title of a ladies’ magazine. To make matters more confusing and further demean the book, English-language paperback editions through the 1960s and 1970s tended to feature misty-focus naked women on the cover, making it look like a work of soft porn. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 686
Categorization
- XREF: Echoes the theme of mistranslation and reader gatekeeping from The Library: A Fragile History on how intermediaries shape what readers receive. — connects to: Howard Parshley’s flawed translation obscured The Second Sex’s philosophical status — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of…, 56; Parshley’s 1953 translation reversed Beauvoir’s meaning on several core existentialist terms — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 42; The original English translation erased Beauvoir as a philosopher — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 41
- SEED: Could ground an essay on how translation choices actively suppress a book’s philosophical argument.
Broader Connections
- Howard Parshley’s flawed translation obscured The Second Sex’s philosophical status
#corroborates(0.95) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 56 - Parshley’s 1953 translation reversed Beauvoir’s meaning on several core existentialist terms
#expands(0.92) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 42 - The original English translation erased Beauvoir as a philosopher
#expands(0.90) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 41