Sloppy seconds
In addition to misconstruing words and phrases, the American edition deleted nearly 15 percent of the original French text (about 145 pages), seriously weakening the sections dealing with women’s literature and history…
Every once in a while, there’s a mild stir in the intellectual community, as someone else notices how appalling the sole existing English translation of Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex is.
The latest provides few examples of the bloopers that the book contains, but a funny account of the source of the trouble:
When Blanche Knopf, wife of the publisher Alfred A. Knopf and an editor in her own right, bought the book on a trip to France, she was under the impression that it was ‘’a modern-day sex manual’’ akin to the Kinsey report, Deirdre Bair writes in her biography ‘’Simone de Beauvoir’’ (1990).
Alfred Knopf, who thought the book ‘’capable of making a very wide appeal indeed’’ among ‘’young ladies in places like Smith,’’ sought out Howard Madison Parshley, a retired professor of zoology who had written a book on human reproduction and regularly reviewed books on sex for The New York Herald Tribune, to translate Beauvoir’s book. Parshley knew French only from his years as a student at Boston Latin School and Harvard, and had no training in philosophy—certainly not in the new movement known as existentialism, of which Beauvoir was an adherent.
The work is hardly alone in having suffered this fate but, particularly given the book’s place in the scholarly canon, Knopf/Vantage’s refusal to commission a new translation reeks of bad faith (no pun intended).
And despite my personal misgivings about the woman, I do believe that Sartre took a great deal of credit for her ideas.
So perhaps as penance for all the nasty things I’ve ever said about the Beaver I should offer up a new translation, and make it available on line.
(Willing collaborators would make the task more alluring, not to mention feasible. I suppose I should also find out whether it would be legal.)
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Comment
- Yes, please! I will not offer up the sad remnants of my highschool Canadian French, but I would love to see a better translation of the full text of The Second Sex. It is aggravating that an influential book would be left in such poor translation.
— schmutzie Aug 23, 8:28am # - That’s rather interesting.
I also learned recently that Patrick O’Brian (of Master and Commander fame) translated many of Beauvoir’s works.
If a new translation does appear I think what I would be most interested in seeing is what happens to anglophone feminists who lean heavily on Beauvoir (I currently study under a feminist professor who can’t speak/read French, but heavily promotes the Second Sex).
— August Aug 23, 12:49pm # - Gail and other Beaver-Haters,
I’d do almost anything for you. So, I could do the English copy-editing and proofreading, if you need it and if you’ll let me.
Who cares if it’s legal?
Festina Lente,
Amelia
— amelia Aug 23, 10:09pm # - oooh, this sounds very, very nice.
— ~A Aug 25, 8:38am # - Do it! Then you’ll be a staple of women’s studies courses, too, especially if you knock off a better but cheaper (PayPal?) edition. Hell, any edition translated by a woman would quickly displace Parshley’s.
Is he the same Parshley who wedged his name into the scientific names of several bug species? He’s all over this list:
http://www.inhs.uiuc.edu/~sjtaylor/Aradidae/NAmAradids.html
— eeksypeeksy Aug 26, 8:52am # - Many, many years ago, in a University of British Columbia ‘creative non-fiction’ course—ah, the things one did under the lure of easy scholarship money!—I had to endure Waiting for the third sex, one participant’s half-baked mix of potted evolution theory and gender confusion. Since we’re still waiting for the third sex, I think translating the second would be a fine way to pass the time.
— John Hudson Aug 27, 1:09am # - All right, I guess I’m going to have to dust off my copy of the thing, and set to work in my leisure time (Sex in the off hours).
EP: from what I understand, Parshley was chiefly a zoologist, so perhaps moonlighted in entemology. The combination of “wedging” and “bugs” in one sentence made for some messy mental images. Thank you.
A third sex? Aren’t we having enough of a time with the two we’ve got?
— gail Aug 27, 1:29am # - This is going to be big. I don’t speak French, but if I can help with proof reading, or something, let me know (not being familiar with the French will perhaps be an advantage).
And, Gail, surely you do other things in your leisure time. Poor Dean.
— Simon Hughes Aug 28, 2:35am # - One of the first weblogs besides robot wisdom that I ever saw, way back when – “honeyguide” – linked to an essay on gender distribution that seemed really accurate.
The premise was it’s a diamond, that we’re sort of trained to see it as a linear flow from masculine to feminine, but it really goes to two other poles as well, the gender-full and the gender-less. Some people having and exhibiting qualities of both genders and some people none. The valuizing of any of those vertices being malicious nonsense.
Obviously trying to get recognition for a third sex of equal standing is childish, but just as obviously the marginalizing of people who are born physically and/or emotionally hermaphroditic, is unnecessarily destructive.
— Lance Boyle Aug 28, 2:47pm # - No disrespect to hermaphrodites or eunuchs intended. The bizarre premise of the ‘creative non-fiction’ in question, so far as I recall, was that a superior, more peaceful, less messy, third sex would emerge as a kind of evolutionary mutation.
— John Hudson Aug 29, 5:04pm # - ”...third sex would emerge as a kind of evolutionary mutation.”
Et voila, les metrosexuels!
(S de B rolls in her grave)
— wizmo Aug 29, 11:28pm # - and while we’re at it… couldn’t we just try and translate it into German as well? there is a rather interesting translation into German around..the first part having been translated by a woman and the second part by a man (or the other way around..don’t remember, women’s studies is too long ago).. it is soooo interesting to see the different choices of words and phrasings… there is no gender-difference in language use? naaaawww..surely not…
anybody up for that?
— maike Aug 30, 3:53am # - Matter and energy are but different forms of the same thing,
all plots are but different forms of the same plot,
all experiences are but different forms of the same experience, and
both sexes are but different forms of the same sex, ergo
to suppose two or more sexes is but an exercise in redundancy.
Dans la substance, tout est meme.
La différence est seulement sous la forme.
Pensez sur lui.
Mais, vive la différence dans la forme.
— Jack Sep 6, 1:07am # - Almost entirely off-topic, but there’s a fantastic email conversation between British author Scarlett Thomas & her Russian translator in the Guardian today:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,,1300879,00.html
— Christophe Sep 11, 8:06am # - I missed something…
and now I miss reading Open Brackets.
Hope all are well.
— ~A Sep 23, 2:40pm # - Yes, the silence is eerie. Anyone home? Hope everything’s OK. The withdrawal symptoms are subsiding slightly, but no matter what anyone tells you, going cold turkey is hell. First Textism, now Open Brackets. At least Oliver and Hugo are still blogging. Maybe they have taken over…
— wizmo Sep 24, 1:52pm #
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