WILL THE REAL SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR PLEASE STAND UP?

I have to confess that I haven't read too many feminist writers and I only took one Women's Studies class in college.  But I devoured Simone de Beauvoir's classic, The Second Sex, the year after I graduated from college.  At the time, I thought she was spot on at certain points but at other times I found her disappointing and jarring -- especially when she talked about "the essence" of woman and what have you.

Well, it turns out that the one-and-only English translation of The Second Sex contains a number of significant errors.  At times the English translation is exactly the opposite of what de Beauvoir intended to say-- especially when it came to "essentialist" language about women.  Ampersand at Alas, a Blog provides the details. 

As Ampersand tells us, there are a number of translators who would be willing to do a new translation but Knopf, which owns the exclusive English language rights to the book, will not permit it.  Ampersand has written a follow up post with more details and a link to a petition to request Knopf to publish a new translation.  If you would like to know what de Beauvoir really meant, do sign up!

Comments

[Alice]

I saw that when Alas posted it last week. I've only ever read Le Deuxième Sexe in French, but having recommended it to many people who would have had to read the English translation, this information was extremely disappointing to me. I wrote a post on it, but had difficulties with blogger that day and had to take it down; I'll see about putting it back up.

[The Happy Feminist]

Alice, you're so erudite. How come your French is so good?

[Alice]

ha! If only... I lived in Belgium, so French was a necessity. :)