Katie Moore and Jill Varley

Fictions and Forces at Play: The Translation and Retranslation of Beauvoir’s The Second Sex

Feminist translation criticism has played a significant role in the rereading and rewriting of a number of early women writers. For Luise Von Flotow, a retranslation is part of an evolving engagement with texts, since the notion of a truer version providing firsthand access to the original text is purely wishful thinking. A case in point is the (re)translation of Simone de Beauvoir’s 1949 essay Le Deuxième Sexe. Both English versions have been accused of perpetrating various fictions about Beauvoir and her work. Parshley’s 1953 translation was criticized for misrepresenting Beauvoir through significant omissions and serious translation errors. Borde and Malovany-Chevallier’s 2010 translation attempted to present the “true voice of the original work, as it was written for its time, with its original intent.” Since the idea of a perfect textual equivalence is a fiction in itself, they set themselves up for failure. And so the debates continue, pointing to both the movement of cultural forces and the particular roles of agents in bringing new translations to life.

Katie Moore and Jill Varley are currently enrolled in the MA in Translation Studies at Concordia University, Montreal. Since completing her BA in Cultural Studies at McGill University, Katie has been working as a part-time proofreader and editor. As a singer-songwriter, she is also interested in music translation. Jill’s MA in English Literature from Concordia University led to her passion for literary translation. As a Regional Director at Status of Women Canada, Jill has had a longtime interest in feminist studies. For this conference, she and Katie have combined their research under the title: “Fictions and Forces at Play: The Translation and Retranslation of Beauvoir’s The Second Sex.”