simone! I am yours forever!

I'm just killed by this: article on how fucked up the translation of simone de beauvoir's book is and how come there is no other translation published? fuck the knopfs and fuck the idiot who butchered the translation.

OH. MY. GOD. it is fucked up beyond belief.

I always kind of wondered about those bits about essence and woman's nature and personalness and thought them very square and puzzling. and IT WAS ALL ABOUT SUBJECTIVITY ALL ALONG. HOLY FUCK. I DO NOT HAVE ENOUGH CAPITAL LETTERS TO EXPRESS MY OUTRAGE. I like how the knopfs thought it would be an exciting new sex manual or kinsey report and how they gave it to some retired zoology prof who barely knew french.

Toril Moi, who has made a detailed analysis of the translation, noted for example that the word ''subject'' generally refers in existentialism to a person who exercises freedom of choice, whereas Parshley understood ''subjective'' in its everyday English sense to mean ''personal'' or ''not objective.'' In his hands, Beauvoir's discussions of woman's assertion of herself as a subject become platitudes implying women are incapable of being objective.

More damning, when Parshley encountered existentialist terms for existence -- such as pour-soi, or ''being-for-itself'' -- vis-a-vis women's lives, he often rendered them as woman's ''true nature'' or feminine ''essence,'' notions that would have been anathema to Beauvoir, according to Moi.

ARRRRRRRRRRGHHHHH. Need I even bother mentioning that I'm feeling very agitated and am in tears?

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 -- Beauvoir being one of the first to declare these as legitimate subjects for study. Gone were numerous quotations from women's novels and diaries, including those of Virginia Woolf, Colette and Sophie Tolstoy, that she used to support her arguments. Little-known historical accounts of women who defied feminine stereotypes, like Renaissance noblewomen who led armies, also vanished from the English edition.

THIS IS SUCH A FUCKING TRAVESTY.

Spokesmen at Knopf and Vintage declined to comment on their decision not to authorize a new translation.

*pant pant pant* *outrage*
SOMEONE PLEASE RETRANSLATE THIS AND PUT IT UP ON THE FUCKING WEB ALREADY.
I'm emailing my translation lists before I calm down.

Comments

[Prentiss Riddle]

I'm told that Levi-Strauss once said of the English translation of The Raw and the Cooked, "That is a very interesting book. But it is not the book I wrote."