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LATVIJAS UNIVERSITÂTES RAKSTI. 2004. 666. sçj.: LITERATÛRZINÂTNE, FOLKLORISTIKA,
MÂKSLA, 36.–42. lpp.
A Case of Mixed Identity: Simone de Beauvoir’s
“The Second Sex” in Estonian Translation
Identitâtes sajaukuma gadîjums: Simonas de Bovuâras
româna ”Otrais dzimums” tulkojumâ igauòu valodâ
Raili Põldsaar (Estonia)
Department of English, University of Tartu, Estonia
Ülikooli 18, 50090 Tartu, Estonia
e–mail: raili@ut.ee
Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, the first and for a long time the only significant feminist
text published in Estonian bears the heavy and thankless burden of representing feminism
to a very male–dominated society. It has undergone serious ideological changes in its Estonian
translation: there are lengthy omissions in the argumentation and supporting material. This
not only mangles Beauvoir’s arguments but may also have a lasting effect on the Estonian
perception of feminism and women’s rights.
Keywords: gender studies, feminism, ideology and translation, Estonia.
Estonia is a country that has been obsessively modernizing itself in the past ten
years in order to earn a place among the “developed” countries of the West. Thus we
have been extremely quick to adopt radical market reforms and consumer culture that
outdo those of most Western countries, to name but a few notable features. However,
Estonia has exercized remarkable selectivity in the range of influences that have been
adopted. Some features that have made an important contribution to the Western public
discourse in the past 40 years are conspicuous in their absence, for example,
multiculturalism or feminism. 1
Estonia has started to develop a feminist community, if not a grassroots women’s
movement, but the group of people interested in women’s issues remains small and
the general public has received a rather warped image of both feminists and the feminist
movements, one that is not much more sophisticated than the cartoons presented
in the mass media and film. There are serious and quite successful attempts to change
the state of affairs in mainstream media (for example, in the articles of Barbi Pilvre
in the weekly Eesti Ekspress or the mere existence of the gender studies journal
Ariadne Lõng) but there still is very little literature on women’s movements or feminism
that an Estonian could read in their native tongue. 2 In addition to academic articles
there are only three individual volumes: Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex,
published in 1997, a collection of feminist art criticism and theory, published in 2000,
and Evelyn Fox Keller’s Reflections on Gender and Science, published in 2001. 3 Only
two women have been published in the around–60–book series of Western thought,
Beauvoir and, very recently, Susan Sontag. 4 As can be seen, Beauvoir was the first
and for a long time the only significant woman thinker published in Estonian and thus
it is clear that her book does and will continue to influence the Estonian perception
of feminist thought. She bore and continues to bear the heavy and thankless burden
of representing feminism to a very male–dominated society where feminism and what
it stands for continue to be an anathema to a sizeable proportion of society. Thus it