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Raili Põldsaar. Identitâtes sajaukuma gadîjums: Simonas de Bovuâras româna ”Otrais dzimums” ..
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both is and is not that surprising that the reception of the text was relatively quiet—
it did get its share of reviews in leading cultural journals and mainstream press but
did not spark a discussion of feminism. In fact, there seemed to be more interest in
the visit that Beauvoir made to Estonia with Jean–Paul Sartre in 1964. 5
The relative silence could be read as evidence of the fact that much of what
Beauvoir was challenging has become passé in today’s world and women’s position
in society has undergone a dramatic change since the 1940s. It was a great shock,
therefore, to discover that the Estonian version of Beauvoir bore startlingly little family
resemblance to her French original or even the much–lamented English version. 6
The translator, Howard Parshley, was a zoologist with no training in philosophy and
little fondness for feminism and thus he deleted portions of the book, distorting
Beauvoir’s arguments on socialist feminism and existentialism. 7 As Sherry Simon has
stated, “just as the naked woman on the cover of one of the paperback editions of
The Second Sex misrepresents the tenor of the content, the translation of this feminist
classic seriously distorts its scholarly underpinnings.” 8 However, the damaged
text still proved to be immensely influential in the English–speaking world, even more
so than in the French. 9
The Estonian version of the book has suffered even more in the hands of translators
and editors and thus ends up misrepresenting Beauvoir’s case and, by that, also
affecting the Estonian reception of feminist thought as such, with potential dire consequences.
Ideology is inevitably present in translation. In the words of Peter Fawcett,
“throughout centuries, individuals and institutions have applied their particular beliefs
to the production of certain effects in translation.” 10 He cites a set of questions, the last
of which, “How is the material translated (what is omitted, added, altered, to control the
message?”, is of special relevance in this context. 11 If a prominent feminist text is misrepresented
in a culture, it will affect the responses to feminism as a philosophy and maybe
even women as thinkers. The following paper does not aim to prove the presence of a
grand conspiracy but just to discuss, on the basis of omissions and alterations, the
possible consequences of the “re–written” Beauvoir in the Estonian cultural space. The
two flawed editions, English and Estonian, are placed side by side to tease out ideological
differences in their stance towards the text.
The first and most marked divergence of the two works is their length—the English
translation covers 767 pages, without references and index, while the Estonian
book is only 482 pages—and that at a wider line spacing and larger font size. It should
also be stated right away that the Estonian translation mentions the fact that the text
has been presented in an abridged form only in a very fine print on the reverse side
of the title page—something that many readers would not notice. Even more disturbing
is the fact that the book lacks the translators’/editors’ commentary on the translation/editorial
choices. Omissions and changes have not been indicated inside the
text in any way. This could have been easily done with the help of either footnotes
or even more simple punctuation marks or spacing. Although feminist translation
theory calls for an active engagement with the text, misrepresentation is not what it
has in mind.
A closer reading reveals that omissions occur not only on the level of chapters
but also inside paragraphs. What more, paragraph boundaries are violated, not as an