Rehabilitating Howard M. Parshley: A Socio-Historical Study of the English Translation of Beauvoir's Le deuxième sexe, with Latour and Bourdieu

Abstract

This study documents the problematic translator-publisher relationship in the case of the English translation of Simone de Beauvoir’s Le deuxième sexe. The socio-historical investigation of the case study demonstrates that the 1953 translation was complicated by several factors: the translator’s lack of philosophical knowledge, the editor’s demands to cut and simplify the text, the publisher’s intention to emphasize the book’s scientific cachet, and Beauvoir’s lack of cooperation. The investigation focuses on two aspects: the translator’s subservience and the involvement of multiple actors.

Primarily concerned with the interaction between the translator and other actors, this study seeks answers that require investigation into historical documents and the work of other scholars critical of The Second Sex. In this enquiry, more than one hundred letters between the translator, H. M. Parshley, and the publisher, Knopf, are thoroughly analyzed. The study combines Bruno Latour’s and Pierre Bourdieu’s sociological concepts in order to provide a more detailed and encompassing examination within the context of Translation Studies. The letter correspondence is the primary evidence on which the study’s conclusions are based.