C ONDICIONES Y R EQUISITOS PARA LA D OCENCIA DE LA M ÚSICA

A particularly notorious and influential review was that of Toril Moi, which was published in the London Review of Books in February 2010. In this article, Moi shares the results from a very precise analysis she made, comparing the French and the new English version in terms of linguistic elements, and as regards the philosophical content of Le Deuxième Sexe. As was mentioned in Chapter One, Moi closely studied the first English translation and valuably informed readers of its translation inaccuracies and cuts, but she did not criticise the

translation’s style, nor Parshley’s command of the English language. However, she goes on to list the stylistic infelicities found in Borde and Malovany-Chevallier’s text and she shows how basic mistakes are made, and, more disturbingly, on a regular basis. She also denounces the

90 _{which is reminiscent of what Jonathan Rée calls ‘the translators-in-terror’ syndrome, as was discussed}

word-for-word aspect of the translation, and indicates that the core issues of that translation deal with terminology (notably terms for gender or philosophy), tenses, and syntax. Whilst she might sound harshly critical, Toril Moi provides us with detailed findings about the new

translation, which will be a basis for my own study, as will be explained in Section B of the present chapter.

But for some other reviewers, and perhaps because Moi sounds particularly severe in her article, Borde and Malovany-Chevallier’s rendering needs to be defended. After giving his readers some general notions about translation and retranslation, Carlin Romano, writing for The Chronicle of Higher Education, criticises Moi’s review without, however, giving his own supported analysis of the text. He seems to insist on deepening the schism between scholars and non-specialists (which reminds us of Anne-Solange Noble’s condescending comments on academics) by quoting Noble who states that Moi’s review is ‘vengeful’. However, he does not seem to appreciate (nor does Noble) the importance of having a precise translation for

academics drawing on de Beauvoir’s works, and teaching her texts to their students. Therefore, he merely reports that Borde and Malovany-Chevallier have been teaching in Paris for over forty years, failing to inform his readers on their actual experience or expertise in philosophy, while he gratuitously denounces the fact that Toril Moi is a Norwegian scholar91_{, implying that she is} less qualified to judge the translation, although she is a renowned Beauvoir scholar and well versed in the French language. It so happens, however, that Toril Moi is not the only one to criticise and be disappointed with the new translation, and many reviewers, either academics or otherwise, have expressed their dissatisfaction. Nancy Bauer, for one, also deplores the

literalism of the new translation and points to the many recurring mistakes:

“The problem is that we find numerous slightly off (or more than slightly off) sentences on every page of the book” (Bauer 2011)

Here Bauer emphasizes the pervasiveness of the mistakes, acknowledging that errors are a normal feature of translations, but not when they are too frequent and deal with very basic target language terms, which is reminiscent of a critique towards Helen Lowe-Porter’s English

91 _{“Leaving aside the oddity of a Norwegian academic from North Carolina upbraiding two lifelong}

Parisians on the proprieties of French usage, the fray threatens to become one of those academic

translations of Thomas Mann’s novels, in which Timothy Buck reports her numerous

mishandlings of the text and her many misunderstandings of the source text. Indeed, it seems to be the same problem, namely that a faulty translation has been accepted as the only one

existing, and is commercially successful (quoted in Hermans 1999: 1-3). However, Buck criticises Helen Lowe-Porter’s translations with sound arguments, however harsh his review might seem, just as Moi’s review was found merciless. Lawrence Venuti defended Helen Lowe- Porter by saying “[Academics] correct errors and imprecisions in conformity with scholarly standards and interpretations, excluding other possible readings of the foreign text and other possible audiences” (Venuti 1998: 33), although the issue at hand goes beyond interpretation, but rather deals with insufficient grasp of the source language (Hermans ibid.).

In addition to the above comments, Bauer particularly insists on the philosophical issues of Borde and Malovany-Chevallier’s book, and even considers that the translators’ footnotes92 are misleading, sometimes complicating the references they mean to explain:

"Mitsein can be translated as 'being with'. The French term réalité humaine (human reality) has been problematically used to translate Heidegger's Dasein." (Borde and Malovany-Chevallier loc.402)

Commenting on the above quotation, Nancy Bauer explains that Borde and Malovany- Chevallier fail to clearly show that Mitsein also relates to Heidegger’s theory, and, therefore, using the adverb ‘problematically’ is confusing, because réalité humaine is merely the set French equivalent for Dasein93, so the shift between German and French is not problematic (Bauer ibid.).

Other reviewers lament the target language literalness and the numerous mistakes, such as Emily Anne Parker, who explains in Philosophy Now that Borde and Malovany-Chevallier’s background is questionable in different ways: not only do they lack solid experience as

translators, but also, they would have to thoroughly study the whole of de Beauvoir’s oeuvre so as to grasp her views, as Le Deuxième Sexe is part of a continuum in her philosophical

evolution. That specialised knowledge would then enable translators to interpret the source text so as to best render it into English, so she sums her point up saying that Borde and Malovany-

92_{The use of footnotes in relation to conveying intertextuality will be examined in Chapter Five.}

Chevallier’sThe Second Sex ‘is most problematically not a translation of Beauvoir’ (Parker 2011).

The new English translation has also been criticised outside of academic circles, as shown in a review by Francine du Plessix-Gray for The New York Times, in which she informs her readers that the style rendered is very disappointing, and that Borde and Malovany-

Chevallier’s use of the English language is faulty, saying that “throughout, there are truly inexcusable passages in which the translators even lack a proper sense of English syntax” (Du Plessix-Gray 2010). We again notice that the pervasiveness of the errors is a main problem, because the reviewer claims that there are not just a few mistakes, but that they are recurrent in the whole translation. Francine du Plessix-Gray also condemns the ineptitude of the style, regretting that “it doesn’t begin to flow as nicely as Parshley’s”, a comment similar to the ones made by Toril Moi.

We can infer from the above remarks that the main issues found in Borde and Malovany- Chevallier’s text are needless literalism (which consequently impedes the target text’s style), recurring translation mistakes (dealing with general terms, but also specialised topics, such as gender and philosophy), and all reviewers explain that those issues stem from the translators’ choice of translation strategy, but also from their deficient background in feminist philosophy and Beauvoir studies. However, it is to be noted that one positive comment emerges from both Borde and Malovany-Chevallier’s admirers and detractors alike, namely that this new rendering is complete. It is indeed an unabridged version, which thus restores some of the examples, quotations, and explanations central to de Beauvoir’s thesis, which is a significant improvement on Parshley’s version, and, therefore, very useful to a new readership discovering de Beauvoir’s text, as well as readers rereading it, but, it does not curb the problems mentioned above94_.

The target text is very much foreignized, introducing foreign terms stemming from

French, and copying the French original syntax, in view of favouring the author, and bringing the readers towards de Beauvoir, thus following the approach advocated by Venuti. Instances of this foreignization will be examined through a close comparison of the source text and the target text, in order to assess the impact that the foreignizing strategy adopted by Borde and

94 _{It can be said, however, that the problem lies in the first translation, whose heavy deletions deviated}

Malovany-Chevallier has on de Beauvoir’s feminist philosophy. But prior to this analysis, I will present my research approach, including methodological considerations and the framework which will be used to analyze the data.

2. Thesis’s research approach