!Guidlines for the Translation of Social Science Texts (str. 2), Simone de Beauvoir - The Second Sex
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GUIDELINES FOR THE TRANSLATION
OF SOCIAL SCIENCE TEXTS
This book has been published with the generous support of the Ford Foundation. Special thanks
are due to Galina Rakhmanova.
Copyright ©2006 by American Council of Learned Societies, New York. The ACLS grants use of this
title free of charge for all non-proit, educational purposes. Proper citation is required; ACLS requests
that citations include: “SSTP
Guidelines
is available in multiple languages at
.”
For all other uses, contact
ISBN: 978-0-9788780-3-0
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
GUIDELINES FOR THE TRANSLATION
OF SOCIAL SCIENCE TEXTS
P R I N C I P A L I N V E S T I G A T O R S
Michael Henry Heim & Andrzej W. Tymowski
A
mericAn
c
ouncil of
l
eArned
S
ocietieS
GUIDELINES FOR THE TRANSLATION
OF SOCIAL SCIENCE TEXTS
Goals
The guidelines that follow have evolved out of the
Social Science Translation Project, an initiative
sponsored by the American Council of Learned
Societies with inancial support from the Ford
Foundation. (For a list of participants in the Social
Science Translation Project, see Appendix A.)
They are intended to promote communication in
the social sciences across language boundaries.
Translation is a complex and intellectually chal-
lenging process, and all those who commission
and edit translations need to familiarize them-
selves with it. While the catch-phrase “lost in
translation” highlights the pitfalls, dificulties, and
potential insuficiencies of the translation process,
we wish to emphasize from the outset that success-
ful communication through translation
is
possible.
Moreover, translation is a creative force: it enriches
the target language* by introducing new words and
the concepts and conventions that go with them.
(Terms followed by an asterisk are deined in the
Glossary, Appendix B.)
The guidelines treat the translation of texts
germane to the academic disciplines commonly
grouped together as social sciences (anthropology,
communications, cultural studies, economics,
gender studies, geography, international rela-
tions, law, political science, psychology, public
health, sociology, and related ields) but are also
applicable to texts generated by governmental
and non-governmental agencies, and by the press
and other media. Much in the guidelines will
likewise apply to texts in the humanities (phil-
osophy, history, art history, musicology, literary
criticism, etc.).
The guidelines are addressed primarily to those
who commission and/or edit translations, whom
we, for brevity’s sake, shall conlate and designate
as commissioning editors or simply editors.
The main goal of the guidelines is to clarify the
translation process for them, to help them embark
on the process with realistic expectations, choose
the proper translator for the job at hand, com-
municate effectively with translators throughout,
and evaluate the translations they receive; in
G u I d e L I N e S F o R T H e T R A N S L A T I o N o F S o C I A L S C I e N C e T e x T S
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other words, the guidelines will help them to
make informed decisions when contracting and
vetting translations.
Though not meant as a translation manual, the
guidelines will also be of interest to translators
because they necessarily deal with the character-
istics that distinguish the translation of social
science texts from the translation of, say, literary
or natural science texts and the techniques best
suited to deal with those characteristics. They also
provide a standard for certain technical issues (such
as citation, transliteration, technical terminology,
and the like) that are likely to surface.
Finally, the guidelines will serve the consumer
of the end product. By making clear what goes
into a translation and what the reader can expect
from it, they enable its audience to read with
greater sensitivity and comprehension.
place in Moscow in July 2004, participants met
with members of a team that produced a series of
approximately ive hundred translations into
Russian of scholarly works in the humanities and
social sciences (see Appendix C); during the
second meeting, which took place in New York in
october of the same year, they sponsored a public
forum for editors and publishers of social science
texts; during the third meeting, which took place
in Monterey (California) in March 2005, they
held a roundtable discussion with members of the
Graduate School of Translation and Interpretation
at the Monterey Institute of International Studies.
The text that emerged then went to a group of
outside readers in the ield for comments. The ver-
sion of the guidelines you have before you is thus
the result of a long process. That process, however,
need not be considered complete. The participants
welcome your comments and suggestions. Please
address them to the two principal investigators,
Michael Henry Heim (
)
and Andrzej W. Tymowski (
).
How the Guidelines Came About
Participants in the Project included translators
specializing in social science texts, university social
scientists representing a number of disciplines, and
a group of editors and journalists. The translators
provided all Project participants with translations
of eight categories of texts in the four Project lan-
guages: Chinese, english, French, and Russian.
The eight categories were meant to encompass the
range of genres and styles a social science trans-
lator might encounter: scholarship (including
theoretical texts, technical texts, and highly jar-
gonized texts), serious journalism written for an
informed audience, governmental documents,
non-governmental organization (NGo) docu-
ments, manifestos, editorials and letters to the
editor, polls, and surveys. While preparing the
translations, the translators took notes on the
problems that arose and the strategies they devised
to handle them. The participants gathered three
times in the course of the Project: the irst time to
choose the texts to be translated; the second, to
discuss the translations; the third, to compose the
guidelines. during the irst meeting, which took
Why Guidelines Are Necessary
The need for better translations of social science
literature is palpable. A case in point is the American
translation of Simone de Beauvoir’s highly inlu-
ential study
Le Deuxième Sexe
(The Second Sex),
a basic feminist text. According to a recent critique,
the english translation seriously distorts the origi-
nal (see Sarah Glazer, “Lost in Translation,”
New
York Times Book Review
, 22 August 2004, 13). The
translator, who was chosen more or less arbitrarily,
made frequent elementary errors. In his rendering
of the text, for example, women are stymied “in
spite of ” rather than “because of ” a lack of day-care
for children. More important, he lacked the most
elementary familiarity with the existentialist
philosophy that served as de Beauvoir’s point of
departure, translating
pour-soi
, “being-for-itself,” as
woman’s “true nature” or “feminine essence” and
using the word “subjective” in the colloquial sense
of “personal” instead of the existentialist sense of
“exercising freedom of choice.” As a result,
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G u I d e L I N e S F o R T H e T R A N S L A T I o N o F S o C I A L S C I e N C e T e x T S
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