The 1980s Chinese Translations of The Second Sex and Women’s Situation in 1980s China

The first Chinese translation of The Second Sex (Beauvoir 1949) was published in China in 1986, followed by seven more in subsequent years. This chapter examines the three 1980s Chinese translations, namely 第二性——女人 [The Second Sex—Women] (1986, reprinted from a Taiwanese translation), 女人是什么 [What is Woman] (1988), and 女性的秘密 [Female Secrets] (1988). It focuses on the manipulations in the titles which all highlight “woman” or “female,” while those of the later versions are mostly faithful representations of the source text title. It intends to answer three questions: why was the 1986 Chinese translation reprinted from a Taiwanese translation? Why did the translators of the 1980s feel the need to foreground “woman/female” in the title? What have been the effects of the translations produced in China? These questions are explored in the framework of post-translation studies (Gentzler 2017). Specifically, it investigates the pre-translation culture in the 1950s–1970s that reveals the main factors underlying the translators’ decision-making and the functions of the word “woman/female” in the titles, and the post-translation effects which intersect with women’s studies, shedding new light on translation studies and women’s studies.