The Second Sex
Many commentators have pointed out that the 1953 English translation of "The Second Sex" by H. M. Parshley, frequently reissued, is poor. A reviewer from "The New York Times" described the zoologist hired to do the translation as having "a college undergraduate’s knowledge of French." The delicate vocabulary of philosophical concepts is frequently mistranslated, and great swaths of the text have been excised. The English publication rights to the book are owned by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc and although the publishers had been made aware of the problems with the English text, they long stated that there was really no need for a new translation, even though Beauvoir herself explicitly requested one in a 1985 interview: "I would like very much for another translation of "The Second Sex" to be done, one that is much more faithful; more complete and more faithful."