The voice of the implied author in the first Norwegian translation of Simone de Beauvoir’s Le deuxième sexe

This chapter presents the findings of a study of how the implied author’s voice in the first Norwegian translation of Simone de Beauvoir’s “Introduction” in Le deuxième sexe (1949) from 1970 differs from the implied author’s voice both in the source text and in the second Norwegian translation from 2000. The analysis shows that the way in which the reader may construct the implied author’s voice in the 1970 translation is affected by how the existentialist vocabulary is translated and by omissions and mitigation of critical comments, sarcasm, and cultural references. The textual analysis is supplemented with considerations of paratextual elements. The chapter argues that the 1970 translation portrays a “Beauvoir” that is more didactic and less severe than the one of the source text and the 2000 translation.