“It had no voice to it”: Sydney Pollack's film translation of Isak Dinesen's out of Africa

Through a thematic analysis, this study investigates the rhetorical implications of Sydney Pollack's translation of Isak Dinesen's autobiographical texts. Specifically, the essay argues that Pollack's film uses strategies of transference, redefinition, antithesis, and displacement to renarrate Dinesen's writings, resulting in a depoliticized romantic adventure. These strategies marginalize, or mute altogether, pivotal elements of Dinesen's texts and life, including her complex voice and unconventional beliefs regarding the role of women, of race, and of colonialism. The consequence of Pollack's translation is a film narrative that honors patriarchal norms and cinematic conventions while fundamentally misrepresenting Dinesen and her life stories.