IDIHCS   22126
INSTITUTO DE INVESTIGACIONES EN HUMANIDADES Y CIENCIAS SOCIALES
Unidad Ejecutora - UE
congresos y reuniones científicas
Título:
Translation and agency. The role of interpreters in the conquest of Mexico
Autor/es:
MARÍA LAURA SPOTURNO
Lugar:
St Andrews, Escocia
Reunión:
Conferencia; Research Seminar, School of Modern Languages; 2014
Institución organizadora:
School of Modern Languages, St Andrews University
Resumen:
In the past twenty years, translation scholars have introduced into the discussion of translation the variables of ethics, ideology, agency, and more recently, resistance and activism. Examining the figure of Malinche, Captain Cortés's major interpreter, in the political and cultural scenario of the Conquest of Mexico calls for the indirect consideration of such variables. The analysis of her positioning and choices as an interpreter should attempt to reconstruct as much as possible the conflicting, if not agonistic, context in which she performed her task. This seminar sets to examine and confront the recreation, both discursive and iconic, of the figure of Malinche in a set of documents which appeared in the sixteenth century and which were meant to give testimony of some of the aspects of the Conquest of Mexico. It goes without saying that the study of Malinche's role as an interpreter cannot be done but through the documents that made a note as to her work; i.e., the chronicles, letters, and codices that inquire into this historical period. The veracity of these documents remains uncertain and one should bear in mind that as recreations of a given historical period they were also subject to the rules which typically govern the acts of translation and interpretation: commission, selection, partiality, the requirements of the context, and the pressure of political, institutional and personal agendas, among others. This seminar has two main goals. On the one hand, I wish to analyse the presentation of Malinche in Bernal Díaz del Castillo's sixteenth century chronicles, Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España, which depict her as a formidable interpreter between the Spanish Conquistadors and the Aztecs in the times of the Conquest of Mexico. On the other hand, I intend to see how the views expressed by Díaz del Castillo, Cortés's loyal soldier, contradict, support, or extend the images of Malinche registered in two pictorial manuscripts originally produced in the sixteenth century: the Florentine Codex by Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagún and the Lienzo de Tlaxcala, the work of the indigenous people. Ever since the Conquest, the figure of Malinche has been a subject of controversy. Was she a victim of the Spanish Conquistadors or the victim of her own people, a faithful interpreter or a traitor to her people?