Revisiting Malinche: A Study of Her Role as an Interpreter

Abstract

In the past 20 years, translation scholars have introduced into the discussion of translation the variables of ethics, ideology, agency, and more recently, resistance and activism.¹ 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 chapter sets out to examine and confront the re-creation, 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 re-creations 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.

I wrote this chapter while I was a Visiting Fellow at the School of Modern Languages at St. Andrews University during February and March 2012.