scholarly journals Una escena de traducción en América Latina: “Las dos orillas” de Carlos Fuentes

Author(s):  
Ilse Logie

In his short story “The two shores” the Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes (The Orange Tree, 1993) fictionalizes language contact. In this apocryphal rewriting of the chronicle of Bernal Díaz del Castillo, The True History of the Conquest of New Spain, the author puts translation on the centre stage by focusing on the ambiguous relations between the two top interpreters of Spanish con queror Hernán Cortés: Jerónimo de Aguilar and La Malinche. Besides, translation is also the genetic source of the story since it is itself an adaptation of an existing chronicle. In Fuentes’s version, Aguilar consciously distorts Cortés ’s words in order to reveal the con queror’s true intentions and to demonstrate his solidarity with the indigenous populations, the Aztecs and the Mayas. The story can be read as a reflection on the complex loyalties of translators and on lan guage ’s colonizing potential. It reconsiders the function of translation, which is presented as performative speech act rather than as a purely reproductive form of transfer. According to Fuentes, translation is an activity that is caught in a double bind as it harbors a potential for disruption and betrayal as well as for subversion.

1953 ◽  
Vol 22 (65) ◽  
pp. 88-89
Author(s):  
A. Macc. Armstrong

The men of the Renaissance looked to classical antiquity for models not only of literary elegance but also of conduct to imitate and outrival. Even Hernán Cortés and his companions were heartened in their struggles by the examples of the classical world, as is clear from the account of one of them, Bernal Díaz del Castillo, who was not a literary man and wrote his True History of the Events of the Conquest of New Spain in protest against the conventional distortions of the professional historians.When Cortés proposed to his followers the burning of their boats, which would prevent anyone from slinking back to Cuba and secure the additional strength of the sailors but at the same time meant throwing off the authority of the Governor of Cuba, he first emphasized that his company must look for aid to God alone and then ‘drew many comparisons with the heroic deeds of the Romans’. They replied in the words of Julius Caesar when he crossed the Rubicon,1 that the die was cast (ch. 59). The comparison with antiquity was later used against Cortés by seven fainthearts who complained that not even the Romans or Alexander of Macedon or any other famous captains whom the world had known had ventured to advance with so small an army against such vast populations. Cortés admitted this, but retorted that with God's help the history books would say far more about them than about their predecessors (ch. 69). His fondness for comparisons with the Romans was parodied when he overcame the forces of Narvaéez sent after him by the Governor, for a negro jester cried out that the Romans had never done such a feat (ch. 122).


2018 ◽  
Vol 80 (159) ◽  
pp. 89
Author(s):  
Juan García Única

En este trabajo analizamos la modernidad de la Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España de Bernal Díaz del Castillo. Modernidad que no debe ser entendida en tanto reivindicación del autor como uno de los primeros novelistas de la literatura hispánica, según una conocida tesis de Carlos Fuentes, sino en tanto resultado de un peculiar modo de enunciación que privilegia la mirada literal sobre la mirada alegórica de la crónica. Para ello nos valemos del estudio comparativo de la Historia verdadera y la Historia de la conquista de México, del cronista contemporáneo de Díaz del Castillo, y capellán de Hernán Cortés, Francisco López de Gómara.


2009 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-68 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angela Ralli

This paper deals with [V V] dvandva compounds, which are frequently used in East and Southeast Asian languages but also in Greek and its dialects: Greek is in this respect uncommon among Indo-European languages. It examines the appearance of this type of compounding in Greek by tracing its development in the late Medieval period, and detects a high rate of productivity in most Modern Greek dialects. It argues that the emergence of the [V V] dvandva pattern is not due to areal pressure or to a language-contact situation, but it is induced by a language internal change. It associates this change with the rise of productivity of compounding in general, and the expansion of verbal compounds in particular. It also suggests that the change contributes to making the compound-formation patterns of the language more uniform and systematic. Claims and proposals are illustrated with data from Standard Modern Greek and its dialects. It is shown that dialectal evidence is crucial for the study of the rise and productivity of [V V] dvandva compounds, since changes are not usually portrayed in the standard language.


Allpanchis ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 44 (79) ◽  
pp. 91-111
Author(s):  
Carlos Garatea Grau

El propósito de este artículo es mostrar el complejo universo textual producido en el Perú durante el inicial contacto de lenguas y situarlo en la historia del español colonial. A partir de referencias y ejemplos se avanza sobre una compleja realidad, marcadamente heterogénea, que refleja la diversidad inherente al contacto durante los siglos XVI y XVII. Al mismo tiempo, se ofrecen testimonios sobre la importancia del discurso jurídico en el registro del español andino y se concluye enfatizando la notable capacidad verbal de Guamán Poma de Ayala. Abstract The aim of this article is to show the complex textual universe produced in Peru during the language contact and, in particular, in the history of the Spanish colonial. From references and examples when traveling over a complex reality, markedly heterogeneous, that reflects the diversity inherent in the language contact during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. At the same time, offer testimonials about the importance of legal discourse in the register of the Andean Spanish and concludes by highlighting the notable verbal capacity of Guaman Poma de Ayala.


Linguistics ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 58 (3) ◽  
pp. 745-766
Author(s):  
Elisabeth Stark ◽  
Paul Widmer

AbstractWe discuss a potential case of borrowing in this paper: Breton a- ‘of’, ‘from’ marking of (internal) verbal arguments, unique in Insular Celtic languages, and reminiscent of Gallo-Romance de/du- (and en-) arguments. Looking at potential Gallo-Romance parallels of three Middle Breton constructions analyzed in some detail (a with indefinite mass nominals in direct object position, a-marking of internal arguments under the scope of negation, a [allomorphs an(ez)-/ahan-] with personal pronouns for internal arguments, subjects (mainly of predicative constructions) and as expletive subjects of existential constructions), we demonstrate that even if there are some semantic parallels and one strong structural overlap (a and de under the scope of negation), the amount of divergences in morphology, syntax and semantics and the only partially fitting relative chronology of the different constructions do not allow to conclude with certainty that language-contact is an explanation of the Breton facts, which might have come into being also because of internal change (bound to restructuring of the pronominal system in Breton). More research is necessary to complete our knowledge of a-marking in Middle Breton and Modern Breton varieties and on the precise history of French en, in order to decide for one or the other explanation.


2003 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 42-55
Author(s):  
Nathan Schlanger

Together with the welcome insights they have brought to the matters at hand, the archaeological dialogues here engaged have certainly made me appreciate where my claims could be modified and my arguments amplified. Since I have already been taxed with a questionable insistence on setting the record straight, and with a penchant for academically coup de poing-ing my way through the archaeological establishment and its established historiography, I may as well persevere and thank the commentators for helping me grasp the following key point: what has been motivating a substantial part of my investigations, I can now better specify, is a growing unease with the well-established paradigm of ‘colonial vindication’. This is not, let me hasten to add, a reference to the genuine injustice done to those indigenous populations whose pasts have been expropriated and denigrated by the colonizing powers (i.e. Trigger's sense of ‘colonial archaeology’). Likewise, there is obviously no denying that the globalization of archaeology in the colonial and post-colonial eras has entailed considerable intellectual and institutional struggles, alongside innumerable power games, financial calculations and scientific compromises – and here Shepherd is surely right to give as example the ‘cradle of humanity’, a shifting zone whose ideological, diplomatic and economic potential Smuts had already fully sized in the 1930s (cf. Schlanger 2002b, 205–6). Rather, what I wish here to open to scrutiny is this apparently long-standing notion that South African archaeology has been systematically ‘done down’, ‘passed over’ and ‘badly used’ (Shepherd's terms) by the metropole – making it quite evident that its history, if not its ethos, should be primarily geared towards securing due recognition and redress.


PLoS ONE ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 8 (9) ◽  
pp. e73006 ◽  
Author(s):  
José Raul Sandoval ◽  
Daniela R. Lacerda ◽  
Marilza S. A. Jota ◽  
Alberto Salazar-Granara ◽  
Pedro Paulo R. Vieira ◽  
...  

2013 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 599-644 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bridget Drinka

This paper explores the complex role of language contact in the development of be and have auxiliation in the periphrastic perfects of Europe. Beginning with the influence of Ancient Greek on Latin, it traces the spread of the category across western Europe and identifies the Carolingian scribal tradition as largely responsible for extending the use of the be perfect alongside the have perfect across Charlemagne’s realm. Outside that territory, by contrast, in “peripheral” areas like Iberia, Southern Italy, and England, have came to be used as the only perfect auxiliary. Within the innovating core area, a further innovation began in Paris in the 12th century and spread to contiguous areas in France, Southern Germany, and northern Italy: the semantic shift in the perfects from anterior to preterital meaning. What can be concluded from these three successive instances of diffusion in the history of the perfect is that contact should be regarded as one of the essential “multiple sources” of innovation, and as a fundamental explanatory mechanism for language change.


2011 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
Britt M. Rusert ◽  
Charmaine D. M. Royal

Since the first phase of the formal effort to sequence the human genome, geneticists, social scientists and other scholars of race and ethnicity have warned that new genetic technologies and knowledge could have negative social effects, from biologizing racial and ethnic categories to the emergence of dangerous forms of genetic discrimination. Early on in the Human Genome Project (HGP), population geneticists like Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza enthusiastically advocated for the collection of DNA samples from global indigenous populations in order to track the history of human ancestry, migration, and languages, while social scientists like Troy Duster insisted that the new genetics was in danger of ushering in insidious practices of eugenics. The Human Genome Diversity Project's 1991 proposal to archive human genetic variation around the world quickly came under intense scrutiny by indigenous peoples and advocacy groups who worried that such measures could exploit indigenous groups as research populations and even resurrect racist taxonomies from the nineteenth century.


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