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Part of
A World Atlas of Translation
Edited by Yves Gambier and Ubaldo Stecconi
[Benjamins Translation Library 145] 2019
► pp. 419–442

Chapter 20
Translation in Central America and Mexico

Colonial history has provided Central America and Mexico with a deceiving linguistic homogeneity, under which a diversity of indigenous languages has resisted and survived. Rather than limited to the relationship between a source and a target text, in this report, translation practices are mapped against the background of wider discourses used in independence struggles, language policies, and literary movements. Specifically, translation is analyzed in three sub-contexts: (a) translation in the shaping of political concepts used in independence documents; (b) implicit and explicit translation practices resulting from language policies, and (c) translation as a common thread in the ‘multi-lettered’ republics.

Keywords: independence movements, history, interpreting, nationalism, linguistic diversity, language policies, literature, translation,
Article outline
  • 1.Translation and “the languages of independence”
  • 2.Translation and the languages of law
  • 3.Translation and the multi-lettered republics
  • Notes
  • References
  • Appendix
Published online: 5 February 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/btl.145.20cas
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