Translating the Canarian Malinche: creation and dissemination of discursive images through hidden translation practices

Abstract

ABSTRACT The present paper can be located at the interface of translation studies, imagology and philological analysis of the sources of a literary text. We analyse a travel book by the German author Käthe Burchard entitled Unter kanarischem Himmel [Under the Canary Sky] (1909), with the aim of recovering and giving visibility to a text that has been ignored by the specialised bibliography on the history of the conquest of the Canary Islands. Furthermore, we aim to investigate the relationships that can be established between Burchard’s work and oral and written sources that were not mentioned by the German author. Through a contrastive study of these sources, we show how this relationship is not merely a case of intertextuality, but a more than probable covert translation. Finally, by analysing the work of a woman, Burchard, who writes about a female figure, the Canarian indigenous Iballa, often compared to the controversial figure of Hernán Cortés’s interpreter, La Malinche, we reflect on the role of translation as a discursive practice in the creation, consolidation and dissemination of certain images, identities (of women, of oppressed groups and hegemonic cultures) and gender discourses in given cultures.