Una revisión documental de la traducción al francés de Mala yerba: la intervención del Abate González de Mendoza

Abstract

The governments arising from the revolutionary movement of 1910 attempted to promote a national image in contrast with that of barbarous Mexico. From the Mexican legation in France, the Abate Jose Maria Gonzalez de Mendoza would contribute to this proposal (work performed in shadow, given that he did not receive any respective credit), by revising, correcting and re-elaborating the translation into French of Mala yerba, by Mariano Azuela. Finding, in the archives of Abate de Mendoza, the typescript referred to by these two persons in their correspondence, has made it possible to verify the precepts which in this particular work must be respected while transposing the language: the rapid descriptions, the back-country dialogue of the characters, the textual attachment and respect for the meanings of localisms which flood this novel, much of which prefigured the causes which would unleash the armed movement of 1910.