Brief Notes on the Portrayal of the Character Malinche in the English Translation of the First Latin American Historical Novel Xicoténcatl (1826)

Briefs notes about the translation of the anonymous novel Xicoténcatl (1826), by Guillermo I. Castillo-Feliú, from Spanish to English, are analyzed in this article. The translation was published in 1999 by the University of Texas Press. This novel is considered the earliest Latin American Historical Novel and the founding reference of the clash between the Latin American literature and the European canon as the seed of the Hispanic American New Historical Novel. Moreover, the book shows the first portrayal of the character doña Marina, La Malinche, in Literature. The comparative analysis of this representation, in the original and in the English version, is the aim of this paper. The study runs under the perspective of the translation theory according to Álvarez & Vidal (1996), Rodrigues (1999), Bassnett (2003), Wyler (2003), and Arrojo (2007).