Translations of Nahua Culture : The Imprints os Sahagún in the Contemporary Apprehension of Pre-Columbian Nahua "Gods" (teteo)
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| Year of publication | 2014 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
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| Description | I track the effect of Bernardino de Sahagún´s (the 16th century Spanish scholar of Nahua (Aztec) culture) work on contemporary scholarship on Nahua religion, especially the translation of the term teotl as “god”. Through the history of translations of the academic term "god" in the Mesoamerica context by anthropologists from Sahagún to contemporary authorities such as Leon-Portilla and López Austin I show what we have to be aware of in dealing with translating other cultures in order to understand them better. I show five different cases where the translations of historical sources to modern languages are complicated or even wrong. The results have great impact on typology of mesoamerican gods and also on typology of nahua society. |