TRADUCIENDO LOS CANTARES MEXICANOS: UN PROCESO DE CRÍTICA LITERARIA TRANSCULTURAL

In this essay I propose translation as a medium of a transcultural literary criticism based on the traductologie practice into Brazilian Portuguese of 24 chants from the Cantares mexicanos, a colonial manuscript in Classical Nahuatl preserved in the Biblioteca Nacional de México. Translation constitutes, in addition to a profound way of reading and interpreting a text, a linguistic operation that investigates the construction procedures of a language-culture. Thus, it allowed me to elaborate a discourse on transculturality or nepantilism identified in the mentioned corpus of the songbook, and consequently a discourse on the translation act once the transculturality of the text, paradoxically, provided me with a translation project that would hypothetically reverse the modus operandi exercised in New Spain through the chants themselves. For this, I will present some examples of chants (Nahuatl- Portuguese) that demonstrate the scope of translation in the production of both discourses.