The Translation of Aesop’s Fables in Colonial Mexico

Abstract

This article offers a new interpretation of the forty-seven Aesop’s fables that were anonymously translated from Latin into classical Nahuatl in colonial Mexico. Informed by former studies that have pointed at the Nahua students and tutors of the sixteenth-century Imperial College of Tlatelolco as the most likely translators, this study elaborates on their educational environment and tries to explain how they might have learnt Latin by following the exercises that Quintilian suggested in Institutio oratoria for the paraphrase of Aesop’s fables. In addition, the article explores the hybrid nature of the Nahuatl version, acknowledging its indigenous rhetorical style, as indicated by Gordon Brotherston, and at the same time highlighting the translator(s)’ Christian manipulation of the Aesopic tradition. In fact, an overall analysis of the fables seeks to demonstrate that they must have been translated in order to function as stories or exempla for conversion purposes.