The incorporation of indigenous loanwords into spanish and english translations of a text by a 16th-century german traveller

Abstract

This essay is based on a description of indigenous words in the work of the German chronicler Ulrich Schmidel (1510-1579), one of the few German-language accounts of the conquest that refers to an early period of colonialism. First, we will compile an inventory of the indigenous words found in the selected text and investigate what kind of strategies and procedures are used, in order to then carry out a comparative case study on how these lexical indigenisms are introduced into the English and Spanish translations of the original German text. We will present the similarities or differences that can be found in the texts researched, and if possible we will make a case for the criteria used for the chosen terms, in other words, whether there is any notable trend when incorporating the loanwords into the chronicles, and whether they aid a better understanding of the process of contact between languages and cultures.