Did Indigenous translators intentionally mistranslate to disrupt colonization? Two WashU scholars explore this question and the crucial role of language in history.
Could Christopher Columbus's shipwreck have been caused by an intentional miscommunication? Shortly after the explorer arrived on a small island in what’s now the Bahamas and claimed it for Spain, he enslaved seven Indigenous Taíno people to serve as his translators. But how accurate were their translations? Scholar Anna Brickhouse proposes that the Native translators may have deliberately misled Columbus, playing a role in the shipwreck that resulted in his first settlement at La Navidad, in her 2015 book “The Unsettlement of America: Translation, Interpretation, and the Story of Don Luis de Velasco.” Brickhouse coined the term “motivated mistranslation” to describe this example and explain how Indigenous people used language to misdirect European colonizers.
Flora Cassen, an associate professor of Jewish, Islamic, and Middle Eastern studies and of history, and Stephanie Kirk, a professor of Spanish, comparative literature, and women, gender, and sexuality studies, built on Brickhouse’s work to both expand and complicate our understanding of early modern translators.
In a special issue of Colonial Latin American Review (CLAR) published last month, co-editors Kirk and Cassen brought together case studies that highlighted translation as a fundamentally political act — one that can surface marginalized voices not only within conventional colonial contexts but also in places where colonial power is less visible.
In the issue, Cassen and Kirk used “motivated mistranslation” to refer to intentional mistranslations that arise from specific agendas. “Mistranslations often generate new meanings, alter power dynamics, and enable cultural negotiations in ways that straightforward models cannot fully explain,” Cassen said.
Cassen and Kirk connected on the topic while attending the annual conference of the Renaissance Society of America in Puerto Rico. “I presented my work in progress at a roundtable on interdisciplinary translation work in early colonial Latin American studies,” Cassen said. “Stephanie and I realized we were both dealing in translation from that same time period.”
The editor of CLAR, who was also at the conference, invited them to collaborate on an issue, which launched a rigorous, year-and-a-half-long editing process. “We’ve always known that language is a tool of empire,” Kirk said. “In compiling the issue, we thought about how translation or mistranslation can also foil it.”
One of the most exciting aspects of the issue is the diversity of sources, according to Cassen and Kirk. The project united scholars from various disciplines — including Latin American colonial studies, Jewish history, and art history — with contributors ranging from graduate students to seasoned experts. The articles also feature a global perspective, drawing from case studies in the Hispanic Caribbean, Peru, Brazil, Europe, and South Asia.
Cassen and Kirk each contributed an article to the collection. Cassen analyzed Joseph ha-Kohen’s Hebrew translation of Gómara’s book on the New World, revealing subtle critiques of Spanish conquest and colonialism embedded in the text by ha-Kohen, a Jewish historian who faced persecution under Spanish rule. Kirk examined the writings of Fray Ramón Pané, a lay brother who accompanied Columbus to Hispaniola, present-day Haiti, and the Dominican Republic. While Pané documented Taíno myths and religious practices, Kirk speculates on the strong possibility that confusions and mistranslations in the text were intentional as Indigenous peoples sought to obscure their traditions from Spanish colonizers and evangelizers.
Cassen and Kirk see the theory of motivated mistranslation as a valuable lens to examine how colonized or oppressed communities might have used language as a means of resistance against and negotiation with imperial power. But it’s also about reclaiming Indigenous voices, often missing from historical narratives, and recognizing them as active agents rather than passive victims or tools of colonizers. “When studying early colonized societies and enslaved people, how can we locate an archive and understand their subjectivity?” Kirk asked. “This approach can be one way to recover these voices.”
Header photo credit: Suzy Hazelwood, Pexels
