A Succint overview of poetry translation in Mexican cultural journalism (1947-1970)

Abstract

The years between the post-war and the end of the sixties (1947 to 1970), in the midst of the cultural Latin-American Cold War, were particularly fruitful in the development of cultural journalism in Mexico. Alongside this process, there was a boom in poetry translations concentrated in the 1960s. In this article, we offer a first overview of this growth from a quantitative analysis, linked to various editorial conjunctures. On the basis of this data analysis, we study the "translation policies" and "cultural geographies", as Beatriz Sarlo (1992) puts it, of three cultural supplements and magazines crucial to the period (Revista de la Universidad de México, La Cultura en México and El Corno Emplumado). We focus on certain biographical intercultural facets of the most important poet-translators and other intermediaries, as Anthony Pym advises, in order to reconstruct a comprehensive episode in the history of translation in Mexico.