The emerging popularity of hemispheric American studies has led to an increased interest in English translations of Spanish chronicles from the colonial period. In the last 15 years, there have appeared several new translations and new editions of old translations of important colonial texts, ranging from José de Acosta’s Natural and Moral History of the Indies to Guaman Poma de Ayala’s Nueva corónica y buen gobierno. Brian Bauer and Vania Smith’s translation of Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa’s History of the Incas further contributes to this bibliography.
Sarmiento de Gamboa’s text has been available in English since 1907, when Clements Markham first translated it; in 1999 Dover published a reprint of the original 1907 edition. Bauer and Smith’s translation is a more transparent rendering of the original Spanish in that it attempts to indicate the inevitable judgment calls inherent in the translation process. In other words, it is particularly self-conscious...
