ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the kind of iconic script known as tlacuilolli in Nahuatl. From the translation point of view, the corpus of post-Cortesian texts written in tlacuilolli, which number over four hundred, are remarkable for the way they incorporate and adapt to local norms. The confrontation with Native American texts challenges received models of translation studies. Western translators who approach native texts are faced with questions not just of radically different language structures, but of little-known or even deliberately obscured literary traditions. Tlaloc's powers in this role are spelled out through the Twenty Signs that are disposed around his body. Paginated like European books, Mesoamerican screenfolds may additionally be opened out over part of or all their length. This enables comparisons to be made simultaneously between two or more passages of a narrative, in a fashion impossible in a spine-bound European volume. In Tlaloc's attire, three of the Twenty Signs disposed around him are replicated in much magnified form.
