ABSTRACT
Over the past 20 years or so, translation studies scholars have addressed retranslation from many different perspectives, particularly the question of what motivates people to produce retranslations. Despite all of these studies, the question of how publishers market retranslations has received relatively little attention, especially in regard to the images used. This chapter examines the eight English translations of Mariano Azuela’s Los de abajo to determine how publishers have employed paratextual materials to market their retranslations. The first English translation appeared in 1929, and the novel has been translated into English a total of eight times. Curiously, five of those translations were published during a period of only 12 years, between 2002 and 2014, making this novel an especially rich source for a study of how retranslations are packaged. The chapter provides a reception and translation history of Los de abajo, showing that, unlike the first English translation of Los de abajo, the seven retranslations frame the novel as world literature, thereby reducing the text’s cultural otherness.
