Cultural Difference and Translation in Eighteenth-Century Columbiads

Columbiads, epic poems written in a range of European languages (French, English, German) between 1753 and 1798 and dealing with the encounter between Columbus and native American peoples, address in a variety of ways the linguistic barriers it threw up. Often, interest in the languages of the indigenous peoples goes hand in hand with respect for their cultures. Whereas some authors minimize the language gap in order to promote an imperialist or missionary agenda, in others it is foregrounded as a manifestation of cultural alterity. The figure of a translator is introduced to personify the desire to venture into a linguistically and culturally different world, and its danger. One example, the Columbona of the Swiss-German author Johann Jacob Bodmer, 1753, goes so far as to depict European sailors and native Americans engaging together in the adventure of language learning in order to share each other’s knowledge and view of life.