In the beginning I had no idea where to start and found it very difficult to find a text to translate which meant I had no clue where to begin my research for such a text either. I was absolutely certain that I wanted to focus on something that was based on Latin America, as I have great interest in this part of the world and I have liked any course that I have attended in university that deals with Latin American culture so far. I found avast amount of works by different Hispanic Authors and certain areas of historical events in which I found very interesting. However, every text I found seemed to have been previously translated into English. In the last few years I have become very interested in the “Megacities” of the world and the history behind them. I particularly enjoy learning about how these cities looked before construction came about and learning why this mass construction occurs. My love for reading and learning about such cities deepened during my year abroad where I met a few Mexican people, whom of which were always describing Mexico to me and how after the Aztec times it was taken over and all the naturality of it was destroyed. There are many awful consequences in Mexico today due to this deliberate destruction of the natural environment which I have read about quite often in online newspaper articles. It was through one of my Mexican friends that I was opened to this book. Through the process of elimination, I decided this book would be a good source as it has not been translated as of yet. I found this book fascinating in which I was also curious to find out more about this topic and believe it is culturally important to understand Mexican life and it also has a massive impact on it. This book also tends to take on a different perspective, that being from the writer who is in fact not only a biologist but also has a great understanding of Ethnoecology. I have explained this term and much more about Victor M. Toledo in the “About”section.
The main reason I chose this piece of work as my translation topic, is because I feel it is a massive area of Mexico that a lot of people are unaware of. I believe that the rest of the world needs to learn from it, otherwise it will happen in many more places throughout the world in the coming years.
