Principal English Translation:
someone who is not competent, who does things backwards (see Molina)
Alonso de Molina:
aoompa. inabil, o el que haze la cosa al reues.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 6v. col. 2. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.
Attestations from sources in English:
Aoompa. Itechpa mjtoa: in amo mozcalia: in vmpa titlano, ҫan amo vmpa itztiuh: in tlein qujcujz ҫam amo ie in qujcuj = Incapable It is said of the immature. Where he is sent, there he goes not at all. What he is to undertake, he does not undertake (central Mexico, sixteenth century)
Fr. Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain; Book 6 -- Rhetoric and Moral Philosophy, No. 14, Part 7, eds. and transl. Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble (Santa Fe and Salt Lake City: School of American Research and the University of Utah, 1961), 222.
Attestations from sources in Spanish:
Aoompa. Itechpa mjtoa: in amo mozcalia: in vmpa titlano, ҫan amo vmpa itztiuh: in tlein qujcujz ҫam amo ie in qujcuj = No haze nj entiende cosa a derechas. Este refran se dize: de vnos bobos o tontos que nj entiendẽ a derechas lo que los dizen nj hazen a derechas lo que les mandan (centro de Mexico, s. XVI)
Fr. Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain; Book 6 -- Rhetoric and Moral Philosophy, No. 14, Part 7, eds. and transl. Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble (Santa Fe and Salt Lake City: School of American Research and the University of Utah, 1961), 222.