Although there is an assertion that the text was a copy of one written in 1528 in Tlatelolco, only seven years after the fall of the Aztec Empire, James Lockhart argues that there is no evidence for this early date of composition, based on internal evidence of the text.
The priest Ángel María Garibay K. provided one translation of the manuscript into Spanish in 1956, while James Lockhart published the Nahuatl text and a scholarly translation to English in 1991 in We People Here: Nahuatl Accounts of the Conquest of Mexico.
It is also variously known as Unos Annales Históricos de la Nación Mexicana ("Some Historical Annals of the Mexican Nation"), La relación anónima de Tlatelolco, “Manuscript 22”, and the "Tlatelolco Codex" (also a true codex called thus exists).
The most important publications in Spanish are: the published one by Antigua Libreria de Robredo, Mexico 1948, introduction of Robert Barlow, translation and notes of Henrich Berlin; the most recent by Conaculta, Mexico 2002, translation of Rafael Tena, Col. Cien de México, 207pp.
Background on the text and a popular translation to English for classroom use can be found in The Broken Spears: The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico by Miguel León-Portilla and Lysander Kemp.