Putting Together the History of Translation in Spain: Creating an Historical Encyclopaedic Dictionary
Translation: Kristin Addis
Abstract
This work, which is intended to be an extensive encyclopaedic dictionary, includes both translators and foreign authors arranged in alphabetical order. Although most of the entries are names of people, there are also general entries on the major national literatures (Italian literature and Polish literature, for example), entries on both translation from Catalan, Galician and Basque into Spanish and translation (from any language, including Spanish) into Catalan, Galician and Basque, and entries on non-literary issues. The preparation of the volume involved tremendous planning and organization since the 850 entries that comprise it were written by 400 writers coordinated by an advisory committee of recognized specialists, who were charged with establishing the list of entries, contacting the most renowned writers to prepare them, and supervising their work. Assigning a specific amount of space to each field according to its relative importance was a particularly delicate operation, as was assigning a specific amount of space to each entry, following the same criterion. With respect to entries on foreign writers, one of the most important factors was that the dimension of their presence in the Dictionary — indeed, the very legitimacy of their inclusion in it — had to be measured not by their significance within their own literary context or in a global canon, but by their influence or impact on the reader.
