This project is funded by the German Research Foundation and aims to provide an online bibliography of translations of nonfictional texts mainly from the early modern period, i.e. the collection of German translations of non-literary texts published between 1450 and 1850.
Apart from developing a technical infrastructure our main task concerns the collection of data: we will compile bibliographical information on translations from English and Dutch into German. Even though belles-lettres will be excluded, the texts will cover a wide range of subject matters, from natural sciences, medicine and technology via historical documents and travel reports to theological essays. In addition, we will transfer data from two existing bibliographies of German translations in the early modern period (Romance-German “Saarbrücker Übersetzungsbibliographie”/“Saarbrücken Translation Bibliography” and Latin-German “Saarbrücker Übersetzungsbibliographie – Latein”/“Saarbrücken Translation Bibliography – Latin”), which were also funded by the DFG.
In the end, we will provide a comprehensive bibliography of translations of nonfictional texts from the early modern period, which will cover Latin, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, English and Dutch as source and intermediary languages and which can serve as a basis for research in many different fields. Moreover, we will grant interested researchers access to our internal user interface to enable them to create their own specialised bibliographies.
On the whole, we consider our project to be a contribution to the field of Digital Humanities: on the one hand, a typical subject matter of the Arts and Humanities will be made accessible online and free of charge while, at the same time, interested researchers can use our IT infrastructure to collaboratively expand the overall database.