May 25, 2000

HOW TO FIND ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS OF MEDIEVAL TEXTS

Individual works published in translation as books and owned by Tech can be found under their authors in the Texas Tech Library on-line catalog. You need to check different possibilities: alphabetization may be by English, Latin, and/or vernacular name forms. Geographical qualifiers can be treated in several different ways. The catalog often, but not always, offers cross references.

In the list of reference books given in the help section, both Bak and Sterns include narrative source translations. Many encyclopedia and dictionary articles written on medieval subjects will also include references to sources in English translation.

How do you determine whether a work has ever been translated into English? In the printed world there are three steps: 1) consult Clarissa P. Farrar and Austin P. Evans, Bibliography of English Translations from Medieval Sources (Columbia University Records of Civilization Sources and Studies; New York: Columbia University Press, 1946) [TTU Lib Ref]; 2) consult Mary Anne Heyward Ferguson, Bibliography of English Translations from Medieval Sources, 1943-1967 (Columbia University Records of Civilization Sources and Studies; New York: Columbia University Press, 1974) [TTU Lib Ref]; and 3) go into the stacks to where the journal Speculum is shelved, and check the rear of the January issues, where from 1971-94 has been published a fairly complete "Bibliography of Editions and Translations in Progress." Parallel to the Speculum initiative is a web page "Preliminary Bibliography of English Translations from Medieval Sources (1968-91)," posted by the Stanford University Library.

It is also possible to search by author in the annual volumes of L'Année philologique (which is known as the premier bibliography for antiquity but which actually covers material up through Bede's death in 735) and in Medioevo Latino. Both these great bibliographies list translations. However, anonymous works may be listed in these by genre or title, which can cause problems for students not confident of their French and Italian.

Throughout the scholarly world, retrospective printed bibliographies are yielding to updatable electronic bibliographies, which will allow quick searches for translations of authors and works. Some major general electronic catalogs such as World Cat can locate textual translations, even in journals. Note especially Humanities Abstracts, which TTU has in its electronic databases: from 1984 on it is solid for searching author and work materials in English language periodicals. TTU has a CD version for a decade of L'Année philologique. An electronic version of Medioevo Latino is now being launched, but is not yet available at TTU. About ten years of The International Medieval Bibliography published at Leeds is available on CD. but not at TTU.