Reflections on the Making of a Census of Medieval Catalan Translations

This article has a twofold purpose. By providing ample illustration of the difficulties encountered in the making of a catalogue of medieval Catalan translations, we first consider different cataloguing criteria in order to discuss the suitability of the database format vis-à-vis that of a PDF document. Secondly, through the former discussion we bring forth three main questions for the study of medieval translation in general, namely: autor-ship, mediation, and transmission. The third question elicits our philological discussion of what constitutes a translation and how we may distinguish different translations or versions of a same work.