Workshop June 2025: Translators’ Annotations

In June 2025, core network members from the Universities of Leuven, Ghent, Leiden, and Exeter, as well as researchers from our key partner, the University of Calgary, gathered in Antwerp for a two-day workshop on the topic of ‘Translators' Annotations’. The workshop began with a series of targeted presentations on case studies involving annotations related to translations from the medieval and early modern periods. A list of the titles of these presentations is provided below. Building on these case studies, the discussion then evolved into an exploration of what a potential glossary entry for ‘Annotations’ should encompass.

Hendrik Conscience Heritage Library

Throughout both days of the workshop, our discussions were enriched by the stimulating environment of the Hendrik Conscience Heritage Library and the Museum Plantin-Moretus. Curators Steven Van Impe and Kristoph Selleslach presented relevant examples of translations from the heritage institutions’ collections, contributing their book-historical, archival, and patrimonial expertise to further deepen our conversations.

Presentations

• Keith C. Sidwell (Calgary): Annotating Lucian: a Taxonomy

• Michelle Bolduc (Exeter): The Rhetoric of Rubrics

• Alisa van de Haar (Leiden): Marginal Annotations as Political Commentary: Sixteenth-Century Dutch Translators and Their Printed Notes

• Noreen Humble (Calgary): Commentarii, notae, annotationes? Explaining and Marketing 16^th-century Ancient Histories

• Eleonora Buonocore (Calgary): Glossing on Aristotle, Translating Plautus: Notes on Translation, Annotation, Marginalia and Exegetical Practices between Manuscript and Early Printed Culture in Central Italy

• Beatrijs Vanacker (Leuven): Writing Back from the Margins in 18th-century Female Translators’ footnotes

• Brecht de Groote (Ghent): Repossessing the Life of an Eminent Philosopher from the Margins

Museum Plantin-Moretus