Translation, Annotation and Knowledge-Making: Leopold von Buch's Travels through Norway and Lapland (1813)

Abstract

This paper sheds new light on the relationship between translation and annotation by adding the theoretical coordinate of expertise to the discussion about the ways in which translators contribute to the making of knowledge. It takes as its case study the German geologist Leopold von Buch's account of his scientific travels through Scandinavia, the Reise durch Norwegen und Lappland (Berlin: Nauck, 1810), which appeared in English three years later as the Travels through Norway and Lapland during the Years 1806, 1807 and 1808 (London: Colburn, 1813). It was translated by the Scottish journalist John Black, who added a handful of his own annotations, while a weightier footnote apparatus was appended by Robert Jameson, Professor of Natural History at the University of Edinburgh. The paratextual material was not, however, meant merely to aid comprehension. Black's additions helped to vaunt his ‘practical’ expertise as a linguist and translator, while Jameson's additions repeatedly stressed his own ‘subject’ expertise as a specialist on the geology of Scotland and an ardent devotee of the German geologist Abraham Werner. These two sets of footnotes highlighted the tensions between transnational scientific knowledge-making and national, regional and individual agendas in nineteenth-century translation and annotation practice.