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Radical Translations

1. Names and toponyms

Names of Agents are spelled as per the “person and organisation authorities” on Data BnF

When Agents are known mainly by a pseudonym (e.g. Gracchus Babeuf), the pseudonym features as their name in the database, and not their Christian name. A number of pseudonymous and anonymous Agents could not be identified. We have numbered anonymous authors to distinguish them from one another (e.g. Anonymous 1, Anonymous 2). Nevertheless, we cannot exclude that the same anonymous Agent might be the author of more than one Resource. Numbers do not indicate a series but were assigned simply according to the order in which entries were created. 

We have noted variants of the same Agent name, such as alternative spellings or the use of initials in this format: “G.G. & J. Robinson (George Robinson)”. Most instances relate to long standing publishing houses which change their name over time, as in the example given where the London bookseller and publisher George Robinson is presented as G.G. & J. Robinson in some imprints. 

All place names that can be identified have been modernized and recorded using the spelling and coordinates provided by the GeoNames dataset.  

2. Titles

As was common in eighteenth-century publishing, many of our Resources bear long summary titles, often featuring genre indications and other explanatory labels. We have opted to retain extended titles, in particular when they contain information regarding translation (e.g. “traduit de l’anglois”), or the implied public. Ellipses are signalled with [...] and capitalization has been limited to proper names and titles. 

Untitled resources (e.g. newspaper articles) were given a short, descriptive placeholder title by us. 

Paratext records bear the same title as the translation they relate to, except when there are several and/or have separate titles.

3. Calendars 

The translation of Republican dates follows the standard concordance with the Gregorian calendar. 

Gregorian dates have been expressed: Year-Month-Day (e.g. 1792-05-21) 

French Republican dates have been rendered: “1 vendémiaire year 5”. 

Some Italian Republics instituted their own short-lived calendars: “anno primo della repubblica cisalplina” [“year 1 of the Cisalpine Republic”]. Radical publishers sometimes adopted the French calendar: “floreale anno 6” [“floreal year 6”]; or created their own “year one”, not based on any formally recognized calendar: “anno primo della libertà ligure” [“the first year of Liguria’s freedom”]. For all of these alternative radical dates, we have reproduced the imprint exactly as it appears in the source, followed by the corresponding Gregorian date in brackets.