De Beni, Matteo, ed. (2016): Ciencias y traducción en el mundo hispánico. Mantova: Universitas Studiorum, 393 p.

In recent years there has been a renewed interest in the history of scientific translation, in particular the role it played in science itself and more broadly in society. These studies generally go from the Renaissance on, as evidenced by the works of Joëlle Ducos (2012) and Pascal Duris (2008), indicative of the many initiatives undertaken in France. With this collection, edited by Matteo De Beni, the Iberian Peninsula is put on the map. It should be noted that this is a companion volume to one on the related theme of the emergence of nomenclatures (De Beni (ed.) 2015). The American historian Peter Dear, quoted by one of the authors of this volume, claims that the role of Hispanic scholars to the scientific revolution, which began in 17^th century Europe, has been seriously underestimated. It is to the credit of this volume to attempt – successfully as will be shown – to rectify this situation, bringing to light evidence of scientific exchange through translation, either from the Hispanic languages or into them. The time span here is broad: from the 14^th century through the Enlightenment and the 19^th century up to the present day. Translation is also interpreted broadly to include lexicography and terminology, sometimes to the exclusion of translation proper. The publication is divided into five sections. The first, entitled scientific knowledge and heritage bibliography, deals not only with issues of conservation and access but also with the social and scientific dissemination of documents in general, not simply with translation. The first text, by Paola Calef, «Las cosas aromáticas que son para el corazón». La ricetta medica del codice dantesco di Santillana, is a good example of interpenetrating cultural worlds in Italy, Spain and France in both literature and medicine. The study focuses one of several curious additions to the manuscript of the first Spanish version of Dante’s Divine Comedy, in the form of the translation of a portion of a medical treatise by the well-known French physician Bernard de Gordon. To uncover the identity of this text, the author surveys the multiple versions, both translations and modifications, that this and comparable medical texts went through up to the 17^th century. The second chapter, by Alejandra Ulla Lorenzo, «Iberian Book Project» (1450-1650): sobre los usos del catálogo en el estudio del libro científico antiguo, is purely bibliographical in nature and outlines the project mentioned in the title, which aims to catalogue all books published in Spanish-speaking countries or in Spanish between 1472 and 1650, as well as other similar initiatives: it appears from these inventories that translations account for 13% of all scientific texts published in the 15^th and 16^th centuries, most having a Greek or Latin original. Luis Pablo Núñez, in Tradición y traducción de los textos botánicos: mapa geográfico y cronológico de las obras botánicas en Europa. El caso de la difusión y recepción del Tractado de las drogas (1578) de Cristóbal de Acosta, presents several Spanish and Portuguese books on Asian plants and documents their numerous translations into both Latin and the main Western languages. This introduction sets the stage for the analysis of Acosta’s book mentioned in the title, a richly illustrated description of 69 plants found in India. The work was translated into Latin and other modern European languages, which are examined in some detail in the form of a textual history. It transpires that the French translation provides the first attestation of some important natural history terms, such as betel, caïman, tamarin… This article also deals with the migration …