Organized by the SPP subproject Scientific Knowledge and Western European Travel Writing on Africa in Translation headed by Prof Dr Alison Martin, the exhibition presents translations of travel reports about Africa in four linguistic areas (German, French, English and Dutch) between 1600 and 1800—works that contributed to shaping knowledge about a continent that, until the late Enlightenment, Western Europeans still for the most part considered unknown, exotic terrain. 

In the Early Modern period, the exchange of knowledge by way of translations accelerated, a development in which scientific travel reports played a key role. In an age in which ever more information from fields such as botany, zoology and geology were being gathered and processed globally, these reports conveyed a better understanding of the world to their readerships.  

Travel in Africa posed a tremendous strategic and physical challenge to Western scientists. Only few returned from the continent’s interior alive. The findings they sent to Europe about its great river systems, climate and fauna were read all the more assiduously, and quickly disseminated beyond the boundaries of the language in which they had originally been recorded. 

With the aid of insights from the fields of translation studies and the history of science, the exhibition focuses on three questions: 

• What intermediary figures played a role in this context? 
• What kinds of information about Africa circulated in Western Europe by way of translations? 
• How did translations reflect competitiveness between national knowledge cultures? 

Poster

The exhibition will be open for viewing in the Landesbibliothekszentrum Rheinland-Pfalz / Pfälzische Landesbibliothek from the beginning of October to the beginning of November. The festive opening will take place m. on 8 October 2024at 7.00 p.m. Please find the invitation attached.