[Digital Books & Periodicals] – [Digital Catalogs] – [Online Dictionaries and Translators] – [Dictionaries, Encyclopedia, and Lexicons] – [Translators’ Sites]
Below are the internet resources discussed or mentioned in Steve Naragon, “Internet Resources for Translating Kant” (2018) [pdf]. That essay briefly considers the following kinds of resources:
(1) the source text (early and critical editions) [→Digital Texts],
(2) previous translations, along with reviews and discussions of those translations [→Digital Catalogs], and
(3) dictionaries relevant to 18th century German, and lexicons and glossaries specific to Kant’s texts [→Digital Dictionaries and Lexicons].
The focus is on translation, but translating Kant also involves understanding the philosophical world in which the text was written, and that involves some basic historical research. Thus, most of these links extend beyond the relatively narrow confines of simple translation issues.
eng(lish), dut(ch), ger(man), dan(ish), nor(wegian), swe(dish), fre(nch), ita(lian), cat(alan), spa(nish), por(tuguese), bas(que), lat(in), rom(anian), rus(sian), pol(ish), ukr(ainian), lit(huanian), latv(ian), est(onian), fin(nish), hun(garian), cze(ch), sl(o)v(ak), bul(garian), geo(rgian), slo(venian), cro(atian), ser(bian), gre(ek), heb(rew), ara(bic), tur(kish), arm(enian), per(sian), uzb(ek), vie(tnamese), chi(nese), jap(anese), kor(ean), ...
A complete list of Kant’s published writings is available on the present website, as well as a growing bibliography of Kant translations, listed by individual work and arranged chronologically by the publication date (first of the Kant text and then of the translation). Thirty-nine languages are represented so far, and each entry is color-coded and tagged with an abbreviation of the language to facilitate searching.
This bibliography aims to include the first edition of each translation, as well as significant revisions and cross-referencing these in a note following the entries. When reviews of the translation have been found, they are collected in their own list as well as indicated with the translation reviewed.
Most translations are published separately as articles or as stand-alone books, but many appear in small collections of translated writings of Kant or in more comprehensive “collected works of Kant in translation,” and these are grouped separately, with separate entries for each item in these collections included in the main list of translations.
Many helpful discussions of translation issues can be found in the published reviews of translations, of which there is also a working list.
Several other bibliographies are also being compiled alongside that of the translations, namely: Bibliographies of … bibliographies of translations, … reviews of translations, … books and articles on translating Kant, … articles on specific Kant translation projects, … books and articles on Kant studies, or the reception of Kant, in a particular language or country.
The links in the section immediately below concern the Academy edition of Kant’s gesammelte Schriften, for which there is a detailed overview on the present website.
Kant’s gesammelte Schriften
Das Bonner Kant-Korpus [http://www.korpora.org/Kant/] includes a searchable online version of vols. 1-23 of the Academy edition of Kant’s gesammelte Schriften (i.e., everything but the lecture notes) that follows page and line breaks of the published version. [Caution! While this is an excellent resource, the transcription has not been proofread; you should always check against the printed Academy edition.][The Bonner Kant-Korpus website was down for a few years, beginning some time in 2022. It now appears to be open again and the links (on this page) to old versions preserved in the Internet Archive have been removed (November 2024).]
• Academy Edition, vols. 1-23.
• a useful search engine of vols. 1-23.
• Complete list of Kant’s printed correspondence (with links to the letters).
• An online and linked version of the 1969 Personenindex to Kant’s writings.
The site also includes online versions of various other texts, including five textbooks used by Kant:
• Achenwall’s Juris Naturalis (1763).
• Baumgarten’s Metaphysica (1757) and Initia Philosophiae Practicae (1760).
• Eberhard’s Vorbereitung zur natürlichen Theologie (1781).
• Meier’s Auszug aus der Vernunftlehre (1752).
BBAW Online Editions
The Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften (BBAW) currently offers four online editions of Kant texts, the first two of which offer improved versions of texts otherwise available as part of the Bonner Kant-Korpus (above), while the latter two involve student notes from Kant’s lectures (division four of the Academy edition).
• Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Tugendlehre: Eine Synopse der Auflagen 1797 und 1803 [website].
A PDF available for download indicates all the variations between the 1797 and 1803 editions of the Tugendlehre. Prepared by Maja Schepelmann and Dieter Schönecker.
• Opus Postumum [website].
Although not yet complete, the present online version (January 2019) offers diplomatic transcriptions of the text from fascicles (Convoluten) II-IX (I and X-XIII are still unavailable). The website offers facsimiles of the original documents, and metadata that links the new transcription with the corresponding text as printed in the Academy edition (volumes 21 and 22). Separate from the website linking transcriptions with facsimiles, one also has available a complete set of facsimiles (grouped by the thirteen fascicles) as well as a list of the facsimiles arranged chronologically. Prepared by Jacqueline Karl and Eckart Förster.
• Vorlesungen über Physische Geographie [website].
This website includes digital transcriptions of the many sets of student notes from Kant’s physical geography lectures: Holstein-Beck (published in AA 26.1), Herder, Hesse, Kaehler (plus Werner, and B-Rink [as published at AA 9: 156-273]), Messina (plus Fehlhauer, Busolt, and Wolter), Dönhoff (plus Volckmann), anon-Bergk, Dohna, Philippi, Friedländer, Powalski, Barth, Pillau, and A-Rink [as published at AA 9: 283-436]), supporting documentation of the various manuscripts, an overview of the notes, along with relevant background information on Kant’s source material ([here] and [here]), a comparative overview of Kant’s lectures and some of his source material, Kant’s students and fellow faculty, and much more. Prepared by Werner Stark.
• The Herder Notes from Immanuel Kant’s Lectures [website] [most recent version].
This website currently (September 2019) includes a new transcription of Herder’s notes from Kant’s lectures on metaphysics, ethics, physical geography, and logic, as well as transcriptions of Herder’s notes on mathematics and physics, and related passages from the three student notebooks that he was using at the time. Included in the website are corresponding images of the manuscripts transcribed, explanatory and textual notes, and introductory materials. Prepared by Steve Naragon.
The following links help locate early editions of Kant’s writings and related texts from the 18th century (along with, of course, about 9 billion other things)
Biblioteca Digital Hispánica: The digital collection of the Biblioteca Nacional de España has 218 thousand items available online.
DDB (Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek): This is a national portal to access digitized versions of cultural artifacts: books, images, sculptures, music, films, scores. The materials presented have all been curated by the member institutions (over 4000 and growing). Its fully developed version went online in 2014. Search results occur in a common window; clicking on a hit will open a page with basic data on the item, and the opportunity, for instance, to click-through to the appropriate page of the instutition holding the item.
DDZ (Deutsche Digitale Zeitschriftenarchiv): This is a database to which academic institutions may subscribe, but many older titles are available without working through a subscribing institution. It currently (2023) lists a little over 1000 journal titles.
Digital Archive of 18th Century German Texts: Compiled by The Kant Research Group at The University of Western Ontario, this is a nicely formatted collection of links connected to digital texts in GoogleBooks and elsewhere. Several related projects are also to be found here, and these are equally well-formatted: Kant’s Books (compiling links to digital texts of books listed in the Warda 1922 bibliography or that we otherwise have good reason to believe that Kant owned or had read) and Women Intellectuals of Eighteenth-Century Germany.
DDZ (Dresden Digitalisierungs Zentrum): The digital collection of the Sächsische Landesbibliothek – Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Dresden (SLUB), with over 100,000 titles and 1.8 million graphic media available for download
DTA (Deutschen Textarchivs): Intended as the “basis for a reference corpus of the New High German language” – an initiative of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences – the DTA has a growing body of scanned, annotated, and downloadable texts dating from the 17th through the 19th centuries (3848 texts, as of this writing).
e|rara: The platform for digitized rare books from Swiss libraries. Over 70 thousand titles currently available (2019) of rare books and prints from the 15th to the 20th century, with “full-text searching” available for texts published after 1800. The browsing platform is especially well designed, and available in German, English, French, and Italian.
Gallica: The digital library of the Bibliothèque nationale de France (with holdings from over 300 partner libraries) and online since 1997, Gallica currently has nearly five million documents available (manuscripts, maps, musical scores, and other print media, images, video, sound files). Materials can be viewed online or downloaded.
GoogleBooks: The world’s largest collection of digitized books, by a wide margin (25 million titles back in 2015). It has been online, in some form, since 2004. Books free of copyright protection may be downloaded; others have a "Preview" or "Snippet View", where limited word searches within the text are still possible. [Google Advanced Book Search]
HathiTrust: Founded in 2008 by a group of North American universities, now with 140 institutional members, the majority in North America. Over 60 of these members have contributed data to the collection, resulting in a total of almost 17 million items, one-half of which are book titles.
The interface to the manuscripts allows for easy online use of the texts. Individual pages may be downloaded as PDF files; downloading entire volumes requires the individual to hold an account through a subscribing institution. The majority of holdings are in the English language, although 400 languages are represented. [Advanced Catalog Search]
Internet Archive: A non-profit library of digitized books, movies, software, music, and websites. Online since 1996, with an original goal of archiving what was then a rather new invention – “the internet” and its ephemera. It currently archives 279 billion web pages, but now also includes books and texts (11 million), audio recordings (4 million) videos (3 million), images (1 million), and software programs (100,000) – all free for downloading.
MDZ (Münchener Digitalisierungs Zentrum): The digital library of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek (BSB), with over 900,000 titles available for download. This database is also accessed through the ZVDD and the DDB.
SLUB (Dresden Digitalisierungs Zentrum): See DDZ.
WDL (World Digital Library): A project of the U.S. Library of Congress, in collaboration with a long list of institutions around the world, representing 193 countries and 145 languages. The collection (as of 2019) incldues prints/photographs (9,491), newspapers (3,561), books (2,195), manuscripts (1,695), journals (1,067), maps (1,059), and a handful of sound recordings and motion pictures.
ZVDD (Zentrales Verzeichnis Digitalisierter Drucke): The portal for all digitized German publications, coordinated by the AG Sammlung Deutscher Drucke [see] and the Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Göttingen [see]. The number of available titles (as of November 29, 2018) is 1,671,744. Volumes can be found by title, author, publisher, place of publication, publication date (or a range of dates). The texts may be read in a DFG-Viewer or downloaded.
From the book trade, for a physical copy
AbeBooks (US): Begun in 1995, this clearing-house for used books was bought by Amazon in 2008, and has complementary sites for other markets/languages: .uk, .it, .de, .fr, IberLibro.com (Spanish language), and ZBAB (Zentrales Verzeichnis antiquarischer Bücher, for German rare books).
German (and other) Periodicals
Gelehrte Journale und Zeitungen der Aufklärung: A project of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences. This cross-links with digital collections. There appear to be, as of August 2021, 316 different titles available. If it’s not here, you may not find it at all.
Journals of the German Enlightenment: This is one of a number of collections that make up the Retrospektive Digitalisierungwissenschaftlicher Rezensionsorgane und Literaturzeitschriften des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts aus dem deutschen Sprachraum website, sponsored by the Universität-Bielefeld Bibliothek, the Göttingen Academy of Sciences, and the Georg Olms Verlag. This collection of journals includes:
• Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek, edited by F. Nicolai (Berlin / Stettin, 1765-94).
• Berlinische Monatsschrift, edited by J. E. Biester and F. Gedike (Berlin, 1783-1811).
• Briefe, die Neueste Litteratur betreffend, edited by G. E. Lessing, M. Mendelssohn, and F. Nicolai (Berlin / Stettin, 1759-66).
• Hamburgisches Magazin, edited by A. G. Kaestner and J. A. Unzer (Hamburg, 1747-1763).
• Der Philosoph für die Welt, edited by J. J. Engel (Leipzig, 1775-1777).
• Philosophische Bibliothek, edited by Johann Georg Heinrich Feder and Christoph Meiners, 4 volumes (Göttingen, 1788-1791).
• Der Teutsche Merkur, edited by C. M. Wieland (Weimar, 1773-89).
digiPress: The periodical portal of the Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek, with digital holdings of 1056 periodical titles (as of December 2018). It appears as though digiPress is not digitizing any titles already available in the Journals of the German Enlightenment collection above. One especially important journal for Kant studies that digiPress has made available is the Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung. A calendar interface allows the user to quickly move through different issues.
• Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung, edited by Christian Gottfried Schütz [bio] and Gottlieb Hufeland [bio] (Jena, 1785-1803; Halle, 1804-1849). Daily except Sunday.
• Göttingische Zeitungen von gelehrten Sachen (1732-52) / Göttingische Anzeigen von gelehrten Sachen (1753-1801) / Göttingische gelehrte Anzeigen (1802-1922), edited by Albrecht von Haller, etc. (Göttingen, 1739-).
DigiZeitschriften, das deutsche digitale zeitschriftenarchiv: “A service for scientific work, with subscription to core journals of German research for students and scientists.”
Kant-Studien – full-view digital copies [v1 (1897) to v33 (1928)] available through the HathiTrust.
Monumenta Germaniae Historia: Grundlage Forschung Mittelalter has a small but useful collection of digitalized periodicals.
• Altpreussische Monatsschrift: vol. 1 (1864) – vol. 59 (1922).
Neue Bibliothek der schönen Wissenschaften und der freyen Künste (Leipzig 1765-83). Digital copies [v1 (1765) to v29 (1783)] available through the SUB – Göttinger Digitalisierungszentrum.
UrMEL Journals: The Thüringer Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Jena (ThULB) offers digital access to a collection of 1539 periodicals. The body of texts can be searched directly, and the periodical titles can be browsed alphabetically and filtered by type (Addressbücher, Kalendarian, Paramentsschriften, Zeitschriften, Zeitungen) and subject matter. As a sample, here is their access page to the Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung.
Wochentliche Königsbergische Frag- und Anzeigungs-Nachrichten: issues from 1752, 1753, 1754, courtesy of the Wielkopolska Library.
[Links for checking the existence and availability of books, in particular any previous translations of a text.]
BNE: The Biblioteca Nacional de España is the national repository library of Spain with a catalog of 26 million items.
BnF: The Bibliothéque nationale de France is the national repository library of France. Total records: over 15 million items.
COPAC: The Consortium of Online Public Access Catalogues combines the catalogs of over 100 major UK and Irish libraries, and includes the holdings of the British Library. Total records: 40 million, representing 452 languages (2018).
DNB: The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek maintains a complete catalog of all German and German-language publications after 1913, including translations of these publications. Total records: 34.2 million (2018).
GVK: The Gemeinsamer Verbundkatalog brings together the records of over 100 libraries to allow a search across 76 million distinct titles. Total records: 221.6 million (2024).
Index Translationum: This database has been overseen by UNESCO since 1946, having been founded in 1932 by the League of Nations. The online database includes translations from UNESCO member states published between 1979 and 2009; earlier works are recorded in print editions of the Index Translationum. (As of March 2019, the website appears to be under construction, with many pages available only in archive format.)
KVK: The Karlsruher Virtueller Katalog was first developed in 1996. This search engine brings together the catalogs of research libraries in German-speaking lands offering a record base of over 600 million books, but the search interface also allows the user to select from dozens of catalog systems world-wide, including WorldCat, and even the major catalogs from the book trade like abebooks, Amazon, and ZVAB (Zentrales Verzeichnis antiquarischer Bücher).
LoC: The Library of Congress is the national repository library of the United States. Total records: over 17 million.
PORBASE: The Base Nacional de Dados Bibliográficos (PORBASE) is the online union catalog for Portugal. Managed by the Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal (BNP), it collects together the holdings of over 170 Portuguese libraries.
SBN: The OPAC SBN is the online public access catalog (OPAC) of the Italian Union Catalog (Catalogo del Servizio Bibliotecario Nazionale). Total records: over 17 million.
TEL: The European Library is (or was) the “portal to the 48 national libraries of Europe.” This platform was frozen at the end of 2016 and no further updates have been made, and perhaps that is why there has always been a very slow connection to the server; the catalog-base and the search interface are quite useful, however, and almost worth the wait. Its records can presumably still be searched through the Europeana portal, but I’ve yet to discover how this is done. Total records: over 175 million.
WorldCat: This “world catalog” is the largest of all the online book-title databases. Administered by the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) and with 72,000 participating libraries. Total records: over 2 billion.
ZDB: The Zeitschriften Datenbank, or German Union Catalogue of Serials catalogs, according to its website, nearly 17 million holdings from 3700 German and Austrian libraries. This includes 1.9 million title records, 282 thousand monograph series, 63 thousand newspapers, and 214 thousand e-journals. Administered by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek and the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz.
Online Dictionaries:
… Bi-Lingual
LEO: Leo is a popular multilingual dictionary – translating between German and English, French, Spanish, Italian, Chnese, Russian, Portuguese, and Polish – online since 2006. The website also includes features for language training.
Linguee: Linguee is another popular multilingual dictionary, available with either English or German as the base language, and then translating between that and a variety of other languages: French, Spanish, Portguese, Italian, Russian, Dutch, Polish, Japanese. Unlike Leo, it offers translation examples from literature.
… German
DWDS: The Digitales Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache brings together the data in the Wörterbuch der deutschen Gegenwartssprache, Wolfgang Pfeifer's Etymologische Wörterbuch des Deutschen , Grimm’s Deutsches Wörteruch, and the ten-volume Duden.
DWB: The Deutsches Wörterbuch von Jacob Grimm und Wilhelm Grimm is part of the Wörterbuchnetz sponsored by the Trier Center for Digital Humanities, where one finds a number of other valuable online resources as well, including the Adelung Wörterbuch and the Goethe-Wörterbuch.
Online Translators
GoogleTranslate and DeepL: GoogleTranslate is one of Google’s many “free” products; one should perhaps assume that the parent company is making money with this service, but how this happens is not obvious, at least not to me. Thankfully there are no advertisements with either translator. DeepL, which is commercially affiliated with the Linguee suite of dictionaries, has both a free version as well as DeepL Pro available for a monthly subscription. GoogleTranslate comes to us from the Silicon Valley behemoth now known as Alphabet, while DeepL was developed in Germany; both are commercial ventures. As of 2018, DeepL can translate between English, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Italian, Polish, and Russian. GoogleTranslate supports over 100 languages, at varying levels of accuracy.
Both programs allow for translating either passages of text (that is either typed or copied into the web-browser window) or entire documents (uploaded from a file directory in GoogleTranslate or with drag-and-drop in DeepL). The output with document translation is editable with GoogleTranslate but not with DeepL (editable translations is one of the features of the “professional” DeepL paid-version). Of the two, with my limited checking of German-to-English translation, DeepL offers a more natural output.
[18th/19th Century German Dictionaries] –
[18th/19th Century German– English / French / Spanish / Italian Dictionaries]
[18th/19th Century German Encyclopedia] –
[Kant Dictionaries/Lexikons] –
[Concept Database]
18th/19th Century German Dictionaries
Bock: Johann Georg Bock, Idioticon Prussicum, oder Entwurf eines Preußischen Wörterbuches. Königsberg: Woltersdorfischen Buchhandlung, 1759. [(vii), 86 p.] [GoogleBooks: PDF]
Campe: Joachim Heinrich Campe, Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache. 5 vols. Braunschweig: Schulbuchhandlung, 1807–13. Reprint: Hildesheim, Olms, 1969-70. [GoogleBooks: v.1 (A-E) • v.2 (F-K) • v.3 (L-R) • v.4 (S-T) • v.5 (U-Z)]
Eberhard: Johann August Eberhard, Synonymisches Handwörterbuch der deutschen Sprache für all, die sich in dieser Sprache richtig ausdrucken wollen. Halle: Schimmelpfennig und Compagnie, 1802. (9th edition: Berlin 1845) [GoogleBooks: 2nd ed. (1806)]
Hennig: Georg Ernst Sigismund Hennig, Preußisches Wörterbuch. Königsberg: Dengelschen Buchhandlung, 1785. [(xiv), 340 p.] [GoogleBooks: PDF]
Müller: Wilhelm Müller, ed., Mittelhochdeutsches Wörterbuch; mit Benutzung des Nachlasses von Georg Friedrich Benecke. 3 vols. in 4. Leipzig: S. Hirzel, 1854, 1861, 1863. [GoogleBooks: v.1 (A-L)(1854) • v.2.1 (M-R)(1863) • v.2.2 (S)(1866) • v.3 (T-Z)(1861)]
18th/19th Century German-English Dictionaries
Ebers: John Ebers, The New and Complete Dictionary of the German and English Languages, composed chiefly after the German Dictionaries of Adelung and of Mr. Schwan. 3 vols. Leipzig: Brietkopf and Haertel, 1796. [GoogleBooks: v.1 (A-G) • v.2 (H-R) • v.3 (S-Z)]
Fahrenkrüger: Johann Anton Fahrenkrüger, Nathan Bailey’s Dictionary. English-German and German-English. Englisch-deutsches und deutsch-englisches Wörterbuch. Gänzlich umgearbeitet von Johann Anton Fahrenkrüger. 2 vols. 10th edition. Leipzig/Jena: Friedrich Frommann, 1801. [GoogleBooks: v.1 (Englisch-Deutsch) • v.2 (Deutsch-Englisch)]
Kant’s student and later colleague, Christian Jacob Kraus [bio] is said to have memorized Bailey’s dictionary while studying English while a student at the university (Voigt 1819, 44-45).
Flügel/Meissner: A Complete Dictionary of the English and German and German and English Languages, containing all the Words in General Use. Volume One: English and German, edited by Johann Gottfried Flügel. Volume Two: German and English, edited by Napoleon N. W. Meissner. Third edition. Leipzig: A. G. Liebeskind, 1856. [1st edition: 1830f.] [GoogleBooks: v.1 (English-German) • v.2 (German-English)]
18th/19th Century German-French Dictionaries
Flathe: Philipp Jacob Flathe, Neues Deutsch-Französisches und Französisch-Deutsches Wörterbuch. Five vols. Leipzig: Weidmann, 1798. [GoogleBooks: v.2 (German-French, A-G) • v.3 (German-French, H-O) • v.4 (German-French, P-S) …]
Mozin/Biber/Hölder: Abbé Mozin, J. Th. Biber, and M. Hölder, Neues vollständiges Wörterbuch der deutschen und französischen Sprache, nach den neuesten und besten Quellen, über Sprache, Künste und Wissenschaften. Two vols. Second edition. Stuttgart / Tübingen: J. G. Cotta, 1823, 1824. [GoogleBooks: v.1 (German-French, A-K) • v.2 (German-French, L-Z) • v.1-2 (German-French, A-Z) /•/ v.1 (1811) (German-French, A-K) • v.2 (1813) (German-French, L-Z)]
Mozin/Biber: Abbé Mozin and J. Th. Biber, Nouveau Dictionnaire Complet à l’usage des allemands et des français. Partie française. Two vols. Second edition. Stuttgart / Tübingen: J. G. Cotta, 1826, 1828. [GoogleBooks: v.1 (French-German, A-G) • v.2 (French-German, H-Z) /•/ v.1 (1811) (French-German, A-G) • v.2 (1812) (French-German, H-Z)]
Mozin/Eisenbach: Abbé Mozin and Dr. Eisenbach, Kleines, deutsch-französisches und französisch-deutsches aus dem vollständigen Taschen-Wörterbuch Mozin’s, von ihm und von Dr. Eisenbach bearbeitetes Hand-Wörterbuch. Stuttgart / Tübingen: J. G. Cotta, 1829. [GoogleBooks: German-French]
18th/19th Century German-Spanish Dictionaries
Schmid 1/2: Ernst August Schmid, Diccionario Español y Aleman / Diccionario Aleman y Español, oder Hand-Wörterbuch der Spanischen Sprache für die Deutschen. Mit einer Vorrede des Herrn Legatios-Raths Bertuch. Leipzig: Schwickert, 1795, 1805. [GoogleBooks: Spanish-German • German-Spanish]
Wagener: Johann Daniel Wagener, Neues und vollständiges Spanisch-Deutsches und Deutsch-Spanisches Wörterbuch. Four vols. Hamburg / Altona: Gottfried Vollmer, 1801. [GoogleBooks: v2: Spanish-German (G-Z) • v3-v4: German-Spanish (A-Z)]
Seckendorf: Theresius Freyherrn von Seckendorff (continued by Ch. M. Winterling, Wörterbuch der deutschen und spanischen Sprache. Hamburg: Perthes und Besser / Nürnberg: Riegel und Wießner, 1828. [GoogleBooks: 1828 edition • 1831 edition]
18th/19th Century German-Italian Dictionaries
Antonini/Lehninger: Abbate Annibale Antonini and Johann August Lehninger, Nuovo Dizzionario, Italiano-Tedesco, Tedesco-Italiano. Leipzig: Caspar Fritsch, 1763. [GoogleBooks: (Italian/German, German/Italian) (1st edition: 1763) (3rd edition: 1785)]
Castelli/Flathe: Nicoló di Castelli and Philipp Jakob Flathe, Nuovo Dizionario italiano-tedesco, e tedesco-italiano. Two vols. Leipzig: M. G. Weidmanns Erben und Reich, 1782. [GoogleBooks: (Italian-German) v1 (A-N) • v2 (O-Z)]
Flathe: Philipp Jakob Flathe, Neues Deutsch-Italienisches Wörterbuch. Two vols. Leipzig: M. G. Weidmanns Erben und Reich, 1782. [GoogleBooks: (German-Italian) v1 (A-L) • v2 (M-Z)]
Valentini: Franz Valentini, Vollständiges italienisch-deutsches und deutsch-italienisches grammatisch-praktisches Wörterbuch. Two vols. Leipzig: Johann Ambrosius Barth, 1831, 1834. [GoogleBooks: (Italian-German) v1 (A-L) • v2 (M-Z)
Valentini: Franz Valentini, Gran dizionario grammatico-pratico, tedesco-italiano, italiano-tedesco. Two vols. Leipzig: Johann Ambrosius Barth, 1832, 1836. [GoogleBooks: (German-Italian) v1 (A-L) • v2 (M-Z)]
18th/19th Century German Encylopedia
Gehler: Johann Samuel Traugott Gehler, Physikalisches Wörterbuch, oder Versuch einer Erklärung der vornehmsten Begriffe und Kunstwörter der Naturlehre, mit kurzen Nachrichten von der Geschichte der Erfindungen und Beschreibungen der Werkzeuge begleitet. 6 vols. Leipzig: Schwickertschen Verlag, 1787-1796. [Links below to GoogleBooks, when available]
v1 (1787): A – Epo (seven engravings)[x, 858 p.]
v2 (1789): Erd – Lin (six engravings)[918 p.]
v3 (1790): Liq – Sed (eight engravings)[958 p.]
v4 (1791): See – Z (six engravings)[vi, 946 p.]
v5 (1795): supplement (four engravings)[(6), 1056 p.]
v6 (1796): Indices of the entire work: I. Subject index (pp. 1-202), II. Latin technical terms (pp. 203-36), III. French technical terms (pp. 237-60), IV. Authors and artists (pp. 261-309)[309 p.]
[Gehler published a revised edition shortly after this one.]
Jablonski: Johann Theodor Jablonski, Allgemeines Lexicon der Künste und Wissenschaften. Königsberg / Leipzig: Johann Heinrich Hartung, 1748 [(4), 1456, (48) p.] [GoogleBooks: New ed. (1748)]
1st edition: 1721. Jablonski (1654-1731) was a grandson of Johann Amos Comenius, tutored the crown prince Friedrich Wilhelm von Preußen, and was named secretary of the Kurfürstlich-preußische Societät der Wissenschaften (later the Berlin-Brandenburg Akademie der Wissenschaften) in 1700, when it was formed by Leibniz.
Krünitz: Johann Georg Krünitz, Oekonomische Encyklopädie oder allgemeines System der Staats- Stadt- Haus- und Landwirthschaft. 242 vols. Berlin: Pauli, 1773-1858. [website]
Zedler: Johann Heinrich Zedler, Grosses vollständiges Universal Lexicon aller Wissenschafften und Künste. 64 vols. Leipzig, 1731-1754. [website]
Kant Dictionaries/Lexikons
… German
De Gruyter Kant-Lexikon: Marcus Willaschek, Jürgen Stolzenberg, Georg Mohr, and Stefano Bacin, eds., Kant-Lexikon. Three volumes. New York-Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2015.
Not available online (yet?), but indispensible. A one-volume student edition has also been released (De Gruyter 2017).
Eisler Lexikon: Rudolf Eisler, Kant-Lexikon Nachschlagewerk zu Kants sämtlichen Schriften, Briefen und handschriftlichem Nachlaß. Berlin: E.S. Mittler, 1930. [viii, 642 p.] Reprint: Georg Olms Verlag, 1984. Available online.
Heinicke: Samuel Heinicke, Wörterbuch zur Kritik der reinen Vernunft und zu den philosophischen Schriften von Herrn Kant. Presburg: Philip Ulrich Mahler, 1788. [xxiv, 135 p.] [GoogleBooks: PDF] [Also available online in an online reader courtesy of the Istituo per il Lessico Intellettuale Europeo e Storia delle Idea]
Considerably shorter than Schmid’s dictionary, which Heinicke more-or-less copied. Schmid publicly complained of this plagiarism in the Intelligenzblatt of the Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung (1788, No. 21, column 184). [see]
Kleines Kant-Lexikon: Larissa Berger and Elke Elisabeth Schmidt, eds., Kleines Kant-Lexikon. Paderborn: Wilhelm Fink, 2018. [292 p.]
Mellin: Georg Samuel Albert Mellin, Encyclopädisches Wörterbuch der kritischen Philosophie, oder Versuch einer fasslichen und vollständigen Erklärung der in Kants kritischen und dogmatischen Schriften enthaltenen Begriffe und Sätze; mit Nachrichten, Erläuterungen und Vergleichungen aus der Geschichte der Philosophie begleitet, und alphabetisch geordnet. 11 vols. Züllichau and Leipzig: Friedrich Frommann, 1797–1804. Reprint: Brussels, Aetas Kantiana, 1968. [Links below to GoogleBooks. NB: 6.1 and 6.2 are in a single book.]
v1.1 (1797): A posteriori – Axiomen der Anschauung [xiv, 464 p.
v1.2 (1798): Bastarderklärung – Cultur [465-880 p.]
v2.1 (1798): Dämonologie – Extension [496 p.]
v2.2 (1799): Factum – Gewissen [513-982 p.]
v3.1 (1800): Gewissheit – Immortalität [430 p.]
v3.2 (1801): Imperativ – Lernen [449-890 p.]
v4.1 (1801): Liberalität – Noumen [453 p.]
v4.2 (1802): Oberhaupt – Receptivität [454-888 p.]
v5.1 (1802): Recht – Systematische Methode [453 p.]
v5.2 (1803): Tadelsucht – Vernunftwissenschaft [455-858 p.]
v6.1 (1804): Verrückung – Zwittergrundsatz [366 p.]
v6.2 (1804): A set of seven indices: (1) all the articles across the volumes (pp. 369-91), (2) that allows the dictionary to serve as a commentary on Kant’s writings (pp. 392-459), (3) subject index (pp. 460-563), (4) Latin terms (pp. 564-82), (5) French terms (pp. 583-95), (6) authors (pp. 596-602), (7) Greek terms (pp. 603-4). [369-604 p.]
Mellin: Georg Samuel Albert Mellin, Kunstsprache der kritischen Philosophie, oder Sammlung aller Kunstwörter derselben, mit Kants eigenen Erklärungen, Beyspielen und Erläuterungen; aus allen seinen Schriften gesammelt und alphabetisch geordnet. Jena-Leipzig, Friedrich Frommann, 1798. [(2), 314, (1) p.] [GoogleBooks: PDF]
This is a quick, one-volume reference work for Kant’s technical vocabulary. Mellin notes in his preface that he hopes to do for Kant what Baumeister did for Wolff in his 1734 Philosophia definitiva, only arranged alphabetically. Mellin helpfully includes Kant’s Latin equivalents with the German terms.
Schmid: Carl Christian Erhard Schmid, Woerterbuch zum leichtern Gebrauch der Kantischen Schriften, nebst einer Abhandlung. Jena: Cröker, 1786. 2nd ed. (1788): [v], 368 p., 52 p. 4th ed. (1798): [viii], 668 p. [GoogleBooks: 2nd ed./1788 • 4th ed./1798] [The 1786 edition is also available online in an online reader courtesy of the Istituo per il Lessico Intellettuale Europeo e Storia delle Idea]
… French
Eisler Lexikon: Kant-Lexikon, 2 vols., translated and revised by Anne-Dominique Balmès and Pierre Osmo. Paris: Gallimard 1994. [xix, 1082 p.]
Verneaux I: Roger Verneaux, Le Vocabulaire de Kant, doctrines et méthodes. Paris: Aubier-Montaigne, 1967. [xviii, 203 p.]
Verneaux II: Roger Verneaux, Le Vocabulaire de Kant, les pouvoirs de l’esprit. Paris: Aubier-Montaigne, 1973. [284 p.]
… Spanish
Caimi: Mario Caimi, ed., Diccionario de la filosofía crítica kantiana. Buenos Aires: Colihue, 2017. [507 p.]
… Portuguese
Caygill: Howard Caygill, Dicionário Kant. Tradução Álvaro Cabral. Rio de Janeiro: Jorge Zahar, 2000. [xlii, 353 p.]
… English
Cambridge Kant-Lexikon: Julian Wuerth, ed. Cambridge Kant-Lexikon. New York-Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming.
Not yet available.
Caygill: Howard Caygill, A Kant Dictionary. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publ., 1995. [ix, 453 p.]
Holzhey/Mudroch: Helmut Holzhey and Vilem Mudroch, Historical Dictionary of Kant and Kantianism. Lanham, Maryland/Toronto/Oxford: The Scarecrow Press, 2005. [xv, 374 p.]
Mattey: G. J. Mattey’s Kant Lexicon. [online]
Palmquist: Stephen Palmquist’s Glossary of Kant’s Technical Terms. [online]
Thorpe: Lucas Thorpe, The Kant Dictionary. New York-London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015. [240 p.]
Concept Database
Kants naturtheoretische Begriffe: A database for tracing the explicit and implicit conceptual relations among Kant’s pre-critical writings. Developed by Wolfgang Lefèvre and Falk Wunderlich (2008). [online]
Zanata: (from their website) “Zanata is a web-based translation platform for translators, content creators and developers to manage localisation projects.”
Translator's Cafe: A useful forum for finding translation work as well as sharing tips with other translators.
PROZ: (from their website) “Online Community and Workplace for Language Professionals. Over 300,000 professional translators and translation companies.”
IATE: (from their website) “IATE (Interactive Terminology for Europe) is the EU’s terminology database. It has been used in the EU institutions and agencies since summer 2004 for the collection, dissemination and management of EU-specific terminology. The project was launched in 1999 with the aim of providing a web-based infrastructure for all EU terminology resources, enhancing the availability and standardisation of the information.”
Work on this page, and on the accompanying essay (“Internet Resources for Translating Kant”), has been partially funded by a grant from the DAAD (“Research Stays for University Academics and Scientists, 2018”).