This is a courageous work, part of an even more courageous project to survey the history of translation single-namedly through a series of "Skizzen" or "sketches", [ p. 150 ]apparently without pretence to completeness, linearity or a balanced approach. Lesser spirits might have awaited teamwork or sought a more rounded first-hand grasp of actual translation situations. Yet that's not what counts here: Vermeer's history is formed by a constantly questioning mind meandering to and from secondary sources, with at least as much attention on the historian as on the past.

Reference

Copeland, Rita

1991 Rhetoric, Hermeneutics and Translation in the Middle Ages: Academic Traditions and Vernacular Texts. Cambridge, New York, Port Chester, Melbourne, Sydney: Cambridge University Press.