I recently finished my translation of Neal Stephenson’s The Baroque Cycle into Spanish. It would have been impossible to translate those three books without the web.

There seems to have been a long history of confusion over Astragalus in England. Thomas Johnson's 1633 revision of John Gerard's "The Herbal, or General History of Plants" contains the editorial complaint (page 1239):

"I should be glad to know which or how many of these our Authour heer affirmes to grow wilde in England; for as yet I have not heard of, nor seene any of them wilde, nor in gardens with us, except the last described [Astragaloides], which growes in some few gardens."

(Personally, I would be glad to know the current Linnaean names for the plants, but I haven't taken the time to try to identify them. I indulged myself in the 1975 Dover reprinting over a year ago, after making do with skimpy abridged editions, and mostly have just browsed, admiring the prose style and the 2705 illustrations.)

Wow, PJorge, that's quite a task! How long did it take you?

What's with this "Skania" hybrid form? "Skåne" or "Scania", take your pick.

I found the essay on translating Harry Potter (at the same site) very interesting:
http://www.swedishbookreview.com/old/2002s-gedin.html

John Cowan: Amen. Even though Swedish is only a second language to me, I refuse to call the provinces by any name but their local ones. (Latinate versions like "Scania" and "Dalecarlia" sound pretentious and outdated in my opinion. Besides, since most foreigners haven't heard of the places to begin with, what's wrong with using Swedish names for parts of Sweden?)