Mapping and Translating
Spaces, Cultures and Languages
WebGis
The open-access WebGIS portal “Mapping and Translating Spaces, Cultures and Languages” is conceived as a digital research infrastructure for the visualisation, georeferencing, and spatial analysis of linguistic and cultural encounters documented in missionary and mercantile sources between 1540 and 1700.
The WebGIS has been developed within the PRIN 2022 MaT Project — “
Mapping and Translating Spaces, Cultures and Languages. Experiences from the Missions Connected to the Portuguese Empire (1540–1700)” [Ref.: 20222SY2K7 – CUP: B53D23001120006] developed in synergy at CNR ISEM and Sapienza DSEAI
Hosted on the servers of the CNR, the portal has been developed by a research team from ISEM-CNR and DSEAI Sapienza, coordinated by Angelo Cattaneo, Simone Celani, Paolo De Troia, Michela Graziosi, Giulia Maggiore, and Irene Verzì, in collaboration with Alessandro Zambetti / AZ-Web.
The platform integrates documented and spatialised cultural and linguistic contacts within a single digital environment, combining archival transcriptions, bibliographic references, cartographic data, and linguistic information.
Its first corpus includes materials drawn from the following missionary archives currently accessible in Rome:
- Archivium Romanum Societatis Iesu
- Archivio Storico di Propaganda Fide
- Archivio dell’Ordine dei Frati Minori Cappuccini
- Archivio Generale dell’Ordine Carmelitano
- Archivio Generale dell’Ordine dei Carmelitani Scalzi
- Archivio della Curia Generalizia Agostiniana
The study also draws on a systematic review of the following published source collections:
- Monumenta Missionaria Africana;
- Monumenta Xaveriana
- Monumenta Brasiliae
- Documenta Indica
- Monumenta Malucensia
- Jesuit Makasar Documents
- Sinica Franciscana
- Fonti Ricciane
Through a WebGIS infrastructure that connects a geodatabase with an online cartographic platform, MaT enables the visualisation of data on interactive maps. It allows users to archive, share, compare, and spatially analyse information on linguistic and cultural interactions extracted from missionary and mercantile sources. In doing so, the system brings together evidence that would otherwise remain dispersed across textual, archival, cartographic, and bibliographical repositories.
The dataset corresponds to the database developed within the MaT Project and is organised into four main sections:
Linguistic interactions are documented through the selective transcription, cataloguing, analysis, and georeferencing of archival excerpts that describe encounters, exchanges, and communicative practices across different languages and cultural contexts, within the framework of Portuguese expansion, mercantile networks, and the missions connected to them.
MetaLinguistic Outputs record the forms of knowledge produced through these encounters, including grammars, dictionaries, vocabularies, translations, catechisms, and other linguistic tools.
Actors of interaction include missionaries, merchants, local interlocutors, translators, interpreters, informants, intermediaries, and other agents involved in processes of linguistic and cultural mediation. The project investigates linguistic practices as products of newly constituted missionary–indigenous communities, emphasising reciprocal interactions rather than the actions of individual missionaries alone.
Chinese toponyms constitute a dedicated section for the cataloguing, identification, and georeferencing of Chinese place names as they appear in missionary, cartographic, and documentary sources.
The WebGIS makes it possible to georeference places of linguistic encounter, visualise networks of contact between missionaries and local populations, and analyse the spatial distribution of linguistic and cultural mediation. It also allows users to explore the chronological development of these phenomena through an integrated atlas and timeline.
By combining spatial and temporal dimensions, the portal enables the study of linguistic interactions not merely as isolated textual events, but as historically situated processes embedded in routes, missions, settlements, commercial circuits, and imperial infrastructures.
The superimposition and interaction of different informational layers make it possible to examine the complexity of these phenomena across space and time, offering a dynamic tool for research, teaching, and the public dissemination of knowledge.
How to Use the WebGIS
The WebGIS has been designed to enable the spatialisation of linguistic interactions documented in the manuscript and printed sources examined by the PRIN 2022 MaT Project — “Mapping and Translating Spaces, Cultures and Languages. Experiences from the Missions Connected to the Portuguese Empire (1540–1700)”. The platform integrates an interactive cartographic interface with a searchable database, offering different ways of accessing the data.
Data can be consulted through four dedicated sections: “Interactions”, “Outputs”, “Authors”, and “Chinese Toponyms”. In addition, “Linguistic Interactions”, “Grammatical and Lexical Outputs”, and “Chinese Toponyms” are also available as layers on the interactive map, allowing users to explore the same information geographically.
This dual access mode responds to a specific methodological need. Not all linguistic interactions identified in the sources can be associated with a clearly identifiable geographical location. In many cases, the toponyms mentioned in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century documents no longer exist, have changed over time, or cannot be located with certainty.
For this reason, some data are represented on the map, while others can only be consulted through the database. In both cases, all information remains searchable and queryable within the platform.
The georeferenced data have been created on the basis of information contained in the sources and are therefore subject to the interpretative limits inherent in historical documentation.
By selecting a point or polygon on the map, users can open a summary record providing an initial description of the documented linguistic interaction or linguistic outcome.
The “Linguistic Interactions” Layer
The core of the WebGIS is the “Linguistic Interactions” layer.
Each item represents a quotation extracted from the sources and documents an episode of linguistic contact observed, recorded, or described by the authors of the historical testimonies. Interactions may be displayed on the map as points or polygons, depending on the nature and precision of the available information.
To facilitate exploration, the platform offers a set of filters. Linguistic interactions can be selected according to the relevant missionary context and the lay agents involved. Each religious and lay agent is identified by a specific colour code.
Religious Agents
Within this category, users can select specific missionary contexts:
- Augustinians
- Capuchins
- Carmelites
- Discalced Carmelites
- Dominicans
- Franciscan Friars Minor
- Jesuits
- Propaganda Fide
Activating individual filters allows users to observe the geographical distribution of linguistic interactions documented in different missionary contexts and to compare their practices, strategies, and areas of diffusion.
Lay Agents
The category of lay agents includes individuals who acted as linguistic and cultural mediators outside missionary structures:
- diplomats
- interpreters
- merchants
- military figures
- navigators
- scribes
Activating individual filters allows users to observe the geographical distribution of linguistic interactions documented in different missionary contexts and to compare their practices, strategies, and areas of diffusion.
Chronological Dimension
A fundamental component of the system is the chronological filter, which allows users to select specific time intervals through a “from–to” criterion.
Temporal exploration makes it possible to follow the development of linguistic interactions between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, highlighting continuities, transformations, and moments of particular intensity in processes of contact between languages and cultures.
The map therefore does not merely display the spatial distribution of data. It also allows users to observe how interactions changed over time and in relation to different historical contexts.
Combining Filters
All filters can be used individually or in combination.
Users can therefore build personalised research paths by relating different missionary contexts, lay actors, chronologies, languages, and geographical areas. This mode of consultation makes it possible to move from focused case studies to large-scale comparative analyses, revealing networks, routes, and dynamics of contact that would be difficult to identify through the consultation of sources alone.
Consulting Information Records
Records related to the “
Linguistic Interactions” layer may contain, depending on the available information:
- current place name
- toponym as recorded in the source
- date of the contact
- population involved
- documented language
- missionary context
- quotation from the source
- reference to the primary source
- reference to the historiographical bibliography
- place where the source was written
- year of composition
- document type
- language of the document
- author
- recipient
The quotation constitutes the essential documentary core of each record and represents the starting point for the analysis of the linguistic interaction.
Navigating Connected Data
Some fields within the records are linked to specific in-depth entries.
For example, the author’s name links to a dedicated biographical record, while a language may link to further records concerning grammatical or lexical outputs documented in the sources.
This system of connections allows users to explore not only individual data points, but also the relationships that link them together.
The “Lexical and Grammatical Outputs” Layer
Linguistic interactions constitute the starting point for the analysis of the Linguistic Outputs documented in the sources.
For this reason, the records dedicated to languages link to a set of data concerning linguistic devices, especially vocabularies and grammars, identified during the research. These data are in turn organised and georeferenced within the database.
Users can therefore move from the description of a single linguistic contact to the analysis of the linguistic tools that emerged from it, observing their geographical, chronological, and documentary distribution.
Depending on the available information, records concerning Linguistic Outputs may include:
- language involved
- documented lemma or lexical unit
- grammatical category
- form attested in the source
- transcription or normalisation of the form
- meaning or translation
- type of linguistic outcome
- context of attestation
- source of origin
- author of the testimony
- dating
- geographical location
- bibliographical references
- linguistic and philological notes
The integrated consultation of linguistic interactions and lexical or grammatical outputs makes it possible to analyse not only where and when contacts between languages and communities occurred, but also which linguistic transformations these contacts produced.
The “Chinese Toponyms” Layer
The Sinological research carried out by the Sapienza unit under the coordination of Paolo De Troia focused on the collection and cataloguing of more than one thousand toponyms drawn from Sino-Jesuit geographical and cartographic sources. These toponyms refer to places outside China that were previously unknown to Chinese scholars and lacked an established Chinese nomenclature.
The resulting data are organised into a dedicated database, now being integrated into the project’s WebGIS through the specific “Chinese Toponyms” layer.
Each place name is structured through a set of multi-layered descriptors, including pinyin transcription, Italian translation, syllable count, correspondences with modern Chinese and Italian forms, detailed territorial descriptions, correlations with European and Latin toponyms in Ortelius and Magini, and analysis of primary sources and authors.
Comparison with later Ming and Qing works — including Yinghuan zhilüe, Haiguo tuzhi, Mingshi, Cihai, and Ciyuan — has produced significant results concerning phonetic and lexical mapping at the moment of contact. It has also clarified how Jesuit toponymy influenced later Chinese lexicography and was reworked within the Chinese linguistic and cultural system.
The related information records follow an autonomous structure and are designed to highlight the specificity of the sources and toponymic traditions involved.
A Platform in Continuous Development
The WebGIS is conceived as a dynamic and incremental tool.
New data, records, and locations may be added as the research develops. The platform has been designed to accommodate future expansions of the database and to make new paths of consultation and analysis progressively available.
