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The eminent cataloguer Antoni Palau-i-Dulcet (Palau 283 887) reports that a "fifth" edition of the "Nueva Filosofía" by Oliva Sabuco came to light in Braga, Portugal, in 1734. In accordance with his sources, "Nueva Filosofía" was translated to Portuguese by a certain Manuel Gomes Alvares, a Bahia, Brazil, native. The Portuguese bibliographer Barbosa Machado (Biblioteca Lusitana t-III pp 277-278) claims that Gomes-Alvares was an expert translator from Castilian (later to become "Spanish") into Portuguese. Only Mr. Palau-i-Dulcet seems to have ever seen -or heard of- this misnomered "5th edition" (for being in Portuguese it would have been the first in this language) alledgedly printed (1733) by Fernandes da Costa in Lisbon at the printing shop Lisboa Occidental. There are no references of the extent of the translation (all Colloquies?, all Treatises? the Dictae Breviae?) nor of its quality. There are no reports that it figures in any library of the Portuguese universities. José Fernández Sánchez, of the National Library of Spain, calls it (Al-Basit, Albacete Magazine of December 1987) the "enigmatic" edition for nobody seems to have ever located any exemplars. The ephemeral -if real- 1734 Portuguese edition did not help in spreading Sabuco's unique work and message.
Therefore, calling the impending (Fall 2006) publication by University of Illinois Press of Sabuco's "New Philosophy" the "first-ever-in-any-language" translation is not a bold claim. Alternatively, it would be the first English version, and the first in any other non-Iberian-language.