Across Languages and Cultures 14 (2), pp. 307–310 (2013) DOI: 10.1556/Acr.14.2013.2.10 1585-1923/$ 20.00 © 2013 Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest Book Reviews Michaela Wolf Die vielsprachige Seele Kakaniens. Übersetzen und Dolmetschen in der Habsburgermonarchie 1848 bis 1918 Wien, Köln, Weimar: Böhlau Verlag, 2012, 439 pp. ISBN 978-3-205-78829-4. Austria is one of the countries that share academic tradition of the Habilita- tionsschrift, a postdoctoral thesis based on independent scholarship and leading to the highest academic qualification. Despite fierce debates on the necessity of such a new thesis, for instance in Germany, it cannot be denied that this tradi- tion sometimes yields the highest level of academic production of already estab- lished scholars. This is the case for Michaela Wolf, who was recently appointed as the CETRA professor 2013 at the oldest and probably most prestigious PhD Summer School in the discipline of Translation Studies. In her book, she ana- lyzes from a translational point of view the fascinating multilingual interaction within the Habsburg monarchy (1848–1918). The title of the book makes use of the slightly ironical German term Kakanien, as the famous Austrian author Robert Musil did in referring to the ‘k. und k.’or the dual monarchy in Austria and Hungary (kaiserlich und königlich). Much research has already been carried out on the complex political, socio- ethnic and linguistic situation of the Habsburg monarchy. But to my knowledge this is the first in-depth study about the socio-linguistic circumstances in the monarchy that approaches the topic systematically from a broad translational perspective. This may seem slightly strange as the situation of the ‘Habsburg Babylon’ (which is also the title of one of Wolf’s chapters) looks like a chal- lenging invitation to translation studies scholars. For some reason the right mix- ture of institutional interest and a historical approach had not been present up to now in other works on the subject, at least not for a work of this scope. In the wake of the interest for the translational aspects of cities, authors like Sherry Simon did discover the attractiveness of former Habsburg cities like Trieste or Czernowitz as objects of study (see for instance Simon 2012). First of all, Wolf’s new book is a mine of statistical information about the sociological position of translation in the society under study. In line with the strong tradition in the German language area of (historical) research on the Buchhandel (the field of book trade and the publishing industry), the publica- tion offers dozens of tables with interesting figures, like on the nationality and language percentages in the monarchy, percentages per language in terms of book production, the numbers of sworn interpreters etc. Sometimes these fig- ures function as eye-openers for laymen. Although we refer to the dual monar-