[groovy2shoes]

> annotations which translate certain words (the name of which escapes me at the moment)

Perhaps you're thinking of glosses? I'm not familiar with graded readers, but I am rather familiar with mediæval manuscripts, wherein it's common to see copies of Latin works with little annotations near certain (sometimes all) words. When the gloss has been added above (or below) the word(s) they annotate, they're said to be interlinear, but marginal glosses aren't unheard of.

The glosses were sometimes written by the same scribe that made the copy, but often they appear to have been added later, perhaps by the owner of the book—sometimes in a comically small hand so as to fit in narrow spaces :)

[mikekchar]

Yes. That's it. Thanks :-) Unfortunately I still can't find the paper. Oh well, the one provided above is quite good. Probably if one searched for papers that cite that one, it would uncover a lot of interesting new work.