"De arauigo en lenguaie castellano": Politica linguistica e traduzione secondo Alfonso X

After Alfonso X’s accession to the throne in mid-13th-century Spain, the translating activity of scientific texts from Arabic changed route: Castilian, instead of Latin, became the language of science. Such a plan, ambitious though risky, was carried out through the writing of the huge Alfonsine corpus of texts, a fundamental contribution to medieval culture, which shaped the picture of Alfonso as “Emperor of Culture”. The aim of this paper is to provide, in the light of recent research, an overall view of the main translators and of the translations of scientific texts from Arabic into Castilian at Alfonso’s court.