The translations into Latin from Greek and Arabic of works by Plato, Aristotle, Ptolemy, Diogenes Laertes, and others are very well known. They were mostly done at the Norman Sicilian court in the early years of William I’s reign (1154–1166) and carried out by or under the supervision of Henry Aristippus, who was a royal official. Not much progress has been made over the question of the Norman Sicilian Translations since Charles Homer Haskins brought them to the attention of scholars over a century ago. The trouble is that they have mainly been treated as part of a translating movement, which swept the Latin West from the end of the eleventh century, which in some small way it was. But a better way of understanding their true significance is to examine them through the prism of Hubert Houben’s notion of Norman Sicily as a “Third Space” between Byzantium, the Latin West and Islam. Then it becomes clear that they not only served to create an image of the Norman king, which set him apart from contemporary rulers, whether from the Latin West, Byzantium or Islam, but also contributed to the marked individuality of the culture of the Norman Sicilian court.

中文翻译：

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作为古典文本翻译中心的诺曼西西里宫廷

柏拉图、亚里士多德、托勒密、第欧根尼·拉尔特斯等人的作品从希腊语和阿拉伯语翻译成拉丁语是众所周知的。它们大多是在威廉一世统治初期（1154-1166 年）在诺曼西西里宫廷进行的，由王室官员亨利·阿里斯蒂普斯 (Henry Aristippus) 或在其监督下进行。自从查尔斯·荷马·哈斯金斯一个多世纪前将诺曼西西里译本问题引起学者们的注意以来，关于诺曼西西里译本的问题并没有取得太大进展。问题在于，它们主要被视为翻译运动的一部分，该运动从 11 世纪末开始席卷拉丁西部，在某些方面确实如此。但是，理解它们真正意义的更好方法是通过休伯特·霍本 (Hubert Houben) 将诺曼西西里岛视为拜占庭、拉丁西方和伊斯兰教之间的“第三空间”概念的棱镜来审视它们。然后很明显，它们不仅有助于塑造诺曼国王的形象，使他有别于当代统治者，无论是来自拉丁西方、拜占庭还是伊斯兰教，而且还促成了诺曼西西里文化的显着个性法庭。