一个懂得屈折的名字

会议

The Meeting

命名委员会于每月第一个星期四上午九点开会，地点在雷克雅未克市中心一座办公楼三层的会议室里。从那里可以望见老码头，在天气晴朗的日子里，还能越过海湾看见埃斯亚山（Esja）平缓的山脊。十月里极少有晴朗的日子。这个星期四，天空低低地压在起重机上方，以至于赫拉芬·埃纳尔松（Hrafn Einarsson）坐下时，觉得只要伸长手臂就能触到苍穹。

The Naming Committee met on the first Thursday of the month at nine o’clock, in a meeting room on the third floor of a government building in the centre of Reykjavík, from which you could see the old harbour and, on clear days, the flat back of Mount Esja across the bay. Clear days were rare in October. That Thursday the sky hung so low over the cranes that Hrafn Einarsson, as he sat down, had the impression you could touch it with an outstretched arm.

这是他参加的第三次会议。一年前，他在报纸上发表过一篇文章，把该委员会称作“冰岛语最后的关卡”，并呼吁将其废除；今年春天，部门随即询问他是否有意成为委员。整整两周时间，他都以为这只是个玩笑。他的朋友们至今仍这么认为。他向他们解释说，自己答应加入是因为唯有从内部才能彻底蔑视一个官僚机构——正如人对朋友说出的大多数话一样，这话大约只有一半是真的。

It was his third meeting. A year earlier he had published an article in the newspaper in which he called the committee “the last customs post of the Icelandic language” and demanded that it be abolished; in the spring the ministry had then asked him whether he would like to become a member. For two weeks he had believed it was a joke. His friends still believed it. He explained to them that he had accepted because you can only despise an authority thoroughly from the inside, and that was, like most sentences you formulate for friends, about half true.

坐在他对面的是奥拉维尔·佩图尔松（Ólafur Pétursson），一名法学家，在委员会任职已有二十年，而且拥有那件灰色套头毛衣的时间至少也一样长。奥拉维尔每次开会都会带一纸袋Kleinur——转角那家烘焙店炸的麻花油子——放在桌子中央，然后自己一个人吃完。他话很少，偶一开口，听起来就像在宣读法条评注，而实际上他也常常这么做。

Opposite him sat Ólafur Pétursson, a lawyer, on the committee for twenty years and for at least as long in possession of the same grey jumper. To every meeting Ólafur brought a paper bag of kleinur, the twisted fried pastries from the bakery on the corner, put it in the middle of the table and then ate them by himself. He spoke little, and when he spoke it sounded as if he were reading aloud from a commentary on the law, which he often was.

坐在主座上的是西格伦·哈德斯多蒂尔（Sigrún Hallsdóttir）。她五十六岁，曾在哈夫纳夫约杜尔（Hafnarfjörður）的一所高中教了三十年冰岛语，主持委员会也有十一年了。当天的卷宗她照例已经看过了，而且不是在前一天夜里看的，是在前一周看的，用铅笔看了两遍。赫拉芬在第一次开会时就观察到，当她翻开一份申请时，边白处早已用她那细小而端正的字迹写下了所申请名字完整的四格屈折变化，下面还有一个单字： 行 。

At the head of the table sat Sigrún Hallsdóttir. She was fifty-six, had taught Icelandic at a grammar school in Hafnarfjörður for thirty years and had chaired the committee for eleven. As always, she had already read the day’s files, and not the night before but the week before, twice, with a pencil. In his first meeting Hrafn had watched her open an application in whose margin the complete declension of the requested name already stood in her small, upright handwriting, in all four cases, and beneath it a single word: works .

因为从根本上说，每一份申请的核心都在于此。凡要在冰岛使用且尚未列入名单的名字，必须具备三个条件：它必须能用冰岛语正字法书写；它绝不能成为使用者的负担；而且它必须能够屈折，也就是在属格中能带上冰岛语词尾，因为一个无法屈折的名字在这种语言里不仅是个外来异物，更几乎是一场语法事故——你无法说出那是谁的自行车，你甚至无法给使用者写一封信，而不让句子在出现名字的地方打个踉跄。

Because that, at its core, was what every application was about. A name that was to be given in Iceland and was not yet on the list had to be able to do three things. It had to be writable in Icelandic spelling. It must not become a burden to its bearer. And it had to decline, that is, take an Icelandic ending in the genitive, because a name that did not decline was in this language not only a foreign body but almost a grammatical accident: you could not say whose bicycle it was, you could not even address a letter to its bearer without the sentence stumbling at the place where the name stood.

赫拉芬认为这是无稽之谈，而且是一种优美、博学、论证严密的无稽之谈，这在他眼里反而让事情变得更糟了。他在文章中曾写道，语言会自我保护；一千年来没有政府部门插手，语言也活得好好的。但在前两次会议中他就发现，把这话写在报纸上是一回事，当着西格伦·哈德斯多蒂尔的面说出来则是另一回事，尤其是当她背诵出 Hjörtur 的属格时，神情仿佛在吟诵一首诗。

Hrafn thought this was nonsense, and beautiful, learned, well-founded nonsense at that, which in his eyes made it worse. Languages, he had written in his article, protected themselves; they had done so for a thousand years without a ministry. But in the first two meetings he had found that it was one thing to write that in a newspaper and another to say it to Sigrún Hallsdóttir’s face while she recited the genitive of Hjörtur to you as if it were a poem.

当天的前几份申请很简单。一对来自阿克雷里（Akureyri）的夫妇想给女儿取名 Elding ，意为闪电；这个词历史悠久，是阴性词，屈折起来就像被牵着手的小孩一样温顺。一个来自塞尔福斯（Selfoss）的男人想给自己加上中间名 Tesla 。“一辆车，”奥拉维尔说。“一位发明家，”赫拉芬说。“而且是个阴性词，”西格伦说。她在空白处写下 Tesla, Teslu, Teslu, Teslu ，透过眼镜上方看着赫拉芬，仿佛在等待反驳。他没有反驳。那个来自塞尔福斯的男人在与格里听起来会像他自己的姨婆，这一点连他自己也看得出来。

The first applications of the day were easy. A married couple from Akureyri wanted to call their daughter Elding , lightning; the word was old, feminine and declined as good-naturedly as a child you take by the hand. A man from Selfoss wanted to be given the second first name Tesla . “A car,” said Ólafur. “An inventor,” said Hrafn. “And a feminine noun,” said Sigrún. She wrote Tesla, Teslu, Teslu, Teslu in the margin and looked at Hrafn over her glasses as if waiting for him to object. He did not object. The man from Selfoss would, even he could see that, have sounded in the dative like his own great-aunt.

一位来自雷克雅未克的女士为她刚出生的儿子申请了 Hafsteinn 这个名字，这名字早就列在名单上了；她显然是出于谨慎才提交了申请，西格伦便向奥拉维尔口述了一则简短、近乎温柔的答复：请她不必担心，她的儿子可以叫这个名字。就这样过了一个小时。外面开始下雨了，不是垂直落下的，而是以冰岛特有的方式下着，雨水仿佛从下往上扑来，而奥拉维尔吃掉了他的第三块kleina。

A woman from Reykjavík applied for the name Hafsteinn for her newborn son, although it had long been on the list; she had evidently made the application out of caution, and Sigrún dictated a short, almost tender reply to Ólafur: she need not worry, her son could be called what he was called. It went on like that for an hour. Outside it began to rain, not vertically but in that Icelandic way in which the rain seems to come from below, and Ólafur ate his third kleina.