A Name That Bends

The Meeting

会议

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.

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。

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.

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。