Translating The Infinities by John Banville

Abstract - John Banville’s talent as a prose stylist is widely recognized. The polished elegance of his phrases constitutes a continuing and fascinating challenge for his translator, due to the intricacies of the source text, its manifold registers and lexical choices. In his novel The Infinities, in Italian Teoria degli Infiniti, John Banville takes cue from Kleist’s Amphytrion to devise a novel where classicality interweaves with science and science fiction through the invention of a world where the ancient gods intermingle with the humans while waiting for the death of Adam Godley, a famous mathematician who explained how an infinity of worlds exist and interact with each other. To translate this book I had not only to work extensively on lexis and style, but also to do considerable research to render the many literary and non literary references. Some examples of these struggles with the source text during the translation process are given in the present paper.

摘要——约翰·班维尔（John Banville）作为散文文体家的创作天赋广受认可。其行文措辞凝练优雅，却因源文本的繁复结构、多重语域与多元词汇选择，给译者带来了持续且极具挑战性的工作。在其小说《无限》（The Infinities，意大利语原名为Teoria degli Infiniti）中，约翰·班维尔以克莱斯特（Kleist）的戏剧《安菲特律翁》（Amphytrion）为创作灵感，构建了一部将古典意蕴与科学、科幻元素交织融合的作品：在这个架空世界中，远古神祇与人类混居共处，一同静待著名数学家亚当·戈德利（Adam Godley）的离世——后者曾阐释了无限多宇宙的存在与相互作用机制。为译好这部作品，译者不仅需在语汇与文体层面深耕细作，还需开展大量研究以还原书中大量文学与非文学类典故。本文将结合翻译过程中针对源文本的若干译制难点实例，展开相关探讨。