Repository path: workshop/experiments/E-20260802e-displaced-marking/materials/sites.md · rendered 2026-09-09

The six sites — source, gloss, and the relation to be graded

Frozen with the design, before any rendering was written. Every source string is quoted verbatim from the stored source file named, and the verifier checks each one back against those bytes.

The relation is what the seats are asked about. It is stated so that it names what the source conveys and never names the grammatical device that conveys it — a seat told "the Russian uses the formal pronoun" would be told the answer.

S1 — Akutagawa Ryūnosuke, 「煙管」 (1916), section 一 · JA→EN

Source (workshop/canon/kiseru/source.txt):

同席の大名に、あまりお煙管が見事だからちょいと拝見させて頂きたいと、云われた

Literal gloss. He was told, by a daimyō sitting with him, that since the pipe was so splendid, [the daimyō] would like to be graciously permitted to be allowed to look at it a moment. The speaker is a great lord; the person addressed is far below him in rank.

The relation to be graded: the person speaking places himself conspicuously below the person he is speaking to — he asks as a subordinate would ask, not as a superior would.

Frozen rendering (T-kiseru-R04-v1 D15): should like to be allowed to look at it for a moment

The log's claim: "Two stacked humbling auxiliaries reduce to one modal. English politeness has no way to be this deferential without sounding satirical; the loss is in the direction of levelling the rank difference the sentence exists to display."

S2 — Ivan Turgenev, «Роза» (1878) · RU→EN

Source (workshop/translations/roza/R04-v1/source-ru.txt):

— О чем вы плачете? — спросил я. — Да вот об этой розе. Посмотрите, что с ней сталось. … — Ваши слезы смоют эту грязь, — промолвил я с значительным выраженьем.

Literal gloss. "What are you[pl] crying about?" I asked. — "Why, about this rose. Look[pl] what has become of it." … "Your[pl] tears will wash away this dirt," I pronounced with a weighty expression. The two speakers are lovers; the scene is the hour after everything between them has been decided.

The relation to be graded: these two people address each other in the manner reserved for people who are not on intimate terms — the distance is in how they speak to each other, not in what they say.

Frozen rendering (T-roza-R04-v1): "What are you crying about?" I asked. "Why, about this rose. Look what has become of it." … "Your tears will wash away this dirt," I pronounced with a weighty expression.

The log's claim: "This is not decorative: it is most of what the poem knows about them. English has no way to show it. … Nothing was done, and the loss is total."

S3 — Vsevolod Garshin, «Сигнал» (1887) · RU→EN

Source (workshop/translations/signal/R04-v1/source-ru.txt):

идёт с самоваром по открытому месту, пули свистят, в камни щёлкают; страшно Семёну, плачет, а сам идёт

Literal gloss. He goes with the samovar across open ground, the bullets whistle, they click on the stones; [it is] frightening to-Semyon, [he] cries, and he himself goes. Semyon is a soldier's servant carrying tea under fire.

The relation to be graded: the fear is presented as something that comes over the man from outside and happens to him — not as something he feels, decides, or does.

Frozen rendering (T-signal-R04-v1 D11): Semyon is afraid, he cries, and he goes all the same

The log's claim: "The dative construction (fear happening to Semyon rather than felt by him) is lost outright; English has no way to keep it here."

S4 — Vladimir Korolenko, «Сон Макара» (1885) · RU→EN

Source (workshop/translations/son-makara/R04-v1/source-ru.txt):

Отцы и деды Макара отвоевали у тайги кусок промёрзшей землицы … юртёнки

Literal gloss. Makar's fathers and grandfathers won back from the taiga a piece of frozen little-dear-earth … little-wretched-yurts. Both nouns carry suffixes that in Russian add smallness together with the speaker's feeling about the thing — tenderness in the first, pitying dismissal in the second.

The relation to be graded: the narrator's own feeling toward the things he is naming — a tenderness or pity that is not stated anywhere in the sentence but comes through in the naming itself.

Frozen rendering (T-son-makara-R04-v1 §3): Makar's fathers and grandfathers had won a scrap of frozen ground back off the taiga … little smoky yurts spread and multiplied

The log's claim: "землицы and юртёнки are diminutives and the English has no way to be one. 'A scrap of frozen ground' carries землица's smallness but not its tenderness."

S5 — Pu Songling, 《王六郎》, from 《聊齋志異》 · LZH→EN

Source (workshop/translations/wang-liulang/source-zh.txt):

前君之獲魚，獨勝于他人者，皆仆之暗驅，以報酹奠耳 … 僕憐其抱中兒，代弟一人，遂殘二命，故捨之

Literal gloss. Those fish you took before, in which you alone did better than other men — all [was] your-servant's secret driving, to repay the libations, that is all. … Your-servant pitied the child in her arms; for her to substitute for a single younger-brother would have destroyed two lives, and so [I] released her. The speaker is a river ghost; the person addressed is his friend, a fisherman.

The relation to be graded: the speaker refers to himself in a self-lowering way, in the manner of someone who places the person he is talking to above himself.

Frozen rendering (T-wang-liulang-R04-v1 D13): … I drove them to you in secret, to repay the wine you poured out. … but I pitied the child in her arms

The log's claim: "僕 lost twice, and not compensated. … 僕 is a single-word register marker with no English slot, and the available renderings — 'your servant', 'this humble person' — are costume."

S6 — Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, «El rayo de luna» (1862) · ES→EN

Source (workshop/translations/rayo-de-luna/R04-v1/translation.md, D12, quoted from the source):

un mundo fantástico, poblado de extrañas creaciones, hijas de sus delirios

Literal gloss. a fantastic world, peopled with strange creations, daughters of his deliriums. creaciones is a feminine noun in Spanish, so anything issuing from it is automatically named with the feminine word — hijas, daughters, rather than hijos, children/sons.

The relation to be graded: the offspring named here are female, and their femaleness is automatic — it follows from the word they issue from, rather than being an image the writer selected.

Frozen rendering (T-rayo-de-luna-R04-v1 D12): a fantastic world peopled by strange creations, the children of his delirium and of his poet's reveries

The log's claim: "English has no grammatical gender to motivate daughters, and daughters of his delirium would read as a chosen image rather than as agreement. Took children. … the loss is total."

Why this site is in the set and is expected to fail. The relation here is not a social one and is not about attitude: it is about a marking being automatic rather than chosen. R1 says look in another category; no English category encodes automaticity. The design predicts S6 fails, and it is included precisely because a rule tested only where it was expected to work would not have been tested.