Repository path: workshop/experiments/E-20260807-narrator-unknown/materials/span-adjustments.md · rendered 2026-09-09

Span adjustments for the length control — amendment A5 (critic advisory 5)

Each locus was first selected on the source-side rule alone (a span in which the narrator presents himself and almost nothing happens), drafted as R06, and only then trimmed or extended at sentence boundaries so that the four English renderings would fall inside a narrow word-count band (design §2, Fix 2). No profile call had been dispatched and no seat had seen anything when this was done. The record below exists because the critic's advisory 5 is right that a removed sentence could in principle carry an axis, and that is not answerable by argument.

(The karr first-draft figure moved 451 → 448 through revision alone; its span was never adjusted.)

What was removed, in both languages

levitov — «Да! я не хочу ни того, ни другого, ни третьего, потому что, начиная оправдание моей злости и зависти людскому счастью, я говорю: вот какое было мое детство и вот каковы были люди, обязанные природой приготовить его к верному хождению по широким и шумным дорогам жизни.» → "Yes! I want neither the one nor the other nor the third, because, beginning the justification of my spite and of my envy at human happiness, I say: this is what my childhood was, and these were the people whom nature had obliged to prepare it for walking surely along the broad and noisy roads of life." — a summarising paragraph that turns to the narrative to follow. It restates the spite and the envy already stated four times in the retained text.

rosegger — «Der Bauer jedoch ist kein schlechter Kenner von Gliedmaßen. Meine Hand, die von den Göttern seit Urbeginn für die Feder bestimmt, packt er an: „Sollen das auch die Werktagspratzen sein? Na, ich dank'. Für den Löffel halten sie's!"» → "The farmer, however, is no bad judge of limbs. He takes hold of my hand, the hand the gods marked out for the pen at the beginning of time: 'And these are supposed to be workaday paws? No thank you. They'll do to hold a spoon!'" — a second beat of the same exchange, in the same mock-heroic register as the retained text, with a second instance of the farmer's speech.

What was added

miyaji — 「私は叔母の家へゐる間父のことをどんなに気にして考へたか知れなかつた。私は家にゐると父を さほどに思ひはしなかつたが、家を離れると朝夕父のことを思はずにゐられなかつたのだ。」 → "There is no telling how much I fretted over my father the whole time I was at my aunt's. At home I did not think of him particularly, but once I was away from home I could not help thinking of him morning and evening."

This is the one adjustment that could plausibly move an axis, and it is named here rather than left to be found. The two added sentences are the first warmth in the passage — the narrator, who has so far been cold about everyone in his family, admits to missing his father. If warmth on miyaji reads higher than a reader of the first selection would expect, this is why. It was added because the item was 14% short of the band and its next paragraph boundary was 12% long; the choice between them was made on arithmetic, before any profile existed, and the alternative (trimming the other three to miyaji's length) would have cost 60 words from every other item.