Repository path: workshop/regimes/R06-lead-single-pass.md · rendered 2026-09-09

R06 — lead single pass (source-only, no revision)

v1.0 (frozen 2026-07-27, S041.) The lead analogue of R01: the translator reads the source, writes the translation once, and stops. No revision pass, no second reading against the source, no polishing. It is the floor every lead-executable comparison needs, and it did not exist — the project had R04 (lead close translation, which includes a self-revision) and nothing beneath it, so no comparison of lead regimes was possible.

Frozen on creation, not draft, because the first experiment that compares it against another regime is the experiment it was created for (E-20260727b-arm-identifiability, and the second regime comparison ARM-framework requires). README.md's rule — draft regimes may be piloted but not compared for the record — would otherwise bar the comparison this exists to make.

The pairing property, which is the whole point

R04's draft, frozen before its self-revision, is an R06 output. R04 §Procedure step 2 is "draft, then self-revise against the source in the same session"; R06 is step 2 stopped after the comma. So every R04 translation contains an R06 translation, and the pair is paired by construction — the same translator, the same session, the same source, the same reading.

This mirrors R01/R02 exactly. R02 v1.0 records: "By construction R02's draft call is identical to R01 … so every R02 draft is simultaneously a valid R01 output — the property the first experiment's paired design exploits." R06 stands to R04 as R01 stands to R02, and for the same reason: it makes the conditional question — given a draft, does revising it help? — answerable at zero cost.

What follows, and it is a real change to R04's practice. R04 as written produces one artifact. To supply an R06 output, the draft must be written out and frozen as its own artifact before the revision begins. A draft reconstructed afterwards, or a draft that was never separately committed, is not an R06 output and may not be used as one. R04 v1.0 adds this requirement (its changelog records the bump).

Roles

• Translator — the lead agent, working directly, as a labeled subject. No panel call, no API cost.
• Judge — never the lead (charter §5).

Human involvement

None.

Procedure

1. Source only. As R04 §1, unchanged: the translator reads the source and non-translational apparatus (dictionaries, commentary on the source language, the critical text). It reads no published rendering of the same passage into any target language before the translation and its log are frozen. Priming, if any, is declared on the artifact.
2. Translate once, straight through. Ordinary care — this is a translation, not a speed trial — but no return pass. Where a choice is unresolved at the moment of writing, the translator writes the option it has and records the alternative in the log; it does not go back and change it.
3. The log is written as the draft is written, decision by decision, and is frozen with the draft.
4. Freeze before anything else happens. The draft and its log are committed before the revision, if any, begins. The commit is the freeze.
5. Contamination declared with a one-line basis, as R04 §4.
6. File under workshop/translations/<work>/R06-v<N>/.

Outputs

translation.md only, with its own translator's log. No run/ — no API call produced it. Cost $0; never ledgered (charter §6, A4).

Known limitations (by design)

• Everything R04 lists except self-revision's blind spots, which R06 does not have because it does not self-revise. It has the drafter's blind spots undiluted instead.
• No return pass means real errors survive. That is the regime, not a defect of the run. An R06 output is expected to contain things its translator would have fixed given a second look; that is the quantity R04-vs-R06 measures.
• The freeze is a convention. Nothing mechanically prevents a translator from silently revising before committing. The same limitation R05 names.
• "No return pass" is not fully enforceable inside a single act of writing. A translator rereads its own sentence as it writes the next one. R06 forbids a deliberate second pass over frozen text; it cannot forbid the ordinary local backtracking of composition, and does not claim to.

Changelog

• 2026-07-27 v1.0 (frozen, S041) — created for E-20260727b-arm-identifiability and for ARM-framework's second regime comparison. Frozen on creation; the pairing property with R04 stated as the design property it exists to supply.