Repository path: workshop/translations/atsui-suna/R14-v1/translation.md · rendered 2026-09-09

T-atsui-suna-R14-v1 - the same story with the declared devices flattened

Derived from T-atsui-suna-R29-v1 by R14 (matched-content flattening), scoped to the C1 device set and to nothing else. R14 renders from the live English, never from the source; here it is scoped further, by device-sites.md's contract: every string not at a Class A site is byte-identical to the R29 arm. A committed script asserts it (workshop/experiments/E-20260815b-fluent-carriage/analysis/checks.py), and a failure of that assertion voids the run's primary rather than being reported as a caveat.

Nothing may change what the text says (R14's one binding rule). The operators used, mapped on to the seven declared classes:

1,517 words against the R29 arm's 1,485 - a length ratio of 1.0215. Flattening lengthens, because supplying a connective and stating a manner both cost words; the ratio is reported here and registered as a rival in the design (H-LENGTH) rather than being suppressed.

contamination: none, on the same basis as the parent artifact, which is the only text this one was written from.

The translation

1

The bathers broke into a run, because it was impossible to walk on the sand. The sand was savagely blistered, and nobody could bear it barefoot for a second.

"It's burning!"

"Splendid heat!"

"Let's race as far as the water."

Three young men and two girls came bursting out of the bathing huts. They put their feet on the sand and were startled by how scalding it was. They jumped up and down repeatedly as they ran down to the water's edge, beside themselves.

"I can't bear it! Will somebody help me."

The girl in the maroon costume screamed. And kicked at the sand for all she was worth. Then young A turned round, opened both arms and took her up as though she weighed nothing.

Seeing this,

"Me as well!" cried the other one, the girl in the broad red-and-black stripes, catching hold of young B.

B took her up in both arms as A had, but she was heavy, and there was no prospect of his running freely. He was a man thin enough to be pitied.

B was visibly suffering. Still he would not give in, and tried to keep going with the girl in his arms. But he moved unsteadily now. He lifted his legs, and only his legs, as hugely as a man walking through deep snow, because it was searing. He set them down slowly. He was sweating and groaning.

A and the girl, already at the shore, had turned round and were laughing themselves double at it. "Hey!" called C, the young man who had got there ahead of A, with his head out of the water.

B was in no state to answer.

"It'll be too bad of you if you drop me."

The girl up on B's arms was jeering at poor B. And she moved both her legs about rapidly, and struck the man's back repeatedly.

"Do keep still, will you. Ah, there's no feeling left in the soles of my feet."

"We're never going to bring shoes, so it's this every day, B."

"Tcha! There's no saving it," B spat out.

"Shall I be a lifeboat, B?"

C kept calling and calling from the water.

"Idiot!" B roared at C. "Behold the gallant knight, as they say. Once it's come to this I'll not let go of this princess, not over any fire, not in any water."

When they got to the water's edge at last the girl tumbled off B's arms and swam away to C.

2

"Call that boiling?"

"Look at them carrying on."

"Weaklings, aren't they, the lot of them!"

"What do you make of that modern girl's performance."

"Showing off like that."

"Let's swim out and pull one of them under by the leg…"

Two men who had brought geisha with them watched the young people at their antics and clicked their tongues.

"So you two aren't going in, then."

"We'll watch."

"Charming. Right, shall we show you what we're made of?"

"Please do," said the two geisha, looking away.

"Right!"

The two of them took off their yukata and ran out on to the sand. They smoked, and wound their towels round their heads. They walked with a deliberately unhurried tread. When they had gone four or five yards they both said the same thing at the same moment.

"This is past bearing!"

"How horribly roasting!"

No sooner had they said it than they gave a "Wah!", flung away cigarettes and everything, and went tumbling flat out for the water's edge.

"The other lot were a great deal better."

"That one's all mouth, whatever it is."

"I can't stand him!"

The two geisha said this sort of thing to each other.

3

"Come on, up on Daddy's back! You."

The man said to his wife, getting the child up on his back, "You're to walk that far in those sandals."

"Why don't you put yours on too?"

"I'm fine. Now then, ready, sonny? Hold tight to Daddy. I'm going to run like mad. It'll be fun."

"Isn't that nice, sonny. Horsey!"

"Here we go, one two three!"

A husband and wife with their child set off at a dead run at that word of command.

Looked at quietly, there was a heat-shimmer like steam burning up off the sand. It was a white plain of sand. It seemed to dry in an instant and to warp back on itself with a crackling sound. In the corner by the bathing huts a gramophone, wild in its tempo and impatient, was playing jazz.

"Get set!"

"On the mark!"

"Bang!"

A troop of schoolboys sounded it with their mouths and ran off in ones and twos.

"Don't be silly, sandals."

"They'll be stolen."

"Shoes! They're a nuisance to swim in."

"If you go over it in one go like those schoolboys just did, it's nothing."

"It frightens me somehow, that stretch of sand."

A party of schoolgirls were getting ready too, saying this sort of thing to each other.

Everyone had gone off, and before long I was the only one left there. I took the thing for a kind of painful stage — on the blazing sand! I felt at the same time as though I were setting beside it a figure of my own hurried daily life. That figure was limitless and frantic. It was shrieking and dancing round and round on the burning sand. I ran off into a solemn delusion and stood there vacant.

In any case I had just got ready to go into the water myself. But I saw the shapes of the people ahead of me treading over the scorched sand. Cowardice struck me all at once, and it was as though the spirit to break into a run had been taken out of me.

All the same, a day as sweltering as this is a rare thing. There will not be another all summer!

"Come on out!"

"In one go, jump it."

"Let's have a look at you running it."

Seeing my friends who had gone on ahead beckoning to me, I went on imagining voices like that.

4

"Row us a boat!"

"Come on, quickly."

Called like that, I braced myself and leapt out. It seared.

"Burning!" I shouted, and jumped before I could stop myself. It was scalding. There was no possible way of keeping the soles of my feet on the ground!

"This is unbearable!" I shouted again, and tried a long jump. I was beside myself by now. I ran and jumped, jumped and ran, like a runner in the hurdles. When I looked across, they were all laughing themselves double.

And they called out this and that, teasing.

"Look at the old man, in agonies."

"Ah-ha-ha… that face!"

"It's no good, you can't turn back now."

"What a shambling sight, what a spineless creature!"

"A man can't put out a lifeboat."

"Look, isn't that wiggle rather like some sort of dance?"

"Barbaric!"

I had no mouth left to answer with. I was in a state of complete confusion. I had no thought for appearances or for what anyone would say. I twisted my face, bent my legs and swung my arms. I trod a preposterous foxtrot. I was on the point of going dizzy.

"I should have left it alone." "I should have stayed at home and had a nap!" "No, no, run harder, it's a desert, it's a desert! A desert whatever happens!"

Blurting out whatever came into my mouth out of sheer misery, humming a march, I kept running flat out.

There were many boats floating on the water like leaves. There were also the people at the shore, the deep blue sky, the red flags and the white parasols. All of it flashed past in front of my eyes like petals.

And,

"He's scalding because he doesn't run faster."

"It's all gesture and nothing else, that's the trouble."

"Isn't he just playing the fool?"

"It's because there was a pretty geisha over there, that's why he didn't want to come across, I'm sure of it!"

"That's right, he was giving her sidelong looks the whole time back there!"

"Tcha, I'm getting sick of this!"

Voices like this came raining down from every side, again like petals. I was struck by the illusion of not being able to tell for a moment which was sea and which was land. That was what I thought, but in fact it was their jeering from before, left scattered in my ears at the instant when I put on speed and turned a somersault two or three yards short of the water's edge. But when I dived head first into the water and put my head out again straight away I had forgotten all of it, the thoughts and the words alike, and

"Right, let's go!" I said, and took the oars.

Looking round without meaning to, I could see any number of comic figures running over the white sand with strange steps. The sand shone so white that the people running looked at times as though they were skating on ice.