Repository path: workshop/translations/atsui-suna/R29-v1/translation.md · rendered 2026-09-09

T-atsui-suna-R29-v1 - Makino, «熱い砂の上», whole, under R29 (fluent carriage)

Source: 牧野信一 «熱い砂の上» (1935), Aozora Bunko, 3,198 non-whitespace characters, 106 paragraphs, four sections - the whole story. Copy-text and the contamination gate: ../provenance.md. Regime: R29-fluent-carriage v1.0, rules C1-C7, frozen 2026-08-15 at 3d3afeb, before the source was read for translation. Target register: unmarked / literary-contemporary (A-mchugh-presence), British usage, declared under C6 and held.

Contamination: none. Basis: no published English rendering of this story - or, so far as two searches could establish, of any of Makino's fiction beyond blog fragments of a different story - exists to be read or measured against. The overlap statistic has no second operand and was not run. ../provenance.md states what that does and does not buy.

Order of writing, declared. This rendering was written first and from the Japanese alone. Its R14 partner is derived from it and is therefore not an independent translation at all; that is the design, not an accident, and it is stated on both artifacts.

1,485 words from 3,198 characters.

The translation

1

They ran, because there was no walking on it—the sand was savagely scorched and nobody could bear it barefoot for a second.

"Hot, hot!"

"Splendid heat!"

"Race you! Race you! As far as the water—"

Three young men and two girls came bursting out of the bathing huts, put their feet on the sand, started at how hot it was, and went hopping down to the water's edge, beside themselves.

"No, no, no! Somebody—"

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

Seeing this,

"Me too, me too!"

—and with that the other one, the girl in the broad red-and-black stripes, caught 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 was wobbling now, lifting his legs — only his legs — as hugely as a man walking through deep snow, because it was hot, setting them down slowly, sweating, groaning.

A and the girl, already at the shore, had turned round and were laughing themselves double at it. C, the young man who had got there ahead of A,

"Hey!"

—called to B 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 thrashing both her legs, and slapping the man's back.

"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—there you are. Once it's come to this I'll not let go of this princess, not over any fire, not in any water—there you are."

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 hot?"

"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…"

The tongue-clicking came from two men with geisha in tow, watching the young people at their antics.

"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. Smoking, winding their towels round their heads, keeping to a deliberately unhurried tread, they had gone four or five yards when, with one voice—

"This is past bearing!"

"How horribly hot!"

—and no sooner had they said it than, with a "Wah!", they 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!"

—was the sort of thing the two geisha said 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, horsey!"

"Here we go, one two three!"

—and at that word of command, off at a dead run, went a husband and wife with their child.

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

"Get set!"

"On the mark!"

"Bang!"

—sounding it with their mouths, off at a scatter, went a troop of schoolboys.

"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—"

Saying this sort of thing to each other while they got ready was another group again, a party of schoolgirls.

Everyone had gone off, and before long I was the only one left there. I — on the hot sand! — took the thing for a kind of painful stage, and then again as if I were setting beside it the limitless, frantic figure of my own hurried daily life shrieking and dancing round and round on the hot sand, and 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 seeing 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 of this heat 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.

"Hot!"

—I shouted, and jumped before I could stop myself. Hot! Hot! Hot! 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!"

"No good, 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, and in a state of complete confusion, with no thought for appearances or for what anyone would say, twisting my face, bending my legs, swinging my arms, treading 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.

Boats floating on the water like leaves, so many of them, so many, and the people at the shore, and the deep blue sky, and the red flags, and the white parasols—and the rest of it—flashed past in front of my eyes like petals.

And,

"He's hot 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, and I was struck by the illusion of not being able to tell for a moment which was sea and which was land — or so I thought, but it was their jeering from before, left scattered in my ears at the instant when, two or three yards short of the water's edge, I put on speed and turned a somersault. — 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.

Translator's log

Written as the draft was written, per R29 C7. The per-site record is sites.json — 84 rows, one per Class A site — and every tally below is produced by tally.py, which parses that file and asserts the class counts against the set device-sites.md declared before the first sentence was rendered (note (bey): a translator's-log table is a data structure and this project kept reading it as prose).

sites: 84   declared total: 84
CARRIED 82   FAILED 2

class    n  carried  failed
A1      29       28       1
A2       6        6       0
A3       8        8       0
A4      13       13       0
A5      10       10       0
A6      12       12       0
A7       6        5       1

What the regime asked, and where the answer was easy

The wager is that a source's formal effect can be carried by target-language resources that are themselves unmarked, and that translationese comes from importing the exponent rather than from carrying the device. Four of the seven classes turned out to have a ready English exponent, and the finding is that they are the classes where English already owns a resource of the same shape:

• A2, the reduplicated mimetics. The standard failure here is romanising — pyon-pyon, jiri-jiri — which C2 forbids outright. What replaces it is not a manner adverb but an English verb that is itself iterative and sound-symbolic: ピヨン／＼と跳ねあがる → went hopping; ピシヤ／＼と叩く → slapping; ジリ／＼と反りかへる → go sizzling and curling back on itself; パラ／＼と駆け出す → off at a scatter. English has a large stock of these and they cost nothing. Six sites, six carriages, no compensation needed.
• A3, reduplication in speech. English tolerates Hot, hot! and Me too, me too! and Horsey, horsey! without a flicker. The device transfers because insistence-by-doubling is a spoken-English resource too. 厭々々 is tripled in the source and tripled in the rendering.
• A4, the keyword. The story is built on 熱い, and the whole carriage is the refusal to vary: one stem, hot, at all eleven tokens of that family. Two things had to be kept apart from it and were: 暑さ, which is the weather and became heat, and 焦け, which is the scorching and became scorched. Collapsing 熱い and 暑い into one English word would have been a content change and is forbidden by C5, not merely discouraged.
• A6, the standalone attribution. Japanese prints the line, then begins a new paragraph with と and the attribution. English's dash-led, verb-first continuation — —B spat out., —said the two geisha, looking away. — does the same withholding and is ordinary English.

Where it was hard, and what the difficulty was

• A7, the withheld subject. This is where the regime's wager is most exposed, and the resource that saves five of the six sites is inversion: off at a dead run, went a husband and wife with their child; Saying this sort of thing to each other while they got ready was another group again, a party of schoolgirls; The tongue-clicking came from two men with geisha in tow. English can put the subject last whenever something else can be fronted. What it cannot do is have no subject at all, which is why A7.1 is recorded FAILED — see below.
• A5, the piled period. Ten sentences in which circumstantials accumulate ahead of a late main verb. The temptation is to import the order, which produces the front-loaded participial pile-up that is the standard mark of a translation out of Japanese. What worked instead was English apposition and participial chaining held to English's own rhythm — but he was wobbling now, lifting his legs — only his legs — as hugely as a man walking through deep snow, because it was hot, setting them down slowly, sweating, groaning. The verb still lands late; the sentence is still one sentence; nothing in it is a calque. This class took the most rewriting and produced no failures.
• A1, the dashes. Twenty-nine sites, and this is the class carrying the greatest cumulative exposure even though only one site failed. Fourteen are utterance-final and are simply kept. Eight are dash-initial sentences — a real English resource, and one that is unremarkable once but becomes a texture at eight. The alternatives were to convert some to ellipses (which say something different) or to drop some (which is flattening by another name); neither was taken, and the honest statement is that the density, not any individual site, is the thing a reader might notice. (This sentence is a prediction about a reader, not a quality claim: internal-judgment-only.)
• The one place the rule set had to be consulted against itself. At ¶025, B quotes a formula and appends だ twice: 勇敢な騎士を見よ――だ … 離さないよ――だ. The exponent is a particle English has no equivalent of. C4 forbids buying it with archaism, which rules out quotha and its relatives. What was taken is an English assertive tag after a dash — Behold the gallant knight—there you are … not in any water—there you are — repeated exactly as the source repeats it, so the doubling of the tag carries too.

The two failures, which are the regime's own result

A7.1, ¶001 — the story's first sentence has no subject. 駆け出した、とても歩いたりしては をられなかつたから. The reader is thrown into a run before being told who is running. An English finite main clause must have a subject; the nearest unmarked resource is an unanchored pronoun, and They ran is what the rendering uses. But They supplies number and animacy that the Japanese withholds, and the alternative that withholds them — Broke into a run — is a fragment that reads as translated the moment it is set down. C3 applies: the site is rendered as ordinary English and recorded as a loss.

A1.21, ¶053 — 俺は好いさ――。 A dash followed by a full stop: a trail that is nonetheless stopped. English punctuation has no such shape. Written out, I'm fine—. reads as a typing error rather than as a suspension. Rendered I'm fine. and recorded as a loss.

Both failures are grammatical, not stylistic. They are places where English forbids the option, not places where taking the option would have produced awkward English. That distinction is what R29 was built to be able to see, and it is the thing this log most wants a later session to notice: on this story the carriage/fluency trade did not bite where the wager predicted it might. (Whether the resulting English in fact reads as unmarked is not for the translator to say — the lead never judges its own translation, charter §5.)

What was considered for Class A and excluded, with the reason

C1's contract is that the set is declared in advance; it is worth recording what was looked at and left out, since a device set chosen to be carryable would make the failure count meaningless.

• Historical kana orthography (歴史的仮名遣: をられなかつた, やうな, ゐる). Excluded: it is the date of the printing, not a choice Makino made against a contemporary alternative, and carrying it would be archaism — forbidden by C4.
• The katakana English layer (ライフ・ボート, モダン・ガール, ジヤヅ, フオツクス・トロツト, and the starter's Get set! / On the mark! / Bang! in katakana). Excluded to Class B: these are image-bearing, and what happens to a foreign word that reaches a target language where it is no longer foreign is a different question, already measured at RS-20260812g.
• The register shifts inside the dialogue (the men's 〜やがる, the geisha's 〜わ, the child-talk お馬). Excluded: these carry who is speaking, which is content under C5. Only the doubling in お馬／＼ is a Class A site, not the register of it.
• The A/B/C naming of the young men. Class B. It is a device, and a striking one, but it is referential and cannot be flattened without changing what the text says.