Repository path: workshop/translations/bai-ganyo-opera/R08-v1/translation.md · rendered 2026-09-09

«Бай Ганьо в операта» — R08 (resistancy, Venuti's foreignizing techniques), v1

Source. As T-bai-ganyo-opera-R06-v1: Алеко Константинов, «Бай Ганьо в операта» (1895), 9 paragraphs, 677 Bulgarian words, copy-text ../src.txt.

Regime. R08 v1.0 — R06 plus the frozen ten-rule resistancy set R1–R10, consulted at every choice, with a D/P/S coverage code and an INT flag on interpretation-driven decisions.

Cost. $0.

Contamination: suspected — basis identical to R06-v1.

Bai Ganyo in the Opera

I prevailed on bai Ganyo that we should take a walk as far as the opera and take ourselves tickets for the evening. They were giving the ballet „Puppenfee“ and I do not remember what else besides. We passed the Greek coffee-house, turned off toward the coffee-house „Mendl“, where the Bulgarians gather, and set our course toward the church „St. Stephen“. Here on the square I invited bai Ganyo that we should turn in at a sladkarnitsa, not supposing that the character of Don Juan can get in under bai Ganyo's skin. But what wonders does civilization not work! I must tell you that I was studying then in Vienna; I had gone home over the holidays and was now returning, and so on the road to Vienna we made acquaintance with bai Ganyo. To this sladkarnitsa I used to go often and knew very well the girl at the till, a pretty little and merry maid, merry, but she held herself well and permitted no liberties. And picture it to yourselves, gentlemen, we go in, we with bai Ganyo, into the sladkarnitsa, we come near to the buffet, the maid greets me merrily with welcome, I answer her with certain playful civilities and turn back to choose myself something sweet and in that time an indignant shriek deafened the whole establishment…

— What happened, bai Ganyo, was it you did her something? — I cried out, alarmed and angry.

— I did not, brother, what should I have done — answered bai Ganyo confusedly, with a trembling voice.

The maid, angered to the highest degree, with a flaming face, with a loud voice recounted to me that bai Ganyo had offended her by deed, had taken hold of her and not only taken hold of her, but… She wanted to call the policeman. Scandal!

— Quick, take yourself off from here, bai Ganyo; if the policeman comes upon you, your work is burst, go upward, I shall overtake you — I cried out with feigned indignation and little remained for me to burst out laughing, as I looked at the tragicomic figure of bai Ganyo.

— What is she preening herself at me for! — said bai Ganyo with courage, on going out. — Sankim, honest is she? I know them, the women hereabouts. Show also the purse — all at once gut morgin, but your bai Ganyo is no simpleton!…

It was fated me that I should conclude the impressions of that day with one more little adventurelet, the hero of which was again our bai Ganyo.

At the opera they were giving, as I told you, the ballet „puppenfe“. We occupied seats in the parterre. The theatre was full. Bai Ganyo's bozav little clothes threw themselves in the eyes as a contrast with the general dark ground of the costumes. The curtain went up. Silence — dead. All with eyes fastened upon the fantastically decorated stage. I sensed that on my right side bai Ganyo is stirring at something, is groaning, but I cannot tear my eyes from the stage: the pictures of the ballet changed continually at the movement of a magic wand, various groups of ballerinas appear, disappear; on the stage now dark, now one-coloured, now many-coloured light — a féerie! From the general group of the ballerinas one detached herself, stepped with small quick paces toward the forestage, halted, sprang up and swam out through the air, propped only upon the little tip of one of her feet… In that same moment behind my back a hysterical ha-ha-ha-ha! clove the air. I turn to the left — all the rows behind me are sniggering and pointing at something on my right side. Momentarily something not good passed through my mind. I turn toward bai Ganyo… God! What do I see! Bai Ganyo has undressed himself to his shirtsleeves and has unbuttoned his waistcoat, which is squeezing him from the muskals stuffed into his poyas: one of the servants of the theatre has taken him with two fingers by the sleeve and is making him with his head altogether unequivocal signs to step out a little; bai Ganyo has goggled out at him and answers him likewise with signs — „sankim, whom will you frighten?“ This precisely babait moment wrings the hysterical laughter out of a little girl, who was sitting behind us, and this laughter infected the whole theatre. A picture! And picture it to yourselves, gentlemen, I look, sunk from shame, toward the boxes — as though someone were drawing me to look — and my eyes meet with the eyes fixed upon me of a whole acquainted German family, in which I had been very well received, and in their eyes I read sincere pity for my desperate position. And in that time bai Ganyo was drawing me energetically by the sleeve:

— Come along, come along, let us go out, leave them, these yids — they shall fall into my hand yet, wait!…

Translator's log

Written as the draft was written. Frozen and committed before any evaluation of this rendering was designed. Decisions and alternatives, not quality claims.

Coverage codes are assigned by R07 §5's test as R08 §Procedure imports it — D only where a rule names the feature and exactly one live option survives. INT marks a decision made on an interpretation of what the source means rather than by any rule (R08 §5a).

The decision table

What the rules did, in prose

R7 alone decides eight of the twenty sites, and every one of them is a Turkish or Bulgarian word in a Bulgarian sentence. That is the whole visible difference between this rendering and the fluent one: the resistancy set is, on this text, almost entirely a rule about the lexical stratum.

Row 7 is the site where the rule set gives no answer and I had to decide. R7 says retain source-culture particulars unassimilated — names, institutions, measures, forms of address — and an ethnic slur is none of those. Retaining «чифути» as chifuts would have hidden from the English reader the one fact the sentence exists to convey, which is that the speaker is contemptible; R8 (mix registers where the source mixes them) then decides it, and the decision is an interpretation, so it is flagged INT. Both the fluent and the plain renderings of this chapter took different options at this site, and the three arms differ there by a whole social judgment.

Rows 12, 13, 16 and 17 are where R1, R2 and R5 bite, and they cost the English its grammar in four different ways — an unregularized tense slide, three standing fragments, a doubled subject pronoun, and an unfinished sentence about an assault.

R10 was used once (row 6) and could have been used anywhere. The regime's own §Known limitations says this. Babait as an English attributive adjective is not a word; it is licensed only by R10's abusive fidelity, and the code is P rather than D because R9's parodic limit is a veto I applied by judgment and not by any test.

Tally

Computed by ../codes.py, committed with the tally; output codes.json. Strict D: 13 of 20 logged sites (65.0%). Mean live options per site: 2.55. INT flags: 3 of 20.

The first writing of this line said 12 and 2.75; both were wrong and the parse caught them. Note (bey) fires again — the fifth time in this project that a hand-read log tally was wrong.

Known exposure

Made third of the three renderings in this session's ladder, after R06-v1 and R07-v1, in the same reading. It is downstream of both.