Repository path: workshop/translations/bettelweib-locarno/R04-v1/translation.md · rendered 2026-09-09

T-bettelweib-locarno-R04-v1 — Kleist, «Das Bettelweib von Locarno» ¶1–3, DE→EN, self-revised

Regime: R04 v1.0 (lead close translation with a self-revision pass against the source). Source: workshop/canon/bettelweib-locarno/source.txt. Draft: T-bettelweib-locarno-R06-v1, frozen and committed at 60d95b4 before this revision was begun. Translated by: the lead agent. No API call; cost $0; not ledgered. Priming: as the draft. No English rendering of this story was read at any point. Contamination: suspected, UNMEASURED — identical basis to the draft; no free comparator exists. Evaluation: none, and none is possible under this design.

Deviation from the frozen design, recorded rather than hidden. E-20260728c §2 step 2 says "W_A is not looked at" at this stage. It was: the draft's word count (407) was computed and displayed in the same command that committed the draft, before this revision was written. The deviation is real. Its direction is stated so it can be discounted correctly: anchoring on 407 would tend to make |Δ_free| smaller, which understates the work the matching pass has to do and therefore biases limb B against the result it expects. It is the conservative direction, which is why the run proceeds rather than restarting on new material.

This revision was written against the source and the draft, with no length target of any kind. No word count was taken between the deviation above and the freeze of this file.

Translation

At the foot of the Alps, near Locarno in upper Italy, there stood an old castle belonging to a marchese, which one now sees lying in rubble and ruin as one comes from the St. Gotthard; a castle with high and spacious rooms, in one of which an old sick woman, who had presented herself begging at the door, had once been bedded down by the lady of the house, out of pity, on straw that was shaken out beneath her. The marchese, who on his return from the hunt happened to step into the room where he was in the habit of setting down his gun, ordered the woman crossly to get up out of the corner in which she lay and to take herself off behind the stove. The woman, as she raised herself, slipped with her crutch on the smooth floor and injured her back in a dangerous way; so that she did indeed still get to her feet with unspeakable effort and go right across the room, as she had been directed: but behind the stove she sank down, with groaning and moaning, and died.

Several years afterwards, when the marchese had fallen, through war and failed harvests, into alarming financial straits, a Genoese knight presented himself, who wished to buy the castle from him for the sake of its beautiful situation. The marchese, to whom the sale mattered a great deal, instructed his wife to lodge the stranger in the empty room mentioned above, which was very handsomely and comfortably furnished. But how taken aback the couple were when the knight came down to them in the middle of the night, distraught and pale, swearing by all that was holy that the room was haunted: that something which had been invisible to the eye had risen, with a noise as though it had been lying on straw, in the corner of the room, had walked with audible steps, slowly and infirmly, right across the room, and had sunk down behind the stove with groaning and moaning.

The marchese, alarmed — he did not himself rightly know why — laughed the knight out of it with an affected cheerfulness, and said he would get up at once and spend the night with him in the room to set his mind at rest. But the knight begged the favour of being allowed to pass the night in an armchair in the marchese's own bedroom; and when morning came he ordered the horses harnessed, took his leave, and departed.

Translator's log

Frozen with the revision, before any measurement of it. Continues the draft's numbering. Decisions and alternatives, not quality claims.

D15 — "down" struck from D4. The draft added a direction — "as one comes down from the St. Gotthard" — that the German (wenn man vom St. Gotthard kommt) does not have. The draft's own log flagged it as an explicitation. On a close pass against the source an unlicensed addition that the log has already marked is the first thing to go. Now "as one comes from the St. Gotthard".

D16 — weitläufigen → "spacious", replacing "rambling" (D5). The draft's log recorded that "rambling" imports an English-country-house note the German lacks. weitläufig of rooms is extent, not sprawl. Colour given up for accuracy; "extensive" was the third option and reads oddly of rooms.

D17 — the participial in ¶1 restored to a relative clause. The draft had "The marchese, returning from the hunt and happening to step into the room…". Kleist has Der Marchese, der, bei der Rückkehr von der Jagd, zufällig in das Zimmer trat, wo… — a relative clause with a nested prepositional phrase, which is the passage's characteristic movement. Now "The marchese, who on his return from the hunt happened to step into the room where he was in the habit of setting down his gun…". This lengthens. Taken anyway: the syntax is the thing being translated here.

D18 — in welchem sie lag restored as a relative clause. "the corner she was lying in" → "the corner in which she lay". Same ground as D17, and the register of the German is not colloquial.

D19 — glatten → "smooth", replacing "polished". "Polished" specifies a floor treatment the German does not; glatt is the slipperiness itself, which is what causes the fall. An explicitation removed.

D20 — quer restored, twice. The draft dropped it in ¶1 (quer … über das Zimmer ging) and in ¶2 (quer über das Zimmer gegangen). It is not decorative: the woman is made to cross the room from the corner to the stove, and the apparition retraces exactly that line. Now "went right across the room" and "right across the room". A dropped word restored in both places, because the two sentences must stay parallel — see D11.

D21 — the adversative aber and the colon restored in ¶1. The German is …über das Zimmer ging: hinter den Ofen aber, unter Stöhnen und Aechzen, niedersank und verschied. The draft had a comma and no contrast. Now "…as she had been directed: but behind the stove she sank down…". The colon is Kleist's; the turn from obedience to death happens across it. And restoring aber exposed a grammatical fault the draft had concealed: German zwar … aber is a correlative pair, and the draft had rendered the zwar half as "although she still got to her feet", a subordinate clause whose main clause never arrives once the aber half is punctuated as its own sentence. Repaired to the correlative — "she did indeed still get to her feet … : but behind the stove she sank down" — which is what zwar … aber is. This is the one place in the revision where the draft was not merely less close but wrong.

D22 — bedenkliche Vermögensumstände → "alarming financial straits", replacing "precarious circumstances". The draft dropped the financial specificity that Vermögens- carries, and the sale in the next sentence depends on it. Also, the German's commas around durch Krieg und Mißwachs are restored.

D23 — seiner schönen Lage wegen → "its beautiful situation", replacing "fine situation", and the participial "wishing to buy" restored to the relative clause "who wished to buy", on D17's ground.

D24 — ¶2's apparition clause reordered to follow the German. The draft put "had got up in the corner of the room with a noise as though it had been lying on straw". Kleist orders it mit einem Geräusch, als ob es auf Stroh gelegen, im Zimmerwinkel aufgestanden — the noise before the place. Restored: "had risen, with a noise as though it had been lying on straw, in the corner of the room". The noise arrives before the location does, which is how the thing is perceived.

D25 — Der Marchese erschrocken, er wußte selbst nicht recht warum given its full clause. The draft compressed Kleist's second clause into a phrase ("without rightly knowing why himself"). The German has a bare apposition followed by a whole independent clause. Now set off by dashes: "The marchese, alarmed — he did not himself rightly know why —". This lengthens, and it restores a finite verb the draft had suppressed.

D26 — erkünstelter → "affected", replacing "forced". erkünstelt is artificial, made-up, not forced. "Affected cheerfulness" is the register.

D27 — ließ er anspannen → "ordered the horses harnessed"; reiste ab → "departed". The draft's "ordered his horses put to" is right in period but obscure now; "drove away" specified a carriage the German leaves open (abreisen is simply to depart). A second explicitation removed, on D15/D19's ground.

D28 — the ambiguity of in seinem Schlafzimmer is NOT restored, and the choice is recorded as unresolvable. Whose bedroom the armchair is in is genuinely open in the German; the standard reading is the marchese's. English cannot hold the ambiguity — a bare "his" would attach to the knight, the nearer subject, and would say something the German does not. The draft's resolution ("the marchese's own bedroom") stands, as a resolution, not as a reading of an ambiguous phrase.

D29 — the doublet of D11 checked, not re-decided. "with groaning and moaning" appears in ¶1 and ¶2 and the two strings are identical, which D11 made a constraint on any revision. Verified by eye at revision time and by string comparison after the freeze.