Repository path: workshop/translations/black-cat/R04-v2/translation.md · rendered 2026-09-09

T-black-cat-R04-v2 — Edgar Allan Poe, "The Black Cat" (1843), the Pluto arc

Pair. English → Japanese. The second span of this work, and the project's second lead translation out of English. T-black-cat-R04-v1 (S038) rendered ¶14–20, the second cat's arc. This renders ¶4–9, the whole of Pluto's: introduction, friendship, the narrator's degeneration, the knife, the morning after, the noose.

Why this span, and it is not a free choice. wiki/base/anchors/A-sasaki-kuroneko §1 rests its headline on a count over the thirteen masculine third-person pronouns Poe uses of Pluto. Eleven of those thirteen lie outside R04-v1's span and have never had an independent Japanese rendering. The frozen site census (workshop/experiments/E-20260731-anchor-second-read/census.md, committed at 4cbea57, before a word below was written) lists every one. The span is the smallest continuous arc of Poe's prose that contains all eleven; it also contains all eight of the cat-referring neuter tokens, which is the other thing the census froze and the other thing nobody had counted.

Declared purpose (purpose-fit). Identical to R04-v1's and for the same reason: a reading edition in modern literary Japanese — である narration, first person 私, 新字新仮名, 漢語 where Poe is Latinate and 和語 where he drops to the Germanic floor; deliberately not the prewar 翻訳調 register of the only free published Japanese rendering, so that any later measurement of convergence between them is not measuring register imitation. The price, stated at v1 and unchanged: period is confounded with translator in any comparison with 佐々木.

Contamination: suspected, declared before measurement — and one priming event that is worse than v1's

Measured after this file's freeze commit with tools/dependence_check_cjk.py against 佐々木直次郎's Japanese; the figure and its reference cells are appended below the log, after the freeze.

Three exposures, declared:

1. The work is famous and 佐々木's Japanese is on Aozora Bunko. Unchanged from v1. The prior for having seen it is high, and no measurement of the lead's own memory can be made from the inside.
2. ⚠ The lead read A-sasaki-kuroneko §1 before translating, and §1 states the answer in aggregate. It knows that 佐々木 uses 彼 with a cat referent five times, all of them Pluto. It does not know which five sites, and it did not open 佐々木's Japanese text, this session or ever. This is a real priming event and it is not argued away. Its direction is toward agreement: a translator who knows the published version reached for an overt pronoun five times is pulled toward reaching for one, not away. Any divergence measured below is therefore measured against the bias, and any convergence is not evidence of anything.
3. No Japanese rendering of any part of this story was read before this file was committed — not this session, not at S038. What was established beforehand was existence and a count, from the anchor's prose. Metadata and a number, not the prose.

Extent. 822 source words → 2,097 non-whitespace Japanese characters, 6 paragraphs, one-to-one with the source's. Counted in Python, not with wc (note (abl)).

Conventions. _…_ marks 傍点, matching the stored English file's italic convention and v1's practice. Poe's full-capital personified abstractions (PERVERSENESS, Man, Intemperance) take 〈 〉, also v1's convention.

黒猫（抄・第二）

この後のほうは、目を惹くほど大きく美しい獣で、全身が黒く、驚くばかりに利口であった。その利口さが話に出ると、妻は——心のうちでは迷信の気が少なからずあったので——黒猫はみな化けた魔女なのだという古い俗説をたびたび引き合いに出した。といって妻がこの点で_本気_だったというのではない——そもそもこんなことを持ち出すのも、たまたま今それが思い出されたという以上の理由によるのではない。

プルートー——これがその猫の名であった——は、私のいちばんのお気に入りであり、遊び相手であった。餌をやるのは私ひとりで、家の中をどこへ行くにも後についてきた。通りへ出るときについてこさせまいとするのさえ、容易ではなかったほどである。

こうした友誼がこの調子で幾年か続いたが、そのあいだに私の気質も性格も——〈不節制〉という魔物の働きによって——（打ち明けるのも赤面の至りだが）根こそぎ悪いほうへ変わってしまっていた。日に日に私は塞ぎがちになり、怒りっぽくなり、他人の気持ちを顧みなくなった。妻に向かって粗暴な口をきくことも自分に許すようになった。しまいには手さえ上げた。飼っている獣たちも、むろん私の気性の変わりようを思い知らされた。ないがしろにするばかりでなく、手荒にも扱った。それでもプルートーにだけは、まだ手をかけまいと思わせるだけの情が残っていた——兎にも、猿にも、いや犬にさえ、はずみで、あるいは懐いて足もとに寄ったというだけで、平気で手を上げていたというのに。だが私の病は昂じるばかりで——酒ほどの病がまたとあろうか！——ついにはプルートーまでが——もう年を取って、それだけに幾らか気難しくもなっていたのだが——そのプルートーまでが、私の癇癪の煽りを食うようになったのである。

ある夜、町なかの行きつけの一軒から、したたか酔って帰ってくると、あの猫が私を避けているように思われた。掴まえると、私の乱暴に怯えて、歯で手にかすり傷を負わせた。たちどころに悪鬼の憤怒が私に取り憑いた。私はもはや自分というものを知らなかった。生まれついての魂は一瞬にして身体から飛び去ったかと思われ、ジンに養われた、悪鬼にもまさる悪意が、五体の繊維という繊維を震わせた。私はチョッキの隠しからペンナイフを取り出し、それを開き、哀れな獣の喉をつかんで、おもむろにその片眼を眼窩からえぐり出した！この呪わしい非道を書きつけながら、私は赤面し、身を灼かれ、身震いする。

朝とともに理性が戻り——夜の放埒の酔いが醒めてみると——私は自分の犯した罪に対して、半ばは恐怖、半ばは悔恨という思いを味わった。だがそれは、よく見たところでか細い、煮え切らぬ感情でしかなく、魂のほうは手つかずのままであった。私はふたたび放埒に身を沈め、ほどなく酒の中にその所業の記憶を残らず溺れさせた。

そうこうするうちに猫は少しずつ回復した。失われた眼の眼窩は、なるほど怖ろしい様相を呈していたが、もう痛みを覚えている風ではなかった。前のとおり家の中を歩き回っていた。ただ、思ったとおり、私が近づくとひどく怯えて逃げた。かつてはあれほど私を慕った生きものに、これほどあからさまに嫌われるということが、はじめは悲しかった——それだけの昔の心が、まだ私には残っていたのである。だがこの思いはほどなく苛立ちに席を譲った。そしてそのとき、私の最後の、取り返しのつかぬ破滅を仕上げるかのようにして、〈天邪鬼〉の魔がやって来た。この魔について、哲学は何ひとつ顧慮するところがない。だが私は、自分の魂が生きているということよりもなお確かに、天邪鬼が人間の心の原初の衝動の一つであること——〈人間〉の性格に方向を与える、分かちがたい根本の能力ないし情念の一つであることを、承知している。いけないと知っている、ただそれだけの理由で、下劣な、あるいは愚かしい行いに手を染めている自分に気づいたことが、百度もなかったという者があろうか。われわれは最良の分別にさからってでも、_掟_であるというまさにそのゆえに、掟であるものを踏みにじりたいという、絶えざる傾きを抱いてはいないか。この天邪鬼の魔が、いま言うとおり、私の最後の破滅を仕上げたのである。_おのれ自身を苛みたい_という、あの底知れぬ魂の渇き——おのれの本性に暴力を加えたい、ただ悪であるというだけの理由で悪をなしたいという渇き——それが私を駆り立てて、あの何の咎もない獣に加えた害を、続けさせ、ついには仕上げさせたのだ。ある朝、私は冷やかな心で、その首に輪縄をかけ、木の枝に吊るした——目からは涙を流し、胸には苦い悔恨を抱いて吊るしたのだ——それが私を愛していたと知っていた_からこそ_吊るし、それが私に腹を立てる理由など何ひとつ与えなかったと感じていた_からこそ_吊るし、そうすることで自分は罪を犯しているのだと知っていた_からこそ_吊るしたのだ——それは死に至る罪であり、私の不滅の魂を、もしそんなことがありうるならば、この上なく慈悲深く、この上なく怖ろしい神の、限りない慈悲さえ届かぬところへ追いやってしまうほどの罪であった。

Translator's log

Written at translation time, frozen at this file's first commit, before any Japanese rendering of this story was fetched and before the study limb's design existed. Decisions and alternatives, not quality claims; evaluative sentences are marked. Nineteen points.

§A — the nineteen pronoun sites, which are what the span was chosen for

1. Eleven English masculine pronouns about a cat, and I wrote 彼 zero times. Not once, and not by policy — I did not decide in advance to avoid it. Site by site (census numbering):

Ten zeros and one demonstrative. The honest description of what happened is not "I chose to drop the pronoun eleven times." It is that at ten of the eleven sites Japanese did not present me with a slot to fill. Site 2 is the only one where something had to go in, and what went in was その, which is a demonstrative and not a pronoun — it points, it does not agree in gender or animacy.

2. The one place I would have had to decide, and did not have to. Site 8 is the interesting one. Poe's in **his** fright at my violence puts two possessors in one phrase; English marks both. I wrote 「私の乱暴に怯えて」 — frightened at my violence — and the cat's ownership of the fright is carried by the fact that nothing else could be the subject of 怯えて. That is not compensation. It is the target language declining to raise the question.

3. The counter-case, and it is the only one: それ, twice, at the hanging. In ¶9's final period I wrote 「それが_私を愛していたと知っていた_からこそ」 and 「_それが_私に腹を立てる理由など何ひとつ与えなかったと 感じていた」. Both render Poe's neuter it, not his masculine he. I reached for an overt pronoun exactly where Poe stopped using a personal one. I did not notice this while writing; I noticed it while writing this table. (Any reading of why is internal-judgment-only; the fact is the count.)

4. Poe's own he → it shift is not representable, and it is not "lost" in the way the theory says either. Eight neuter tokens in this span, all Pluto, all at or after the knife (census §neuter). Japanese offers それ for a thing and nothing at all for a familiar animal, so the contrast between he and it has no vehicle — but neither term of the contrast had a vehicle to begin with, because he had none either. C1 says a grammaticalised category is lost and repaid intermittently in the lexicon. Here there is nothing to repay, because the category never surfaced. What actually disappears is not a marking but a change of marking, and a change is a different kind of object from a feature. Recorded as a decision-level observation, not a claim.

5. The three human sites are the within-text control and they behave identically. Site 1 is outside the span. Sites 13–14 — "for no other reason than because he knows he should not" — became 「いけないと知っている、ただそれだけの理由で」: two zeros. So Japanese did not treat the generic man differently from the cat. If the anchor's reading were that Japanese has some special difficulty with animal reference, this is the site that would have shown it, and it does not.

§B — where the work actually was

6. PERVERSENESS → 〈天邪鬼〉, and it is a substitution I could argue either way. Poe's word is a Latinate abstraction personified into a faculty. Japanese has no neutral abstract equivalent that also works as a name: 邪心 is wickedness (misses the because it is wrong logic), 背理 is against-reason (too logical), へそ曲がり is right in sense and colloquial in register. 天邪鬼 is exactly right in sense — the impulse to do the contrary — and is now an ordinary word for a contrarian, so it does not read as a folk demon. But it is a domestication: a Japanese folkloric figure standing in for a Western faculty-psychology term, and it is the same class of move A-shaw-spider-thread catalogues as 極楽→"Paradise". Alternatives were live; I took the readable one. The 魔 I attached to it (〈天邪鬼〉の魔) is an addition, licensed by Poe's own "the spirit of".

7. the Fiend Intemperance → 〈不節制〉という魔物. Straight, and it forced 〈 〉 to do two jobs in one span — personified abstraction (¶6, ¶9) and small-capital emphasis (Man).

8. "sagacious to an astonishing degree" → 「驚くばかりに利口であった」. Sagacious of an animal is a period word with no Japanese register-match; 利口 is the plain word and loses the Latinate lift. 聡明 was live and would have been arch. This is the ordinary style-correspondence trade and it went the usual way.

9. "Our friendship lasted, in this manner, for several years" — 「こうした友誼がこの調子で幾年か続いた」. 友誼 is deliberately elevated for a cat, because Poe's friendship is deliberately elevated for a cat. 仲 or 付き合い were the natural registers and would have flattened the joke that is not a joke.

10. "I suffered myself to use intemperate language" → 「粗暴な口をきくことも自分に許すようになった」. The reflexive-permissive suffered myself is the sentence's whole moral posture. 自分に許す keeps it. つい〜してしまった would have been idiomatic and would have removed the culpability.

11. "At length, I even offered her personal violence" → 「しまいには手さえ上げた」. Poe's euphemism is Latinate and formal; 手を上げる is the Japanese euphemism and is colloquial. The register moves down where the source moves up. I took the euphemism over the register because the euphemism is what the sentence is doing.

12. "what disease is like Alcohol!" → 「酒ほどの病がまたとあろうか！」. Poe capitalises Alcohol. 〈 〉 was available and I did not use it, because 酒 with 〈 〉 would read as a personification the sentence does not make — here Alcohol is a disease, not a fiend. An inconsistency with point 7, made knowingly.

13. "deliberately cut one of its eyes from the socket" → 「おもむろにその片眼を眼窩からえぐり出した」. Deliberately is the word doing the horror. おもむろに (unhurriedly) rather than 故意に (on purpose): Poe's word carries both slowness and intent and Japanese splits them; I took slowness, because the intent is already in わざわざ-free syntax and in the whole paragraph.

14. "I blush, I burn, I shudder" → 「私は赤面し、身を灼かれ、身震いする」. Present tense kept — Japanese has no morphological present/past contrast to lose here, but the narrating-now frame is carried by the plain 〜する against the surrounding 〜た, which is the same job by a different route.

15. "the soul remained untouched" → 「魂のほうは手つかずのままであった」. 〜のほうは to mark the contrast English marks with word order and the definite article.

16. "gave place to irritation" → 「苛立ちに席を譲った」. A calque, and I kept it because the metaphor is live in Japanese too. The alternative 「苛立ちに取って代わられた」 is flatter and more natural. (That this is a trade rather than a free win is internal-judgment-only.)

17. The three italicised _because_s → 傍点 on 「からこそ」, three times. Poe emphasises the conjunction; Japanese has no single conjunction to emphasise, so the emphasis lands on a clause-final 〜からこそ, which already means precisely because. The 傍点 is therefore partly redundant with the lexis — the Japanese says "precisely because" whether or not the dots are there, where the English needs the italics. Kept anyway, to preserve the visible triplet.

18. Poe's dashes. Kept as —— throughout, including the six-dash cascade of the final period. The Japanese sentence can carry them because they are doing rhythmic, not syntactic, work.

19. What I did not do. No sentence was split that Poe did not split, and none joined. The paragraph count is one-to-one. This is a stricter constraint than v1 took and I took it because the span exists to be counted against another translation, and paragraph drift would make the site alignment argue rather than compute.

Contamination, measured — appended after the freeze commit 52c5887

python3 tools/dependence_check_cjk.py workshop/translations/black-cat/R04-v2/dependence/cells.json Raw output at dependence/result.json. Character runs, not word runs; not comparable to dependence_check.py figures (the tool's own warning).

Verdict: the subject clears its references, +5 over the highest. contamination: suspected stands and is now measured rather than asserted. For comparison, R04-v1's subject run was 16 against a reference maximum of 8 (+8); this span overlaps佐々木 slightly more in absolute terms and slightly less in margin.

The two 17-character runs, printed so they can be judged rather than counted:

「からペンナイフを取り出しそれを開き」 — Poe: "I took from my waistcoat-pocket a pen-knife, opened it" 「私は自分の魂が生きているということ」 — Poe: "I am not more sure that my soul lives"

Both are strings where the Japanese word order is fixed by the English clause structure and the vocabulary has no live alternative — the shape RS-20260728b-forced-run-ru calls FORCED. Neither is a stylistic choice.

The convergences that do not show up as runs are the interesting ones, and there are two. Independently, from the English alone, this translation and 佐々木's reach for 天邪鬼 at PERVERSENESS and 掟 at _Law_ — 佐々木 writes 「天邪鬼_の心持」 and 「_掟」, this file writes 「〈天邪鬼〉の魔」 and 「掟」. Both are under seven characters and so are invisible to the instrument. ~~掟 is close to forced.~~ Both were measured after this file's freeze and NEITHER is forced (RS-20260731-anchor-second-read §4.3): of four independent non-lead renderings of the same paragraphs, one reached 天邪鬼 and none reached 掟. So the agreement with 佐々木 is 3 of 6 on 天邪鬼 and 2 of 6 on 掟 — a convergence, not a floor. The sentence that called 掟 "close to forced" was an assertion and it is withdrawn. Log point 6 stands: 天邪鬼 is a domesticating substitution with at least three live alternatives, chosen before 佐々木's text was opened.

And the divergence that does not show up either. Over the eleven Pluto pronoun sites in this span, 佐々木 writes an overt 彼 four times and this translation writes it zero times (log §A). The instrument sees none of that, because a pronoun is one character.