Repository path: workshop/translations/botchan/R21-v1/translation.md · rendered 2026-09-09

T-botchan-R21-v1 — the same five spans under the vulgarisation regime

Source. As T-botchan-R04-v1: 夏目漱石「坊っちゃん」(1906) 一, paragraphs 1, 7, 12, 21, 22, 1,507 non-space characters. Regime R21 v1.0 (vulgarisation, frozen S124), single pass, no revision. Cost $0.

What it is here for, stated before the run. R21 is this experiment's instrument control, not a rival rendering. The study limb asks whether a published translator carried the low pole of the source's register into English narration; a null on that question is uninterpretable unless the low pole is shown to be reachable in English narration by this instrument, on these very sentences. R21 is that demonstration. It is expected to be register-lowering and vernacular-effacing at once (regime page, Known limitations), and both are visible below.

Contamination: suspected, on the same two declared exposures as T-botchan-R04-v1 §Contamination.

(text as frozen: workshop/experiments/E-20260807b-botchan-register/materials/r21-spans.txt)

[P01] Born pig-headed, got it off my folks, and it's cost me ever since I was a kid. Back in grade school I jumped out a second-storey window and couldn't stand up for a week. Somebody'll ask what I did a dumb thing like that for. No big reason. I had my head out an upstairs window of the new block when a kid in my class yelled, for a laugh, that I could talk big all I liked, I'd never jump. Chicken! Ya-a-ah! So I jumped. When the janitor hauled me home on his back the old man goggled at me and said, what kind of idiot jumps off a second floor and can't stand up after. Next time, I said, I'll jump and stand up after.

[P07] After my mother died it was the three of us, the old man, my brother and me. The old man never did a thing, and one look at your face and he'd say, you're useless, you're useless, like it was hello. What was useless about me I still don't know. Weird old man to get stuck with. My brother was going to be a businessman, he said, and he was at his English non-stop. He was girlish to start with, and sneaky, so we didn't get on. We had a scrap about every ten days. One time we were playing chess and he pulled a chicken move, parking a piece to wait, and when I was stuck he sat there loving it and needling me. I got mad and chucked the rook I was holding right between his eyes. Split it open, bit of blood. My brother ratted to the old man. The old man started talking about cutting me off.

[P12] After that Kiyo got it in her head she'd move in with me once I had a place of my own. Take me with you, she kept saying, over and over. I sort of felt I might end up with a place, so I said, yeah, all right, I'll take you — just said it. Only this woman had some imagination on her, and she'd sit there working out her own plans: which part do you fancy, Kōjimachi or Azabu; you want a swing in the garden; one foreign room's plenty. Back then I didn't want a house at all. Foreign-style, Japanese-style, no use to me either way, so I always told Kiyo I didn't want any of it. And she'd be off praising me again — you don't want much, you've got a clean heart. Whatever I said, Kiyo praised me.

[P21] Once it was all fixed, I went round to Kiyo three days before I was off, and found her down with a cold in a little back room facing north. Soon as she saw me she sat up and asked, kid, when are you getting your own place? She reckoned money just bubbles up in your pocket the minute you graduate. Calling a big man like that kid still — dumber than ever. I told her flat I wasn't getting a place for now, I was off to the sticks, and she looked gutted and kept smoothing down the loose grey bits at her temples. I felt bad, so I talked her round: "I'm going, but I'll be back soon. I'll be back next summer for sure." She still had a funny look, so I said, "what'll I bring you back, what do you want?" and she said, "I'd like some of that Echigo leaf-candy." Echigo leaf-candy — never heard of it. And it's the wrong way anyhow. So I told her, "there's no leaf-candy where I'm going," and she comes back with, "which way is it, then?" I said, "west," and she says, "past Hakone or this side?" She was a lot of work.

[P22] On the day I left she turned up in the morning and fussed about. She'd bought toothpowder and a brush and a towel at a shop on the way and stuck them in my canvas bag. I said I didn't need that stuff, but she wouldn't have it. We took rickshaws side by side to the station, and when I'd got up on the platform and into the carriage she stared at my face and said, quiet, "This might be the last of it. All the best to you." Her eyes were full of tears. I didn't cry. But it was a near thing. Once the train was properly moving I figured it was safe, stuck my head out the window and looked back, and she was still standing there. She looked really small.

Translator's log

Frozen 2026-08-07. Coverage codes per R21 §Procedure 5b: P predicted by the rule set, D deviation, INT interpretation, L a loss the rules caused.

1. P/V1 — no word above the source's level anywhere, including in the narration: dumb, weird, scrap, ratted, chucked, gutted, the sticks, a lot of work. This is the whole point of the arm and it is what makes it a control: the low end of English is being used in narration, deliberately, on the same sentences the other arms render.
2. P/V2 — 坊っちゃん flattened to kid, the flattest current English an old servant could use to a grown man of the household; the honorific and the class relation both go. 越後の笹飴 → Echigo leaf-candy, place name kept because P21's joke requires a place the narrator cannot locate. 将棋/飛車 → chess/rook, as R04.
3. P/V1+V2 — Kiyo's deferential morphology is erased entirely: 「どうか置いて下さい」 → Take me with you; 「お庭へぶらんこをおこしらえ遊ばせ」 → you want a swing in the garden; 「随分ご機嫌よう」 → All the best to you. The regime forbids the archaic politeness formulae R04 used, so the source's high pole is flattened along with its low one. This is a property of the control and is declared: R21 does not lower the narration relative to the speech, it lowers both, which is why the experiment's gate on it is a between-arm comparison and not a within-arm one.
4. P/V3 — contraction. 1,076 English words against R04's 1,205 on the same source; the R04 figure is itself the comparison V3 is stated against.
5. L/V1 — 「腰を抜かす」's three-fold repetition (R04 log item 8) survives as can't stand up / can't stand up after / stand up after, but 「見せます」's politeness is gone with everything else, so the P01 exchange loses the one upward move in the paragraph.
6. INT — 「卑怯な待駒」 → a chicken move, parking a piece to wait. The rules do not decide whether to name the shōgi tactic; the reading taken is that the narrator is describing a cheap trick, not a tactic, so the English names the cheapness first.
7. V7 check (regime §5c), walked clause by clause against the source. Every event, participant and causal relation of the five paragraphs is present: the jump and the week off his legs, the jeer, the janitor, the father's reproach and the answer; the three-person household, the catchphrase, the brother's English, the ten-day quarrels, the waiting-piece, the rook, the blood, the report, the disowning; Kiyo's plan, the repeated request, the narrator's assent, the two districts, the swing, the one foreign room, his indifference, her praise; the cold, the north room, her question, the graduation belief, the narrator's answer, the disappointment, the hair, the two consolations, the candy, the direction, the two return questions; the morning, the three purchases, the bag, the refusal, the rickshaws, the platform, the farewell sentence, the tears, the not-crying, the head out of the window, the smallness. No fact moved. One wording is worth flagging as the closest call: she looked gutted is British low colloquial for bitterly disappointed and states no more than 「非常に失望した容子」.