Repository path: workshop/translations/caldura-mare/R06-v1/translation.md · rendered 2026-09-09

«Căldură mare» — R06 (lead, source-only, single pass), v1

Source. Ion Luca Caragiale, «Căldură mare» (1899), the sketch whole. Public domain: Caragiale 1852–1912. Copy-text: Romanian Wikisource, page Căldură mare, fetched 2026-08-13 through the MediaWiki action=parse API (the page transcludes a proofread scan of Opere, volumul 2 — Nuvele și schițe, pages 120–124); the rendered text with wiki chrome stripped and nothing else altered is ../source.txt. 120 paragraphs, 916 Romanian words, 5,294 characters, read whole in Romanian.

The project's first Romanian source. Romanian appears nowhere else in this repository.

Regime. R06 v1.0 — lead agent, source only, single pass, no return pass, log written as the draft is written. No published rendering of this sketch into any language was read before this draft and its log were frozen.

Cost. $0 (charter §3, A4 — lead translation is never ledgered).

Contamination: none, and the basis is a measurement. No English rendering of «Căldură mare» is reachable: the one public-domain English Caragiale collection, Lucy Byng, Roumanian Stories (John Lane, 1921; Project Gutenberg #38991), carries only The Easter Torch and At Manjoala's Inn, and this sketch is in neither. So the comparator for a same-text overlap measurement does not exist. What was measured, and is reported here rather than asserted, is this draft against the whole of Byng's Caragiale — 8,748 words of period English translated from the same author by a hand that had this author's idiom in front of it. tools/dependence_check.py returns longest common run 5 tokens, 0 shared 7-grams, 0 shared 12-grams, 0 shared 15-grams, verdict clean, against a same-text independent-pair baseline the project records at 8–24 tokens. That is a cross-text figure and cannot bound same-text dependence; it is reported because it is the only measurement available and because a placeholder declaration with no number is what note (bcd) forbids.

Great Heat

The thermometer says 33° Celsius in the shade... Under the blaze of the sun a cab pulls up in Patience Street, at number 11 bis, towards three in the afternoon. A gentleman climbs down from the carriage and with a limp step goes up to the door under the awning, where he puts his finger on the bell button. He rings once... nothing; twice, three times... nothing again; he leans on the button with his finger and does not lift it off again... At last a manservant comes to open.

In everything that follows, all the persons preserve an imperturbable calm, even and full of dignity.

The Gentleman: Is the master at home?

The Servant: Yes; but he told me to say, if anybody came looking for him, that he'd gone to the country.

G.: You tell him I called.

S.: I can't, sir.

G.: Why not?

S.: The room's locked.

G.: Knock, and he'll open it.

S.: Well, he took the key with him when he went out.

G.: Which is to say he's gone out?

S.: No, sir, he hasn't gone out.

G.: My friend, you are... an idiot!

S.: No I'm not, sir.

G.: You say he isn't at home.

S.: He is at home, sir.

G.: Well, didn't you say he'd gone?

S.: No, sir, he hasn't gone.

G.: Then he's at home.

S.: No he isn't, only he hasn't gone to the country, he's just stepped out.

G.: Where?

S.: Into town.

G.: Where!?

S.: Into Bucharest.

G.: Then tell him I called.

S.: What is your name, sir?

G.: What's that to you?

S.: So as to tell him.

G.: Tell him what? How do you know what to tell him, when I haven't told you what to tell him? Wait, let me tell you first; don't rush at it... Tell him when he gets back that someone came looking for him...

S.: Who?

G.: I did.

S.: Your name, sir?

G.: That's quite enough! He knows me... we're friends...

S.: Very good, sir.

G.: Have you understood?

S.: I have understood.

G.: Ah!... Tell him we're to meet without fail.

S.: Where?

G.: He knows... Only he must come.

S.: When?

G.: When he can.

S.: Very good.

G.: Have you understood?

S.: I have understood.

G.: Ah!... and if he sees our friend...

S.: Which friend?

G.: He knows!... he's to tell him that nothing could be done about the business he knows of, because I spoke to the person... Don't forget!

S.: How could I forget?

G.: ...and she says that now it's too late, since he didn't come in time; because if he'd come even a few days sooner, that would have been another matter!... it might perhaps have been managed... Keep it in mind!

S.: I'm keeping it, sir...

G.: ...seeing that the aunt of the person who went to pay the deposit to the guardian of the minors hadn't left yet, and he hadn't heard yet, seeing that he hadn't been told by the lady's nephew, with whom the business was as good as settled, if he'd only had the patience to wait till Monday evening, when the lawyer is bound to be back, because he's gone off on a boundary survey; but now, unfortunately, it's impossible from several points of view, which he knows about... That's what you're to tell him.

S.: Very good, sir.

The gentleman goes off... The servant makes to shut the door... The gentleman comes back.

G.: Ah!... do you know what? Don't tell him anything, because you may not keep the persons straight. I'd better call round this evening and tell him myself... What time does Mr. Costică get in to dinner?

S.: Which Mr. Costică?

G.: Your master.

S.: Which master, sir?

G.: Yours... Mr. Costică.

S.: My master isn't called Mr. Costică; he's a propritor...

G.: Well! and what if he is a propritor?

S.: His name is Mr. Popescu.

G.: And what else?

S.: What do you mean, what else?

G.: Naturally... Popescu, propritor... very well... and what else?

S.: I couldn't say.

G.: Isn't he called Costică Popescu?

S.: No.

G.: Impossible.

S.: It is so, sir.

G.: Well, you see?

S.: See what?

G.: Is he called Costică?

S.: No, Mitică.

G.: Mitică?... beyond belief!... What street is this here?

S.: Number 11 bis...

G.: I'm not talking about 11 bis.

S.: The master said he didn't want to put up 13, because it's fatal.

G.: 13 has nothing to do with it... I'm asking you about the street. What street is this?

S.: Patience Street...

G.: Patience Street?... impossible!

S.: No, sir, it's Patience Street.

G.: Then this isn't it.

S.: It is it.

G.: No.

S.: Yes it is.

G.: On the contrary, I'm looking for Wisdom Street, 11 bis, Wisdom Street, Mr. Costică Popescu.

S.: Is that so?

G.: That's so.

S.: Then it isn't here.

G.: Very good.

The gentleman goes off and walks to the cab. The cabman is asleep on the box. The horses are asleep in the shafts.

The Gentleman: Come along, cabman!

The Cabman: Not free... got a fare, bag pardon...

G.: What fare?

C.: Me not know, bag pardon...

G.: Where did you pick him up?

C.: Vrom over dere, bag pardon.

G.: Well, isn't that me?

C.: Eh! is the gentleman, bag pardon.

The gentleman climbs up... The cabman lays on the whip... The horses wake and start off. The gentleman rises to his feet, at the back of the cabman's neck.

G.: Listen to me; do you know where Patience Street is?

C.: Dat not know, bag pardon.

An old woman goes past. The gentleman stops the cab.

The Gentleman: If you please, good woman, do you know where Patience Street is?

The Old Woman: This is it, my dear.

G.: Oh, come!... Terribly gone in the head!... Drive on, cabman!

The cab starts. The gentleman signals to stop at a little grocer's on the corner, where a boy in a green apron is dozing on the step in the shade.

The Gentleman: Young man, what street is this?

The Boy: Patience Street...

G.: You're a fool!... On, cabman!

The cab goes a good stretch further... A street policeman is sitting on a bench at the gate of a large courtyard. He has taken his boots off to cool his feet a little. The gentleman signals; the cab stops.

The Gentleman: Sergeant!

The Sergeant: Your orders!

G.: If you please, don't you know where Patience Street is?

S.: This is the very one.

G.: Impossible.

S.: Yes, sir, this is it.

G.: ...to Mr. Popescu's, number 11 bis...

S.: Why, yes, further up, on the left-hand side, some yellow houses in a courtyard, with an awning...

G.: Ah!... Then that servant is a stupid!... Merci!... Turn round, cabman!

Translator's log

Written as the draft was written, decision by decision, and frozen with it (R06 §3). Decisions and alternatives, not quality claims. Any evaluative sentence carries internal-judgment-only, which the front matter already asserts for the page.

D1 — the title. «Căldură mare» is a bare noun phrase, "great heat". Great Heat keeps the bareness. Alternatives live at the moment of writing: Terrible Heat, A Scorcher, Heatwave. The last two put a modern English weather idiom on an 1899 Bucharest sketch and were not written.

D2 — «birje / birjar». Cab / cabman. The Romanian is a Russian-Turkish borrowing for a hired open carriage with a driver on a box; London cab has the box, the shafts and the hire, and the sketch needs the reader to see the vehicle without a footnote. Droshky was live and rejected: it would import a Russian word into a Romanian street to avoid an English one.

D3 — «strada Pacienței» / «strada Sapienții», the joke the sketch is built on. The gentleman wants Sapienței (Wisdom Street — a real Bucharest street by the medical faculty) and is standing in Pacienței (Patience Street), and he spends the rest of the sketch asking every human being he meets for the street he is already in. If the names stay Romanian the English reader sees two similar-looking words and no joke; if they are Englished the joke lands and the Bucharest topography goes. Chosen: Patience Street and Wisdom Street. The whole comic architecture — a man losing his patience while standing in Patience Street and asking for Wisdom — is carried by the meanings, and it is the only thing in the sketch that the reader must have.

D4 — «Domnu-i acasă?» Is the master at home? «Domnul» here is the servant's employer, and English domestic idiom of the period says master. Alternative: Is the gentleman at home?, which is what the Romanian literally has and which collides with the fact that the caller is himself called the Gentleman two lines later.

D5 — the speaker abbreviations. Caragiale writes the first line of each new speaker in full («Domnul:», «Feciorul:», «Birjarul:») and then abbreviates to initials, reusing letters across scenes — his «S.» is the Sergeant and his «B.» is both the Cabman and, spelled out, the Boy. The English mirrors that scheme exactly: full first mention, initials after, and S. is the Servant in the house and the Sergeant in the street. Alternative: a unique letter per speaker, which would be tidier and would silently repair a feature of the page.

D6 — «Amice, ești... idiot!» My friend, you are... an idiot! The vocative «amice» is the Latinate, faintly forensic one an educated Bucharest man reaches for; my friend is the nearest English gesture. My good man was live and rejected as too English-servant-comedy, and it also concedes the class point the sketch is making, which is that the gentleman never once wins.

D7 — the ladder of contradiction (a plecat / n-a plecat / a ieșit). Romanian «a plecat» does duty for both has left (town) and has gone out, which is exactly what makes the servant's answers consistent and the gentleman's fury inevitable. English has no one verb that does both. Chosen: gone out throughout the middle of the ladder, with gone to the country at the top and stepped out at the resolution. The seam shows — the English reader can see the equivocation a beat earlier than the Romanian reader can — and there is no rendering that hides it. Alternative considered: away, which is stiffer and does not fit "he took the key with him when he went away".

D8 — «Ce să-i spui? de unde știi ce să-i spui, dacă nu ți-am spus ce să-i spui?» Kept as one breath with the triple tell him intact. The Romanian is a single accelerating sentence and the English can hold it.

D9 — «Se poate să uit?» How could I forget? Literally is it possible that I forget?. The English rhetorical question keeps the servant's unshakeable politeness, which is the joke; a flat I won't forget would make him merely obedient.

D10 — the long message. «...deoarece nu plecase încă mătușa persoanei care s-a dus pentru ca să dea arvuna tutorelui minorilor...» — 90 words of business Romanian with four embedded relatives, a conditional that never resolves and a subject that changes twice. Kept as one sentence, with the subordinators rendered heavily (seeing that, with whom, which he knows about) so that the English is as hard to hold in the head as the Romanian. «arvună» → deposit (earnest money, the sum paid to bind a sale); «tutorele minorilor» → the guardian of the minors, which is a legal office and stays legal; «hotărnicie» → a boundary survey, the formal fixing of a property line, which the lawyer has travelled out of town to do; «cocoană» → the lady, losing the faint provincial-genteel colour of the Romanian word.

D11 — «propitar». The servant's mangling of «proprietar», proprietor: he has heard the word and cannot say it. Chosen: propritor, kept in all three of its occurrences, including in the gentleman's mouth when he repeats it back. A correct proprietor would delete the one place where the servant is visibly out of his depth, and the gentleman's echo of the mangled form is the sketch conceding that he has stopped listening.

D12 — «Costică» / «Mitică». Left as they are. Both are Romanian diminutives (of Constantin and Dumitru); the gag is that the gentleman has the wrong nickname of the wrong man in the wrong street, and any English substitution would have to invent a pair of English pet-names and lose the fact that the two are not similar at all.

D13 — «că e fatal». Because it's fatal. The Romanian is the everyday superstition word for an unlucky number and unlucky is the ordinary English. Chosen: fatal, because the servant is reporting his master's phrase and the faintly overblown Latinate word is the point: this is a household where the number 13 is not merely unlucky but fatal.

D14 — «mo roc». The cabman's mangled «mă rog», if you please / beg pardon, and the sketch's one piece of sustained broken Romanian. Chosen: bag pardon, repeated at every occurrence, with the surrounding grammar broken to match («Nu slobod» → Not free; «Nu știi la mine» → Me not know; «Ghe acolo» → Vrom over dere). The Romanian marks him as an outsider speaking the city's language badly; bag pardon marks the same thing in English without naming an English accent that would place him in a specific foreign country.

D15 — «Ie! la domnu este, mo roc.» Eh! is the gentleman, bag pardon. The cabman means why, it's the gentleman himself — he cannot recognise his own fare. The English keeps the missing subject rather than supplying it.

D16 — «Caii dorm la oiște.» The horses are asleep in the shafts. «oiște» is the single central pole of a two-horse carriage, for which English has pole but no idiom; in the shafts is the English phrase for horses standing harnessed and waiting, and it is what the sentence is for.

D17 — «Domnul se ridică-n picioare, la ceafa birjarului.» The gentleman rises to his feet, at the back of the cabman's neck. «ceafă» is the nape. Kept literal because the physical comedy — a man standing up in a moving cab to shout into the driver's neck — is the sentence's whole content.

D18 — «jupâneasă». Good woman. The Romanian is the old townsman's address to an older woman of the servant class, courteous and dated. Goodwife is dated in the wrong century; mistress is wrong in class; madam is wrong in register.

D19 — «măiculiță». My dear, from the old woman. Literally little mother, an endearment addressed downward in age. English has no diminutive-of-mother used as an endearment to a stranger; my dear keeps the warmth and the presumption and loses the word's shape.

D20 — «Teribil de ramolită!» Terribly gone in the head! «ramolit» is the French ramolli naturalised — senile, softened. Alternatives: gaga (the exact register but a twentieth-century English word), senile (clinical). Gone in the head is what an irritated man says.

D21 — «băcănioară». A little grocer's. The diminutive of «băcănie», a small dry-goods and grocery shop. Kept as a diminutive.

D22 — «Sergentul: Ordonați!» Your orders! The formulaic reply of a Romanian ranker to a civilian's address, roughly command me. English police have no such formula. Your orders! keeps the military reflex, which is why the sergeant is the only person in the sketch who is immediately useful.

D23 — «S-a descălțat de cizme, să-și mai răcorească picioarele.» He has taken his boots off to cool his feet a little. The «mai» — a bit more — is carried by a little.

D24 — «Mersi!» Kept as Merci!. The French word is in the Romanian, spelled Romanian, and it is the gentleman's one flash of the boulevard; the English keeps it in its French spelling because an English page cannot show a Romanian phonetic respelling of a French word without a note.

D25 — «feciorul e un stupid». That servant is a stupid. The Romanian uses the adjective as a noun with the indefinite article, the way an educated man swearing in French-inflected Romanian would. Kept, and the English is faintly wrong in the same way. Alternative: is an idiot, which duplicates the earlier «idiot!» and repairs the grammar.

D26 — what the single pass leaves standing. Two places were written with the alternative still live and were not returned to, per R06 §2: bag pardon (D14), where a case exists for a respelled mă rog left in Romanian; and Patience/Wisdom Street (D3), where the argument for keeping Pacienței/Sapienței and losing the joke is real and was refused rather than answered.