Repository path: workshop/translations/candia/R10p-v1/translation.md · rendered 2026-09-09

T-candia-R10p-v1 — d'Annunzio, «La fine di Candia» ¶1–24, R10 against A-mansfield-garden-party

Provenance

• Source. Gabriele d'Annunzio, «La fine di Candia», San Pantaleone (Firenze, Barbera, 1886), paragraphs 1–24 of 118, 800 words. Italian Wikisource proofread transcription of the 1886 edition, fetched 2026-07-31 via the MediaWiki API; frozen at workshop/experiments/E-20260731g-provenance/material/source-unit.txt. Public domain.
• Regime. R10 v1.0 — lead, source only, single pass, no return pass, against a named Tier 1 naturalness anchor supplied as numbered propositions frozen before the source was read for translation. Target: A-mansfield-garden-party, propositions M01–M11, reused verbatim from E-20260731f/claims.json.
• Language pair. Italian → English. The project's third translation from Italian (after T-jeli-* and the Tarchetti pair) and its fourth Italian source unit; not a new source language, and the design does not claim one.
• Order. This arm was written FIRST, before T-candia-R10c-v1 existed. E-20260731f wrote its centre arm first; the reversal is declared in that experiment's Amendment A1.2 and is the session's control on the ordering confound.
• Matched pair. T-candia-R10c-v1, same source unit, same regime, target A-mchugh-presence. Neither is a revision of the other; both are single passes.
• Contamination: none, MEASURED. See ## Contamination below. The one freely reachable published English — the anonymous "The End of Candia" in Short Story Classics (Foreign), vol. 2, Collier 1907, Gutenberg #70578 — was extracted to a file by script by line number and was not read by the translator before this text and its log were frozen. The extraction printed only line and word counts.
• Human involvement. None.

Translation

Donna Cristina Lamonica, three days after the Easter banquet — which in the Lamonica house was by tradition a great one, and magnificent, and thronged with guests — was counting over the table-linen and the silver of the feast, and putting everything away in perfect order in the presses and the coffers against the banquets that were to come.

There were present at the business, as there always were, and lending a hand, the maid Maria Bisaccia and the laundress Candida Marcanda, called by everybody Candia. The great baskets, heaped with fine linen, lay in a row along the floor. The silver vessels and the other things for the table shone out upon a spread cloth; and they were massive, worked a trifle rudely by country silversmiths, of shapes that were almost liturgical, as all such vessels are that come down from generation to generation in rich provincial houses. A fresh smell of washing was abroad in the room.

Candia took the hand-towels out of the baskets, and the table-cloths, and the napkins; she made the mistress look at the linen, that it was whole; and she passed each piece in turn to Maria, who filled the drawers, while the mistress scattered a perfume down among them and set the number in her book. Candia was a tall woman, bony, lean, of fifty; her back was bent a little by the habitual attitude of her trade, her arms were very long, and she had the head of a bird of prey upon the neck of a tortoise. Maria Bisaccia was an Ortona woman, a trifle plump, of a milky complexion, with very clear eyes; her speech was soft, and her gestures slow and delicate, as of one used to keep her hands nearly always among sweet pastes, among syrups, among preserves and among candied fruits. Donna Cristina, an Ortona woman too, brought up in the Benedictine convent, was small of stature, with her body let fall a little forward; her hair inclined to red, her face was sown with freckles, her nose was long and thick, her teeth were bad, her eyes were most beautiful and modest, and she was for all the world like a young clerk dressed up in women's clothes.

The three women went about the work with great care; and in this way they spent the better part of the afternoon.

Now, once, as Candia was going out with the empty baskets, Donna Cristina, counting the spoons, found that one was missing.

"Maria! Maria!" she cried, with a sort of terror. "Count! There's a spoon short.... You count them!"

"But how? It can't be, signó," answered Maria. "Let's see, now."

And she set to going over the silver, saying the number out loud. Donna Cristina looked on, shaking her head. The silver chinked out clear.

"It's true!" cried Maria at the last, with a gesture of despair. "And now what are we to do?"

She herself was safe from any suspicion. She had given proof of her faithfulness and her honesty for fifteen years in that family. She had come from Ortona along with Donna Cristina, at the time of the wedding, almost as a part of the marriage-portion; and by now she had got herself a certain authority in the house, under the mistress's protection. She was full of religious superstitions, devoted to her own saint and her own bell-tower, and cunning beyond everything. With the mistress she had struck up a kind of hostile alliance against all the things of Pescara, and above all against the saint of the Pescarese. At every turn she named her birthplace, the beauties and the riches of her birthplace, the splendours of its basilica, the treasures of San Tommaso, the magnificence of the church ceremonies — set against the poverty of San Cetteo, that owned one little silver arm and nothing more.

Donna Cristina said:

"Look well in there."

Maria went out of the room to go and look. She rummaged every corner of the kitchen and of the balcony, and it was no use. She came back with her hands empty.

"It's not there! It's not there!"

Then the two of them fell to thinking, to making guesses, to searching about in their memories. They went out on the balcony that gave on the courtyard, and on the balcony of the wash-house, to make the last search of all. And as they were talking loud, the gossips came to the windows of the houses round about.

"What's happened to you, Donna Cristí? Tell us! tell us!"

Donna Cristina and Maria told the thing over, with a great many words and a great many gestures.

"Gesù! Gesù! So there are thieves about, then?"

In a moment the noise of the theft was spread through the neighbourhood, through the whole of Pescara. Men and women set to discussing it, to imagining who the thief could be. And the news, as it reached the last houses of Sant'Agostino, grew bigger: it was no longer a question of one single spoon, but of all the silver of the Lamonica house.

Now, as the weather was fine, and on the balcony the roses were beginning to flower, and two siskins in a cage were singing, the gossips stayed on at their windows for the pleasure of chattering in the fine weather, in that sweet warmth. The women's heads came up among the pots of basil, and the clatter of them seemed to delight the cats along the eaves.

Donna Cristina said, clasping her hands together:

"Who can it have been?"

Donna Isabella Sertale, called the Weasel, who had the quick furtive movements of a little beast of prey, asked in her shrill voice:

"Who was in there along with you, Donna Cristí? Seems to me I saw Candia going by...."

Translator's log

Frozen before any evaluation of this translation was designed (charter §3, A4; R10 §7). Decisions and alternatives, not quality claims. A decision is logged when two or more renderings were live at the moment of writing. Target codes: A aimed at a numbered proposition, X contrary to one, N none bore on it. Proposition ids are A-mansfield-garden-party M01–M11.

Correction to the frozen opportunity list, recorded here rather than by editing it (R10 §2). The opportunity list cites ‟Aaaah!” as M07's site and la Pica as a C12 site. Both fall in paragraph 25 of the story, outside this frozen 24-paragraph unit. M07 (written-out sound play) is therefore missing for want of material, not un-installed, and the only remaining sound-play site in the unit is ‟Gesù! Gesù!”. The list was written after reading the unit and still got this wrong, which is worth one line: an opportunity list is itself a reading and can be wrong in the direction that makes the translator look worse.

1. Title character's nickname, «detta la Faina». Faina is the stone marten. Live: keep "la Faina" untranslated / "the Marten" / "the Weasel". Took "the Weasel". A 1922 translator Englishes a speaking nickname rather than leaving it and glossing it, and weasel is the English animal that carries the sense the Italian carries. Given up: the specific animal. A — M08, M10.
2. ¶1 «convito pasquale». Live: "Easter dinner" / "Easter banquet" / "Easter feast". Took "Easter banquet" — and then "banquets that were to come" for «conviti futuri», so that the same word does the work twice, as the Italian does. A — M08.
3. ¶1, the parenthesis. The Italian is one period with a relative clause. Live: break into two sentences / keep as one with commas / set the relative clause off with dashes. Took the dashes. This is the arm's first structural commitment and it recurs at 10, 20 and 24. A — M09.
4. ¶1 «grande per tradizione e magnifico e frequente di convitati». Kept the polysyndeton — "a great one, and magnificent, and thronged with guests" — rather than the smoother "a great, magnificent, well-attended affair". A — M09.
5. ¶1 «canterani e forzieri». Canterano = a chest of drawers; forziere = a strongbox or coffer. Live: "chests of drawers and strongboxes" / "presses and coffers". Took "presses and coffers": both are period English household words and both date the prose. A — M08.
6. ¶2 «detta popolarmente Candia». Live: "popularly called" / "called by the people" / "called by everybody". Took the third — spoken idiom rather than the Latinate adverb. A — M05.
7. ¶2 «una spasa». A cloth spread out. No English noun. Took "a spread cloth" rather than a footnote or "a cloth". N.
8. ¶2 «lavorati un po' rudemente». Took "worked a trifle rudely". A trifle is the period intensifier; a bit would be the contemporary one, and the centre arm takes it. This is one of the pair's cleanest single-word separations. A — M08.
9. ¶2 «spandevasi nella stanza». Live: "spread through the room" / "was abroad in the room". Took "was abroad in the room" — the period idiom for a smell filling a space. A — M08.
10. ¶3, the 174-word paragraph. Kept whole, and kept the three portrait sentences running on semicolons as the Italian does, against the option of four short paragraphs. The centre arm does not. This is the largest structural difference between the two texts. A — M09, M10.
11. ¶3 «i mantili, le tovaglie, le salviette». Live: "the towels, the tablecloths, the napkins" / "the hand-towels out of the baskets, and the table-cloths, and the napkins". Took the second: the and-chain and the hyphenated table-cloths are both period. A — M08, M09.
12. ¶3 «come colei ch'era usa esercitar le mani». Live: "like one accustomed to" / "as of one used to keep her hands". Took the second — used to rather than accustomed to, which is the period-plainer of the two and avoids the Latinate. A — M08.
13. ¶3 «con il busto un po' abbandonato su 'l davanti». Live: "with her body drooping a little forward" / "with her body let fall a little forward". Took "let fall", which keeps the Italian's passive abbandonato and reads as period English. A — M08.
14. ¶3 «somigliando un cherico vestito d'abiti muliebri». Live: "resembling a cleric in women's clothes" / "she was like a young clerk dressed up in women's clothes" / with "for all the world like" added. Took the third. For all the world like is a period intensifier with no contemporary equivalent that is not archaic-sounding, and it is the arm's clearest single M08 site. A — M08, M10.
15. ¶6 «Manca 'na cucchiara». The Italian is dialect ('na for una, cucchiara for cucchiaio). Live: mark the dialect in English ("There's a spoon a-missin'") / leave it unmarked. Left unmarked. M-set has no dialect proposition; marking it would have been aimed at nothing, and eye-dialect in English attaches a class signal the Italian does not carry here. N. (The centre arm takes the same decision for a different reason — C04 forbids it — and the two arms therefore agree here by two different routes.)
16. ¶6 and ¶24, «signó» / «Donna Cristí». Kept both truncated vocatives in the Italian. Live: normalise to "signora" and "Donna Cristina" / keep. Kept: they are the only marks of the women's speech left, once 15 gave up the dialect spelling. A — M05.
17. ¶7 «Mo' vediamo». Live: "Now we'll see" / "Let's see now" / "Let's see, now". Took the third, with the comma, for the spoken rhythm. A — M05.
18. ¶9 «con un atto di disperazione». Live: "with a gesture of despair" / "in despair". Took the first — the noun-phrase construction is the period one. A — M08.
19. ¶9 «E mo' che facciamo?». Live: "And now what do we do?" / "And now what are we to do?" Took the second: are we to is the period modal. A — M08.
20. ¶10, the alliance sentence. Kept as one long period ending on a dash and the San Cetteo clause, against breaking it at «in confronto». The dash lands the irony — one little silver arm — on the end of the sentence. A — M09, M11.
21. ¶10 «astutissima». Live: "extremely cunning" / "most cunning" / "cunning beyond everything". Took the third. A — M08.
22. ¶14 «Non c'è! Non c'è!» Kept the immediate repetition rather than "It isn't anywhere!" A — M06. Same at ¶6 «Maria! Maria!» and ¶18 «Gesù! Gesù!».
23. ¶18 «Gesù! Gesù!» Kept the Italian rather than "Jesus! Jesus!" or "Lord! Lord!". It is an exclamation standing unattributed in a line of choral speech, and leaving it in Italian is what dates the prose. A — M08. (The unit's only remaining sound-play site; see the correction above.)
24. ¶19 «il remore del furto si sparse». Live: "news of the theft spread" / "the noise of the theft was spread". Took the second: noise for remore keeps the Italian's word and the passive is period. A — M08.
25. ¶19 «La novella … s'ingrandì». Live: "the story grew" / "the news … grew bigger", with And opening the sentence. A — M09.
26. ¶20 «due lucherini in gabbia». Lucherino = siskin. Live: "two siskins in a cage" / "two finches". Kept siskins unglossed. N — the M-set has no glossing proposition, so this is aimed at nothing; it is logged because the centre arm's C12 makes the identical choice for a stated reason and the pair would otherwise look like it separates here.
27. ¶20 «il ciaramellío». A chattering, a prattling. Live: "the chatter" / "the clatter of them". Took "the clatter of them" — of them is the period construction and it is the unit's one place where the narration takes the gossips' own view of themselves. A — M01, M08.
28. ¶24, the close. The unit ends on the Faina's question and the ellipsis. Kept the four-dot ellipsis of the Italian rather than normalising to three. The whole unit's design is that the accusation arrives inside a pleasant afternoon of chatter, and the last line is where it lands. A — M11.
29. Contractions in the narration. Considered at every narrative sentence and taken at none. M04 wants contracted forms in narration, not only in speech; there is no site in this unit's narration where a contraction would not read as an error in 1922 English, because the narration has no first person and almost no negation. X — M04, and the reason is the source's, not the translator's. In the dialogue the contractions are everywhere (It can't be, Let's, It's true, It's not there).

Codes: A 24 · X 1 · N 4. Twenty-nine logged decisions over 800 source words.

Contamination

None, MEASURED. tools/dependence_check.py, unmodified, against the whole 3,426-word published English. Figures, the comparison to the centre arm, the length controls and the anthology null are in wiki/findings/results/RS-20260731g-provenance.md and workshop/experiments/E-20260731g-provenance/analysis/. The published translation was not read before this text and its log were frozen.

Declared priming. The translator had, before writing, read the Italian source unit in full and roughly the first 2,200 characters of it once more during material selection; had read a pre-existing recall probe it wrote itself (material/recall-probe.txt), which is a reconstruction and not a recollection; and had read parts of T-karen-R10c-v1 and T-karen-R10p-v1, the S074 pair, while establishing this session's arm order. None of these is the published English of this story.