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

T-cavalleria-rusticana-R04-v1 — Verga, «Cavalleria rusticana» ¶50–81, lead close

• Source. Giovanni Verga, «Cavalleria rusticana», in Vita dei campi (Treves, 1880; text of the 1881 edition transcribed at it.wikisource.org, CC BY-SA / GFDL, retrieved 2026-08-06). Verga d. 1922 — public domain. Locus: ¶50–81 of 81, 740 Italian tokens (744 whitespace-separated words), from compare Alfio's return with his mules to Turiddu's death among the prickly pears.
• Regime. R04 v1.0 (lead close translation, source-only). Draft frozen separately as T-cavalleria-rusticana-R06-v1 per §Procedure 2a, before this revision was begun.
• Translated by. The lead agent, in session, as a labeled subject (charter §3, A4). Cost $0; never ledgered.
• Lineage. Revision of T-cavalleria-rusticana-R06-v1. Sibling under a different regime: T-cavalleria-rusticana-R08-v1 (resistancy).
• Evaluation. workshop/experiments/E-20260806b-berman-occurrence/ → wiki/findings/results/RS-20260806b-berman-occurrence.md. This translation was never judged by the lead (charter §5); it entered a blind five-arm line-up as one unlabelled rendering.

Contamination — measured, not asserted

Declared high before the locus was chosen; measured after the text was frozen.

Basis for the declaration: «Cavalleria rusticana» is among the most-translated Italian short stories; Strettell 1893, Dole 1896 and Lawrence 1928 are all freely reachable online and plausibly sit in the lead's training data.

Measurement (tools/dependence_check.py, run after this text and its log were frozen; figures in RS-20260806b-berman-occurrence §3 and in the experiment's runs/): see that result page for the shared-7-gram counts and longest common runs against Strettell 1893 and Dole 1896, and for the two published translators' figure against each other. The design does not rest on this rendering being independent of either published one — its role in the line-up is as one of two 2026 renderings, the other produced by a panel model that has never seen this project, and the experiment's period-versus-universal contrast is registered on the pair, not on this arm alone.

Priming declaration (R04 §Procedure 1). Before any locus was selected, the lead had seen Strettell's English of Italian ¶1–8 and Dole's English of ¶1–2 while checking OCR quality on the two scans. The locus was then deliberately chosen from ¶50–81, a stretch whose English the lead had not seen in any rendering, and no published rendering of the locus was read before this translation and its log were frozen. The two published renderings of the locus were extracted programmatically, without their prose being displayed, until after the freeze.

Translation

Compare Alfio came back with his mules, loaded with money, and brought his wife a fine new dress as a present for the feast days.

— You've every reason to bring her presents, Santa from next door said to him, because while you're away your wife adorns your house for you!

Compare Alfio was one of those carters who wear the cap over one ear, and hearing his wife spoken of in that way he changed colour as if they had knifed him. — Holy great devil! he exclaimed, if you have not seen right, I'll not leave you eyes to cry with! you nor your whole kin!

— I'm not used to crying! answered Santa; I didn't cry even when I saw with these eyes Turiddu della gnà Nunzia go into your wife's house at night.

— Very well, answered compare Alfio, many thanks.

Turiddu, now that the cat had come back, no longer hung about the little street by day, and worked off his boredom at the tavern with his friends; and on Easter Eve they had a dish of sausage on the table. When compare Alfio came in, just from the way he planted his eyes on him Turiddu understood that he had come about that business, and he laid his fork down on his plate.

— Have you orders to give me, compare Alfio? he said to him.

— No request, compare Turiddu, it's a while since I've seen you, and I wanted to talk to you about that thing you know of.

Turiddu had at first held out a glass to him, but compare Alfio put it aside with his hand. Then Turiddu got up and said to him:

— Here I am, compar Alfio.

The carter threw his arms round his neck.

— If you'd like to come tomorrow morning to the prickly pears of the Canziria we can talk about that business, compare.

— Wait for me on the highroad at sunrise, and we'll go together.

With these words they exchanged the kiss of challenge. Turiddu gripped the carter's ear between his teeth, and so made him solemn promise not to fail.

The friends had left the sausage quietly, quietly, and went with Turiddu as far as home. Poor gnà Nunzia waited up for him late every evening.

— Mamma, Turiddu said to her, do you remember when I went for a soldier, and you thought I wasn't coming back any more? Give me a good kiss like then, because tomorrow morning I'm going far away.

Before daylight he took his flick-knife, which he had hidden under the hay when he went off a conscript, and set out for the prickly pears of the Canziria.

— Oh! Jesus-Mary! where are you going in such a fury? Lola whimpered in dismay, while her husband was on the point of going out.

— I'm going close by, answered compar Alfio, but it would be better for you if I never came back.

Lola, in her shift, was praying at the foot of the bed, pressing to her lips the rosary that fra Bernardino had brought her from the Holy Places, and reciting all the Hail Marys that would go into it.

— Compare Alfio, Turiddu began, after he had gone a stretch of road beside his companion, who kept quiet, with his cap over his eyes. As God is true I know I'm in the wrong and I'd let myself be killed. But before coming here I saw my old woman, who had got up to see me leave, on the pretext of seeing to the hen-house, as though her heart were speaking to her, and as sure as God is true I'll kill you like a dog so as not to make my poor old woman cry.

— That's the way, answered compare Alfio, taking off his jerkin, and we'll both of us strike hard.

Both were good hands with the knife; Turiddu took the first blow, and was in time to catch it on his arm; when he gave it back, he gave it back good, and struck for the groin.

— Ah! compare Turiddu! you really do mean to kill me!

— Yes, I told you so; now that I've seen my old woman in the hen-house, I seem to have her always before my eyes.

— Open them wide, those eyes! compar Alfio shouted at him, for I'm about to give you back good measure.

As he stood on guard all gathered in on himself, keeping his left hand on the wound, which hurt him, and almost trailing along the ground with his elbow, he snatched up a handful of dust and threw it in his opponent's eyes.

— Ah! howled Turiddu, blinded, I'm dead.

He tried to save himself, making desperate leaps backwards; but compar Alfio caught him with another blow in the stomach and a third in the throat.

— And three! this one is for the house you adorned for me. Now your mother will let the hens alone.

Turiddu groped a while this way and that among the prickly pears and then fell like a stone. The blood gurgled foaming in his throat and he could not even get out: — Ah, mamma mia!

Translator's log

Frozen 2026-08-06, before any evaluation of this translation was designed (charter §3, A4; R04 §Procedure 3). Decisions and alternatives, not quality claims.

What the revision changed, and why

Four changes, all in one direction, and the direction is the log's most useful fact.

1. «come se l'avessero accoltellato» — draft "as if he had been knifed" → "as if they had knifed him". The Italian is an impersonal third-person plural, which Italian uses where English reaches for the passive. The passive is the smoother English and it also quietly removes the nameless they who do the knifing in a story where everyone in the piazza is watching. Kept the active.
2. «E tre!» — draft "And that's three!" → "And three!". The draft had supplied a copula the Italian does not have, at the one place in the passage where Alfio is counting knife-blows aloud. Removed.
3. «soltanto dal modo in cui…» — draft "from nothing but the way" → "just from the way". The draft's phrasing was heavier than the Italian, not lighter; this is the one revision that is only about English.
4. «la vicina Santa» — draft "Santa the neighbour" → "Santa from next door". The neighbour reads as an appositive title; the Italian is locating her, and she is about to be the voice from next door that starts the killing.

The decisions that were live and where they hurt

• compare / compar / gnà / fra kept unglossed (settled at draft; see the R06 log). What is given up is that an English reader gets a sound rather than a relation. What is kept is that the relation is fictive kinship inside a village, which every English candidate — neighbour, friend, goodman, Master — resolves in one direction and thereby settles. compar Alfio and compare Alfio both occur in the source, sometimes in adjacent lines; the alternation was preserved rather than regularised, and I do not know whether Verga intended it or the compositor did.
• «bravi tiratori» → "good hands with the knife". Tiratore is one who delivers a thrust; the fight is with knives and the Italian never says so here, because the reader of 1880 does not need telling. Live alternatives: "Both were good thrusters" (opaque in English — a thruster is not a person), "Both were good fencers" (imports a salle and a sport), "Both knew how to strike" (vague where the Italian is technical). I supplied "with the knife" and I am recording it as a supply, not as a translation: it is the one place in this passage where I put on the page a noun the source withholds and could not find a way not to.
• «tutte le avemarie che potevano capirvi» → "all the Hail Marys that would go into it". The antecedent of it is the rosary, two clauses back, and an English reader may not get there. The live alternative was "as many Hail Marys as the beads would hold", which is clearer and which supplies beads. Kept the obscurity.
• «la mia vecchia» / «la mia vecchierella». Turiddu says my old woman twice and then, at the moment he commits to killing, vecchierella — the diminutive that turns her small and pitiable. English has no productive diminutive here. "My poor old woman" was chosen; "my poor little old woman" was live and was rejected as comic. The gradient is lost, and it is lost at the exact syllable the murder turns on.
• «son morto» → "I'm dead". "I'm a dead man" is the English idiom and was live. The Italian is two words and Turiddu has a handful of dust in his eyes. Kept the bare form.
• «adornare», twice, thirty paragraphs apart. Fixed at draft as adorn in both places (R06 log, item 2). English adorn is more decorative and less bitter than the Italian at the first occurrence, and that cost was accepted to keep the second occurrence a rhyme rather than a fresh remark.
• «zitti zitti» → "quietly, quietly". Verga's reduplication kept as reduplication. "Without a word" and "in silence" were live; both are better English and neither is doubled.
• «Santo diavolone!» rendered "Holy great devil!" — a calque of an oath English does not have, rather than a substitution ("By all the devils!", "The devil take it!", both live). Retaining it leaves an English reader with a phrase they can hear and cannot place, which is approximately Alfio's position.
• The dialogue dashes are Verga's and are kept; no quotation marks were supplied.

(Any evaluative sentence in a log carries internal-judgment-only; the front matter carries it for the page. The lead never judges this translation — charter §5.)