Repository path: workshop/translations/cavalleria-rusticana/R08-v1/translation.md · rendered 2026-09-09

T-cavalleria-rusticana-R08-v1 — Verga, «Cavalleria rusticana» ¶50–81, resistancy

Role in the design: this is the registered negative control of E-20260806b-berman-occurrence. Berman's twelve tendencies are a catalogue of what translation does to a text when it is left to its own devices; a coding scale for them is only a measurement if it can also register a rendering that runs the other way. This arm is that rendering. It is produced under R08, a regime frozen at S048 from Venuti's account of his own practice — not written for this experiment and not written by reading Berman — so the negative control is not an artefact shaped to beat the scale it is checking.

• Source. As T-cavalleria-rusticana-R04-v1: Verga, «Cavalleria rusticana», Vita dei campi (1880/1881), ¶50–81 of 81, 740 Italian tokens (744 whitespace-separated words). Public domain (Verga d. 1922).
• Regime. R08 v1.0 (resistancy). Rule numbers R1–R10 cited in the log below are that regime's, not this page's.
• Translated by. The lead agent, in session, as a labeled subject. Cost $0; never ledgered.
• Contamination: high — same basis and same measurement as the R04 sibling; see that artifact. The same priming declaration applies (Strettell ¶1–8 and Dole ¶1–2 seen; the locus ¶50–81 seen in no English before the freeze).
• Lineage. Written from the Italian with the R08 rule set in hand, after T-cavalleria-rusticana-R04-v1 was frozen. It is therefore not independent of the R04 rendering and is not treated as an independent subject: it is a control arm, and the result page says so.

Translation

Compare Alfio came back with his mules, loaded with big coin, and carried his wife as a gift a fine new dress for the feast-days.

— You have reason to carry her gifts, said to him the neighbour Santa, because while you are away your wife adorns you the house!

Compare Alfio was of those carters who carry the cap upon the ear, and at hearing his wife spoken of in such a manner he changed colour as if they had knifed him. — Holy big-devil! he exclaimed, if you have not seen well, I will not leave you the eyes for crying! to you and to all your kindred!

— I am not used to crying! answered Santa; I did not cry even when I saw with these eyes Turiddu of the gnà Nunzia enter by night into the house of your wife.

— It goes well, answered compare Alfio, so many thanks.

Turiddu, now that the cat had come back, no longer haunted the little street by day, and worked the gloom off at the osteria, with the friends; and on the vigil of Pasqua they had upon the board a dish of sausage. As compare Alfio entered, only from the manner in which he planted his eyes upon him, Turiddu comprehended that he had come for that affair, and he laid the fork upon the plate.

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

— No prayer, compare Turiddu, it was a while that I did not see you, and I wished to speak to you of that thing which you know.

Turiddu at first had presented him a glass, but compare Alfio put it aside with the hand. Then Turiddu rose and said to him:

— I am here, compar Alfio.

The carter threw him the arms about the neck.

— If tomorrow morning you wish to come into the fichidindia of the Canziria we shall be able to speak of that affair, compare.

— Await me on the highroad at the springing of the sun, and we shall go there together.

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

The friends had left the sausage hushed, hushed, and accompanied Turiddu as far as home. The gnà Nunzia, poor little thing, awaited him till late every evening.

— Mamma, said to her Turiddu, do you recall when I went for a soldier, that you believed I had not to return any more? Give me a fine kiss as then, because tomorrow morning I shall go far.

Before day he took his spring-knife, that he had hidden under the hay when he had gone a conscript, and put himself on the road for the fichidindia of the Canziria.

— Oh! Gesummaria! where do you go with that fury? whimpered Lola, dismayed, while her husband was on the point of going out.

— I go here nearby, answered compar Alfio, but for you it would be better that I returned no more.

Lola, in her shift, prayed at the feet of the bed, pressing on the lips the rosary that fra Bernardino had carried to her from the Holy Places, and recited all the avemarie that could be contained therein.

— Compare Alfio, began Turiddu after he had made a piece of road beside his companion, who kept silent, and with the cap upon the eyes. As is true God I know that I have the wrong and I would let myself be killed. But before coming here I saw my old woman who had risen to see me depart, with the pretext of governing the hen-house, as if the heart spoke to her, and as much as is true God I will kill you like a dog so as not to make my little old woman weep.

— Thus it goes well, answered compare Alfio, stripping himself of the doublet, and we shall strike solid, both the two of us.

Both were good strikers; Turiddu touched the first blow, and was in time to take it in the arm; as he rendered it, he rendered it good, and thrust at the groin.

— Ah! compare Turiddu! you have truly the intention to kill me!

— Yes; I have told it you; now that I have seen my old woman in the hen-house, it seems to me to have her always before the eyes.

— Open them well, the eyes! cried to him compar Alfio, for I am about to render you the good measure.

As he stood on guard all gathered up to keep the left upon the wound, which pained him, and almost crawled along the ground with the elbow, he snatched up rapidly a handful of dust and threw it into the eyes of the adversary.

— Ah! howled Turiddu blinded, I am dead.

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

— And three! this is for the house that you have adorned me. Now your mother will leave the hens alone.

Turiddu floundered a piece here and there among the fichidindia and then fell like a boulder. The blood gurgled foaming to him in the throat and he could not utter even: — Ah, mamma mia!

Translator's log

Frozen 2026-08-06, before any evaluation of this translation was designed. Decisions and alternatives, not quality claims. R08 requires a coverage code on each logged decision and an INT flag where an interpretation of what the source means decided the case.

Coverage

Twenty-four decisions logged; 24 of 24 carry a rule code, which is not a finding about R08 — this passage was chosen for the experiment because it is dense with exactly the features R08 legislates, so the coverage is a property of the selection. Two decisions carry INT.

What this regime cost, recorded because the experiment will be asked it

Two things, and neither is a quality claim.

• Decision 24 is ungrammatical English and I let it stand. The house that you have adorned me is not a sentence an English speaker writes. R9's limit is the parodic and the incomprehensible; this is neither — the meaning arrives — but it is the point at which R08 stops producing marked English and starts producing wrong English, and the boundary turned out to be a dative rather than anything more interesting.
• Decision 22 loses information the reader needs. Both were good strikers does not tell an English reader that the two men are about to fight with knives, which the Italian does not say either — but the Italian reader of 1880 knew, and mine does not. R5 and the reader's need are in direct conflict here, and R08 resolves it against the reader every time.

(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.)