Repository path: workshop/translations/dakghar/R05-v2-spanA/translation.md · rendered 2026-09-09

T-dakghar-R05-v2 — «ডাকঘর» span A (units [1]–[86]), the reviser's pass

ARM-dakghar step 4; E-20260813d. Section ১ re-rendered whole from E-20260813d/materials/spanA-copytext.txt — units [1]–[86], 1,147 Bengali speech-words — under register.md as closed at span C, blind to R05-v1's span-A English and to its log D1–D23.

Source. Rabindranath Tagore, «ডাকঘর», Indian Publishing House, Calcutta, year not established (collation.md §1). Copy-text source-ipublishinghouse.txt, span-A lines byte-identical to the commit that froze R05-v1. Span A's page-image gate is complete and its four corrections were applied before R05-v1 was written; span A has no empty speeches (collation.md §2, §5).

Contamination — suspected, and the basis is a list, not a recollection

R05-v1's span A was contamination: high: its translator had read Devabrata Mukherjea's authorised English (Macmillan 1914) — dramatis personae and Act I through unit [16]. This rendering's translator has not opened Mukherjea. But the project pages this session had to read in order to design the experiment quote him, and the exposure is exactly eight units of his English: [8], [9], [15], one śloka, [22], [43], [71], [72] — plus the bare fact, without words, that he inverts the footing at [6]. The list is E-20260813d §10, registered before a word was translated. Unit [86] carries a further declared exposure: a panel hand's English for that unit, not Mukherjea's and not R05-v1's.

register.md is a second, deliberate exposure to R05-v1's lexis — Uncle, Auntie, Grandad, kabiraj, chhatu, nagra, Amal-babu, Mr Datta — because that is what a binding register is. This is a reviser's pass by the same hand, not an independent second opinion (note (bhb)), and it is labelled one.

The rendering

⟨1⟩

MADHABDATTA — I've landed in a mess. When he wasn't here, he simply wasn't here — there was nothing to worry about. Now he's come from somewhere and settled all over my house; if he goes, it's as if this house of mine won't be a house at all. Kabiraj, do you think he'll —

KABIRAJ — If there's long life in his fate, then he may well live a long while. But from what the Ayurveda writes, well —

MADHABDATTA — What are you saying?

KABIRAJ — The scriptures say —

paittikān sannipātajān kaphavātasamudbhavān —

MADHABDATTA — Stop, stop, don't go reciting those verses at me any more — they only make me more frightened. Just tell me what has to be done now.

KABIRAJ (taking snuff) — He'll have to be kept very carefully.

MADHABDATTA — That's true enough, but settle it for me before you go — careful about what?

KABIRAJ — I've told you before, you can't let him go outside at all.

MADHABDATTA — He's a child. Holding him inside the house day and night is very hard.

KABIRAJ — Well, what can you do? This autumn sun and this autumn wind are both like poison to that boy — because, don't you see, the scriptures say —

apasmāre jvare kāśe kāmalāyāṃ halīmake —

MADHABDATTA — Stop, stop, let your scriptures be. So he'll have to be kept shut up, then — there's no other way?

KABIRAJ — None at all, because — pavane tapane caiva —

MADHAB — And what am I to do with your caiva, will you tell me that! Let it be — just tell me what has to be done! But your treatment is very hard! All the misery of the illness the poor child bears in silence — but at medicine time, seeing what he goes through, my chest feels like bursting.

KABIRAJ — The stronger that suffering, the greater its result — that is why the great sage Chyavana has said,

bheṣajaṃ hitavākyañca tiktaṃ āśu phalapradaṃ.

I'll take my leave for today then, Mr Datta.

(Exit)

(Enter GRANDAD)

MADHAB — There, Grandad's come! That's everything ruined!

GRANDAD — Why? What have you got to fear from me?

MADHAB — Because you're the ringleader for driving children mad.

GRANDAD — You're no child, there's no child in your house, and your own age for going mad is past — what's your worry?

MADHAB — I've brought a child into the house.

GRANDAD — How's that?

MADHAB — My wife had gone mad to take an adopted son.

GRANDAD — I've been hearing that a long time, but you were the one who wouldn't have it.

MADHAB — You know, brother, I made my money with a great deal of hardship. Somebody else's child turning up from nowhere and wearing away without any labour what I earned with so much of it — even the thought of it used to sit badly with me. But how this child has got hold of me —

GRANDAD — So that's it: the more money you spend on him, the more you think it's the money's own great good fortune!

MADHAB — I used to earn money before, and it was only a sort of drug — I couldn't have kept off it however I tried. But now that I know all the money I make will go to that boy, I'm getting a great pleasure out of earning it.

GRANDAD — Good, good, brother — tell me, where did you get the boy?

MADHAB — A nephew of my wife's, by village reckoning. The poor thing has had no mother since he was small. And then the other day his father died as well.

GRANDAD — Ah! Then he has need of me.

MADHAB — The kabiraj says wind, bile and phlegm have all risen up inflamed together in that little body of his, and there's not much hope for him. The one way left is to save him somehow from this autumn sun and air and keep him shut in the house. Getting boys out of the house is the game of your old age — that's why I'm afraid of you.

GRANDAD — You're not wrong, I've turned into an absolute terror — just like the autumn sun and wind. But brother, I know a game or two for keeping a child indoors as well. Let me finish off a little business and then I'll make friends with that boy.

(Exit)

(Enter AMALGUPTA)

AMAL — Uncle!

MADHAB — What is it, Amal.

AMAL — Can't I even go out into that courtyard?

MADHAB — No, my child.

AMAL — The place where Auntie splits lentils with the hand-mill? There, look — where the squirrel sits back on its tail and picks up the broken bits of lentil in both paws and eats them, crunch, crunch — can't I go there any more?

MADHAB — No, my child!

AMAL — If I were a squirrel it would be lovely! But Uncle, why won't you let me out?

MADHAB — Because the kabiraj has said that if you go out you'll fall ill.

AMAL — How did the kabiraj come to know?

MADHAB — What are you saying, Amal? The kabiraj not know? Why, he's got through books this thick.

AMAL — Can you know everything just by reading books?

MADHAB — Well! You don't know that either, I suppose?

AMAL (fetching a long sigh) — I haven't read any books at all — that's why I don't know.

MADHAB — Look, the great scholars are all just like you — they don't come out of the house.

AMAL — They don't come out?

MADHAB — No — when would they come out, tell me? They sit and sit and only read their books — they've no eye for anything else.

Amal-babu, when you're grown you'll be a scholar too — you'll sit and read all these great thick books — and everyone will look at you and be astonished!

AMAL — No, no, Uncle, I beg you, I won't be a scholar — Uncle, I won't be a scholar!

MADHAB — What talk is this, Amal? If I could have been a scholar I'd have been saved!

AMAL — I'll see everything there is — I'll just go about looking.

MADHAB — Listen to him! See what? What is there so much of to see?

AMAL — When I sit by our window I can see the hills far away, and I want so much to cross over that hill and go on.

MADHAB — What crazy talk! No business, no work, and off over the hill for nothing at all! There's no telling what he'll say next. When a hill stands up high like a great fence, then surely you've got to understand that going over it is forbidden — otherwise what was the need of piling up rocks that size and making such a great affair of it?

AMAL — Uncle, do you think it's forbidding? It seems to me the earth can't talk, and that's why it lifts its hand to the blue sky like that and calls. People far away, who stay sitting inside their houses — they can hear that call too, when they sit alone by the window at midday! I suppose the scholars can't hear it!

MADHAB — They're not mad like you — they don't even want to hear it.

AMAL — I saw someone yesterday who was mad like me.

MADHAB — Really! Let me hear what he was like.

AMAL — He had a bamboo stick over his shoulder. A bundle tied at the end of the stick. A little pot in his left hand. He was wearing an old pair of nagra shoes and going along this field path, straight towards that hill. I called out and asked him, where are you going? He said, who knows — wherever it comes out! I asked, why are you going? He said, I'm going to look for work. Tell me, Uncle, does work have to be looked for?

MADHAB — Of course it does! Any number of people go about looking for work!

AMAL — How fine! Then I'll go about looking for work like them too!

MADHAB — And if you look and don't find it!

AMAL — If I look and don't find it I'll look again. — Then the man in the nagra shoes went off, and I stood at the door and stood there watching him. There where the stream runs along under the fig tree, he put his stick down and slowly washed his feet in the stream water — then he opened the bundle, took out chhatu, mixed it with water and started to eat. When the eating was done he tied the bundle up again and got it on his shoulder — rolled the cloth up off his legs, went down into that stream, and cut his way through the water and crossed over and went off, just like that. I've told Auntie I'll go to the side of that stream one day and eat chhatu.

MADHAB — What did Auntie say?

AMAL — Auntie said, you get well first and then I'll take you to the side of that stream and feed you chhatu there. When will I get well?

MADHAB — It won't be long now, my child.

AMAL — Not long? But as soon as I'm well I'm going away.

MADHAB — Where will you go?

AMAL — I'll dip my feet in the water of ever so many winding streams and cross them and go on — at midday, when everybody's lying down with the doors shut, then I'll go on somewhere, ever so far, just looking and looking for work.

MADHAB — All right, very well — you get well first, and after that you —

AMAL — And after that don't tell me to be a scholar, Uncle!

MADHAB — Tell me what you want to be.

AMAL — Nothing comes to mind just now — all right, I'll think and tell you.

MADHAB — But don't go calling out and talking like that to any stranger there is.

AMAL — I like strangers very much.

MADHAB — And if one of them seized you and carried you off?

AMAL — Then it would be lovely! But nobody ever seizes me and carries me off — everybody only sits me down and leaves me there.

MADHAB — I've work to do, I'm off — but mind, my child, don't you go out of doors.

AMAL — I won't. But Uncle, I'll sit in this room by the roadside.

1,638 English words from 1,147 Bengali speech-words — factor 1.428, counted on the same convention as the Bengali (speech text and in-speech stage directions; speech-heads and head-position directions excluded). 86 units to 86 units, no split, no merge.

Translator's log — frozen 2026-08-13, before v1 or Mukherjea was opened

Decisions are numbered R1… — the R05-v1 log runs D1–D51 and is not renumbered (R05 §3). Decisions and alternatives only; any evaluative sentence carries internal-judgment-only, which the front matter already asserts of the whole page.

R1 — the ক্ষেপ- chain, unified, and the decision that pays for it. register.md §Settled-4 (D41) states that the root recurs four times in section ৩, that R05-v1's English does not join across the play, that no erratum was issued, and that this is "the work's largest standing loss and it is the craft report's to state." No V rule governs the root. A source-side census of the whole copy-text gives nine occurrences: [23], [24], [27], [63], [64] in span A and [296], [378], [379], [381] in section ৩ — the register's four confirmed.

All five span-A sites are rendered on one English root, mad: [23] the ringleader for driving children **mad; [24] your own age for going mad is past; [27] had gone mad to take an adopted son; [63] not mad like you; [64] someone yesterday who was mad like me. The alternative was site-by-site idiom — sets children off, your wild years, was desperate to, not the dreamer you are — which reads better line by line and is what a translator without the census would produce. The chain is chosen over the line.

R2 — and পাগল is therefore not mad. The census shows পাগল at three sites, [61], [282], [368], distinct from the ক্ষেপ- family throughout. V4 — a designation the source varies is not collapsed — makes the unification at R1 into a prohibition here. [61] কি পাগলের মত কথা! is rendered "What crazy talk!", reserving mad for the other root. This is a decision made by the census and not available to a translator of section ১ alone; it costs [61] its most natural English.

R3 — আয়ুর্ব্বেদ is kept and does not extend V2's list. [2] আয়ুর্ব্বেদে যে রকম লিখ্‌চে → "from what the Ayurveda writes". V2 exists for a source word with no unmarked English slot, and its list is closed at three (kabiraj, chhatu, nagra). Ayurveda is not that case: it is the proper name of a textual corpus and it is a naturalised English headword, so using it adds no foreignness that the Bengali does not have. Rejected: the medical books, which loses that the Kabiraj is naming a specific authority — and he is naming authorities all scene (শাস্ত্র, মহর্ষি চ্যবন).

R4 — শাস্ত্র is the scriptures at all three sites ([4], [11], [13]), against the texts or the books, which would collide with পুঁথি at [48]–[55]. V4: two Bengali words, two English words, and the collision is the thing to avoid. বল্‌চেন at [4] puts an honorific verb on the scripture itself — the Kabiraj honorifies his authority — and English has no slot for it. Logged as a V5 loss.

R5 — the ślokas, transliterated unglossed, and one of them mattering out loud. V1 and the names table fix roman transliteration set as quotation. The three ślokas at [5], [12], [17] and the half-line at [14] are transliterated with diacritics. The load-bearing one is [14]/[15]: Madhab seizes on the single word চৈব and throws it back — "And what am I to do with your caiva". A translator who Englished the ślokas would have to rewrite that joke, because there would be no foreign word left in Madhab's mouth to seize. D3 of R05-v1 argued this before the comparator was opened and RS-20260811f §6 reports it confirmed against Mukherjea, who Englishes them and duly rewrites the joke. This rendering keeps the decision and states the dependence: it is not an independent re-derivation, because the outcome was known before this rendering began.

R6 — V5 fires eleven times in span A and buys nothing each time. Grammatical deference with no English slot, marked nowhere: Madhab's আপনি/honorific verbs to the Kabiraj at [1] মনে করেন, [3] বলেন কি, [6] আওড়াবেন না, [8] দিয়ে যান, [9] পারবেন না, [11] করবেন বলেন, [13] আপনার, [15] আপনার ×2, বলেন; the scripture's own honorific at [4] (R4); Amal's honorific for পিসিমা at [43] ভাঙেন and [72] বল্লেন. Every one is a loss and none is compensated, which is what V5 requires. RS-20260812h §2's census is the new fact: every আপনি in all 430 units is Madhab's, so what is lost at [1]–[15] is not a fact about the scene but a standing trait of one character — Madhab is the play's only deferential speaker. The rendering carries none of it.

R7 — [71]/[72] rendered flat, and the register's showcase is not restored. পিসিমা কি বল্লে? (ordinary) against পিসিমা বল্লেন (honorific), adjacent lines, the same aunt: "What did Auntie say?" / "Auntie said, …". RS-20260811f §5 has already corrected R05-v1's D13 for calling this the sharpest single loss in span A — independent readers of the Bengali register these two pairs least reliably of the six (0.333 and 0.667 source-side). Rendering them flat is V5; not promoting them is R7.

R8 — V7 and V3 on the vocatives, and one entreaty flattened. [18] দত্ত মশায় → Mr Datta (surname host); কবিরাজ মশায় at [1] → Kabiraj, মশায় dropped (office host); পিসে মশায় / পিসেমশায়, printed both ways at 16 sites, → Uncle throughout, the word-division recorded and not rendered. [56] is the loss inside V1: তোমার দুটি পায়ে পড়ি — I fall at your two feet — is an ordinary Bengali entreaty and not marked foreign, so V1 sends it to unmarked English, "I beg you", and the feet go. Rejected: keeping the feet, which would make an everyday formula read as local colour and invert the source's own distribution of markedness — V1's whole purpose.

R9 — ভাই is brother, three times, and the register is why. [29], [32], [36], all Madhab and Grandad. The names-table row ভাই → brother was created at span B (D30) over twelve sites with the boys; it now binds here. Two adult men calling each other brother is not ordinary English — V6 would prefer old man or nothing — and the register overrules V6. Recorded as a rule conflict resolved for the rule, not for the line. [33] ভাইপো is a compound, not the vocative, and is nephew.

R10 — বাবা is my child at [42], [44], [73], [85]. V9, which was written at span B over the street adults. Madhab is the only speaker of it in span A; the census gives 28 sites in the play and one বাছা at [97]. Rejected: son, which asserts the adoption the play keeps at arm's length — [27] পোষ্যপুত্র is the only place it is named.

R11 — বিদেশী লোক is stranger, and the far country goes. [81], [82], and [268] in section ৩. V1 sends an unmarked source word to unmarked English; foreigner imports a nation-state that this village has no use for, and stranger keeps the ordinariness and loses the another-country element that the play's whole geography runs on. Logged as the second V1 loss of the span, after R8.

R12 — three one-word losses inside V1, named because the craft report is owed them. [43] জাতা → hand-mill (a hand quern of two stones; quern would be marked-archaic English against V6, mill alone is a building). [66] ঘটি → a little pot (a small round brass water-pot; the metal goes). [35] বাত পিত্ত শ্লেষ্মা → wind, bile and phlegm, which is the standing English of the three humours and, unusually, loses nothing.

R13 — [38]'s misprint carried into the English. The stage direction reads (অমলগুপ্তের প্রবেশ), giving the child a surname that appears nowhere else in 430 units; collation.md §3 says a one-witness undated copy-text is not silently mended, and D42 closed it as a misprint carried verbatim. The English carries it too: (Enter AMALGUPTA), against AMAL at every speech-head. The alternative — printing AMAL and footnoting — would put the emendation in the translation and the evidence in a note.

R14 — [15]'s unresolved reading is still unresolved. collation.md §2 left চুপ করে সহ্য করে against সহ undecided at the available scan resolution, to be settled when span B ran its gate; §6 does not record it settled. The rendering takes সহ্য — "bears in silence" — which is what the transcription has, and the reading is flagged here rather than treated as decided.

R15 — [21] সর্ব্বনাশ করলে, and what the finite verb is doing. "That's everything ruined!" The verb is second-person familiar and could be read as spoken to Grandad on his entrance — you've ruined everything — or as an exclamation flung at nobody. The stage has Grandad entering at [20] and Madhab's [21] is his reaction, not yet his greeting; his greeting-by-accusation comes at [23]. Read as exclamation, and the second-person is lost.

R16 — where the English is longer than the Bengali and it is the grammar's fault. Factor 1.47. The recurring cause is that Bengali finite verbs carry the subject and English requires it — [41] যেতে পারব না is four English words for three — and that জান‍্লার ধারে-type relational nouns take a preposition and an article each. No compensating compression was attempted; V6 wants ordinary spoken English, and ordinary spoken English is not terse.

R17 — what was not changed on whole-play knowledge, recorded so the count can be audited. The ending is known to this translator: Amal dies, or sleeps, with the King's letter promised. Nothing in span A was tilted towards it — no foreshadowing added at [74] "as soon as I'm well I'm going away" or [84] "nobody ever seizes me and carries me off", both of which the ending makes terrible. The temptation was live at those two lines and was declined, and this entry exists so that a diff showing no change there is not read as a translator who did not notice.