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

Turgenev, «Дворянское гнездо» (1859) — the opening of Chapter I

Source. Иван Сергеевич Тургенев, «Дворянское гнездо», ch. I, paragraphs 1–4 complete. Written 1856–58; first published in Современник vol. LXXIII no. 1 (1859), pp. 5–160. Public domain (Turgenev d. 1883).

The unit is a passage — 442 Russian words, from «Весенний, светлый день клонился к вечеру…» to «…сын воспитывался в одном из лучших казенных заведений в Петербурге.» It stops where the dialogue starts. Passage-level units of 100–500 words are the unit D-20260725-06's ratification named for candidate held-out material.

Why this work, and why this passage. The 1904 Nation joint review — the project's strongest external comparative document — makes its strongest parity claim about this novel and not about the audited cycle: "In 'A Nobleman's Nest' and 'A House of Gentlefolk' we have found almost exactly the same number of errors." The project has audited Записки охотника twice and this novel never. This passage is the test of a claim the study limb establishes.

Within the novel, the passage is chosen to lie clear of every site the review quotes. The review prints ~20 parallel-column extracts, cited to Hapgood vol. iv pp. 8, 41, 56, 67, 69, 71, 83, 109, 115, 141, 144, 145, 153, 154, 155, 156, 203, 228, 249, 257, 277, 287. Chapter I paragraphs 1–4 precede p. 8 and contain none of the quoted matter; the check is recorded in the audit design and is machine-verifiable against the excerpt file.

Text and provenance. Retrieved from ru.wikisource (Дворянское гнездо (Тургенев)/Глава 1, raw wikitext) and cross-checked word by word against az.lib.ru/t/turgenew_i_s/text_0020.shtml (Moshkov library, cp1251), an independent transcription pipeline. 442 words on both sides. The two agree everywhere but one word:

Quotation-mark style differs («…» vs "…"); no other divergence. Stored source-ru.txt is the wikisource text, 442 words, SHA-256 d5b0ff555ab10fc158dfb4dfbc3c61df3a792e8ccc6a2e39aeb55a0c90b880c7. This is NEXT.md note (aa) applied to the source, as in T-svidanie-R04-v1.

Regime. R04 — lead close translation, source only. No API call, no cost, never ledgered (charter §6, A4).

Contamination: high. Raised from suspected to high on 2026-07-25, after the audit measured it — see E-20260725-gnezdo-audit/verification.md §4. The declared basis is now a measurement, not an assumption: this text shares more 7-grams with each published translation than the two published translations share with each other — CI(7) between 1.65 and 2.04 depending on how proper nouns are handled (RS-20260725c-contamination-sweep, which downgraded the "2.06×, growing with n" figure first recorded here; the growth is flat under the stricter rule and the cell is symmetric between the two published texts under it). Two exact coincidences are visible without measuring at all: "and his aunt on short commons until" (Hapgood's words) and "the necessity of pushing his own way in the world" (Garnett's). Freeze order is provable in git — nothing was consulted — which is precisely why the result matters: it is what an honestly blind translation of canonical Russian prose by this lead looks like.

Three exposures, all declared, none nil:

1. Generic. Turgenev is heavily translated and Garnett's A House of Gentlefolk is on Project Gutenberg, so it may sit in the lead's training data. No claim of independence from remembered renderings is made. This is the same standing exposure as T-svidanie-R04-v1. It was originally graded suspected rather than high on the reasoning that this novel's English is far less canonical than A Sportsman's Sketches'. The measurement refuted that reasoning, which is worth keeping visible: the lead's estimate of its own contamination was too low, in the direction that flattered the work.
2. Specific, and it touches one word of this passage. Before translating, the lead read the 1904 Nation review complete, including its judgment on институтский: at a different site (Hapgood iv. 154 / Garnett ii. 155) the reviewer sets Hapgood's "in the French language of girls' institutes" against Garnett's "in boarding-school French" and prefers Garnett's. The word «институт»/«институтские» occurs twice in this passage. So on one lexical choice the lead knew an external verdict before choosing.

The choice was made against that verdict, from the Russian, and is logged as item 6 below. That does not make it independent; it makes the direction of the contamination the unhelpful one, which is worth recording but is not a defence. No landmark in the audit spec turns on институт or on any word the review quotes anywhere.

3. Measured, after the fact. See the block above. Log item 12 records the lead reasoning its way to "azure" for consistency with an earlier lead translation; Hapgood had already written the identical six words, "into the very depths of the azure". The reasoning in the log is sincere and the independence it implies is not real.

Beyond those: no English rendering of this novel was fetched, opened, or searched before this file and the audit design were committed. Verifiable in git. Freeze order per NEXT.md note (f).

A Nest of Gentlefolk — the opening

A bright spring day was drawing on towards evening; small rosy clouds stood high in the clear sky and seemed not to be drifting past, but to be withdrawing into the very depths of the azure.

At the open window of a handsome house, in one of the outlying streets of the provincial capital of O—— (this was in the year 1842), two women were sitting: one about fifty, the other already an old woman of seventy.

The first of them was called Marya Dmitrievna Kalitina. Her husband — once the provincial procurator, and in his day a well-known man of affairs, a brisk and resolute man, bilious and obstinate — had died some ten years before. He had been given a fair education and had been at the university, but, born into a poor estate, he understood early on the necessity of pushing his own way in the world and making his pile. Marya Dmitrievna married him for love: he was not bad-looking, he was clever, and when he chose he could be very agreeable. Marya Dmitrievna (Pestova by birth) had lost her parents in childhood, had spent several years in Moscow at the Institute, and, coming back from there, had lived fifty versts from O——, at Pokrovskoe, the family village, with an aunt and an elder brother. This brother soon moved to Petersburg into the service, and kept both his sister and his aunt on short commons until a sudden death put a term to his career. Marya Dmitrievna inherited Pokrovskoe, but did not live there long; in the very second year after her wedding to Kalitin, who had contrived in a matter of days to make a conquest of her heart, Pokrovskoe was exchanged for another property, far more profitable but an unlovely place with no manor house on it; and at the same time Kalitin acquired a house in the town of O——, where he settled with his wife for good. There was a large garden attached to the house; on one side it ran straight out into the fields, beyond the town. "So then," Kalitin concluded, being no great friend to the quiet of the country, "there is no need to go trailing out to the village." More than once, in her heart, Marya Dmitrievna regretted her pretty Pokrovskoe, with its gay little river, its broad meadows and green groves; but she never gainsaid her husband in anything, and stood in awe of his mind and his knowledge of the world. And when, after fifteen years of marriage, he died, leaving a son and two daughters, Marya Dmitrievna had by then grown so used to her house and to town life that she had no wish to leave O—— herself.

In her youth Marya Dmitrievna had enjoyed the reputation of a pretty blonde; and at fifty her features were not without their pleasantness, though they had swelled a little and run together. She was rather sentimental than kind, and had kept her Institute ways well into her mature years; she had spoilt herself, was easily put out, and would even cry when her habits were disturbed; on the other hand she was very affectionate and agreeable when all her wishes were carried out and nobody gainsaid her. Her house was among the pleasantest in the town. Her fortune was a very good one, not so much inherited as acquired by her husband. Both daughters lived with her; her son was being educated at one of the best government establishments in Petersburg.

Translator's log

Frozen 2026-07-25, before the audit design was written and before any published rendering of this novel was fetched. Decisions and alternatives, not quality claims. Any evaluative sentence is marked internal-judgment-only.

1. «губернский город О…» → "the provincial capital of O——". The usual English is "the provincial town of O——", which is what the phrase says on its face. I took "capital" because the passage's next clause depends on it: her husband was the губернский прокурор, the procurator of the province, an office that sits in the province's seat. "Provincial town" severs a link the Russian makes in four words. Cost: "capital" is grander in English than «губернский город» is in Russian, and O—— is a sleepy place.

2. «прокурор» → "procurator", not "prosecutor". The 1842 прокурор was a supervisory law officer of the Petrine system, not a trial prosecutor. "Procurator" is opaque to a modern reader and faintly Roman; "prosecutor" is transparent and anachronistic. I chose the opaque accurate word over the transparent inaccurate one. Live alternative: "public prosecutor of the province".

3. «делец» → "man of affairs". «Делец» carries a shade — an operator, someone who gets things done and is not too nice about how. "Man of affairs" is neutral and slightly grand; "man of business" is neutral and flat; "operator" or "wheeler-dealer" would catch the shade and wreck the period. The shade is lost. It matters because it is the first hint of how Kalitin got his money, which the sentence about «набить деньгу» then confirms.

4. «рожденный в сословии бедном … набить деньгу» — the register drop is deliberate and is kept. Turgenev sets an inverted, bookish participial phrase («born in an estate poor») immediately against a colloquialism («to stuff money»). I rendered these "born into a poor estate" and "making his pile". "Estate" for сословие keeps the legal sense of a birth-class; "class" would be clearer and would lose it. "Making his pile" is the coarsest thing in my English and is meant to be.

5. «держал… в черном теле» → "kept … on short commons". The idiom means holding dependants in deliberate austerity and subjection. "On short commons" is period-right English and covers the material half; the half about subjection is thinner in my version than in the Russian. Alternatives considered: "kept them in strict subjection" (covers the other half, loses the food), "kept them short".

6. «институт» / «институтские замашки» → "the Institute" / "her Institute ways". This is the contaminated choice. The domesticating option is "boarding school" / "boarding-school ways", which reads better in English and is what the 1904 Nation reviewer prefers at a different site in this novel — a verdict I had read before translating (see the contamination note above). I chose against it, from the Russian: the институт was a specific closed government school for noble girls, and институтка was a recognised social type — sheltered, given to raptures and to taking offence. That type is the whole point of «институтские замашки» in a woman of fifty, and "boarding-school ways" carries the sheltering but not the type. Cost, stated plainly: an English reader without the referent gets less from "Institute" than a Russian reader gets from «институт», so the gain may be notional. I cannot claim this choice was made free of knowing the reviewer's opinion; I can only record that it runs against it.

7. «прекословить» rendered by one English word in both places — "gainsay". Turgenev uses the verb twice in the passage, of the wife toward her husband («ни в чем не прекословила мужу») and of the world toward the wife («никто ей не прекословил»). The repetition is characterisation: what she never did to him, she requires of everyone else. Two different natural English verbs ("contradicted", "crossed") would dissolve it. "Gainsay" is archaic-leaning in modern English, which is a cost I accepted to keep the echo.

8. «любезен» / «любезна» likewise held to one word, "agreeable" — of the husband ("when he chose he could be very agreeable") and of the wife ("very affectionate and agreeable"). Same reasoning as item 7, weaker case: the echo is fainter and «любезный» is a common word.

9. «более чувствительна, нежели добра» → "rather sentimental than kind". «Нежели» is bookish for "than", and "rather … than" is the English construction with the matching flavour. «Чувствительный» in this period spans sentimental, susceptible and touchy; the sentence needs all three, because the next clause has her crying when her routine is upset. "Sentimental" carries two of the three and drops touchy. Alternative: "more feeling than kind", which is vaguer and keeps more.

10. «благоприобретенное» → "acquired". In Russian law of the period the word is a term of art: property got by one's own act, opposed to родовое, ancestral. The whole sentence is a legal distinction — «не столько наследственное, сколько благоприобретенное» — and English "not so much inherited as acquired" reduces a technical antithesis to an ordinary one. "Self-acquired" is the English legal term but reads oddly of a fortune made by someone else, which is the joke: the wife's fortune is "self-acquired" by the husband.

11. «тучки» → "small … clouds". The diminutive of туча, a rain-cloud. English has no diminutive; "cloudlets" is unusable. I took "small rosy clouds" and lost the affection in the suffix. The same loss recurs at «речка» → "little river" (partly recovered) and «старушка» → "an old woman" (not recovered — «старушка» is warm, "old woman" is not; I could not find a way to say it in the same seven words).

12. «уходили в самую глубь лазури» → "withdrawing into the very depths of the azure". «Лазурь» is a marked poetic word; "azure" is its marked English counterpart, and I used it for the same word in T-svidanie-R04-v1, so the two lead translations are consistent. «Уходили» is plain "went away"; "withdrawing" is more deliberate than the Russian and was chosen for the sense of the clouds receding rather than travelling.

13. What I could not keep: the sentence shape of the third paragraph. Turgenev's Russian runs a 60-word sentence in which the appositions to «муж» pile up before the verb «умер» finally lands. English cannot suspend a subject that long without strain, so I broke the apposition out between dashes and let "had died some ten years before" arrive earlier and with less force. internal-judgment-only: I think this is the largest single loss in the passage, and it is structural rather than lexical.

14. Names and units left as they are — Marya Dmitrievna, Pokrovskoe, versts, Petersburg. No patronymic was dropped, no verst converted.