Repository path: workshop/translations/erdsegen/R14-v1/translation.md · rendered 2026-09-09

T-erdsegen-R14-v1 — the same facts, flattened

What this is. R14 v0.1 matched-content flattening applied to T-erdsegen-R04-v1. It renders from the live English, never from the German (R14 §What it is applied to), and nothing it says differs from what the R04 text says. It is a control arm in E-20260807-narrator-unknown, not a translation of anything.

Contamination: none. No source and no comparator was consulted; the input is one frozen English text by the same hand. Cost $0. Length: 489 words against the R04's 466, a ratio of 1.049 (counted by script, not by eye — note (bey)), inside the ±15% tolerance declared in the experiment design §4 before the operators were applied.

I am out of patience with the whole lot of you.

That greeting comes first, dear friends, and now you may laugh.

Long, long ago was what the old man sang under our courtyard windows. I had never understood him. The first two days of this year were two very small eternities. The third has not come to an end at all yet. But if this remarkable year that has now begun should ever stop, which by human reckoning is at any rate probable, then I shall laugh, gentlemen. My laughter will affect you as the trumpet-blast of the Last Judgment would, provided you have any notion what is meant by that.

My present frame of mind lies, I admit, a good way off from laughter. For six years, in your company, doing work with a pen and paste-scissors, I diligently mistook my calling. Now that I am looking for it by myself with a walking-stick, I hope it will soon come in sight. And next New Year's Eve I shall appear before you in a way that will frighten you, wearing a tasselled cap and carrying a hayfork. I shall not serve one hour beyond what I agreed to, even if half of January goes by before I become a farmhand. My endeavour is honest. In der Zusen is the name of the place where I am writing you mourners my first news, at a tavern table. Two farms have already thrown me out, yesterday. Today is a rest day. To my civil enquiry at the first one the answer was that in summer the cherries grow and in winter the vagabonds, that the gentry would no doubt like a warm nest and a full bowl about New Year, that afterwards, when the snow goes, they go too, so that a man is on his own again when the field work has to be done, and that I should go to the Social Democrats, since I was probably one myself. Then the door was shut in my face.

That had been a handsome holding, out on the high road. I am sorry about it. But it has furnished material for a brilliant piece of political economy, at twenty kreuzer the line and no less. It costs me as much myself.

At the second farm I asked, with my hat in my hand, whether they had no want of a hand. The farmer, a little fat cocky fellow, looked at me with his mouth open. Then he took hold of the point of my moustache, which was still tolerably well turned up, with his dirty fingers, and asked what sort of a dainty fork I had got there, and whether it was supposed to be a dung fork. My fingers cramped at once, but there was no way of avenging my honour. I knocked my fists together in a pleading manner, applying for a dung fork in the flesh.

Operator log

Frozen before any profile of this text was collected. Every operator is R14 v0.1's; the propositional rule is that nothing may be added, removed or altered in what the text says.

• F1 cadence levelling. ¶4's 175-word paragraph, which runs on dashes and an interpolated speech, becomes eleven declaratives of similar length; ¶6's three sentences become four.
• F2 figure de-specification. "loom up terribly before your eyes" → "appear before you in a way that will frighten you"; "the hole where" → "the place where"; "not a farthing less" → "and no less" (the coin was a figure, the quantity is the proposition and is kept).
• F3 repetition flattening. "laugh, laugh, laugh" → "laugh"; "and more biting with it" is not in this text.
• F4 verb deadening. "gawps at me" → "looked at me with his mouth open", the manner stated rather than enacted; "reaches with his snotty fingers" → "took hold … with his dirty fingers"; "Bang — and I had the door in my face" → "Then the door was shut in my face".
• F5 register levelling. The opening oath "Drrrat the lot of you!" → "I am out of patience with the whole lot of you."; "Such greeting aforesaid" → "That greeting comes first"; "Endeavour? Honest." → "My endeavour is honest."; the farmer's whole speech, four exclamations and a dialect form, restated as reported declaratives; the third-person address "has he got there" is thereby lost, which is the operator working as specified and is the single largest thing this arm removes.
• F6 connective explicitation. The dashes at "— In der Zusen" and "Today is a rest day —" become sentence boundaries; the farmer's paratactic clauses become a that … that … so that … and that chain.
• What was NOT changed: the six years, the pen and paste-scissors, the walking-stick, New Year's Eve, the tasselled cap, the hayfork, the hour, half of January, In der Zusen, the tavern table, the two farms, the cherries and the vagabonds, the warm nest and the full bowl, the snow, the Social Democrats, the high road, the twenty kreuzer, the hat, the moustache, the dung fork, the fists. The propositional content is intended to be identical; this run does not run an independent equivalence control, and §7 of the result page carries that as a limit.