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

「星」 — R08 (resistancy: Venuti's foreignizing rules, executed), v1

Source. As T-hoshi-R06-v1: 国木田独歩, 「星」 (November 1896), Aozora Bunko card 42207, ../source.txt, 12 paragraphs, 2,157 non-whitespace characters, read whole in Japanese.

Regime. R08 v1.0 — the ten-rule set frozen 2026-07-28, cited by number in the log, with an INT flag on decisions made by interpretation rather than by rule (R08 §5a).

Downstream of R06, and this is a limit of the pair, not a property of the regime. T-hoshi-R06-v1 was written and committed (1822ac7) before this draft began, by the same hand in the same session, exactly as the Romanian pair T-caldura-mare-R06-v1 / -R08-v1 was. RS-20260813b limit 3 therefore carries over unchanged: this is a replication of a lead-vs-lead contrast in a fixed order, not of an independent one.

Cost. $0.

Contamination: none, on the same reachability basis set out in the R06 artifact, which is a check and not a same-text measurement, and is stated as such there.

The Star

In the country near to the capital there dwelt a poet young of years. The house stands at the foot of a smallish hill, and the garden, unbefitting the house, is wide; a clear stream, running out from the stand of trees on the hill, pierces through it and past. The trees have grown as they sprang wild; spring, plum and cherry bloom in disorder; summer, the green shade thickens deep and the water of the brook too is dark; autumn, the brocade of the coloured leaves is splendid. When autumn grows somewhat old and the kogarashi begins to sound, the thing-lonesomeness is without limit; and winter entered, the leaves of the trees having fallen away utterly, only the face of the garden is seen through — and among all, only the sort that is pine and cedar boast in green. Morning and evening the poet took his pleasure in this garden and so lived.

In the beginning of the winter of a certain year, the master of this garden, with one old servant, morning upon morning taking up brooms swept the fallen leaves together, piled these in seven places on the bank of the stream, and, piled as they were, twenty days and more went by. The frost beginning to lie white, it appeared that the freezing of the brook's water also was not far. Thus, at the dusk of a Sunday, the poet came back from without, and for a space walked in the garden hither and yon; that which he sings in a clear voice must be a merry song of love. In this poet's body young blood goes warmly round; the night-cold of winter is no matter for counting; all things are merry and withal sad, sad and withal merry; himself making poems, himself singing, himself weeping, he took his pleasure.

This evening the sky was high and clear and the light of the stars too of a keenness beyond the common — was it for that? — night having come in, for a good while yet he was sauntering along the brink of the stream; but at last, calling the old servant, he had fire carried across into one of the heaped fallen leaves, and himself went within. Thus, though the folk entered deep sleep and the night wore late, this fire alone burned well; the flame is reflected in the water of the brook, the smoke rises up dead straight, and about where the cedars stand in a thicket one stroke of blue smoke, heavy as fog.

The night wears later and later; the great sky and the earth by degrees draw near one another. Star by star comes down to the treetops; dewdrop by dewdrop upon the treetops would return to the sky. The ten thousand soundings are still and voiceless; only the smoke of the poet's garden climbs higher and higher.

In heaven there are a man-star and a woman-star, young of years; far apart though they be held one from the other, on the road of love ten million ri are one ri, and these two had entered at some time into a deep dream of love, coming down to earth to receive the pleasant hours of night upon night — now on the rock-horn of a high peak, now upon the waves of the great sea-plain, now at the brink of the flow of a thin valley-river — talking out an unending intimate speech till it was light, and, startled at the sky of shinonome, they returned to heaven.

The woman-star was quick to find the smoke standing up from the poet's garden, and: tonight is cold beyond all else, and frost has fallen even on the River of Heaven, so let us go down to that garden where the smoke stands, and stir the bonfire, and talk — at which the man-star smiled, and embracing one another, tracing the smoke, they came down soundless into the garden. The jewel on the woman-star's brow shoots a crimson light, the man-star's gives off a light of water-colour. The amatsu-otome, drunk on the incense of love, leaned strengthless upon the man-star's shoulder. Thus the two, until one mountain of fallen leaves had burned itself away, spoke their unending hearts, and, the daybreak drawing near, went home far into the western sky. The next night also the poet had one of the piled fallen leaves burned, and the man-star and the woman-star came down again from the sky and spoke as on the night before. Thus, until Saturday night, night upon night the smoke stood up from the poet's garden, and when the night wore late a water-coloured light and a crimson light came down side by side into this garden — but the poet knows nothing at all of it.

Of the seven mountains of fallen leaves, six burned away, and Saturday night left over but one. The smoke standing up from this one climbing thin and thin into heaven, wrapped in a pale-crimson haze the maiden-star went first and came down quietly into the garden. The bonfire of the poet's garden being for this night only, with regret at what was left the two spoke on; and then, on the going home, saying that there could not be no word of thanks to the master of the garden, they went in company into the poet's room, and at the poet's sleeping face — the colour of that noble countenance from outside the floating world, young and young, entered into sinless sleep — the two were a while lost in the looking. Near the pillow, thrown into disorder, are the poetry collections of the countries. One of them lies open as it was left, come out at the place of the Western poem entitled "My Heart is in the Highlands", and of that poem the one line

"Now then, farewell, high peaks that wear the snow"

had a red line drawn under it. The maiden-star, seeing this, straightway floated a dew of tears, and said, how lofty is the heart of this lord young of years; and then, bringing her mouth to the poet's ear, whispered somewhat; the whispering ended, the lovers looked round at one another and smiled, and kissing by turns the poet's gentle cheek, went out away, saying, sleep you in peace, sleep you in peace.

It dawning, on the Sunday morning, the poet in the bed of his waking called to mind the dream of the night gone. In the dream an amatsu-otome, wearing a crimson star upon her brow, appeared, and beckoning without word, drawn by that beckoning he climbs the hill; and the maiden drew close and whispered thus: do you desire love, my lord, or is it freedom you would have? — she asks; and, the blood of freedom being love and the wings of love freedom, I do not desire to lack the one of them, he answers. The maiden smiled, and, saying that in that case there is first a thing to show you, pointed far into the western sky, and, throwing out the words, fix your eyes well and look, vanished away, no telling whither. No sooner had the poet called this dream to mind than he sprang up, and, the sky of shinonome being at last white, went out of the house alone and climbed the hill. Looking out over the western sky, two small stars, hanging low toward the earth, give off a thin light; after a while the eastern sky is dyed gold, the light of those stars goes out of itself, and the shadows of the ranged mountains that have appeared above the horizon are like mayuzumi, the colour of the snow the peaks wear is fainter than the dream, the poet's heart melts into the borders of rapture, and in his eyes the tears brimmed over. These are tears not known save by one in his prime, and he who swallows these tears yearns after the freedom it is vain to desire upon the earth. Yet among the things that draw this tear from a man in his prime, there could be nothing to match the snow of a high peak soaring beyond heaven, faint and faint, when it has copied the dream-path of love into a semblance.

The poet raised his voice and sang "My Heart is in the Highlands", and coming to the line "Now then, farewell, high peaks that wear the snow", his voice was higher by a degree, his eyes looked away far toward the ranged mountains as though loving, as though wrathful, the black hair hanging at his shoulders swayed in the wind, and, the climbing morning-sun making his whole body shine, his figure standing with the blue sky held up over him was to be seen as it were the incarnation of freedom itself.

(Made the eleventh month of the twenty-ninth year.)

Translator's log

Frozen with the draft, before any evaluation of this translation was designed. Coverage codes are the R08 rule numbers; INT marks a decision taken by interpretation where no rule decided (R08 §5a). Written as the draft was written.

[1] The governing decision, and it is the opposite of R06's [1]: archaise (R3). The source is 擬古文 — Meiji Japanese deliberately written old. R3 licenses archaism "where the source word is itself dated or literary", and here the whole register is dated, not scattered words. So: there dwelt, withal, hither and yon, somewhat as a noun, straightway, save by, no matter for counting, sleep you in peace, the inverted the whispering ended. R9 is the live constraint throughout — the limit is short of the parodic, and the place I judged closest to it is the thing-lonesomeness in ¶1 [4].

[2] Tense kept as the source has it (R2, R1). Where Doppo shifts to a stative present inside a past narrative — 「うつり」, 「立ちのぼりて」, 「重し」; 「知ることなし」; the whole middle of the final long paragraph — this arm shifts with him and does not normalise. R06 normalised all of it, so the two arms differ on every one of these sentences. The English result is a narrative that keeps sliding into the present and back, which is exactly what the Japanese does and is not what English narrative does.

[3] Period length and clause order followed (R2), including where it hurts. ¶6 and the long dream paragraph are single periods in the source, chained on 「て」-forms with no full stop; they are single periods here, chained on commas and semicolons. R5 forbade the repairs that would have helped: no supplied subject in the frost beginning to lie white, it appeared that…, no supplied and in and, the daybreak drawing near, went home. The one place the source's discontinuity is reproduced outright (R1) is the end of ¶3: 「青煙一抹、霧のごとくに重し」 has no verb, and the English has none — one stroke of blue smoke, heavy as fog.

[4] 凩 → kogarashi, unassimilated (R7); 物さびしさ → the thing-lonesomeness (R6 calque). R06 took the first stripping wind and loneliness past all measure. Here the named wind is kept as a name with no gloss, which is R7's plain instruction, and 物さびしさ — the 物- prefix that makes a feeling diffuse and objectless — is calqued rather than dissolved. This is the R09 borderline of the draft: thing-lonesomeness is a coinage, and I judged it inside the limit because the compound is transparent, not because it is comfortable.

[5] Retained without gloss (R7): kogarashi, shinonome, amatsu-otome, mayuzumi, ri (千万里 → ten million ri, a measure, not converted to leagues), the River of Heaven. R06 converted or explained all but the last of these. Not retained: 天の河 stays the River of Heaven in both arms, because it is transparent and because the frost falling on it needs it to be a river — the only place the two arms coincide on a decision of this kind.

[6] 水色 → water-colour (R6), against the sense. The compound means light blue; the calque is a false friend in English. Taken deliberately: R6 prefers word-for-word rendering of an image to a domestic equivalent, and the image is the colour of water. The cost is that an English reader may read a painting medium, and the polysemy is left open rather than closed (R4). R06's log [7] records the same word going the other way; the pair is a clean instance of one rule set producing a divergence a translator would not otherwise make.

[7] 『いざさらば雪を戴く高峰』 — calqued from Doppo's Japanese, NOT restored to Burns (R5, R6). The decisive rule is R5: the source withholds Burns's English, and supplying it would give this reader something Doppo's reader did not have. So the line reads Now then, farewell, high peaks that wear the snow — 「いざさらば」 as now then, farewell, 「戴く」 as wear (the same verb the peaks get in the last paragraph, 「峰々に戴く雪」). The poem's title is likewise translated from Doppo's 「わが心高原にあり」 as My Heart is in the Highlands, one word off Burns's actual title, because that is what the Japanese says. INT on one point: I judged that a reader who knows Burns will hear the near-miss, and that the near-miss is the effect — a famous line coming back through Japanese slightly wrong. A reader who does not know Burns loses nothing, because Doppo's reader did not know him either.

[8] 万籟 → the ten thousand soundings (R6). Calqued on the characters. Every sound in creation (R06 [6]) is what the compound means; the ten thousand soundings is what it says, and keeps the Sino-Japanese numeral idiom that R7 would keep in a measure.

[9] 浮世 → the floating world (R6, R7), where R06 took another world. In English the floating world points at ukiyo-e prints rather than at Buddhist transience; kept anyway, since R6's instruction is to calque the figure and R4's is to leave the second reading open.

[10] わかわかしく → young and young. The reduplicated adverb is kept as a reduplication (R6, R8) rather than levelled to very young. Similarly 淡々しく → faint and faint in the last long paragraph, and 細々と → thin and thin in ¶7.

[11] 一語の礼なくてあるべからず → there could not be no word of thanks (R5, R1). The Japanese is a double negative of obligation. English grammar allows a repair (they could not go without a word of thanks — which is what R06 wrote); R5 forbids supplying the repair, so the double negative stands.

[12] Where interpretation and not a rule decided (INT). (i) 「なればにや」 in ¶3 — a classical rhetorical was it because? — is set off in dashes as an interjected question rather than folded into the sentence; no rule chooses between them. (ii) 「その次の夜もまた…昨夜のごとく語りき」 was read as the narrator's summary rather than as free indirect discourse. (iii) In ¶10 the maiden's speech is unmarked in Japanese and I left it unmarked, with the reporting verbs asks / answers trailing the clauses in Japanese order; no rule requires that and R2 only permits it.

[13] R10 was not used anywhere. Nothing in this draft sharpens, extends or turns a thrust back on the source. Recorded because R08's own limitation note says the D-rate should be read as an upper bound wherever R10 is invoked, and here it is not invoked at all.