Repository path: workshop/translations/janko/R06-v1/unitA.md · rendered 2026-09-09

Unit A — «Janko muzykant» ¶22–24, single pass, frozen BEFORE the contamination gate

Henryk Sienkiewicz, «Janko muzykant» (1884 text, Pisma t. I, Gebethner i Wolff), Polish → English. Paragraphs 22–24 of the cleaned source (workshop/experiments/E-20260731e-option-census/runs/janko_pl_clean.txt). 308 Polish words. This is the R06 single pass — no revision — frozen in its own commit so that the standing contamination gate (CLAUDE.md, measure before choosing) can run on it before the rest of the span is drafted.

GATE RESULT, measured after this file was committed and before anything else was translated: tools/dependence_check.py against Curtin 1893 (../../../experiments/E-20260731e-option-census/runs/curtin_yanko_span.txt, 3,092 tokens) returns DEPENDENT? — 18 shared 7-grams, 7 shared 12-grams, 4 shared 15-grams, longest common run 18 tokens:

"the boy would send his whole soul out to it through his eyes for it seemed to him"

The work was abandoned on this measurement. Six of the 7 twelve-grams vanish under the tool's name exclusion, i.e. they are largely function-word runs; one survives it. This artifact is retired and exists only as the record of the gate firing. The session's translation limb is T-smierc-R04-v1 (Reymont), whose gate came back clean at 8 tokens on the same instrument.

No claim is made here that the run is recalled rather than forced. RS-20260728b-forced-run-ru established that run length alone is a poor description of dependence, and nothing in this session tests forcing. What the standing rule prescribes on this number is a selection, and the selection was made.

The manservant up at the manor had a fiddle, and now and then he would play on it in the grey hour, to please the serving-maid. Janko would sometimes crawl in among the burdocks, right up to the open door of the pantry, to get a look at it. It hung on the wall just opposite the door, and there the boy would send his whole soul out to it through his eyes, for it seemed to him some holy thing beyond his reach, a thing he was not fit to touch, and at the same time his own dearest love. And still he wanted it. He would have liked to hold it in his hands just once, at least to see it closer up… The poor little peasant heart shook with happiness at the thought.

One night there was no one in the pantry. The master and mistress had been abroad a long while, the house stood empty, and so the manservant sat out his evenings on the other side of it, with the chambermaid. Janko, crouched in the burdocks, had been looking a long while now through the wide-open door at the object of everything he wanted. The moon that night was full, and it came slanting in at the pantry window and threw the window back as a great bright square on the wall opposite. But the square moved slowly toward the fiddle, and in the end lit it right up. Then, out of the dark of the room, it seemed as if a silver light were coming off it; the curved sides in particular were lit so hard that Janek could barely look at them. In that shining everything showed perfectly: the cut-in waist, the strings, and the bent-back neck. The pegs beside it glowed like glow-worms, and along its length hung the bow, like a rod of silver…

Ah, it was all lovely, and very near to magic; and Janek looked more and more hungrily. Squatting in the burdocks, his elbows on his thin knees, his mouth open, he looked and looked. Now fear held him where he was, now some longing there was no beating pushed him forward. Was it a spell, or what?… For the fiddle in that brightness seemed at times to be coming nearer, as though it were floating toward the child… At moments it went dim, only to blaze out again brighter still. A spell — plainly a spell! Just then a wind got up; the trees rustled softly, the burdocks flapped, and Janek seemed to hear, quite distinctly: