Repository path: workshop/translations/jeli-il-pastore/register.md · rendered 2026-09-09

Binding register — «Jeli il pastore»

What this is. The decisions made in an earlier span that bind every later span of the same work. A short translation does not need one: everything is in view at once, and consistency is a property of a page you can re-read. Over 11,474 source words in five sittings weeks apart it is not, and "keep it consistent" stops being an instruction and becomes an instrument or it does not happen.

Status of the entries. Every row cites the log decision that created it (D<n> in R05-v1/translation.md). A row may be revised, but only by a numbered erratum on the translation page plus a dated line in §Revisions below — never by silently changing the row, because the point of the register is to make drift visible rather than to prevent it.

Unresolved rows are as important as resolved ones and are listed separately. An unresolved row was a decision the next span was required to settle, not one it might quietly inherit. After S047 the work is translated whole and there is no next span, so what remains open (U4) is open permanently, and U6 is closed unsettled with its measurement recorded — see §Closed without settlement.

Voice and register

Names, address, and the horses

| N35 | soldo | soldo / soldi | a coin whose value an English reader cannot compute; joins onze (N20), tumoli (N22), grano (N34), puddara (N28) under D14. lira remains an English word and is not in this class | D83 | | N36 | roba | irreducible — no single English word | Verga's great word, and the register's largest gap, found by census at span 5 and not by noticing: 6 occurrences, already rendered everything he owned (¶9), things (¶51, ¶52), and now everything we had (¶140, property), goods (¶181, wealth), provisions (¶187, food for a dinner). This row records a loss rather than instructing a rendering — the first row of that kind. Any later use must be chosen for its sense and logged | D73 | | N37 | ballatojo | the gallery (a bell-tower's) / the landing (a house's outside stair-head) | one Italian word, two places; identical in shape to N15. ¶79 is the Tebidi bell-tower, ¶158 and ¶177 are Mara's town house | D74 |

Place-names are kept as in the source and are not listed individually: Tebidi, Licodia, Vizzini, Ragoleti, Passanitello, Donferrante, la Commenda, il Jacitano, Marineo, Resecone, Caltagirone, Poggio alla Croce, Buccheri (il Bucchierese → "from Buccheri"), and the fair of San Giovanni.

Unresolved — and the work is now complete, so nothing further will settle them

Closed without settlement

Why this row could not simply be left open. An unresolved row is one the next span is required to settle, and after S047 there is no next span. A row left open on a completed work is not a live question, it is an unmarked loose end — so U6 is closed with its result recorded as a null rather than carried.

Settled

Revisions

Dated entries, each pointing at the erratum on the translation page that authorises it.

• 2026-07-27 (S039), erratum E3. V4 status changed from adopted by drift, flagged to tested and kept (D24); N5 extended to cover campaio (D29). Rows V6–V9 and N21–N24 added, not revised.
• 2026-07-28 (S045), erratum E5. N15 made referent-sensitive — mandra/armento → herd of horses and cattle, flock of sheep (D56). The row was set when every referent in the story was equine and broke silently when span 4 moved Jeli to sheep; spans 1–3 are unaffected. V5 gains a second scope clause (D59), and the reduplication rule that had lived only in the log becomes row V10, scoped to manner and degree (D58). Rows N31–N34 are additions. U5 settled with a variable neither of its two candidates named (D62), and U6 opened in its place.

• 2026-07-28 (S047), erratum E6. V10 re-scoped — from a grammatical boundary (adverbs of manner and degree only) to a euphonic one (kept where the English word is short and doubles idiomatically), because the grammatical boundary set at D58 is contradicted by frozen prose from spans 1 and 2 that nobody had checked it against: bianco bianco → white, white is an adjective predicated of a face and is doubled. No frozen prose changes. The row now carries an explicit flag that its criterion would not replicate for another reader (D71). N31 gains the note that its feminine will not cross (D82). Rows N35–N37 are additions. A second finding of the same shape is recorded on the translation page and repairs nothing: V7 was created in span 2 and never applied backwards, so the two span-1 guillemet sites carry double quotation marks, not V7's single ones — measured rather than tidied (E-20260728d). Two rows written late and never checked against the spans they describe: one failure mode, found twice in one session.

• 2026-07-27 (S042), erratum E4. V5 scoped — from onomatopoeia respelled to imitative sounds respelled, calls and cries kept (D45). This is the row's first substantive revision; it narrows what V5 binds and adds nothing. Rows N25–N30 and unresolved row U5 are additions, not revisions. U3 settled (D43); U4 restated with its difficulty measured rather than asserted (RS-20260727d §3).