Repository path: workshop/translations/kasagi/R06-v1/translation.md · rendered 2026-09-09

Kaşağı — Ömer Seyfettin, 1919 · T-kasagi-R06-v1

Source. Ömer Seyfettin (1884–1920), «Kaşağı», first printed 1919. Copy-text workshop/translations/kasagi/source-trwikisource.txt (tr.wikisource revid 172873), units [1]–[74], 887 Turkish words. The copy-text is a modern recension of unknown editorship and the 1919 printing was not reachable — collation.md.

Regime. R06, lead single pass, source only, no revision pass. The whole story, straight through. 887 Turkish words → 1,500 English words (ratio 1.69, against 1.48 for the project's Bengali span at S160 and 1.50 for its Finnish novella).

Language. The project's nineteenth source language and its first Turkic one.

Cost. $0. Lead translation is never ledgered (charter §3, A4).

Contamination: suspected, and the boundary is one word. Before translating, while establishing that the story was public domain and that a free English existed, the lead saw search-result titles including "The Currycomb (Kaşağı)" and a two-sentence plot blurb. No sentence of any English rendering was read, and none is stored. The exposure is the single lexical item currycomb, which the translation then uses; it is declared here rather than measured away. Overlap against a freely readable English was measured after this file was committed — RS-20260811g-carrier §6.

The translation

When we played in the stable yard we would hear, down below under the silver willows, the mournful trickle of a stream we never saw. Our house seemed to have got lost behind the big chestnut trees of the inner fence. My mother had gone to Istanbul, and my brother Hasan, a year younger than me, and I never left Dadaruh's side any more. He was my father's groom, an old man. Early in the morning we would run to the stable. What we loved best were the horses. Taking them to water with Dadaruh, riding them bareback — there was no getting enough of it. Hasan was afraid and could not ride alone. Dadaruh would take him up in front of him. Putting barley in the nosebags, filling the mangers with hay, carrying out the dung: we liked all of it better than any game. And grooming above all. That was the finest thing there was. The moment Dadaruh took the currycomb in his hand and set to work, just like — tick — tick — tick — just like a clock, I could not keep still:

— Let me do it too! I would keep on at him.

Then Dadaruh would put me up on Tosun's back, put the currycomb into my hand,

— Go on then! he would say.

I would rub the iron thing over the animal, but I could never get that even clatter out of it.

— Is he swishing his tail?

— He is.

— Where? Let me look!..

I would lean down, I would stretch. But you could not see the tail past the horse's rump.

Every morning, the moment I reached the stable,

— Dadaruh, I'm going to do the grooming, I would say.

— You can't.

— Why not?

— Because you're still too little, that's why...

— I'm going to.

— Grow first.

— When?

— When you're as tall as the horse.

— .....

Of all the work of the horses and the stable, grooming was the one thing I could not manage. I did not come up even to the horse's belly. And it was the best of it, the most delightful thing of all. The steady clatter of the currycomb seemed to please Tosun: he would lay his ears back and swing his tail like a great tassel. Just as the grooming was coming to an end he would turn restive, and then Dadaruh would bring his hand down on his rump with a "Hoy!.." and start on the other horses. One day I was left on my own. Hasan and Dadaruh had gone down to the stream. A craving to do the grooming woke in me. I looked for the currycomb; I could not find it. In the corner of the stable Dadaruh had a small windowless room. I went in. I searched the shelves. I looked among the saddles and everywhere else. Nothing, nothing! Under the bed stood a chest of green wood. I opened it. I nearly cried out with joy. The German-silver currycomb that had come out of the presents my mother sent from Istanbul a week before was gleaming there. I snatched it up. I ran to Tosun. I tried to rub it along his belly. He would not stand still.

— I suppose it hurts? I said.

I looked at the teeth of this fine currycomb that shone like silver. They were very sharp, very pointed. To take the edge off them a little I began rubbing it on the stones of the wall. When the teeth were ruined I tried again. Still not one of the horses would stand. I lost my temper. It was as though I wanted to take my rage out on the currycomb. I ran to the fountain ten paces off. I laid the currycomb on the stone of the trough. I found the heaviest stone I could lift from the ground and began bringing it down on it, fast, again and again. This fine currycomb that had come from Istanbul, that Dadaruh had probably not had the heart to use, I crushed, I broke to pieces. Then I threw it into the trough.

Every morning, on his way out, my father would look in at the stable and glance about him. That day I was alone in the stable again. Hasan had stayed at the house with Pervin, our servant. As my father was looking at the fountain he saw the broken currycomb in the trough; he shouted to Dadaruh:

— Come here!

. . . . . .

My breath was going to stop; I don't know why, I was very frightened. Dadaruh was at a loss, and when the broken currycomb came to light my father asked who had done it. Dadaruh:

— I don't know, he said.

My father's eyes turned to me, and before he had asked anything:

— Hasan, I said.

— Hasan?

— Yes, yesterday, while Dadaruh was asleep, he went into the room. He took it out of the chest. Then he crushed it on the stone of the trough.

— Why didn't you tell Dadaruh?

— He was asleep.

— Go and call him, let me see.

— .....

I went through the gate in the fence. I ran up the shaded path towards the house. I called Hasan. The poor thing had no idea of anything. He came running behind me. My father was very hard. One look from him and we were frightened out of our lives. He said to Hasan:

— If you tell me a lie I'll beat you!

— I won't.

— Very well. Why did you break this currycomb?

Hasan stared in bewilderment at the thing standing in Dadaruh's hand. Then, shaking his fair head:

— I didn't break it, he said.

— Don't lie, I'm telling you.

— I didn't break it.

My father again:

— Tell the truth and I shan't be angry with you. Lying is a very bad thing, he said.

Hasan stuck to his denial. My father flew into a rage. He went at him and brought a slap down across his face — "Shameless liar."

— Take him to the house; and don't you let him in here again. He can sit with Pervin from now on! he shouted.

Dadaruh took my crying brother up in his arms. He walked towards the gate in the fence. After that I always played alone in the stable. Hasan was a prisoner in the house. He was not forgiven even after my mother came home. Whenever the chance arose my father would say, "That liar." Whenever the slap he had taken came into Hasan's mind he would start to cry, and could hardly be quieted. My poor mother never for a moment allowed that I could have laid a false charge against him. "Could that fool Dadaruh have let the horses crush it?" she would say.

The next year my mother went to Istanbul again for the summer. We were left alone. The stable was still forbidden to Hasan. At night, in bed, he would ask me what the horses were doing, whether the foals had grown. One day he suddenly fell ill. A horse was sent to the town. The doctor came. "Diphtheria," he said. The peasant women from the farm crowded into the house. They kept bringing birds, cutting them open and binding them round my brother's neck. My father never left the head of the bed.

Dadaruh was very subdued. Pervin was sobbing her heart out.

— Why are you crying? I asked.

— Your brother is ill.

— He'll get better.

— He won't get better.

— Then what will happen?

— Your brother is going to die! she said.

— Die?

I began to cry too. Ever since he fell ill I had been sleeping beside Pervin. That night I could not sleep at all. The moment I dropped off, Hasan's shape would come before my eyes and stand there in front of me crying, "Slanderer! Slanderer!"

I woke Pervin.

— I'm going in to Hasan, I said.

— Why?

— I'm going to tell my father something.

— What are you going to tell him?

— That it was I who had broken the currycomb; that is what I'm going to tell him.

— What currycomb?

— The one last year. You know how my father turned against Hasan...

I could not finish what I was saying. I was drowning in deep sobs. Crying and crying, I told Pervin. If I told my father now, Hasan would hear it too, and perhaps he would forgive me.

— You'll tell him tomorrow, she said.

— No, I'm going now.

— Your father is asleep now; you'll tell him in the morning. Hasan is asleep too. You'll kiss him, you'll cry, and he will forgive you.

— Very well!

— Now go to sleep!

— .....

Again I could not close my eyes until morning. While the sky was only just going pale I woke Pervin. I got up. I was in a hurry to be rid of the poison in me, to pour out the gnawing of my conscience. Only — my poor, innocent brother had died in the night. In the hall we found the farm's imam and Dadaruh, crying. They were waiting for my father to come out.

Translator's log

Written as the draft was written, decision by decision, and frozen with the draft — nothing below was added after any evaluation existed (R06 §3, charter §3, A4). Decisions and alternatives, not quality claims.

One thing this log cannot record. The register decision at D6 is a decision not to do anything, taken eighteen times, and a translator has no way of telling from inside whether it cost a reader anything. That is the question the study limb was built to ask, and the log was frozen and committed before the study limb existed.