Repository path: workshop/translations/korolenko-spans/R04-v1/translation.md · rendered 2026-09-09

T-korolenko-spans-R04-v1 — ten spans from four Korolenko stories

Source. В. Г. Короленко, «Сон Макара» (1883), «Лес шумит» (1886), «В дурном обществе» (1885), «Судный день (Иом-кипур)» (1889). Text: ru.wikisource, ПСС 1914 pages for the first three and the main page for the fourth, wikitext retrieved 2026-07-30. Public domain. The exact Russian translated is workshop/experiments/E-20260730f-recall-floor/materials/spans.final.json, entries N01–N10, committed with this file. 502 Russian words.

Regime. R04 (lead close translation, source-only), v1. Translator: the lead agent, as a labeled subject. Cost $0 (charter §3, A4).

Why these four works and these ten spans. They are the non-canonical arm of E-20260730f-recall-floor. Marian Fell's 1916 Makar's Dream, and Other Stories (Gutenberg

62555) contains exactly these four works and is the only freely reachable English of any of them —

the same argument T-son-makara-R04-v1 made in S026, now extended from one story to four. The spans were chosen by a script committed before any span was seen (materials/select_spans.py, commit 9682fdb): fixed offsets within each work, first paragraph at or after the offset with ≥35 words. The opening of «Сон Макара» is excluded because the lead translated it in S026.

Priming: none. Fell's collection was downloaded before this translation and not read, except that about ninety words of its first page came into view while its table of contents was being located — that span is the S026 opening and is excluded from the item pool for that reason and this one. contamination/fell1916-makar.txt, in the repository since S026, was not opened.

Contamination: suspected at freeze, pending measurement, on the same two-step as the Turgenev half. The measurement is prospective: it did not exist when the prose was written. suspected rather than none because Korolenko has been translated and those translations could sit in training data — S026's measured longest run against Fell was 8 tokens on a different passage of the same story, which is at the clean end of this project's range and is not zero.

The translation

N01 — «Сон Макара» (traps on the road)

Макар остановился. В этом месте, почти на самую дорогу, выдвигалось начало целой системы ловушек. При фосфорическом свете ему была ясно видна невысокая городьба из валежника; он видел даже первую плаху — три тяжёлые длинные бревна, упёртые на отвесном колу и поддерживаемые довольно хитрою системой рычагов с волосяными верёвочками.

Makar stopped. At this spot the beginning of a whole system of traps came out almost onto the road itself. In the phosphorescent light he could see plainly the low fencing of dead brushwood; he could even see the first deadfall — three heavy long logs propped against an upright stake and held up by a fairly cunning arrangement of levers with little horsehair cords.

N02 — «Сон Макара» (the Tatar on the piebald horse)

—Постой, постой! — кричал попик, но Макар даже не слышал. Он узнал знакомого татарина, который шесть лет назад увёл у него пегого коня, а пять лет назад скончался. Теперь татарин ехал на том же пегом коне. Конь так и взвивался. Из-под копыт его летели целые тучи снежной пыли, сверкавшей разноцветными переливами звёздных лучей.

— Stop, stop! cried the little priest, but Makar did not so much as hear him. He had recognised a Tatar he knew, who six years before had made off with his piebald horse and five years before had died. Now the Tatar was riding that same piebald horse. The horse fairly reared as it went. From under its hoofs flew whole clouds of snow-dust, glittering with the many-coloured play of the starlight.

N03 — «Сон Макара» (the old Toyon)

Средняя дверь отворилась и вошёл старый-престарый Тойон, с большою серебристою бородой, спускавшейся ниже пояса. Он был одет в богатые, неизвестные Макару меха и ткани, а на ногах у него были тёплые сапоги, обшитые плисом, какие Макар видел на старом иконописце.

The middle door opened and there came in the old, old Toyon, with a great silvery beard that hung down below his belt. He was dressed in rich furs and stuffs that Makar did not know, and on his feet were warm boots trimmed with plush, such as Makar had seen on the old icon-painter.

N04 — «Лес шумит» (the opening)

В этом лесу всегда стоял шум — ровный, протяжный, как отголосок дальнего звона, спокойный и смутный, как тихая песня без слов, как неясное воспоминание о прошедшем. В нём всегда стоял шум, потому что это был старый, дремучий бор, которого не касались ещё пила и топор лесного барышника. Высокие столетние сосны с красными могучими стволами стояли хмурою ратью, плотно сомкнувшись вверху зелёными вершинами.

There was always a murmur standing in that forest — even and long-drawn, like the echo of a bell far off, quiet and vague, like a soft song without words, like an indistinct memory of something past. There was always a murmur in it, because it was an old, dense pine wood that the saw and the axe of the timber-dealer had not yet touched. Tall hundred-year-old pines with mighty red trunks stood like a sullen army, their green crowns locked close together overhead.

N05 — «Лес шумит» (Oksana and Roman)

Вот уже Оксана и не любила, когда он так говорил. Перестанет, бывало, плакать и начнёт его нехорошими словами «лаять». Ну, Роман на неё не сердился. —Да и что же ты, — спрашивает, — лаешься? Я же ничего такого не сказал, а только сказал, что не знаю.

Now Oksana did not like it when he talked like that. She would leave off crying and start "barking" at him with ugly words. Well, Roman was not angry with her. — And what are you barking for? he asks. I said nothing of the sort, I only said that I don't know.

N06 — «Лес шумит» (Opanas on tales and songs)

—Ох, пане, пане, — говорит Опанас, — у нас говорят старые люди: в сказке правда и в песне правда. Только в сказке правда — как железо: долго по свету из рук в руки ходило, заржавело… А в песне правда — как золото, что никогда его ржа не ест… Вот как говорят старые люди!

— Ah, master, master, says Opanas, among us the old people say: there is truth in a tale and truth in a song. Only the truth in a tale is like iron: it has gone about the world a long while from hand to hand, and has rusted… But the truth in a song is like gold, which rust never eats… That is how the old people say it!

N07 — «В дурном обществе» (Lavrovsky)

Другую фигуру, доставлявшую обывателям развлечение зрелищем своего несчастья и падения, представлял отставной и совершенно спившийся чиновник Лавровский. Обыватели помнили ещё недавнее время, когда Лавровского величали не иначе, как «пан писарь», когда он ходил в вицмундире с медными пуговицами, повязывая шею восхитительными цветными платочками. Это обстоятельство придавало ещё более пикантности зрелищу его настоящего падения.

Another figure that gave the townspeople entertainment by the spectacle of its misfortune and its fall was the retired and thoroughly drink-sodden clerk Lavrovsky. The townspeople still remembered the not-distant time when Lavrovsky was styled nothing but "pan secretary", when he went about in an undress uniform with brass buttons, tying delightful coloured kerchiefs about his neck. This circumstance lent a still sharper relish to the spectacle of his present downfall.

N08 — «В дурном обществе» (Valek on the hill)

Пока я рассматривал гробницу, удивляясь странному назначению окна, на гору вбежал запыхавшийся и усталый Валек. В руках у него была большая еврейская булка, за пазухой что-то оттопырилось, по лицу стекали капли пота. —Ага! — крикнул он, заметив меня. — Ты вот где. Если бы Тыбурций тебя здесь увидел, то-то бы рассердился! Ну, да теперь уж делать нечего…

While I was examining the vault and wondering at the strange purpose of the window, Valek came running up the hill, out of breath and tired. In his hands was a big Jewish loaf, something was bulging inside his shirt, and drops of sweat were running down his face. — Aha! he cried, catching sight of me. So this is where you are. If Tyburtsy had seen you here, wouldn't he have been in a rage! Well, there's nothing to be done about it now…

N09 — «Судный день» (Khapun)

— Знал, то б и не спрашивал. Слышу давно, — люди болтают, вот как и ты: Хапун, Хапун, а в какой разум это говорится, и не знаю. — Так бы сразу и говорили, что не знаете… Если хочете знать, так я и расскажу, потому что я побывал-таки на свете, не то что вы.

— If I knew I shouldn't be asking. I've been hearing it this long while — folk chatter, just as you do: Khapun, Khapun, and in what sense it is said I don't know. — Then you should have said straight off that you don't know… If you want to know, I'll tell you, for I have knocked about the world a bit, not like you.

N10 — «Судный день» (matchmaking)

— Хорошо! Как вы богатый человек и Мотря богатая невеста, так тут уж и малому ребенку ясно: посылайте сватов к старому Макогону. — Правда! Да только я это знал и без тебя… А как же с Галей?

— Very well! Seeing that you are a rich man and Motrya is a rich bride, why, it is plain even to a small child: send your matchmakers to old Makogon. — True! Only I knew that without you… But how about Galya?

Translator's log

Frozen with the translation, before any comparator was opened and before the evaluation that uses it was designed. Decisions and alternatives, not quality claims. Any evaluative sentence here carries internal-judgment-only.

The same rule as the Turgenev half. These renderings are distractors in a forced-choice test, and they were written as R04 would write them with no experiment in view. Nothing was made worse to lose or made Fell-like to match. Register is nineteenth-century Russian literary prose in the English that period asks for, which is R04's normal setting.

Decisions

1. «плаха» (N01) — "deadfall". A плаха is a block of wood, and in trapping vocabulary the weighted log that falls on the animal. English trapping has the exact term, "deadfall", and it is the only word in the ten spans where the English is more precise than the Russian. Recorded because that direction is rare and worth noticing: an ordinary Russian noun becomes an English technicality.

2. «попик» (N02) — "the little priest". A double diminutive of поп, itself the familiar (and slightly disrespectful) word for a parish priest. English has neither the familiarity nor the diminutive; "little priest" reads as a comment on his height, which the Russian does not make. Rejected: "the priestling" (archaic and contemptuous in the wrong direction), "the good father" (reverent, which is precisely wrong).

3. «Тойон» (N03) is left as "Toyon". The Yakut word for a lord or master, and Korolenko's story turns on Makar's God being called by it. Translating it as "the Lord" would collapse the distance the whole story is built out of. Left untranslated and uncapitalised beyond its own capital, with no gloss — R04 does not footnote.

4. «плис» (N03) — "plush". A cheap cotton velvet. "Plush" is the correct English and now reads as luxurious, where the Russian reads as the good boots of a poor man. The anachronism of connotation is left standing and recorded.

5. «шум» in N04 is the story's title word and it cannot be one English word. Лес шумит is "the forest makes its noise", and the noun шум covers noise, rustle, murmur, roar. The paragraph compares it to a distant bell and to a song without words, so the quiet end of the range governs: "murmur". But the title, on that choice, would be "the forest murmurs", which is too soft for a story in which the forest also roars. The span is translated for the span, and the title's word is left unsolved.

6. «стоял шум» (N04) — "there was always a murmur standing in that forest". The Russian verb is to stand, and the sound is treated as a thing occupying the wood rather than an event in it. Idiomatic English drops the verb ("there was always a murmur"). It is kept in the first sentence and dropped in the second, where the Russian repeats the whole phrase — so the English keeps the image once and the repetition once, and cannot keep both twice.

7. «лаять» (N05) is in quotation marks in the Russian and stays in quotation marks. The verb is to bark, used of a person scolding, and Korolenko marks it as the peasant word by quoting it. Keeping the quotes keeps his marking; translating it as "scold" would erase both the dog and the marking.

8. «пане» (N06) — "master". A Polish/Ukrainian vocative, and Opanas is a Ukrainian addressing a Polish-speaking gentleman. "Sir" is flatter and loses the geography; "pan" untranslated would be opaque this early. "Master" is chosen and is wrong in a specific way — it implies ownership where пан implies rank — and the alternative was to keep the Polish and lose the reader.

9. «пан писарь» (N07) — "pan secretary", kept in the Russian's own quotation marks. Here the same word is kept untranslated, because in N07 it is a title being quoted as a title, not a form of address, and the joke is that a drunk was once called it. The two spans therefore treat «пан» differently, and this is a deliberate inconsistency rather than an oversight: in N06 it is speech, in N07 it is a label.

10. «вицмундир» (N07) — "undress uniform". The civil servant's everyday coat, as against the full-dress мундир. English has the military term and it is the right register; "frock-coat" is what the garment looked like and drops the officialdom that is the sentence's whole point.

11. «еврейская булка» (N08) — "a big Jewish loaf". Kept literal. The phrase is the narrator's, the bread is bought in the Jewish quarter of a Ukrainian town, and softening it to "a big white loaf" would edit an 1885 text to 2026 taste. Same ruling as T-senilia-R04-v1 made on Turgenev's «как еврей Ротшильд», and the honest place for the discomfort is this log.

12. «Хапун» (N09) is left as "Khapun". The Ukrainian-Jewish folk demon who carries off a Jew on the Day of Atonement, and whose name is built on хапать, to snatch. "The Snatcher" would gloss the etymology and lose the name; the story spends its next page explaining who he is, so the transliteration is the one the text itself supports.

13. The dialogue dash is kept as a dash throughout N02, N05, N06, N08, N09 and N10. Same typographic ruling as T-senilia-R04-v1: the Russian marks speech with a leading dash and quotation marks with guillemets, and both distinctions are carried into the English rather than normalised to English quotation marks. This is the most visible non-English feature of these ten spans and it is a regime decision, not a local one.

14. «побывал-таки на свете» (N09) — "I have knocked about the world a bit". The particle -таки is a boast, and побывать на свете is to have been about in the world. The English idiom carries the boast and loses the particle; there is no English clitic that does that work.

What was consulted

The Russian, from the wikisource pages named above, and nothing else. No English of any of these four works was opened before this file was frozen, and fell1916-makar.txt, which has been in this repository since S026, was not read.

R04-v1