Repository path: workshop/translations/niewola-tatarska/R06-v1/draft.md · rendered 2026-09-09

T-niewola-tatarska-R06-v1 — Sienkiewicz, «Niewola tatarska» I (opening), single pass

R06 output, i.e. R04 step 2 stopped before the self-revision (R04 §Procedure 2a). Frozen as its own artifact, in its own commit, before the revision was begun. Source: workshop/canon/niewola-tatarska/source.txt, 985 Polish words, three paragraphs — section I ¶1–2 entire plus ¶3 cut at the sentence boundary the manifest names.

Pair: PL→EN. The project's first Polish source and its first macaronic one — the narrator quotes Latin inside Polish syntax five times, and one of those five (integra rodu dignitas … integram) has its Latin inflection carrying the sentence's point.

Contamination: suspected, and the basis is unusual — it is measured after both passes, on purpose. Comparator: Jeremiah Curtin, "Tartar Captivity," in Hania (1898), Gutenberg #36583, located by heading offset and never opened by the translator (method note abm); provenance and digests in the manifest. Figures for both passes, and the argument for the ordering, are in ../R04-v1/translation.md §Contamination. In one line: the longest run this draft shares with Curtin is the outcome variable of the study limb that consumes it, and a selection gate run on an outcome variable conditions the sample on the thing being measured.

Priming: none. No English rendering of this work, and no English rendering of any Sienkiewicz, was consulted before this draft and its log were frozen. The Curtin volume was downloaded and its story boundaries found by string search on headings; its prose was passed to tools/dependence_check.py and to nothing else.

My serving-lad, riding now ahead of me and now behind, went on plucking away at his torban, while grief and longing for Marysia gripped my heart—and the further I rode from her, the more hotly I loved her. At such times the words came into my mind: post equitem sedet atra cura; but since, with my fortune so greatly diminished, I dared neither speak with His Honour Tworzyański nor confess my affections to him, nothing was left me but to earn a new fortune with my sabre, and having adorned myself with gloria militari, then and only then to stand before him. Neither God nor my own dear Marychna could take it ill of me that I had not done so sooner. Had she bidden me leap into fire or into water, or shed my blood outright, Thou, Jesus Christ, who lookest into my heart, seest that I would have done it. But one thing I could not sacrifice even for my winsome girl, and that was my honour as a nobleman. My fortune was nothing, but the worth of my blood was great, and it had come down to me from my fathers as though by testament that I should hold for ever in view that my neck is my own and I am free to hazard it, but that the integra rodu dignitas is my forebears' bequest, which I must render up as I received it: integram. — Eternal rest grant unto my fathers, O Lord, and let everlasting light shine upon them, world without end. Even had His Honour Tworzyański consented to give me his girl, I should have had nowhere to bring her; and if, looking at the slenderness of my fortune, he had in his pride called me a pauper, or a grey-coat outright, then I should have felt myself touched in my understanding of my house's excellence and should have had to take revenge upon him—which, he being the father of my Marysia, God the Lord forbid.

So then there was nothing left but to ride for the Borderlands. Having pawned some of the harness-mountings and belts and whatever else of better sort had come to me from my fathers, and sold the rest, I got together three hundred ducats of full weight, which I handed over at once to His Honour Tworzyański against the interest; then, having taken leave of Marysia with tears and heavy sighing, I made ready through the night for the road, and on the morrow the two of us, my man and I, turned our horses towards the East.

Our road fell by way of Zasław and Bar to Hajsyn. Halting for the night at castles, manors or inns, we came at last to Uman, beyond which the steppe already opened before us, level, rank and soundless. My man, riding ahead, struck up on his torban again and again and sang songs, and it seemed to me that there flew before me, like a bird I was chasing, glory—and behind me, like a second bird, longing. We were riding for the outpost called Mohylna, where in his time my father, His Honour, had kept watch as colonel with an armoured banner which he had put into the field at his own charge for the war against the Musulmans; but to Mohylna it is a very long way, for—God be praised—the Commonwealth is spread broadly over the earth, and besides that one must ride there across steppes over which Tatars and brigands of every kind go prowling day and night, so that it is very much in place to have a care for one's own neck. Along the road I marvelled at everything, since, being in Ukraine for the first time, I met with nothing but unfamiliar matters and things. It is a soldierly land, and the people in it are harder than ours and prouder, and there is such a spirit in a peasant there as a nobleman need not be ashamed of. When you ride through a settlement, though he sees you are wellborn, he barely tips his cap to you, and looks you straight in the eyes. In every cabin there is both a sabre and a firelock, and many a peasant carries a hammer-axe in his hand, just as a nobleman does elsewhere. There is a stubborn nature in these people too, and even—for which the sabre has punished them already and will punish them again—they make little enough of the Commonwealth's commissioners: such is the mettle that nearness to the heathen and a continual readiness for war have worked in them. They take to the plough none too willingly, and if husbandry does prosper with one of them, he would rather settle on his own ground than on a lord's. But into the household retinues, or under the Commonwealth's light colours, they enlist greedily, and the soldier they make is excellent, above all for scouting and skirmishing—though in the open field too non obtrectant, but raising a great shout they go at the enemy as into smoke, cutting and thrusting. Every settlement of theirs is liker a wagon-camp than a village;—they keep a great many horses, which graze on the steppe winter and summer, and they are as fleet as the Tatar sort. Many of them also run off to the insulae of the Dnieper, and there in the Sich lead a life as of a religious order, but a soldierly one and altogether given to brigandage; from which licence of theirs our dear country has suffered much and will suffer more, until she curbs them. To keep them in place—for any nobleman, or even a great lord—is hard, for time and again they break away and go off into the empty steppes, of which there is plenty there, to settle at their own will. In the build of their bodies as well as moribus they differ from our peasants, being tall and sturdy, of a swarthy complexion, liker the Tatar, with moustaches black as a Wallachian's, while their heads—having taken the fashion from the heathen—they shave, leaving on the very crown alone a fierce forelock. Seeing and considering this I marvelled greatly both at that land and at everything in it; and as I have called it soldierly, so I will say again that a country better suited to an armed and mounted people one might search the whole world for in vain. When some perish, others come up from every side, and along all the trails they move just as flocks of birds do; and in that steppe waste it is easier to hear, than a lark above the tilth, the crash of matchlocks, the clash of sabres, the neighing of horses, the flapping of banners in the wind and the shouting of soldiers. There go about there also, as likewise in Podolia and Volhynia, old beggar-men whom all hold in great respect. These, being blind, play on their lyres and cantant songs of knighthood, whereby spirit and a feeling for glory flourish greatly. And the soldier there, seeing that those who live today rot tomorrow, regards his own life no more than a broken penny, dispensing blood as a magnate dispenses gold—and cares more for a fair death than for life or temporal goods. Others, having come to love war above all else, though not seldom of great blood, run near to savagery in unbroken soldiering, and go to battle as though to a wedding, with great gladness and singing; but in time of peace they grow sorely irked, and finding no outlet for their martial humours, are a threat to the common quiet. These they call the lost men. When a man perishes there, all reckon it an ordinary thing, and even his nearest do not much weep for him, saying that it better befits a man to die on the steppe than in a bedchamber like a woman. And indeed that is the best school and seasoning for knighthood there is.

Translator's log (draft pass)

Written as the draft was written and frozen with it (R06 §Procedure 3). Decisions and alternatives, not quality claims. Where a choice was unresolved at the moment of writing, R06 requires the option written down and the alternative recorded here rather than a return pass; every ALT below is such a record.

D1 — the governing register decision, made before the first sentence. The Polish is a pastiche: 1880 prose imitating a mid-seventeenth-century pamiętnik, with archaic orthography (téż, daléj, szlacheckiéj) that the source's own readers already read as old. Chosen: a broadly seventeenth-century English memoir register — whereby, liker, it better befits, participial openings (Having pawned…), and indeed — kept below the threshold of unreadability. ALT rejected at the moment of writing: plain modern English with the Latin retained, which would have made the Latin read as ornament rather than as the narrator's ordinary furniture. Not revisited.

D2 — the five Latin tags are retained untranslated, without gloss. post equitem sedet atra cura, gloria militari, integra rodu dignitas … integram, non obtrectant, insulae, moribus, cantant, pauper — eight in fact, counting the single words. The Polish reader gets no gloss; the English reader gets none. This is a policy and not eight decisions, and it is the one place where the draft is most exposed: a reader without Latin loses the Horace.

D3 — integra rodu dignitas … integram, the hardest site in the passage. The Latin adjective is inflected to agree with dignitas and its repetition is the sentence's point: what is received whole must be handed on whole. Kept both Latin words, in Latin, with the Polish genitive rodu untouched inside the phrase. ALT recorded and not taken: englishing the second one — "which I must render up as I received it: whole." That would have made the sentence legible and destroyed the device.

D4 — J. W. = Jaśnie Wielmożny. An abbreviated honorific with no English equivalent at the right social altitude. Chosen: "His Honour" spelled out, not abbreviated. ALT: keep J. W. as-is; rejected, because an English reader has no expansion for it. The cost is that the source's abbreviation — a scribal habit that dates the narrator — is gone. Note that it also appears of the narrator's own dead father (J. W. ojciec mój), where "my father, His Honour" reads oddly and was written anyway.

D5 — Marysia / Marychna, two diminutives of one name. The source grades affection: Marysia throughout, Marychna once, at the tenderest moment. Both retained in Polish form, unglossed, so the gradation survives even if the reader cannot name it.

D6 — teorbanik. A small torban, the long-necked Ukrainian lute. Chosen: "torban", unglossed, on the same policy as D2. ALT: "lute", which would have been comprehensible and wrong about the instrument.

D7 — pacholę / pachołek, the same person under two words. Pacholę (a lad, a page) opens the passage; pachołek (a serving-man) recurs. Chosen: "my serving-lad" first, then "my man" — i.e. the variation was kept rather than normalised, because the source varies. ALT: one word throughout. Unresolved at the moment of writing and left as written.

D8 — kresy → "the Borderlands", capitalised. The word is a proper region in Polish usage and not a common noun. Capitalisation is the decision; "the borderlands" would have made it descriptive.

D9 — gardło jest rzeczą moją → "my neck is my own". The Polish is literally throat, and the idiom is life staked in a quarrel. English "neck" carries exactly that (risk one's neck). Recorded because it is a substitution of body part, not a literal rendering.

D10 — Wieczny odpoczynek racz… is a liturgical formula and was rendered by the English formula, not translated fresh: "Eternal rest grant unto my fathers, O Lord, and let everlasting light shine upon them." The Polish inserts ojcom moim into the fixed text; the English does the same. na wieki wieków → "world without end" rather than "for ever and ever", to stay inside the same liturgical English.

D11 — pauprem, albo zgoła szarakiem. Pauper kept in italic Latin (the Polish is a Latin loan in the instrumental). Szarak — a grey man, the poor petty nobleman, and also a hare — became "grey-coat", which keeps the colour and loses the hare. ALT: "a nobody", rejected as too modern and too flat.

D12 — dukatów ważnych trzysta → "three hundred ducats of full weight". Ważny here is of full weight, a coin term, not important.

D13 — na prowizyą → "against the interest". A loan term: the 300 ducats go to Tworzyański as interest on a debt. ALT considered: "as a provision", which is the false friend.

D14 — chorągwią pancerną → "an armoured banner". Chorągiew is both the flag and the cavalry unit named after it; pancerni is the specific middle-weight Polish cavalry. Chosen: keep the unit sense of "banner" and use "armoured" rather than "mailed" or "pancerni". The English keeps the ambiguity the Polish has and loses the technical identification.

D15 — bisurmany → "the Musulmans". An archaic-derogatory Polish word for Muslims. Chosen: an archaic English form rather than a neutral modern one, on D1's register policy. ALT: "the paynim", rejected as too specifically Middle English.

D16 — Rzeczpospolita → "the Commonwealth". Standard and settled; recorded only because "Republic" is the other live option and is anachronistic for the polity.

D17 — stannica → "outpost". Stanica: a frontier watch-station. "Outpost" is right and generic; "stanitsa" would have imported the Russian Cossack village.

D18 — animusz (twice) → "mettle" once, and left in italics as animusz… no. Both occurrences were englished: the first as "mettle", and the phrase czułość na sławę as "a feeling for glory". This breaks D2's retain-the-Latin policy, because animusz is a Latinism in Polish rather than a Latin quotation, and the line between them was drawn while writing rather than in advance. Recorded as the draft's one policy inconsistency.

D19 — non obtrectant retained, and I am not certain of its sense. Obtrectare is to disparage or oppose; in this clause about Cossack soldiers "choć i w polu non obtrectant" the intended sense is most likely they do not fall short there either. Retaining the Latin passes the uncertainty to the reader unchanged, which is the honest option and also the convenient one.

D20 — osełedec → "a fierce forelock". The Cossack scalplock. Srogi → "fierce". ALT: transliterate oseledets; rejected because unlike torban it has no chance of being recognised.

D21 — stare dziady … na lyrach grają → "old beggar-men … play on their lyres". Dziad is both grandfather and mendicant; here the blind wandering singers. "Lyre" is the lira (hurdy-gurdy), and "lyre" is wrong about the instrument in the same way "lute" would have been wrong about the torban — taken anyway, because "hurdy-gurdy" is comic in this register. Inconsistent with D6 and recorded as such.

D22 — samopałów → "matchlocks"; rusznica → "a firelock". Two different guns, two different English words, both period. The pairing is a decision: the source's two words are not synonyms.

D23 — taboru → "a wagon-camp". The tabor is the laager of chained wagons. "Camp" alone loses the wagons, which are the point of the comparison with a village.

D24 — straceńcami zowią → "These they call the lost men". Straceniec: one who is lost, hence a desperado. Chosen: the literal "lost men" over "desperadoes", which is right in sense and wrong in period.

D25 — szafując krwią jako magnat złotem → "dispensing blood as a magnate dispenses gold". Szafować is to dispense lavishly, to squander. "Dispensing" is weaker than the Polish; ALT "squandering" was live and not taken because it editorialises where the narrator admires.

D26 — łożnicy → "a bedchamber". Łożnica is specifically the marriage bed / bridal chamber, and the contrast is dying like a woman indoors. "Bedchamber" keeps the room and loses the marriage.

D27 — place names. Zasław, Bar, Haysyń, Umań, Mohylna, Podole, Wołyń. Chosen: English conventional forms where they exist (Podolia, Volhynia, Uman, Hajsyn), Polish forms where they do not (Zasław, Mohylna). Mixed by rule, not by accident, and the rule is use the form an English atlas of the period would print.

D28 — na Ukrainie → "in Ukraine". The source's construction is the ordinary Polish locative of the period. Written without an article; recorded because "in the Ukraine" is the period-English form and would have been the register-consistent choice, and was not taken.

D29 — nie bardo in the source is a typographical error for nie bardzo. Read as bardzo ("not much"). Recorded as a source defect, not an emendation to the frozen source.txt, which keeps the witness as fetched.

D30 — one sentence was left with a construction I would ordinarily rewrite. "and should have had to take revenge upon him" — the modal stack is heavy. R06 forbids the return pass; the alternative "and must have avenged myself upon him" is recorded here and was not written. This is the clearest single item for the revision pass to be measured against.