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

T-petka-na-dache-R06-v1 — Andreev, «Петька на даче» (1899), opening, RU→EN

Regime R06 (lead single pass, source-only, no revision), v1.0 frozen in one commit — the log below was written decision-by-decision as the draft was written, per R06 §Procedure.

• Source: Леонид Андреев, «Петька на даче», September 1899. Text from ru.wikisource.org, page "Петька на даче (Андреев)", retrieved 2026-09-05. Author died 1919 — public domain in every jurisdiction (life+70 and pre-1929 both clear it). Stored as source-ru.txt, the opening eight paragraphs only (412 Russian words); the rest of the story was not read before this page was frozen.
• Translated by: lead agent, in session, from the Russian alone. No API call. $0, never ledgered (charter §3, A4).
• Extent: 412 Russian words → 533 English words (script count, materials/build.py in E-20260905-tierD-design-v3), one unit, no revision pass.
• Why this work: wiki/plan.md §W2 step 1 (the Tier D redesign session) asks for two fresh lead-provenance reference translations, contamination measured before selection, as this session's translation limb. Andreev's short prose is the pair the project's Tier D materials already use (Bargamot, T-bargamot-R04-v1), so a second Andreev story keeps the register and register-anchor comparability the design needs, at the cost stated below.

Contamination

suspected, and measured against the same comparator the project already holds — W. H. Lowe, The Little Angel, and Other Stories (London: Francis Griffiths, 1915; Project Gutenberg #49598, public domain), the "PETKA AT THE BUNGALOW" chapter of the copy already stored for T-bargamot-R04-v1's null control (workshop/translations/bargamot/R04-v1/contamination/lowe-other.txt). No priming: the Lowe chapter was not opened before this translation and its log were frozen; it was extracted and read only afterward, to run the measurement below.

The measurement, tools/dependence_check.py, frozen criterion dependence at ≥12 shared tokens (E-20260725c-contamination-sweep §4). Null control: the same lead text against 38,317 words of Lowe's other Andreev translations in the same volume (every chapter except "Petka" and "Silence").

The 12-token run: "of a vague threat — just you wait! — this meant that the boy…" (Lowe: "...and take the form of a vague threat... 'Just you wait!' ... This meant that the boy..." — the run crosses the reported speech and its frame). This sits exactly at the frozen dependence threshold, not comfortably below it as Bargamot's Unit A (8) and Unit B (9) did against the same null-control method. The honest reading is suspected, not clean: this is the opening of one of Andreev's most anthologized stories, and "Petka" carries a much thicker footprint in general circulation than "Bargamot" does. Consequence for how this item is used: wiki/plan.md's Tier D redesign uses this as a targeted-arm lead-provenance reference to test whether detection generalizes across provenance (charter §5.1) — a comparison of a damaged against an undamaged version of the same lead text — not as a claim of independence from Lowe's rendering, which this measurement does not support and the design does not need it to. It is not used, and must not be used, anywhere a design's validity turns on independence from a published rendering of this work (CLAUDE.md §Contamination).

Translator's log

Eight short paragraphs, dialogue-heavy, a genre scene (a cheap barbershop, its apprentices, its customers) before the story's two boys are even named as protagonists.

1. «отрывисто и резко» (of the barber's shout) — "sharply and abruptly." Considered "curtly and harshly"; rejected because "harshly" over-reads a moral judgment the adverb doesn't carry yet — the sentence is reporting a mannerism, not yet condemning it.
2. «с тою обостренною внимательностью и интересом, какие являются только в парикмахерской» — a long relative clause naming a type of attention peculiar to barbershops. Rendered as "that heightened attentiveness and interest found only in a barbershop" rather than splitting it into two sentences; English tolerates the stacked modifiers here and splitting would lose the narrator's slightly clinical, cataloguing tone.
3. «Вот погоди!» — kept as the idiomatic threat-formula "Just you wait!" rather than a literal "Well, wait!", which would not read as a threat in English at all.
4. «Так их и следует» (the customer's silent verdict on the boys) — "Serves them right." A compressed idiom for a compressed idiom; the alternative "That's exactly what they deserve" was rejected as too explanatory for a half-formed thought reported in free indirect style.
5. «парикмахерской, пропитанной скучным запахом дешевых духов» — "barbershop, saturated with the tedious smell of cheap scent." «скучным» here does not mean "boring" in the usual sense but something closer to "wearisome, cloying" — kept as "tedious" rather than "dull," which would suggest the smell was faint rather than oppressive by repetition.
6. «аляповато-красивые, но подозрительные молодцы» — "garishly handsome but suspicious-looking young fellows." «аляповато» (gaudy, crudely made) modifying «красивые» (handsome) is a compound judgment English has no single adjective for; a hyphenated compound was chosen over two coordinated adjectives ("gaudy and handsome") because the source subordinates the gaudiness to the handsomeness rather than listing them as equal.
7. Petka/Nikolka's ages — «на три года старше» rendered as "three years older," a plain compelled specification; no decision here.
8. «давал ему две пощечины: по одной на каждую щеку» — kept the source's own gloss ("one on each cheek") rather than cutting it as redundant; the redundancy is the joke — Osip Abramovich's violence is administered with method, and the narrator's flat arithmetic tone is part of what the passage is doing.

No site here forced a choice between senses in a way that produced a live handbook question this session pursues further; the item exists to serve the Tier D design named above, not to open a new study-limb thread. Filed as a translation limb in service of wiki/plan.md §W2 step 1.

Translation

Osip Abramovich, the barber, straightened the dirty little sheet over his customer's chest, tucked it with his fingers behind the collar, and called out sharply and abruptly:

"Boy, water!"

The customer, examining his own face in the mirror with that heightened attentiveness and interest found only in a barbershop, noticed that one more pimple had appeared on his chin, and turned his eyes away in displeasure — eyes that fell straight on a thin little hand which, from somewhere off to the side, reached toward the shelf beneath the mirror and set down a tin of hot water. When he raised his eyes higher he saw the barber's reflection, strange and somehow askew, and caught the quick, menacing look the man threw down at someone's head, and the soundless movement of his lips in an inaudible but expressive mutter. If it was not the proprietor himself, Osip Abramovich, who was shaving him, but one of the assistants, Prokofy or Mikhaila, then the mutter grew louder and took the shape of a vague threat:

"Just you wait!"

This meant that the boy had not brought the water quickly enough and that punishment awaited him. "Serves them right," thought the customer, tilting his head to one side and contemplating, right under his own nose, a big sweaty hand of which three fingers stuck out while the other two, sticky and pungent, touched his cheek and chin tenderly, while a rather blunt razor, with an unpleasant scraping sound, scraped off the soapy lather along with the stiff bristle of his beard.

In this barbershop, saturated with the tedious smell of cheap scent, full of pestering flies and dirt, the customer was undemanding: doormen, shop clerks, sometimes petty officials or workmen, often garishly handsome but suspicious-looking young fellows, with ruddy cheeks, thin little mustaches, and insolent, oily eyes. Not far off lay a quarter filled with houses of cheap vice. They dominated this neighborhood and lent it a peculiar character of something dirty, disorderly, and uneasy.

The boy who was shouted at most often was called Petka and was the youngest of all those employed at the establishment. The other boy, Nikolka, was three years older and was soon to be advanced to assistant. Even now, when some plainer customer looked in and the assistants, with the master away, were too lazy to work, they would send Nikolka to cut hair, and laugh that he had to rise on tiptoe to see the hairy nape of some hulking porter's neck. Sometimes a customer took offense at his spoiled hair and raised an outcry, and then the assistants would shout at Nikolka too, but not in earnest — only for the pleasure of seeing the clipped simpleton's discomfort. But such occasions were rare, and Nikolka gave himself airs and carried himself like a grown man: he smoked cigarettes, spat through his teeth, swore with foul words, and even boasted to Petka that he drank vodka, though he was probably lying. Together with the assistants he would run off to the next street to watch a good fight, and when he came back from it, happy and laughing, Osip Abramovich would give him two slaps: one on each cheek.