Repository path: workshop/translations/quijote-I20/R06-v1/translation.md · rendered 2026-09-09

T-quijote-I20-R06-v1 — Cervantes, Don Quijote I.20, Sancho's tale, single-pass draft

This is the frozen draft required by R04 §Procedure step 2a, and it is therefore an R06 output in its own right. It is committed before the self-revision begins. The revised text and the full translator's log are T-quijote-I20-R04-v1.

• Source: Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha (1605), Parte I, cap. XX. Project Gutenberg #2000 (Spanish), fetched 2026-08-05. Locus stored at ../../../experiments/E-20260805f-translated-register/materials/quijote-I20-locus-es.txt, 778 Spanish words, SHA-256 d8bd3e370faf2e04f121deaa1a1344d51f12ccb7376ba905265d8f205417fef1. Span: from «— Pues así es, Sancho, que Rocinante no puede moverse» to «Pasa adelante, Sancho.»
• Language pair: Spanish → English. The project's second Spanish prose locus (after Quijote I.3, S102).
• Regime: R06 (lead single-pass). Cost: $0, never ledgered (charter §3, A4).

Priming declaration — this locus was moved because of a breach that was caught

R04 §1 was breached during materials preparation and the remedy R04 §1 itself specifies was applied. While locating chapter XX in the four Gutenberg files, the lead read Ormsby's (1885) and Smollett's (1755) English of the earlier part of this chapter — Don Quixote's Golden-Age speech and Sancho's reply, which had been the intended locus. That passage is therefore disqualified: R04 §1 requires that the translator read no published rendering of the passage before the translation and its log are frozen.

R04 §1 provides the remedy in its own text — "the passage selected must be one whose rendering has not already been seen" — and it was applied: the locus was moved forward to Sancho's tale of Lope Ruiz and Torralba, whose English in any published rendering the lead has not read in this session. One fragment of Smollett's English from later in the chapter (the revelation of the fulling-hammers, ~1,500 characters past the end of this locus) was seen; it lies outside the locus and contains none of its matter.

This is declared rather than glossed because the alternative — translating the seen passage and flagging it — would have produced a primed artifact, and a primed artifact is not evidence about anything this arm asks.

Contamination

suspected, unmeasured at the moment of freezing, and measured after the fact against Ormsby (1885) and Smollett (1755); the measurement is reported on T-quijote-I20-R04-v1 and in E-20260805f §Gate. Don Quijote is among the most translated works in any language and the lead must not claim independence from remembered renderings. Per CLAUDE.md's standing rule the lead is not the independent third translator here, and no part of this arm's design turns on its being one: this rendering is a labeled subject and a source of process evidence, not a measurement of translating ability.

Translation (draft, single pass)

"Well then, Sancho, since Rocinante cannot stir, I am content to wait for the dawn to smile, though I weep for as long as she is in coming."

"There's no call for weeping," said Sancho, "for I'll keep your worship entertained telling stories from now till daylight — unless you'd care to get down and stretch out a while on the green grass, the way knights errant do, so as to be better rested when the day comes and the moment for taking on this outlandish adventure that's waiting for you."

"What do you mean, get down? What do you mean, sleep?" said Don Quixote. "Am I, by any chance, one of those knights who take their rest in the midst of dangers? Sleep yourself — you were born to sleep — or do what you like; I shall do what I see best befits my purpose."

"Don't be angry, sir," Sancho answered. "I didn't mean anything by it."

And going up to him he put one hand on the front saddle-bow and the other on the back one, so that he ended up with his arms round his master's left thigh, not daring to move a finger's breadth from it: such was the fear he had of the blows, which were still sounding, one after another. Don Quixote told him to tell some story to pass the time, as he had promised, to which Sancho said he would if the dread of what he was hearing would let him.

"But all the same, I'll make an effort to tell a story that, if I manage to tell it right and nobody stops me, is the best story there is. Now let your worship pay attention, for I'm beginning. 'Once upon a time, and may the good that comes come for everybody, and the harm for whoever goes looking for it...' And mind, sir, that the beginning the ancients gave their old tales wasn't just anyhow: it was a saying of Cato the Sensorious the Roman, which goes, 'and the harm for whoever goes looking for it' — which fits in here like a ring on a finger, so that your worship will hold still and not go looking for harm anywhere, and instead we'll turn back by some other road, since nobody's forcing us to follow this one, where so many frights come at us."

"Get on with your story, Sancho," said Don Quixote, "and leave the road we're to take to me."

"I say, then," Sancho went on, "that in a village in Extremadura there was a goatherd shepherd — I mean to say, one that kept goats — and this shepherd or goatherd, as I say, of my story, was called Lope Ruiz; and this Lope Ruiz was in love with a shepherdess called Torralba, and this shepherdess called Torralba was the daughter of a rich stockman, and this rich stockman —"

"If that's how you tell your story, Sancho," said Don Quixote, "saying everything twice over, you won't be done in two days. Tell it straight through and tell it like a man of sense, or else say nothing at all."

"The way I'm telling it," Sancho answered, "is the way they tell all the old tales where I come from, and I don't know how to tell it any other way, and it isn't right for your worship to ask me to start new customs."

"Tell it how you like," said Don Quixote. "Since fortune will have it that I can't help listening to you, go on."

"So then, sir of my soul," Sancho went on, "as I've said already, this shepherd was in love with Torralba the shepherdess, who was a sturdy girl, and wild with it, and ran a bit to the mannish, because she had a few hairs of a moustache — I can see her now."

"Then you knew her?" said Don Quixote.

"I never knew her," Sancho answered, "but the man who told me this story told me it was so true and certain that when I told it to anybody else I could safely swear I'd seen the whole of it. So then, with the days coming and the days going, the devil, who never sleeps and tangles everything, brought it about that the love the shepherd had for the shepherdess turned into a grudge and ill will; and the cause of it, according to wicked tongues, was a certain quantity of small jealousies she gave him, of the sort that go over the line and get into forbidden ground; and the shepherd hated her so much from then on that, so as not to see her, he decided to take himself away from that country and go where his eyes would never see her again. Torralba, once she found herself scorned by Lope, was fond of him straight away, more than she'd ever been fond of him before."

"That is the natural condition of women," said Don Quixote: "to scorn whoever loves them and love whoever hates them. Go on, Sancho."

Translator's log (written as the draft was written; frozen with it)

Decisions and alternatives, not quality claims. R06 §2: where a choice was unresolved at the moment of writing, the option written is the one that stands and the alternative is recorded here; the draft was not gone back over.

The standing decision, taken before the first sentence and governing everything below. The source sets two registers against each other on purpose: Don Quixote's speech is literary and slightly archaizing even for 1605, Sancho's is rustic, formulaic and current. The draft renders Sancho in plain, unmarked, current English and marks Don Quixote up only where the Spanish is itself marked. The alternative — a uniform period-English surface for both, which is what the 1755 and 1885 traditions supply — was rejected at the outset because it would flatten the one contrast the passage is built on. This decision is the reason the log below is worth anything to E-20260805f: it records where the source pulled against it.

• D1 — «ría el alba» / «llore». The dawn "laughs" (Spanish idiom al reír el alba) and Don Quixote answers it with "though I weep". English has no laughing dawn, and break would kill the pair. Wrote "wait for the dawn to smile, though I weep". Alternatives live at the moment of writing: "for the dawn to laugh" (keeps the verb, buys a phrase that is not English); "till the dawn breaks, though I break with weeping" (rebuilds the pair on a different word, at the cost of the source's image). First site where the source pulled toward marked English and the pull was refused.
• D2 — «vuestra merced», 8 occurrences. The governing register decision of the whole passage. In 1605 this is an ordinary respectful address, already contracting toward usted; it is not archaic to Cervantes's first readers. Every English rendering the phrase has a tradition in — your worship — is now an antiquarianism, and using it puts a period costume on a servant speaking normally. Wrote "your worship" anyway, seven times, and "sir" once (D4). Recorded as the draft's largest unresolved tension: the plain-Sancho policy says sir, and the hand wrote your worship. This is the clearest instance in the passage of the source bending the English away from the translator's own default, and it is registered here before any measurement is designed.
• D3 — «Érase que se era, el bien que viniere para todos sea…». A rhymed formulaic tale opening. Wrote "Once upon a time, and may the good that comes come for everybody, and the harm for whoever goes looking for it" — English's only fully naturalised tale formula plus a literal rendering of the jingle. The rhyme (sea / buscar assonance) is not reproduced; recorded as a loss rather than compensated, because Sancho quotes the formula again three lines later and the two quotations must match word for word or Don Quixote's complaint loses its object.
• D4 — «señor mío» / «señor mío de mi ánima». Rendered "sir" and "sir of my soul". The second is not English and was written anyway: Sancho's effusion is doing characterisation, and "my dear sir" or "master of my heart" would each domesticate it to a different English cliché. Logged as deliberate strangeness, not oversight.
• D5 — «Catón Zonzorino». Sancho's malapropism: Cato Censorinus deformed by zonzo, "dull, silly". The joke needs an English word that misses a real epithet and lands on foolishness. Wrote "Cato the Sensorious" — near-miss on Censorious, audible as senseless. Alternatives live at the moment of writing: "Cato the Dunsorious" (louder joke, less like a real epithet); "Cato Zonzorino" untranslated (loses the joke entirely for an English reader). Not gone back over.
• D6 — «como anillo al dedo». Wrote "fits in here like a ring on a finger" — the source image kept rather than swapped for fits like a glove. This is fluency-by-scaffolding rather than fluency-by-substitution (ES-20260724-fluency-and-foreignness); the image is transparent in English and costs nothing to keep.
• D7 — «consejas». Old wives' tales / folk tales, with a tinge of the discredited. Wrote "old tales" both times. "Old wives' tales" was live and rejected as carrying an English sneer the Spanish does not have at this point.
• D8 — the deliberate repetition («el cual pastor o cabrerizo, como digo, de mi cuento… la cual pastora llamada Torralba…»). Preserved exactly, including the awkward "goatherd shepherd — I mean to say, one that kept goats". This is the one place where clumsy English is required: Don Quixote complains about the repetition in the next speech, so any smoothing destroys the joke two lines later. Recorded because it is the opposite of D2 — here the source pulls the English away from fluency and the pull is correct.
• D9 — «una moza rolliza, zahareña y tiraba algo a hombruna, porque tenía unos pocos de bigotes». Wrote "a sturdy girl, and wild with it, and ran a bit to the mannish, because she had a few hairs of a moustache". Zahareña is a falconry word for an unmanned hawk — wild, not to be handled; "wild" keeps the sense and loses the hawking metaphor. Recorded as a loss.
• D10 — «omecillo». An archaic form (from homicidium) meaning grudge or enmity, and archaic in Sancho's mouth in 1605 — the source's own period-marking, on a rustic. Wrote "a grudge", plain. The alternative, an English archaism ("a feud", "malice aforethought"), was live and refused under the standing decision. Second registered site where the source offered marked English and it was refused — and unlike D2 the refusal held.
• D11 — «que todo lo añasca». Añascar, to muddle or entangle. Wrote "tangles everything".
• D12 — «pasaban de la raya y llegaban a lo vedado». Wrote "go over the line and get into forbidden ground" — literal, and the euphemism survives intact in English.
• D13 — «La Torralba», «el Lope». The definite article before a personal name is a rustic / colloquial marker in Spanish and has no English equivalent at all. Dropped: "Torralba", "Lope". A total loss with no compensation attempted, recorded as such.
• D14 — «no me van a la mano». Literally "if they don't go to my hand" — if nobody checks or interrupts me. Wrote "nobody stops me".
• D15 — «desemejable». Sancho reaching for a big word and mangling the register (roughly "unlike any other", "monstrous"). Wrote "outlandish", which is plain English doing the same job, and does not mark it as a malapropism. Alternative live at writing: "this so dissimilar adventure", which would mark it but reads as translationese.
• D16 — «conocístela tú». Preterite with enclitic pronoun; slightly formal, unremarkable in 1605. Wrote "Then you knew her?" — plain. The English tradition's "Didst thou know her?" was live and refused.
• D17 — «arzón delantero… el otro». Wrote "the front saddle-bow and the back one"; saddle-bow is the only English word for the thing and is itself period-flavoured now. Kept: the alternative is a paraphrase.