Repository path: workshop/translations/quijote-I3/R04-v1/translation.md · rendered 2026-09-09

T-quijote-I3-R04-v1 — Cervantes, Don Quijote I.3 (1605), Spanish → English

Source. Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha, Primera parte, Capítulo III, «Donde se cuenta la graciosa manera que tuvo don Quijote en armarse caballero» (1605). Copy-text: Project Gutenberg ebook 2000 (public domain), lines 1455–1667 — 2,332 Spanish words, the complete chapter. Regime R04 v1.0; the frozen first-pass draft is T-quijote-I3-R06-v1. Translator: the lead agent, as a labeled subject (charter §3, A4). Cost $0; never ledgered. Lineage: none — first rendering of this work in the project.

Why this chapter. It is the passage the reception record this session builds (S-quixote-humour-reception) uses as its own diagnostic: Ormsby's 1885 introduction attacks Gustave Doré for drawing an "elaborate fountain" where Cervantes meant "just such a rude stone trough as that beside the primitive draw-well in the corner", and says it is "the mean, prosaic, commonplace character of all the surroundings and circumstances that gives a significance to Don Quixote's vigil and the ceremony that follows." The chapter is where the record's central claim is checkable.

Contamination

suspected — and, unusually for this project, MEASURED against four comparators. Don Quixote is the most-translated novel in Spanish and English renderings of this chapter certainly sit in the lead's training data; the prior is high, not low. The gate (CLAUDE.md §Contamination, run as a selection gate before the design was fixed) was run with tools/dependence_check.py against all four freely reachable published English renderings of this same chapter — Shelton 1612, Motteux 1712, Jarvis 1742, Ormsby 1885. The measured figures, the longest common run and the shared 7-gram counts, are in workshop/experiments/E-20260804b-quixote-affect/materials/dependence.json and are reported in RS-20260804b-unsmiling-gravity §3. What the measurement governs: whether this rendering may be used as an independent comparator. It is used here only as a labeled subject in a blind coding pool, never as the independent yardstick — see the result page.

Priming, declared, and it is not the priming R04 §1 forbids. No published rendering of this chapter, in any language, was read before this translation and its log were frozen. Ormsby's 1885 critical introduction was read first — commentary, not a rendering, so within R04 §1's explicit allowance for "commentary on the source language" — but it carries both a diagnosis of Cervantes's humour (unsmiling gravity, sententious terseness, prosaic incongruity) and a prescription for translating it (resist antiquated language, use the simplest and plainest everyday language). This translator had both in mind while drafting. The consequence is stated rather than passed over: this log is not evidence that an unprimed translator would find the problems at the sites the record names. What it is evidence of is narrower and still worth having — what happens when a translator tries to follow the record's prescription, which is how D3, D7 and D12 below became findings.

The translation

Chapter III. Wherein is told the droll manner in which Don Quixote had himself dubbed knight

And so, wearied by this thought, he cut short his scanty inn supper; which done, he called the innkeeper, and shutting himself up with him in the stable, fell on his knees before him, saying:

"Never shall I rise from where I am, valorous knight, til that your courtesy grant me a boon I would ask of you, the which shall redound to your praise and to the profit of the human race."

The innkeeper, seeing his guest at his feet and hearing such language, stood confounded, looking at him, not knowing what to do or what to say to him, and pressed him to rise; and he would by no means, until he had to tell him that he granted him the boon he asked.

"I looked for no less of your great magnificence, my lord," replied Don Quixote; "and so I tell you that the boon I have asked of you, and which your liberality has granted me, is that tomorrow on that day you shall dub me knight, and this night in the chapel of this your castle I shall watch my arms; and tomorrow, as I have said, that which I so much desire shall be accomplished, so that I may, as I ought, go through all the four quarters of the world seeking adventures on behalf of the needy, as is the charge of chivalry and of knights errant, such as I am, whose desire is inclined to such emprises."

The innkeeper, who, as has been said, was something of a sly rogue and had already some inklings of his guest's want of wits, was finally convinced of it on hearing such language, and, to have something to laugh at that night, determined to humour him; and so he told him he was well advised in what he desired and asked, and that such a purpose was proper and natural in knights as distinguished as he seemed and as his gallant bearing showed; and that he himself, in the years of his youth, had given himself to that honourable exercise, going through divers parts of the world seeking his adventures, without having failed to visit the Percheles of Málaga, the Islas de Riarán, the Compás of Sevilla, the Azoguejo of Segovia, the Olivera of Valencia, the Rondilla of Granada, the Playa of Sanlúcar, the Potro of Córdoba and the Ventillas of Toledo, and divers other parts, where he had exercised the lightness of his feet and the subtlety of his hands, doing many a wrong, soliciting many a widow, undoing certain maidens and gulling sundry wards, and, in fine, making himself known in as many courts and tribunals as there are in nearly all Spain; and that at the last he had come to retire to this his castle, where he lived on his own property and on other people's, taking in all knights errant of whatever quality and condition they might be, solely for the great affection he bore them and that they might share with him their substance in payment of his good will.

He told him also that in this his castle there was no chapel where he might watch his arms, because it had been pulled down to be built anew; but that in case of necessity he knew they might be watched anywhere, and that this night he might watch them in a courtyard of the castle; and in the morning, God being served, the due ceremonies should be performed, in such sort that he should be dubbed knight, and so much a knight that there could be no more so in the world.

He asked him if he carried money; Don Quixote answered that he had not a farthing, for he had never read in the histories of knights errant that any of them had carried any. To this the innkeeper said that he was mistaken; for, granted it was not written in the histories, because it had seemed to their authors that there was no need to write down a thing so plain and so necessary to be carried as money and clean shirts, it was not on that account to be believed that they carried none; and so he might hold it for certain and proven that all the knights errant of whom so many books are full and crammed carried their purses well lined against what might befall them; and that in like manner they carried shirts and a little casket full of ointments to cure the wounds they received, for not on every occasion in the fields and deserts where they fought and came off wounded was there one to cure them, unless indeed they had some sage enchanter for a friend, who would succour them at once, bringing through the air in some cloud some damsel or dwarf with a phial of water of such virtue that, on tasting a drop of it, they were instantly whole of their sores and wounds, as though no hurt had come to them. But that, so long as this was wanting, the knights of past time held it a right thing that their squires should be furnished with money and other necessary things, such as lint and ointments to cure themselves; and when it happened that such knights had no squires — which was seldom and rarely — they carried it all themselves in saddle-bags so fine that they were hardly to be seen, on the horse's croup, as though it were some other thing of more importance; because, save for such an occasion, this carrying of saddle-bags was not much allowed among knights errant; and therefore he gave him for counsel — since he might yet even command it of him, as of his godson, which he was so soon to be — that he should not travel thenceforward without money and the said provisions, and that he would see how well he found himself with them when he least expected it.

Don Quixote promised to do what was counselled him with all punctuality; and so order was presently given how he should watch his arms in a great cattle-yard that lay to one side of the inn; and Don Quixote, gathering them all up, laid them on a trough that stood beside a well, and, bracing on his buckler, took hold of his lance and with a genteel bearing began to pace to and fro before the trough; and as he began his pacing, night began to fall.

The innkeeper told all who were in the inn of his guest's madness, of the watching of the arms and of the dubbing he looked for. They marvelled at so strange a kind of madness and went to watch him from a distance, and saw that, with a composed air, he now paced to and fro; now, leaning on his lance, fixed his eyes on the arms without taking them off them for a good while. Night had fully fallen, but with such brightness from the moon that it could vie with him that lent it her, so that all the new knight did was well seen by all. Now it came into the head of one of the carriers who were in the inn to go and water his team, and it was needful to take off Don Quixote's arms, which lay on the trough; who, seeing him come, called out to him in a loud voice:

"O you, whosoever you be, rash knight, that come to lay hand on the arms of the most valorous errant that ever girded sword! look to what you do, and touch them not, if you would not leave your life in payment of your rashness."

The carrier took no cure of these words — and he had done better to take it, for it would have been curing himself in health; rather, seizing them by the straps, he flung them a great way from him. Which seen by Don Quixote, he raised his eyes to heaven, and, setting his thought — as it appeared — on his lady Dulcinea, said:

"Succour me, my lady, in this first affront that is offered to this breast that is your vassal; let not your favour and protection fail me in this first trial."

And, saying these and other such words, letting go his buckler, he raised his lance in both hands and with it dealt the carrier so great a blow on the head that he brought him to the ground, so sorely handled that, had he followed it with a second, he would have had no need of a surgeon to cure him. This done, he gathered up his arms and returned to pacing with the same calm as before. Not long after, without anything being known of what had passed (for the carrier was still stunned), there came another with the same intent of watering his mules; and as he came to take off the arms to clear the trough, without Don Quixote's speaking a word or asking favour of any, he let go his buckler again and raised his lance again, and, without breaking it in pieces, made more than three of the second carrier's head, for he split it in four. At the noise all the people of the inn came running, and among them the innkeeper. Seeing this, Don Quixote braced on his buckler, and, laying hand on his sword, said:

"O lady of beauteousness, strength and vigour of my enfeebled heart! now is the time to turn the eyes of your greatness upon this your captive knight, who awaits so great an adventure."

With this he gathered, to his own thinking, so much spirit that had all the carriers in the world assailed him he would not have given back a foot. The companions of the wounded, seeing them in such case, began from a distance to rain stones upon Don Quixote, who sheltered himself as best he could with his buckler, and dared not leave the trough for fear of forsaking his arms. The innkeeper cried out to them to let him be, for he had already told them he was mad, and as a madman he would go free though he killed them all. Don Quixote cried out too, and louder, calling them felons and traitors, and saying that the lord of the castle was a craven and base-born knight, since he suffered knights errant to be so used; and that had he received the order of chivalry, he would give him to understand his treachery:

"But of you, foul and base rabble, I make no account: throw, come on, come at me and do me what hurt you can, for you shall see the payment you get for your folly and presumption."

He said this with such spirit and boldness that he struck a terrible fear into those who were assailing him; and as much for this as for the innkeeper's persuasions, they left off throwing at him, and he let the wounded be carried off and returned to the watching of his arms with the same quiet and composure as before.

The innkeeper did not think well of his guest's jests, and determined to cut it short and give him the wretched order of chivalry at once, before some other mishap should occur. And so, coming up to him, he excused himself for the insolence which that low people had used towards him without his knowing anything of it; but that they were well punished for their rashness. He told him, as he had told him already, that in that castle there was no chapel, and that for what remained to be done there was no need of one; that the whole point of being dubbed knight lay in the blow on the neck and the stroke on the shoulder, according to what he knew of the ceremonial of the order, and that this could be done in the middle of a field; and that he had already fulfilled what touched the watching of the arms, since two hours' watch was enough, and he had been at it more than four. Don Quixote believed it all, and said that he was there ready to obey him, and that he should make an end with all the speed he might; because if he were assailed again and saw himself dubbed knight, he did not think to leave a soul alive in the castle, save those the castellan might bid him spare, whom for his sake he would leave.

The castellan, thus warned and made fearful, presently brought out a book in which he entered the straw and barley he served to the carriers, and with a candle-end that a boy brought him, and with the two aforesaid damsels, came to where Don Quixote was, whom he bade kneel down; and, reading in his manual, as though he were saying some devout prayer, in the middle of the reading he raised his hand and gave him a good blow on the neck, and after it, with his own sword, a handsome stroke on the shoulder, muttering all the while between his teeth as though he were praying. This done, he bade one of those ladies gird on his sword, which she did with much address and discretion, for no little was needed to keep from bursting with laughter at every point of the ceremonies; but the prowess they had already seen in the new knight kept their laughter in check. As she girded on the sword, the good lady said:

"God make your worship a fortunate knight and give you fortune in your frays."

Don Quixote asked her what her name was, that he might know from thenceforward to whom he stood obliged for the favour received; because he thought to give her some part of the honour he should win by the valour of his arm. She answered with much humility that her name was la Tolosa, and that she was the daughter of a cobbler of Toledo who lived by the stalls of Sancho Bienaya, and that wherever she might be she would serve him and hold him for her lord. Don Quixote answered that, for his love, she would do him the favour to take the "don" from thenceforward and call herself doña Tolosa. She promised him she would, and the other buckled on his spur, with whom he had almost the same colloquy as with her of the sword: he asked her name, and she said she was called la Molinera, and that she was the daughter of an honest miller of Antequera; whom Don Quixote also besought to take the "don" and call herself doña Molinera, offering her new services and favours.

The ceremonies, then, till then never seen, being done at a gallop and in haste, Don Quixote could not see the hour to find himself on horseback and go out seeking adventures; and saddling Rocinante at once, he mounted him, and, embracing his host, said things to him so strange, in thanking him for the favour of having dubbed him knight, that it is not possible to hit upon the way to report them. The innkeeper, to see him once outside the inn, answered his speeches with no less rhetoric, though with briefer words, and, without asking him the cost of the lodging, let him go in a good hour.

Translator's log

Frozen 2026-08-04, before E-20260804b-quixote-affect was designed and before any published rendering of this chapter was opened. Decisions and alternatives, not quality claims. Any evaluative sentence carries internal-judgment-only, which the front matter also declares for the page. R06→R04 marks a decision the self-revision changed; the frozen draft is T-quijote-I3-R06-v1.

D1 — velar las armas. The technical term for the night-long vigil over the arms before dubbing. English chivalric usage has the watch of arms / to watch one's arms, which is exact. Live alternative: keep vigil over, which is clearer to a modern reader and religiously coloured. Chose watch, throughout, because the source's word is the technical one and the mock-liturgy is Cervantes's joke to make, not the translator's to underline.

D2 — pila, and it is the site the reception record singles out. A stone water-trough beside a well in an inn yard. Chose trough at every occurrence. What is lost is not the referent but a second sense: Spanish pila is also the baptismal font. So Don Quixote lays his arms, for a vigil that is a sacrament in his head, on an object whose name is simultaneously cattle-trough and font; the mock-sacrament is in the noun itself. English has no word that is both. Live alternatives: font (takes the sacred half, throws away the whole prosaic point, and would be precisely Doré's fountain in words); basin (vague, takes neither). Chose the prosaic half deliberately, on the reading that the record's mechanism — the mean and commonplace surroundings — is carried by the referent and only decorated by the pun.

D3 — corral, and here the record's own prescription and the record's own diagnosis pull apart. The innkeeper offers a vigil "en un patio del castillo"; four lines later the narrator puts it in "un corral grande". Two words for one place: the innkeeper's grand one and the narrator's flat one, and the joke lives in the gap. R06→R04: the draft had "a great yard", which is neutral and lets the gap close. Revised to "a great cattle-yard". That is more marked than Ormsby's plainest everyday language rule would license, and it is what his prosaic incongruity diagnosis requires. The record's two prescriptions are in conflict at this site, and the log records that the conflict was resolved in favour of the diagnosis over the rule.

D4 — the curar thread, six occurrences, and one of them is a triple pun. curar runs through the chapter: no se curó el arriero (took no heed) · curarse en salud (to take precautions, lit. to be cured while healthy) · maestro que le curara (a surgeon to cure him) · ungüentos para curar las heridas · había quien los curase · hilas y ungüentos para curarse. R06→R04: the draft rendered the heed-sense with heed and the medical ones with heal, breaking the thread in two and flattening the pun to a tautology — "it would have been taking heed of his health" says nothing. The revision runs cure through all six, using the obsolete English to take cure of = to take heed of (the sense preserved in curate, cure of souls): "The carrier took no cure of these words — and he had done better to take it, for it would have been curing himself in health." This holds the thread and the pun in the source's own number of words. Cost, and it is the same cost as D3: take no cure of is archaic, and the narrator is supposed to be plain. Live alternative considered and rejected: "took no notice … it would have been prevention rather than cure", which reaches for the English proverb, lands the sense, and expands one clause into two — the expansion the record says is exactly how the humour dies.

D5 — Don Quixote's archaism, and the systematicity is not transferable. Cervantes marks Don Quixote's chivalric register with a phonological archaism applied automatically wherever its environment occurs: f- for h- — fasta (hasta), fazañas (hazañas), fermosura (hermosura). English has no sound-change of comparable currency, so the marking had to become lexical and site-by-site: til that · emprises · beauteousness. R06→R04: the draft had generic archaic English scattered through the speeches and no marker at Cervantes's three sites; the revision put a marker at each of the three and took the generic archaism down. What is lost is that the source's device is automatic and mine is chosen — three deliberate words against a rule that fires wherever an h- appears. (This reproduces, from the inside and without being looked for, the standing finding at wiki/goodness-senses.md §style-correspondence S013: meaning carried by grammar is not translated but transcoded into lexis, and the transcoding costs systematicity.)

D6 — vos and tú. Don Quixote opens on vos to the innkeeper (la vuestra cortesía, os digo) and uses tú to the carrier (Oh tú, quienquiera que seas) and to Dulcinea (tu grandeza). English has one pronoun. R06→R04: the draft used thou/thy for the tú passages and you for the vos ones, and the revision took thou out entirely. Reason: thou in modern English reads as elevated, which inverts the source — Cervantes's tú to the carrier is contemptuous and his vos to the innkeeper is ceremonious, so the one English archaism available marks the wrong direction. The distinction is therefore dropped rather than reversed, and Don Quixote's contempt for the carrier is left to the words around it (rash knight, foul and base rabble).

D7 — the innkeeper's curriculum vitae. haciendo muchos tuertos, recuestando muchas viudas, deshaciendo algunas doncellas y engañando a algunos pupilos. The joke is that the chivalric verbs are kept and their objects swapped for crimes: a knight deshace tuertos (undoes wrongs), this man hace them; a knight succours maidens, this man deshace them. Chose "doing many a wrong, soliciting many a widow, undoing certain maidens and gulling sundry wards" to hold the do/undo pairing, which is the hinge. Lost: tuerto is also one-eyed, so haciendo muchos tuertos says both doing many wrongs and making many one-eyed men. No English word carries both.

D8 — the place-names, and this is the one class where uniformity was chosen over effect. los Percheles de Málaga, Islas de Riarán, Compás de Sevilla, Azoguejo de Segovia, la Olivera de Valencia, Rondilla de Granada, Playa de Sanlúcar, Potro de Córdoba, las Ventillas de Toledo — the thieves' and whores' quarters of nine Spanish cities, recited as a knight's itinerary of far realms. R06→R04: the draft calqued them (the Isles of Riaran, the Compass of Seville, the Olive Grove of Valencia, the Colt of Cordova), which makes them sound like romance destinations and helps the joke; the revision made them uniformly copy-opaque with only the connective englished (the Islas de Riarán, the Compás of Sevilla, the Potro of Córdoba). The draft's handling was better for the joke and was four handlings inside one class — the exact consistency fault this project has now recorded in seven translators (wiki/goodness-senses.md §consistency). Choosing uniformity here is a decision against effect, taken knowingly, and it is the clearest case in this log of two senses giving opposite instructions at one site. Either way the 1605 joke is unrecoverable without a gloss, since it needs the reader to know these are slums.

D9 — hizo más de tres la cabeza del segundo arriero, porque se la abrió por cuatro. An arithmetic joke in fourteen words: without breaking the lance in pieces, he made more than three pieces of the man's head, because he split it in four. Kept the compression exactly — "without breaking it in pieces, made more than three of the second carrier's head, for he split it in four" — and resisted the one obvious clarification ("more than three pieces"), because naming the elided noun is the smallest possible instance of the operation the record says kills the humour.

D10 — la negra orden de caballería. negra here is an exasperated pejorative — this wretched knighting business. The word is the innkeeper's, sitting inside the narrator's sentence: free indirect discourse. Chose "the wretched order of chivalry", keeping it unquoted and unflagged, so that the reader has to notice whose word it is. Live alternative: "the accursed order", stronger and more visibly the innkeeper's. voice: this is the one place in the chapter where the narrator lends his sentence to a character, and marking it would spend the effect it creates.

D11 — the two prostitutes. The narrator calls them doncellas (damsels), then damas (ladies), then la buena señora (the good lady), while telling us one is a cobbler's daughter from Toledo and the other a miller's from Antequera and that both are barely holding in their laughter. The escalation is deadpan and unremarked. Kept all three registers exactly and added nothing.

D12 — no vio la hora, and the plainness rule loses a third time. "No vio la hora don Quijote de verse a caballo" — idiomatically he could not wait. Chose the calque, "could not see the hour", over the idiom. Reason: could not wait is four flat words that state the impatience; could not see the hour keeps the source's figure and costs nothing in comprehension. Ormsby's plainest everyday language rule points at could not wait. Third site in this log where following that rule would flatten a figure the same introduction says carries the humour.

D13 — the enclitic openings. Díjole también…, Preguntóle…, Prometióle…, Antojósele en esto a uno de los arrieros…, Hechas, pues, de galope y aprisa… — Cervantes opens sentence after sentence with the verb and a clitic pronoun. English cannot front the verb without inversion that reads as poetic. Every one of them is flattened to subject-first. Not compensated anywhere, and recorded here as an uncompensated whole-chapter loss rather than a local one.

D14 — castellano. The narrator switches from ventero (innkeeper) to castellano at the moment of the dubbing. castellano is castellan, lord of a castle — and also Castilian. Kept castellan at exactly the sites Cervantes uses it and innkeeper everywhere else, so the English reader gets the same one-word promotion at the same moment.

D15 — con gentil continente / un poco socarrón. R06→R04: "with a graceful carriage" → "with a genteel bearing", on the reading that gentil here is mock-heroic and genteel carries the mockery that graceful does not. socarrón — dryly mocking, wily, not quite either — rendered "something of a sly rogue", with the hedge kept because the source hedges (un poco).

D16 — what the ledger is. un libro donde asentaba la paja y cebada que daba a los arrieros, read from "as though he were saying some devout prayer". Nothing was done to this sentence but translate it flat, and it is named here because it is the chapter's purest instance of the record's mechanism: the whole joke is carried by the referent — a fodder account-book used as a missal — and by the narrator declining to remark on it.