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

T-smert-chinovnika-R06-v1 — Chekhov, «Смерть чиновника» (1883), whole, source-only draft

Source. А. П. Чехов, «Смерть чиновника» (подзаголовок «Случай»), written 25–26 June 1883, first published Осколки 1883 № 27; copy-text the ФЭБ / ПСС text as transcribed at Russian Wikisource, stored whole at workshop/experiments/E-20260808b-discordant-marking/materials/src-smert-chinovnika.txt (713 Russian words, 30 paragraphs). Read in Russian, whole, before anything was written.

Regime. R06 — single pass, source only, no revision. Frozen as its own artifact before the R04 self-revision begins (R04 §2a). Cost $0 (charter §3, A4).

Contamination: suspected. Constance Garnett's The Death of a Government Clerk (The Tales of Chekhov vol. 13, 1922) is public-domain, anthologised constantly, and plausibly sits in the lead's training data. No line of it was seen before this draft and the R04 revision were written and committed — unlike the sibling artifact T-tolstyi-i-tonkii-R06-v1, which declares a four-sentence narration exposure. The Garnett text was extracted to a sealed file by script. The n-gram measurement is on T-smert-chinovnika-R04-v1.

The translation

One fine evening a no less fine executive officer, Ivan Dmitrich Chervyakov, was sitting in the second row of the stalls and watching Les Cloches de Corneville through opera-glasses. He watched, and felt himself at the summit of bliss. But suddenly… In stories one often meets this "but suddenly." The authors are right: life is so full of sudden things! But suddenly his face puckered, his eyes rolled up, his breathing stopped… he took the glasses from his eyes, bent forward and… a-tishoo!!! He sneezed, as you see. Sneezing is forbidden to nobody anywhere. Peasants sneeze, and chiefs of police sneeze, and sometimes even privy councillors sneeze. Everybody sneezes. Chervyakov was not in the least put out; he wiped himself with his handkerchief and, like a polite man, looked about him: had he disturbed anyone with his sneeze? But now he did have to be put out. He saw that the little old man sitting in front of him, in the first row of the stalls, was carefully wiping his bald head and his neck with his glove and muttering something. In the little old man Chervyakov recognised State General Brizzhalov, of the department of ways and communications.

"I have spattered him!" thought Chervyakov. "Not my chief, another man's, but still it is awkward. I must apologise."

Chervyakov coughed, leaned his body forward and whispered in the general's ear:

— Excuse me, your Ex'lency, I spattered you… I did not mean to…

— It's nothing, nothing…

— For God's sake, excuse me. I really… I did not wish it!

— Oh, do sit still, please! Let me listen!

Chervyakov was disconcerted, smiled foolishly and began to look at the stage. He looked, but he no longer felt bliss. Uneasiness began to torment him.

In the interval he went up to Brizzhalov, walked about near him and, mastering his shyness, muttered:

— I spattered you, your Ex'lency… Forgive me… I really… it was not as though…

— Oh, enough of it… I had forgotten it already, and you are still on the same thing! — said the general, and he twitched his lower lip impatiently.

"Forgotten it, and there's malice in his own eyes," thought Chervyakov, glancing suspiciously at the general. "And he won't talk. I ought to explain to him that I did not wish it at all… that it is a law of nature, or else he will think I meant to spit. He does not think so now, but he will think so later!.."

When he got home Chervyakov told his wife of his breach of manners. His wife, it seemed to him, took what had happened too lightly; she was frightened at first only, and then, when she learned that Brizzhalov was "another man's," she was reassured.

— All the same, you go and apologise, — she said. — He will think you don't know how to conduct yourself in public!

— That's just it! I did apologise, but he was somehow odd… Not one sensible word did he say. And there was no time to talk, either.

Next day Chervyakov put on his new uniform coat, had his hair cut, and went to Brizzhalov to explain… Going into the general's waiting-room, he saw a great many petitioners there, and among the petitioners the general himself, who had already begun receiving petitions. Having questioned several petitioners, the general raised his eyes to Chervyakov as well.

— Yesterday at the Arcadia, if you will recollect, your Ex'lency, — the executive officer began his report, — I sneezed, sir, and… accidentally spattered… Exc…

— What nonsense… Goodness knows what! What is it you want? — said the general, turning to the next petitioner.

"He won't talk!" thought Chervyakov, turning pale. "He is angry, then… No, this cannot be left like this… I will explain to him…"

When the general had finished his conversation with the last petitioner and was making for the inner apartments, Chervyakov took a step after him and mumbled:

— Your Ex'lency! If I make bold to trouble your Ex'lency, it is precisely out of a feeling, I may say, of remorse!.. It was not on purpose, as you are graciously pleased to know yourself, sir!

The general pulled a tearful face and waved his hand.

— Why, you are simply making fun of me, my good sir! — he said, disappearing behind the door.

"What making fun is there here?" thought Chervyakov. "There is no making fun here at all! A general, and he cannot understand! If that is how it is, I will not apologise to this braggart any more! Devil take him! I will write him a letter, but I will not go. By God, I will not!"

So thought Chervyakov as he walked home. He did not write the letter to the general. He thought and thought, and could not think that letter out at all. He had to go the next day and explain in person.

— I came yesterday to trouble your Ex'lency, — he mumbled, when the general raised questioning eyes to him, — not in order to make fun, as you were pleased to say. I was apologising for having spattered you, sir, in sneezing… and of making fun I never thought. Do I dare to make fun? If we are to make fun, then there will be no respect left, then, for persons… at all…

— Get out!! — barked the general, suddenly turning blue and shaking.

— What, sir? — asked Chervyakov in a whisper, sinking with terror.

— Get out!! — repeated the general, stamping his feet.

Something snapped in Chervyakov's stomach. Seeing nothing, hearing nothing, he backed to the door, went out into the street and shuffled off… Arriving mechanically at home, without taking off his uniform coat, he lay down on the sofa and… died.

Translator's log

Written as the draft was written. Decisions and alternatives, not quality claims.

L1 — «ваше —ство» is a typographic device and I kept it as one. Chekhov does not write «ваше превосходительство» in Chervyakov's mouth; he writes the dash-elision «ваше —ство», the swallowed middle of the phrase, four times. It is the sound of a man saying the title so often and so fast that it has worn away. I rendered it your Ex'lency with the apostrophe carrying the elision. Alternatives: y'Excellency (harder to read), your Excellency (deletes the device entirely and is what the phrase would look like if he said it properly), your 'lency (the closest phonetically and the least legible).

L2 — the словоерс again, five occurrences, and again a category change. «чихнул-с», «изволите знать-с», «брызнул-с», «Что-с?» and Chervyakov's report. As in T-tolstyi-i-tonkii-R06-v1 L2 I rendered the clitic -с as an appended sir: I sneezed, sir; as you are graciously pleased to know yourself, sir; for having spattered you, sir, in sneezing; What, sir?. Same objection as there: the Russian is a particle inside the clause and the English is an address noun. «Что-с?» is the worst case — a single interrogative pronoun with a deference clitic — and What, sir? is two words where the Russian is one.

L3 — «милостисдарь». Chekhov's slurring of «милостивый государь», gracious sovereign, the formal epistolary address, spoken here in contempt. I rendered my good sir. The Russian is (a) elevated, (b) slurred, and (c) sarcastic all at once; the English keeps (c) and half of (a) and loses (b) entirely. My dear sir was the alternative and is warmer than the Russian.

L4 — «Пошел вон!!» A bare masculine past-tense form used as a brutal imperative, and it is the grammatical hinge of the story: the general has addressed Chervyakov with вы in every previous line, and this construction abandons polite address altogether. Get out!! is right for force and carries no marking whatever of the switch out of вы. Nothing in this draft records that the general has stopped being polite; the reader is told only that he barked. This is a declared loss, not a repair.

L5 — «сами изволите знать-с». «Изволить» is the deferential auxiliary; as you are graciously pleased to know yourself is a full-length English courtesy formula for a two-word Russian auxiliary. It over-runs the line badly and I kept it because the deference is the object here. Alternative: as you know yourself, sir, which is natural English and marks almost nothing.

L6 — «экзекутор» is a specific post — the officer responsible for the housekeeping and discipline of a government department — not a hangman and not an executive in the modern sense. Executive officer chosen as the least wrong. No gloss.

L7 — «смеяться». Chekhov repeats it six times in the last exchange. English laugh alone reads as merriment; the sense is make fun of, mock. I used make fun throughout to keep the repetition, at the cost of a heavier phrase than the Russian verb. Alternative: alternate laugh and mock, which breaks the repetition that the passage is built on.

L8 — the interior monologues are in вы-free territory and carry no address marking at all; they are included in the rendering but they are not sites.