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

T-stachomazochtra-R06-v1 — Alexandros Papadiamantis, «Ἡ Σταχομαζώχτρα» (1889), whole, EL→EN

• Source. Ἀλέξανδρος Παπαδιαμάντης, «Ἡ Σταχομαζώχτρα» (Χριστουγεννιάτικον διήγημα), first published 1889. Public domain (Papadiamantis d. 1911, PD old 70). Greek Wikisource transcription, fetched 2026-08-13, stored at ../source-el-full.txt. 98 paragraphs, 2,974 Greek words — the complete story, not an excerpt.
• Language pair: Modern Greek → English, the project's first. (Ancient Greek appears in the Homer work; the modern language does not.)
• Regime: R06 — lead single pass, source only, no return pass. The log was written as the translation was written.
• Cost: $0. Lead translation is never ledgered (charter §3, A4).
• English result: 98 paragraphs to the source's 98.

Contamination — declared, and measured after the freeze, with the reason for the ordering

contamination: suspected at the moment of freezing. A comparator exists and is reachable, and it was deliberately not consulted until after this file was committed: an English rendering of this story circulates online, and reading it before translating would have destroyed the thing the measurement is for. R06 §1 forbids reading any published rendering before the freeze, so the order is: translate → freeze → measure → record. The measurement and the consultation log are added by the result page of the run this translation feeds, not by editing this section, so that the frozen text stays frozen.

Priming. No published rendering of this story into any language was read before the freeze. The lead had read no Papadiamantis in English. Greek dictionaries, and the source's own footnote markers, are the only apparatus used.

What the declaration permits and bars. It bars any use of this translation in a design whose validity turns on independence from a published rendering. It does not bar the use this translation was made for: the run it feeds compares this text against edited copies of itself, differing only inside the sites declared in §D26, so whatever this text shares with any published hand, it shares in both arms of every pair.

The one thing the lead knew in advance, declared here rather than discovered later. ARM-dose was live before this translation began and its step 2 was written down, so the lead knew while translating that a manipulation of culture-bound items on the world channel would follow, and chose this story partly for the density of such items. It did not know which sites the seed would select, what the doses would be, or which windows would clear the minimum-site rule. This is a weaker position than T-hastrman-R06-v1 was in — that translation's site table predated the existence of its experiment's design; this one does not — and the run that consumes it treats these five windows as a replication set reported separately, never as the primary. Stated here so that it cannot be presented later as anything else.

The translation

The neighbour, the Zerbinió, expressed great astonishment when she saw, on Christmas Day of the year 187—, aunt Achtitsa wearing a new kerchief, and the Old Man and Patrona in clean little shirts and new shoes.

And this because it was very well known that aunt Achtitsa had seen her daughter's dowry sold at auction to pay the debts of a worthless son-in-law; because she was alone in the world and a widow; and because she was rearing her two orphaned grandchildren by turning her hand to all manner of trades. She was — all on her own, poor soul! — one of those who have no portion under the sun. The neighbour, the Zerbinió, pitied the old woman's privations and the two orphans', but was she rich herself, that she should come to them as helper and comforter?

Fortunate the departed, old Michalios, who went down to the grave before his wife Achtitsa, without seeing the calamities that were waiting for her after his death. He was of a good soul, God rest him! The two boys, "the ones she had no joy of", Yorgis and Vasilis, were drowned when their bratséra went down in the winter of the year 186—. That bratséra was lost with all hands — what horror, what grief! May no good Christian woman be fated to such a terror.

Her third son, the loafer, the lost body, had gone off abroad, and was to be found, they said, in America. She had thrown a stone behind him. Had she set eyes on him since? Had she heard a word of him? Others again, men of the island, said that he had married out there in those lands, and had taken, they said, a Frankish woman. An Englishwoman, a thing out of the hills, who did not know how to speak Greek. Nothing worse! What is one to say — can a woman curse her own child, her own entrails, her own bowels?

Her daughter had died at her second lying-in, leaving her the two orphans for an inheritance. Their apology for a father was still alive (and may the black news of him come, and soon!) — but what a householder, he had made a fine thing of it! A gambler, a drunkard, and other virtues besides. They said he had married again somewhere else, to hang another household round his neck, the shameless man! Such husbands!… She had got herself a son-in-law too, and what a son-in-law (a bright end to him!).

What could she do? She put out all her strength and tried, one way or another, to keep the two orphans alive. At the different seasons of the year she weeded, she gathered the late grapes, she picked olives, she went out to service. She gathered arbutus berries and drew raki off them. A few pressings of grape-skin from here, a few maize cobs from there — she found a use for everything. Then in October, as soon as the oil presses opened, she would take a sort of measuring rod, a fifty-dram tin, and a small pitcher, and go the round of the settling channels where the lees of the oil collected, and gather the mourga. By this method she provided the whole year's oil for her lamp.

But aunt Achtitsa's chief income came from the gleaning. Every year in June she went aboard a boat, sailed the open sea and crossed over to Euboea. She had set at nothing the shaming name of "the ship-woman", which the other women slung at her, for it was still held a disgrace that a woman should sail the deeps. There, along with other poor women, she busied herself gathering the ears of corn that fell from the reapers' sheaves, from the loads and from the carts. Every year the country people of Euboea and the village boys flung the jeer in their faces: "Look! the petticoats! the petticoats are on us again!" But she bent her head, patient and silent, and gathered those crumbs of that rich country's harvest, and made up three or four sacks, a whole year's provision for herself and for the two orphans, whom she had left in the meantime to the care of the Zerbinió; and, sailing back, she returned to her seaside village.

But this year — that is to say, that year — a failure of crops had scourged Euboea. Failure in the olive grove of the little island where aunt Achtitsa lived. Failure in the vines and in the maize, failure almost in the arbutus berries themselves, failure everywhere.

Then, since no evil comes alone, a heavy winter came down on those northerly parts. From the month of November, with scarcely a breath of south wind or a fall of rain, it began to snow. One fall had hardly stopped before another began. At times a dry north wind blew, packing the snows harder still, and they did not melt on the mountains. "They were waiting for more."

The old woman had barely had time to carry in on her shoulders, from the gullies and the coppices, a few armfuls of dry wood, enough to last two weeks or three, and the heavy winter fell on them. About the middle of December there came a small break, and a few timid rays of sun appeared, gilding the highest roofs. Aunt Achtitsa ran off to the ormánia to seize the chance and bring in a little firewood. The next day the winter came down more savagely. Until Christmas not one clear day, not one corner of sky visible, not one ray of sun.

A strong north wind, heavy-breathing, the "snow-bringer", blew on the eve of the holy day. The roofs of the houses were loaded with hardened snow. The usual games in the streets and the snowball fights had stopped. That winter was not playful. From the tiles of the roofs there hung, like ripe fruit, icicles a span long, which the young rascals of the neighbourhood no longer had any appetite to eat.

On the evening of the 23rd the Old Man had come home from school delighted, because from the next day the lessons stopped. Before he had unslung the "keeper" from under his arm, the Old Man, being hungry, opened the doulápi, but he did not find so much as a morsel of bread there. The old woman had gone out, perhaps in search of bread. Poor Patrona sat huddled beside the hearth, but the hearth was dead. She was raking the ashes, supposing in her childish simplicity — she was barely four years old, the poor little girl — that a hearth always had the property of giving warmth, even when it was not burning. But the ashes were damp. Drops of water, from snow melted perhaps by some furtive and passing ray of sun, had run down through the chimney. The Old Man, who was barely seven, ready to cry because he could find no crumb to quiet his hunger, opened the one window, three spans across. The whole little house, low, half-ceiled with a sort of sofás, stood perhaps two fathoms from the floor to the roof.

The Old Man lifted a stool onto the stone sill of the window, climbed onto the stool, propped himself with his left hand against the shutter, which was open, stretched himself boldly up towards the roof, reached out his right hand, and broke off one icicle from among those that adorned the "drips" of the eaves. He began to suck it slowly and with relish, and gave some to Patrona to eat as well. They were hungry, the poor wretches.

Old Achtitsa came back a little later, carrying something wrapped up in her bosom. The Old Man, who knew from his childish experience that his grandmother's bosom never swelled without a reason, jumped up and ran at her breast, thrust in his hand and gave a cry of joy. A piece of bread the good, if somewhat severe, grandmother had "managed" that evening as well — who knows at the cost of what humiliations and how much begging!

And what would she not have borne, before what sacrifice would she have drawn back, for the love of these two children, who were twice children to her, being the children of her child! And yet she did not want to show them any great weakness, and "she gave them no soft eye". She called the boy "the Old Man" because he had the name of her true Old Man, the departed old Michalios, whose name it hurt her to hear or to speak. The poor little girl she called Patrona, caressingly, and a little "like the gentlewoman come down in the world that she was", not bearing to hear the name Argyro, her daughter's name, which had been handed on as an inheritance to the orphan when its mother died in childbed. Beyond this pet name she gave the two poor creatures no other demonstrative tenderness, but rather a practical love and protection.

The wretched old woman made up a bed for the two orphans to sleep in, and lay down herself beside them, and told them to breathe under their covering so as to get warm, and promised them — lying, but hoping it might come true — that tomorrow Christ would bring wood and bread and a pot boiling on the fire; and she lay awake past midnight, going over her bitter fortune.

In the morning, after the liturgy (it was Christmas Eve), papa-Dimitris, her parish priest, appeared suddenly at the door of the poor little house:

"Well may you receive it," he said, smiling.

"Well may she receive it" indeed! And from whom was she expecting anything?

"I have had a letter for you, Achtitsa," the old priest added, shaking the snow off his ráso and his shawl.

"Come in, déspota! And would that I had the fire," she murmured to herself, "or the sweet and the raki to make him welcome."

The priest climbed the four steps of the stair and, coming in, sat down on the stool. He searched in his bosom and drew out a large envelope with many and various seals and stamps.

"A letter, did you say, father?" said Achtitsa again, only then beginning to understand what the priest was telling her.

The envelope, which he had drawn out of his bosom, appeared to be open at one end.

"The steamer came in tonight," the parish priest went on; "they brought it to me just now, as I came out of the church."

And putting his hand inside the envelope he drew out a folded paper.

"The letter is to me," he added, "but it looks to you."

"To me? To me?" the old woman kept repeating in astonishment.

Papa-Dimitris unfolded the paper.

"God has seen your pain and is sending you a little help," said the good priest. "Your son writes to you from America."

"From Amerika? Yannis! Yannis has remembered me?" cried the old woman, overjoyed, making the sign of the Cross.

And then she added:

"Glory be to God!"

The priest put on his spectacles and tried to read:

"It is badly written," he said, "and I have trouble reading these scrawls they have brought in nowadays; but we shall try to make sense of it."

And he began, with difficulty, and stumbling often, to read:

"Papa-Dimitris, I kiss your hand. First I ask after your health, etc., etc. I have been away many years and I do not know what is happening there, nor whether they are alive or dead. I am in a distant place, very deep in Panama, and I have no communication with other countrymen who are in America. Three years ago I came across so-and-so and so-and-so, but they too had been away many years, and did not know what was going on at our house.

"If my father or my mother is alive, tell them to forgive me, for a man always struggles for the good, and it often comes out to evil. I fell ill twice with the bad diseases of this country here, and spent a long time in the hospitals. What I had and what I had not went on the illness, and I barely saved my life. I had married ten years ago, according to the custom of this country here, but now I am a widower, and I ask nothing better than to lay hold of a little money and come home to my own country, if I am in time for my parents to bless me. And let them have no complaint against me, for God wills it so, and we cannot go against Him. And let them not bear a grudge, for if it is not God's will, a man cannot prosper.

"I send you here enclosed a bill of exchange in your name, for your holiness to sign, and let my father or my mother see to cashing it, if they are alive. And if, God forbid, they are dead, let your holiness cash it, and give it to a brother of mine, if he is there, or to a nephew of mine and to other poor people. And let your holiness keep also, if my parents are dead, a part of this sum for the forty liturgies…"

Many things this letter said, and one important thing it left out. It did not mention the amount of money for which the bill of exchange was drawn. Papa-Dimitris, noticing this, ventured the conjecture that the writer of the letter, having forgotten, and thinking that he had set down the sum higher up, had judged it needless to repeat it further down, which was why he said "this sum".

Nevertheless unspeakable was the joy of Achtitsa at getting news of her son after so many years. Sleeping as under ashes for so many years, the spark of a mother's love leapt up out of her bowels into her face, and her aged, shrunken and wrinkled countenance was made bright with a ray of youth and beauty.

The two children, although they did not understand what it was about, seeing their grandmother's joy, began to leap about.

Kyr Margaritis was not exactly a discounter of bills, or a money-lender, or a merchant: he was all of these together. One trade-tax he paid, but he plied three trades.

Old Achtitsa, being in dreadful want, took the note her son had sent, on which appeared letters red and black, some printed and some written by hand, of which neither the aged parish priest nor she understood anything, and went off to kyr Margaritis's magazí.

Kyr Margaritis took a pinch of tambákos, shook out his vráka, on which a part of the tambákos always fell, pulled his skoúfia down to his eyebrows, put on his spectacles, and began to examine the note at length.

"It comes from Amerika?" he said. "Your son has remembered you, I see. Bravo, I'm glad."

Then he went on:

"It has the number 10 on it, but we don't know what kind of coin it may be — ten shillings, ten rupees, ten kolonáta, or ten…"

He broke off. He had all but said "ten pounds".

"Let's call the schoolmaster," muttered kyr Margaritis. "Perhaps he will know how to read it. What language can it be, I wonder?"

The Greek master, who was sitting watching the men playing kiámo in the café next door, was asked across and went over to kyr Margaritis's magazí. He came in, upright and stiff, took the note, asked kyr Margaritis to lend him his spectacles, and began to spell out the Latin characters:

"It must be English," he said, "unless it is German. Where does this docket come from?"

"From Amerika, kyr master," said aunt Achtitsa.

"From America? Then it will be English."

And saying this he tried to spell out the words ten pounds sterling, which the draft carried in handwriting.

"Sterling," he said; "sterling will mean thaler, I believe. The word appears to be of the same etymology," he pronounced dogmatically.

And he handed the note back into kyr Margaritis's hands.

"That will be it," he said; "and since there is the number 10 at the head of it, it will beyond doubt be a note for ten thalers. All the same, I ought to tell you that I know nothing of financial matters. We men of letters are occupied with other things."

And having said this, since he felt the cold in kyr Margaritis's freezing, flagstoned magazí, he went back to the café to get warm.

Kyr Margaritis had begun to rub his hands, and seemed to be turning something over.

"Now, what would you have," he said, turning to the old woman; "the times are hard, trade is dead slack. Am I to take it and cash it for you — do I know that my money is safe, do I know that it isn't a forgery even? From down there, from that lost world, do you really expect anything? All the lies and the counterfeiting come to us from there. They knock about all those years, the loafers (excuse me, I don't mean your son) out there where the sun bakes the bread, and they can't be troubled to send one pará, one honest pará; all they send is waste paper."

He took two turns about his enormous counting-desk, and went on:

"And it's no small matter, bless you, it's ten thalers! If I had ten thalers, I'd get married."

Then he continued:

"But what am I to say to you — I'm sorry for you, for you're a good woman, and you have those orphans as well. Say I keep a thaler and a half for the risks I'm running, and the eight and a half are yours… And so that we're safe, don't go asking for kolonáta; let me give you five-franc pieces, so that we're straight. Eight and a half five-franc pieces, then… Ah! I was forgetting!…"

On the contrary, he had not forgotten: he had been thinking of it from the beginning of the interview.

"The late Michalios used to owe me something, I don't remember now…"

And he went back to his counting-desk:

"And that scapegrace son-in-law of yours ate up two thalers of mine, I think."

And he armed himself with his huge katástikho:

"It's only right that I should keep it back… whatever I give you will look like a gift to you."

He opened the katástikho.

The close-packed and blackened pages of this katástikho were like fat fields, like good ground. Whatever a man sowed in it bore fruit many times over.

It was as though one cut the leaves of the sapling each time some item was settled, but the root stayed under the earth, ready to sprout again.

Kyr Margaritis found the two accounts at once.

"Nine and fifteen your late husband owed me," he said; "and two thalers lent and never returned to your son-in-law, which comes to…"

And taking a reed pen he began to do first the addition, and the reduction of the thalers into drachmas, and then the subtraction from the sum of the ten French thalers.

"That works out at my giving you…" kyr Margaritis began.

At that moment a new figure came in.

He was a merchant from Syros, staying on the little island on business.

As soon as he was in he made his way with the greatest freedom and confidence to the counting-desk where kyr Margaritis stood.

"What have we here, kyr Margaritis?… What's this?" he said, seeing the poor widow's note lying ready to hand on the desk.

And taking it in his hands:

"A bill of exchange for ten English pounds, from America," he said in a clear voice. "How did this get here? Do you do that kind of business too, kyr Margaritis?"

"For ten pounds!" repeated aunt Achtitsa on the instant, having caught the word distinctly.

"Yes, for ten English pounds," said the man from Hermoupolis, turning to her again. "It isn't yours, by any chance?"

"It is, sir."

Aunt Achtitsa, in assent, always said yes; but now she wondered herself how she had come to say "it is, sir", and where she had found that word.

"For ten napoleons it will be, perhaps," said kyr Margaritis, biting his lips.

"I tell you it is for ten English pounds," the Syriot merchant repeated once more. "Won't you be told?"

And he threw a second long look at the note:

"It's safe money, arzán-kondán, I tell you. Will you cash it, or shall I cash it here and now?"

And he made a movement to draw out his pocket-book.

"A man might take it for nine pounds… French ones," said kyr Margaritis, hesitating.

"French? I'll take it for nine English."

And turning the sheet of paper over, he saw the signature the good priest had put on it, compared it with the name that appeared in the text, and found it to agree.

And opening his pocket-book he counted into aunt Achtitsa's hand, before her dazzled eyes, nine most shining English pounds.

And this is why the poor old woman wore on Christmas Day a new "undoctored" kerchief, and the two orphans had clean little shirts for their thin limbs and warm shoes for their frozen feet.

Translator's log

Written as the draft was written. Frozen at this commit, before the design of the run that consumes it existed. Decisions and alternatives, not quality claims. Any evaluative sentence carries internal-judgment-only.

D1 — the title, and the word the story is named for

Σταχομαζώχτρα is a feminine agent noun built on στάχυ (an ear of corn) and μαζεύω (to gather): the woman who gathers the fallen ears. English has one word for this and it is gleaner, which is exact, and which arrives carrying Ruth and Millet. The Greek word carries neither. Live alternatives: The Gleaner (chosen for the English title line, as the only noun that names the trade), The Corn-Gatherer (accurate, invented, and reads as a kenning), and leaving the title transliterated. The directory slug is the transliteration; the title line is the English word.

D2 — the two languages of the narration

Papadiamantis writes narration in katharévousa — dative cases, participial chains, ἐπεβιβάζετο, διεπεραιοῦτο — and speech and free indirect thought in the demotic of the island. The gap is the first thing on the page and it is not stylistic decoration: the narrator's language is the state's and the church's, the speech is the village's, and the whole story is about a poor woman being handled by people whose language is not hers. The decision was to build the gap out of English register rather than to leave it flat: Latinate and periodic in narration ("unspeakable was the joy of Achtitsa"), inverted where Greek inverts, and plain in speech ("what would you have", "bless you", "dead slack"). What is lost is that Greek's two registers are two grammars; English's are only two vocabularies, and no English reader will feel the case system change. internal-judgment-only.

D3 — «τὸ Ζερμπινιώ», the neuter woman

The neighbour's name takes the neuter article — τὸ Ζερμπινιώ — which is northern-island usage for a woman's nickname and carries no insult. English has no neuter article and no way to do this. Options: Zerbinió bare; the Zerbinió (chosen); a gloss. "The Zerbinió" keeps the strangeness of the article at the cost of making it look like a nickname for a boat. It is the closest thing English has to a grammatical gender being used affectionately, and it is not close.

D4 — the kinship honorifics: θεια-, μπαρμπα-, παπα-, κὺρ

Four prefixes, all bound to the name, none with an English equivalent that behaves the same way:

• θεια-Ἀχτίτσα — thia-, "aunt", used of any older village woman. Rendered "aunt Achtitsa", lower-case, which is the nearest English has; Goody Achtitsa was live and is a real English domestic form for exactly this social position, and was rejected for the base text because it places the story in an English village. It is kept as the DOM rendering in §D26.
• μπαρμπα-Μιχαλιός — barba-, "uncle". Rendered "old Michalios". Uncle Michalios reads as a kinship claim in English; barba-Michalios was live.
• παπα-Δημήτρης — the priest's title, prefixed and inseparable. Rendered "papa-Dimitris", transferred, because Father Dimitris is Roman and Anglican and Parson Dimitris is a village in Wiltshire. This is the one honorific carried over in the base text.
• κὺρ Μαργαρίτης — kyr, a shortened κύριος, the address for a man of a little property. Rendered "kyr Margaritis", transferred. Mr. Margaritis was live and is wrong by a whole class: kyr is what you call the man who lends you money in a village, not what you call him in a town.

The old woman's own use of «κὺρ δάσκαλε» to the schoolmaster is rendered "kyr master", which is a compromise and reads slightly broken. Live alternative: "master schoolmaster", which reads worse.

D5 — «Καλῶς τὰ ’δέχθης»

A set formula said to someone who has received good news, with no propositional content and no English equivalent. Options: Congratulations (kills the joke), Joy of your news, Well may you receive it (chosen). The next paragraph turns on the formula being empty — «Καλῶς τὰ ’δέχθη» αὐτή! — so the English has to be repeatable as a quotation, which "Well may you receive it" is.

D6 — the curses that are blessings, and the blessings that are curses

Four formulas, all of them the mode the whole first movement is written in:

1. «ἂς εἶναι μοναχή της!» — literally "let her be on her own", said sympathetically. Rendered "all on her own, poor soul!".
2. «ποὺ νὰ φτάσουν τὰ μαντᾶτα του, ὥρα τὴν ὥρα!» — "may the news of him arrive, any hour now" — the news meaning the news of his death. Rendered "and may the black news of him come, and soon!"; the adjective is added because English "news" does not carry the sense alone. A real addition, recorded as such.
3. «τὸ λαμπρό τ’ νὰ βγῇ!» — "may his brightness come out", ironic. Rendered "a bright end to him!".
4. «Τέτοια τρομάρα καμμιᾶς καλῆς χριστιανῆς νὰ μὴν τῆς μέλλῃ» — apotropaic. Rendered close: "May no good Christian woman be fated to such a terror."

D7 — «τὰ ἀδιαφόρετα»

The dead sons are called τὰ ἀδιαφόρετα — "the ones from whom no benefit came". It is a lament word, not an accusation. Rendered "the ones she had no joy of", which is the English of the same feeling and is four words longer. The profitless ones was live and is cruel in English in a way the Greek is not.

D8 — ρωμέικα

The Englishwoman «δὲν ἤξευρε νὰ μιλήσῃ ρωμέικα» — could not speak Romaic, the vernacular, the language of the Ρωμιοί. Rendered "Greek" in the base text, which loses the whole opposition between Romaic and Hellenic that the schoolmaster four pages later is standing on. Carried in §D26 as a site: TRA Romaic.

D9 — «ἕνα ξωθικό»

Ξωθικό is a creature from outside — a fairy, a nereid, something not of the household. Applied to the foreign daughter-in-law it is half insult and half fear. Rendered "a thing out of the hills". A fairy creature was live and is too pretty; a changeling asserts a story the Greek does not.

D10 — the trades, and the words for them

Paragraph 5 is a list of ways of not starving and every item is a technical term:

• ἀργολογοῦσε — to gather the last, late grapes the harvest left. "gathered the late grapes".
• κούμαρα — the fruit of Arbutus unedo. "arbutus berries", which is a botanist's phrase in English and a child's word in Greek. No English domestic equivalent exists because the tree does not grow here; sloes was live as a DOM and is a different fruit.
• στέμφυλα — the pressed skins. "pressings of grape-skin".
• ἓν πενηντάρι ἐκ λευκοσιδήρου — a fifty-dram measure in tin-plate. Rendered "a fifty-dram tin", keeping the unit; a half-pint tin was the DOM and is a lie about the volume.
• μούργα — the black lees that settle out of pressed olives, burnable in a lamp. English has amurca, from the same root through Latin, and nobody knows it. Kept as mourga.
• ποτόκια — the small channels below the presses. "settling channels".

The paragraph is the reason the story was chosen: it is a page of things England does not have.

D11 — «καραβωμένη» and «οἱ φ’στάνες»

Two jeers. Καραβωμένη is a coinage on καράβι, a ship: the woman who has been aboard. Rendered "the ship-woman", which is not an English insult and does not sound like one; the alternative was to invent one (the sailing hussy) and assert a tone the Greek does not have. «Νά! οἱ φ’στάνες!» — "the petticoats!" — apocopated φουστάνες, shouted by boys at women in the field. Rendered "the petticoats!", which works, and the apocope is lost.

D12 — «ὀρμάνια», «δουλάπι», «σοφᾶς»: the Turkish layer

Three of the house-and-land words are Turkish loans naturalised in the island's Greek — orman (forest), dolap (cupboard), sofa (the raised platform along a wall). To an English reader these are simply Greek words. To the story they are the ordinary furniture of a life that has been Ottoman within living memory. All three are carried over in the base text — ormánia, doulápi, sofás — which is the maximum this translation transfers anywhere, and is a decision that could easily have gone the other way: "the woods", "the press", "a kind of settle".

D13 — «φύλακας», the school bag

The boy unslings his «φύλακα», in the author's own quotation marks, with a footnote in the original edition explaining it as the local word for the satchel. The quotation marks are the author saying this is not the general word. Rendered the "keeper", in quotation marks, footnote dropped — because the project's window-building strips markup, and a footnote that cannot survive the manipulation should not be in the text it is manipulated from. Recorded here instead: the source's two footnote markers (on φύλακα and on ten pounds sterling) are not carried.

D14 — «σπιθαμή», «ὀργυιά»: the body measures

A span and a fathom, both still English words, both still meaning what the Greek means. Kept. "three spans across" and "two fathoms" are among the few places in the story where the transfer costs nothing at all, and they are worth naming because the rest of the page costs so much.

D15 — «ἡ ἑστία ἦτο σβεστή»

"The hearth was put out." English "the hearth was out" is thin; "the hearth was cold" is the obvious move and is a different image (Greek says extinguished, English says cold). Chosen: "the hearth was dead", which keeps the extinguishing and adds a metaphor the Greek does not have. Recorded as an addition.

D16 — «ἥμερο μάτι δὲν τοὺς ἔδιδε»

"She gave them no tame eye" — she never let her face go soft at them. Rendered inside its own quotation marks, "she gave them no soft eye", since Papadiamantis quotes it as a village phrase and the English should be quotable in the same way. Tame was live and is the literal word; soft is the English collocation.

D17 — «σὰν ἀρχοντοξεπεσμένη ποὺ ἦτον»

One compound word: ἄρχοντας + ξεπεσμένος, "gentry-fallen". It explains why the old woman prefers the grand name Patrona to her dead daughter's plain Argyro. Rendered "like the gentlewoman come down in the world that she was" — eleven words for one, and the log records it because it is the worst ratio in the translation.

D18 — «δέσποτα», and the sweet and the raki

Δέσποτα is the vocative used to a bishop, said here to a village priest, half deference and half the reflex of a poor woman with a churchman at the door. Kept as "déspota"; "your reverence" was live and is Anglican. «τὸ γλυκὸ καὶ τὸ ρακί» is one thing, not two: the spoon-sweet on a saucer with a glass of spirit, the fixed rite of receiving a guest, and its absence is the measure of the house's poverty. Rendered "the sweet and the raki" with the definite articles kept, because the articles are what make it a rite rather than refreshments.

D19 — the son's letter

The letter is written by a barely literate emigrant and read aloud by an old priest who stumbles. The Greek is plain, formulaic, and grammatically loose. The decision was not to correct it and not to caricature it: no dropped letters, no phonetic spelling, but flat coordination, formula ("I kiss your hand", "God forbid", "your holiness"), and one long unpunctuated stretch about the illness. Σαρανταλείτουργα — the forty consecutive liturgies said for a soul — is rendered "the forty liturgies", which names the number and loses the fact that it is a single institution with a single word.

D20 — «συνάλλαγμα» / «συναλλαγματική» / «γραμμάτιον» / «ἐπιταγή» / «δελτάριον»

Five words for the same piece of paper, and the story is about nobody knowing what it is worth. Greek shifts between them as the speaker's competence shifts: the emigrant calls it συνάλλαγμα, the narrator συναλλαγματική, kyr Margaritis and the narrator around him γραμμάτιον, the schoolmaster δελτάριον (a coinage, roughly "docket"), the narrator once ἐπιταγή. The English keeps the shift: "bill of exchange" in the letter and in the Syriot's mouth, "the note" around kyr Margaritis, "this docket" for the schoolmaster, "the draft" once. Flattening all five to "the bill" would have been better English and would have deleted the plot.

D21 — the money, which is the story

σελλίνια (shillings), ρούπιες (rupees), κολωνᾶτα (Spanish pillar dollars), τάλληρα (thalers), ναπολεόνια (napoleons), πεντόφραγκα (five-franc pieces), λίρες (pounds), παράς (the para). Two are already English. Every one is kept as itself, including kolonáta transferred, because the whole comedy is a man in a shop trying to convert a currency he cannot read into one he can cheat with, and any tidying flattens the joke. The one loss: πεντόφραγκα is rendered "five-franc pieces", which is transparent in English and slightly comic in Greek.

D22 — «κεσάτια», «καλπουζανιές», «τελμπεντέρης», «ἀρζὰν-κοντάν»

Kyr Margaritis speaks Turkish loanwords when he is squeezing someone (kesat, slack trade; kalpazan, counterfeiter; telbendere, a wastrel), and the Syriot merchant speaks French (argent comptant) when he is being grand. That is a whole social map inside four words. Only the Frenchman's phrase is carried over — arzán-kondán, italic, because it is foreign inside the Greek too and a reader is meant to notice it. The three Turkish words are Englished: "trade is dead slack", "the counterfeiting", "that scapegrace son-in-law". The map is therefore half deleted, and the half that survives is the half that was already marked. This is the most consequential loss in the translation and it was taken deliberately, on the ground that a reader who meets four unglossed loanwords in one speech stops reading the speech.

D23 — «Μάλιστα»

Asked whether the note is hers, the old woman answers «Μάλιστα» — the formal yes — and the narrator then remarks that she always said ναί and wondered where she had found this word. The whole paragraph is about a register distinction English does not have. Yes / yes indeed / yes, sir were all live. Chosen: "It is, sir." — the deference relocated from the word for yes, which cannot carry it in English, to an added vocative, which can. Then the narrator's sentence had to be rewritten around the new phrase ("how she had come to say 'it is, sir'"). The source marks the register in the choice between two yeses; the English marks it in an added word, which is a different operation, and the reader is told about a distinction they cannot see.

D24 — «Παίρνεις ἀπὸ λόγια;»

Idiom, roughly "are you to be persuaded by words at all?" — the merchant's exasperation at a man haggling against a fact. Rendered "Won't you be told?". Do you take anything from talk? is the literal and is not English.

D25 — «ἄδολην» μανδήλαν

The last paragraph's kerchief is ἄδολη — unadulterated, undyed with cheating dyes, the real thing — in the author's quotation marks again, because it is the seller's word. Rendered "undoctored", in quotation marks. Unadulterated was live and is a chemist's word; pure loses the commerce. The story ends on a word about not being cheated, three lines after the old woman has been cheated out of one pound, and the English had to keep the commercial sense for that to land.

D26 — the culture-bound site table, frozen

Every item in the translation where a culture-bound decision was actually taken, with the three renderings that were live at the moment of writing: TRA carries the source word over, DOM reaches for the nearest article of the English domestic world, NEU finds a location-free English phrase. base is the string as it stands in the translation above. brit is the lead's own frozen prediction, made now, of whether the DOM rendering is a STRONG or WEAK cue that the prose is English-written; SHAM is a location-neutral-for-location-neutral substitution, matched in edit size, which is not a culture-bound decision at all.

Windows are the five spans of the translation dense enough in such decisions to be manipulated. Boundaries are given as the first and last words, inclusive. No window contains a reference to England, America or the English language, which paragraphs elsewhere in the story do; the exclusion was applied when the windows were cut, before any site was assigned to any dose.

Row 4 is listed and carries n = 0: ἐξενοδούλευε ("she went out to service") is a culture-bound item and has no distinct DOM, because English domestic service is what the phrase already says. It is held constant in every form and is not manipulable, exactly as Turnov was in T-hastrman-R06-v1. Row 8 (the Zerbinió) has TRA and DOM identical for the same reason — the name is the name — and is likewise a constant.

Rows 35 and 36 are the same decision — the honorific κύρ — occurring in the nominative and in the possessive, and they are listed separately because the strings differ. A dose ladder may therefore domesticate one and not the other, giving a form that reads Mr. Margaritis … kyr Margaritis's. That is not a defect of the table: it is what a partially domesticating translator's page actually looks like, and it is the thing this arm exists to measure.

Counts, computed by script and not by reading (translations/README.md's binding condition; the script is workshop/experiments/E-20260813a-world-dose/code.py, which parses this table and asserts every count): 40 rows, of which 38 are manipulable (TRA and DOM distinct after asterisks are stripped) — S1 6, S2 9, S3 7, S4 7, S5 9. Every window clears the ≥ 4-site rule the prior run fixed. Window lengths, same script: 225 · 298 · 340 · 211 · 114 English words.