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

Turgenev, «Свидание» (1850), ¶1–¶19 — R06, the unforced English baseline

Source. workshop/canon/svidanie/source-ru.txt ¶1–¶19, 1,074 Russian words, SHA-256 of the whole file f19aaa911cd37cf27499af3b21e04164c1b54d876bb257e535bcc7eceab9a470. Two witnesses, emendations and variant register in the canon manifest. Public domain.

Regime. R06 — lead, source only, one pass, no revision. No API call, no cost, never ledgered (charter §3, A4).

Why this exists. It is the control the pre-run critic required (E-20260730g §A2, finding 2, BLOCKING). T-svidanie-R09-v1 is written trying to keep Futabatei's punctuation rule; a high compliance figure there proves only that a motivated translator can comply. This limb is what English does when nobody is counting, and it is the baseline against which the cost of the rule is read.

Passage selection. Frozen before the source was read for translation: the contiguous run beginning at the first paragraph the project has not already translated (¶1 — T-svidanie-R04-v1 holds ¶0) and running to the end of the first dialogue movement (¶19).

Contamination: high

Declared high on a measurement, not on a prior, and the measurement is four sessions old. RS-20260725c-contamination-sweep measured T-svidanie-R04-v1 — ¶0 of this same sketch, same translator — against both published English translations and returned CI 3.13 / 3.07, the highest of six cells and more than double the next, with 40 shared 7-grams with Hapgood 1903 against a 6-gram Garnett/Hapgood baseline, including a fourteen-word run at the opening. That artifact carries the standing consequence "this translation must not be used as a neutral third point in any experiment", and the same consequence is inherited here.

No English rendering of this sketch was opened, fetched or searched during this session. Provable in git. But «Свидание» is among the most translated Russian prose there is, the lead has demonstrably reproduced Hapgood's wording on the adjacent paragraph, and no claim of independence is made.

Why the study can nonetheless use this text, stated rather than assumed. E-20260730g's statistic is a count of commas and sentence-final marks against the Russian. Recalled English wording moves lexis; it does not decide how many commas the Russian has. The one channel by which contamination could reach the statistic is if a recalled published rendering itself preserved the Russian's pointing — which is exactly the property being measured and is not a property any published English translation claims. Recorded as a limitation, not dismissed: if a recalled Hapgood sentence happened to carry the Russian's comma count, this limb's figure is inflated by it, and the direction is toward higher English compliance.

The translation

¶1. I cannot say how long I slept, but when I opened my eyes the whole interior of the wood was filled with sunlight, and in every direction, through the joyfully rustling leaves, the bright blue sky showed through and seemed to sparkle; the clouds had gone, driven off by a wind that had got up; the weather had cleared, and there was in the air that particular dry freshness which, filling the heart with a kind of brisk sensation, almost always promises a calm bright evening after a foul day. I was on the point of getting up and trying my luck again when suddenly my eyes came to rest on a motionless human figure. I looked closer: it was a young peasant girl. She was sitting twenty paces from me, her head bent in thought and both hands fallen into her lap; on one of them, half open, lay a thick bunch of wild flowers, and at every breath she took it slid quietly down onto her checked skirt. A clean white smock, buttoned at the throat and at the wrists, fell in short soft folds about her body; large yellow beads in two rows hung from her neck down over her breast. She was very far from plain. Her thick fair hair, of a beautiful ash colour, was drawn back in two carefully combed half-circles from under a narrow scarlet band pulled down almost to her brow, which was white as ivory; the rest of her face was only faintly touched by that golden tan which fine skin alone takes. I could not see her eyes — she did not raise them; but I saw clearly her fine high eyebrows, her long lashes: they were wet, and on one of her cheeks the dried trace of a tear glistened in the sun, a tear that had stopped at her lips, which had gone a little pale. Her whole small head was very charming; even her rather thick and rounded nose did not spoil it. What I especially liked was the expression of her face: it was so simple and gentle, so sad and so full of a childish bewilderment at her own sadness. She was evidently waiting for someone; something cracked faintly in the wood: she raised her head at once and looked round; in the transparent shade her eyes flashed quickly before me, large, clear and startled, like a doe's. For some moments she listened, not taking her wide-open eyes from the place where the faint sound had come from, then sighed, turned her head gently, bent lower still and began slowly to sort through her flowers. Her eyelids reddened, her lips moved bitterly, and a fresh tear rolled out from under the thick lashes, halting and glittering brightly on her cheek. In this way a good deal of time went by; the poor girl did not stir — only now and then she would move her hands wistfully and listen, listen still… Something rustled through the wood again — she started. The noise did not stop, grew more distinct, came nearer, and at last firm quick footsteps could be heard. She straightened up and seemed to take fright; her attentive gaze quivered and kindled with expectation. A man's figure flickered quickly through the thicket. She looked, flushed suddenly, smiled with joy and happiness, was about to rise and at once drooped all over again, went pale, grew confused — and only then raised a trembling, almost pleading look to the man who had come, when he had stopped beside her.

¶2. I looked at him with curiosity from my hiding place. I confess he did not make an agreeable impression on me. He was, by every sign, the spoiled valet of a young and wealthy gentleman. His clothes advertised a claim to taste and to a dandy's carelessness: he had on a short bronze-coloured coat, probably off his master's shoulders, buttoned to the top, a little pink cravat with lilac ends, and a black velvet cap with gold braid pulled down to his very eyebrows. The round collar of his white shirt propped his ears up without mercy and cut into his cheeks, and his starched cuffs covered his whole hand right down to the red crooked fingers, which were adorned with silver and gold rings set with turquoise forget-me-nots. His face — ruddy, fresh, insolent — belonged to that class of faces which, so far as I have been able to observe, almost always outrage men and unfortunately very often please women. He was evidently trying to give his rather coarse features an expression of contempt and boredom; he kept screwing up his already tiny milk-grey eyes, frowning, letting the corners of his mouth droop, yawning with an effort, and with a careless, though not altogether deft, ease he would now put a hand to his gingerish, rakishly curled side-locks, now pinch the yellow hairs that stood out on his thick upper lip — in a word, he gave himself intolerable airs. He began giving himself airs the moment he caught sight of the young peasant woman waiting for him; slowly, with a rolling step, he came up to her, stood a while, twitched his shoulders, thrust both hands into the pockets of his coat, and, having scarcely honoured the poor girl with a fleeting and indifferent glance, let himself down onto the ground.

¶3. "Well now," he began, still looking off somewhere to one side, swinging his leg and yawning, "have you been here long?"

¶4. The girl could not answer him at once.

¶5. "A long time, Viktor Alexandrych," she brought out at last in a barely audible voice.

¶6. "Ah!" (He took off his cap, passed his hand majestically over his thick, tightly curled hair, which began almost at his very eyebrows, and, having looked round him with dignity, carefully covered his precious head again.) "And I had quite forgotten. Besides, you see, the rain!" (He yawned again.) "No end of things to do: you can't see to everything, and he scolds into the bargain. We're leaving tomorrow…"

¶7. "Tomorrow?" the girl said, and fixed a frightened look on him.

¶8. "Tomorrow… Come, come, come, please," he put in hurriedly and with vexation, seeing that she had begun to tremble all over and had quietly bowed her head, "please, Akulina, don't cry. You know I can't bear it." (And he wrinkled his blunt nose.) "Or else I'll go this minute… What nonsense — snivelling!"

¶9. "Well, I won't, I won't," Akulina brought out hurriedly, swallowing her tears with an effort. "So you're going tomorrow?" she added after a short silence. "When will God grant that I see you again, Viktor Alexandrych?"

¶10. "We shall meet again, we shall. Not next year — then later. The master, it seems, wants to enter the service in Petersburg," he went on, pronouncing his words carelessly and somewhat through his nose, "and perhaps we may go abroad."

¶11. "You will forget me, Viktor Alexandrych," Akulina said sadly.

¶12. "No, why should I? I shan't forget you: only be sensible, don't play the fool, obey your father… And I shan't forget you — no-o." (And he stretched himself calmly and yawned again.)

¶13. "Don't forget me, Viktor Alexandrych," she went on in an imploring voice. "It seems I loved you so, it seems everything was for you… You tell me to obey my father, Viktor Alexandrych… But how am I to obey my father…"

¶14. "And why not?" (He uttered the words as though out of his stomach, lying on his back with his hands under his head.)

¶15. "But how can I, Viktor Alexandrych — you know yourself…"

¶16. She fell silent. Viktor played with the steel chain of his watch.

¶17. "You're not a stupid girl, Akulina," he began at last, "so don't talk rubbish. It's your own good I want, do you understand me? Of course, you're not stupid, not altogether a peasant girl, so to speak; and your mother, too, was not always a peasant woman. All the same you have no education — and so you ought to obey when you're told."

¶18. "But it's frightening, Viktor Alexandrych."

¶19. "E-eh, what nonsense, my dear: what have you found to be frightened of! What's that you've got there," he added, moving closer to her, "flowers?"

Translator's log

Frozen 2026-07-30, before T-svidanie-R09-v1 was begun and before 「あいびき」 was read. Decisions and alternatives, not quality claims; any evaluative sentence carries internal-judgment-only. R06 is one pass, so this log records what was decided while writing, not on review.

A0 — Target register. An unmarked literary English with a light nineteenth-century tilt; contractions in speech, none in the narration. Rejected: a fully contemporary register, which makes Viktor's affectation read as camp rather than as servant-dandy.

A1 — «вся внутренность леса» → "the whole interior of the wood". Interior is the odd word and it is odd in Russian too — Turgenev does not write "the wood was full of sunlight". Kept. Rejected: "the depths of the wood", which is idiomatic and loses the architectural sense.

A2 — «сквозило и как бы искрилось» → "showed through and seemed to sparkle". «Сквозить» is one verb for to show through a gap; English needs two words. The «как бы» is Turgenev's hedge and is kept as seemed to. Rejected: "glimmered", which collapses the two verbs into one and loses the hedge.

A3 — «бодрым ощущеньем» → "a brisk sensation". Бодрый is invigorating, wide-awake; "brisk" carries the physical lift and not the alertness. A loss, recorded. Rejected: "a feeling of vigour", which is a noun phrase where Turgenev has an adjective and a colourless noun.

A4 — «рубаха» → "smock", not "shirt". A woman's Russian peasant rubakha is a long shift; "shirt" in English is a man's garment and would put her in trousers. Rejected: "chemise", which is underwear in English and would be indecent in a wood.

A5 — «Она была очень недурна собою» → "She was very far from plain." Turgenev's litotes, kept as a litotes. Rejected: "She was very pretty", which is what it means and destroys the narrator's reserve — this narrator never says a woman is pretty.

A6 — «пепельного цвета» → "of a beautiful ash colour". Kept literal. English "ash-blonde" exists and is a hairdresser's term, two centuries late.

A7 — «как у лани» → "like a doe's". Лань is a fallow deer; the English simile is the doe's eye and carries the same fright.

A8 — «Так прошло довольно много времени» → "In this way a good deal of time went by". Так here is in this manner, not thus; the phrase is doing time-passage work, and "so" at the head of an English sentence has become a discourse particle.

A9 — «встрепенулась» → "she started". One Russian verb for the whole small convulsion of a bird lifting its head. English has no verb for it; "started" is the least bad. A loss, recorded.

A10 — «камердинер» → "valet". Rejected: "manservant", which is vaguer than the Russian; kamerdiner is a specific household rank and "valet" is its English counterpart.

A11 — «с барского плеча» → "off his master's shoulders". A set phrase meaning a cast-off from the master, and English has the same picture. Kept.

A12 — «рукавчики» → "cuffs". The established Russian text reads рукавчики (small sleeves, i.e. detachable starched cuffs); the second witness reads рукавички, mittens, which cannot be starched and cannot reach the fingers. The canon manifest records the choice.

A13 — «ломался нестерпимо» → "he gave himself intolerable airs". Ломаться is to put on a performance of oneself. Rejected: "he posed unbearably", which is closer to the word count and reads as a translation.

A14 — «Виктор Александрыч» → "Viktor Alexandrych", not "Alexandrovich". The syncopated colloquial patronymic is Akulina's, and it is a class marker she keeps for eleven paragraphs. Transliterated as she says it.

A15 — «Давно-с» → "A long time". The «-с» is the servile enclitic, untranslatable and everywhere in Russian nineteenth-century speech. Dropped, and it is a real loss — it marks her as speaking upward. Rejected: "A long time, sir", which puts a word in her mouth that is not there and makes it explicit where Russian makes it a suffix.

A16 — «Что за глупости — хныкать!» → "What nonsense — snivelling!" Kept the dash. Хныкать is a contemptuous verb for a child's crying; "snivelling" carries the contempt.

A17 — «не совсем мужичка» → "not altogether a peasant girl". Мужичка is the feminine of muzhik and is what Viktor thinks he is generously denying. Rejected: "not quite a peasant", which loses the gender and therefore the insult's exact shape — he is comparing her to her mother two clauses later.

A18 — «И-и, какой вздор» → "E-eh, what nonsense". An interjection with no English equivalent; transliterated to something an English reader will voice as a drawl of dismissal. Arbitrary, and recorded as arbitrary.

A19 — What was not decided. Sentence boundaries, clause order and every mark of punctuation were written as English wanted them, without reference to the Russian's counts. That is the whole point of this limb and it is stated here so that the R09 log's departures are readable against it.