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

T-unter-prishibeyev-R04-v1 — Anton Chekhov, «Унтер Пришибеев» (1885), whole

Source. As T-unter-prishibeyev-R06-v1: Russian Wikisource ПСС text, SHA-256 6f51d7215ae4e49d1cf3ae67dc8e49a3b5c744a1f192f7d7f672094159b376f3, 23 paragraphs, 1,225 Russian words, public domain.

Regime. R04 (lead close translation, source-only), v1.0. The draft required by §2a is T-unter-prishibeyev-R06-v1, frozen and committed at 9d0e01e before this revision began; the pair is therefore paired by construction and the revision delta below is an observation, not a reconstruction.

Scope. The whole story. 1,785 English words, from the draft's 1,777.

Cost. $0.

Contamination: suspected, on the same basis as the draft, and measured after this freeze — see §Measured independence, written in after the comparator was opened.

Hypothesis-awareness. As the draft: the translator knew the session's general subject and not its criteria or predictions. Both lead hands are excluded from the study's primary.

The translation

[1] "Non-commissioned Officer Prishibeyev! You are charged with having, on the third of September last, insulted by word and by act the constable Zhigin, the district elder Alyapov, the village policeman Yefimov, the attesting witnesses Ivanov and Gavrilov, and six other peasants besides, the first three of these having been insulted by you in the discharge of their official duties. Do you plead guilty?"

[2] Prishibeyev, a shrivelled sergeant with a prickly face, brings his hands down to his trouser-seams and answers in a hoarse, strangled voice, biting off every word as though giving an order:

[3] "Your High Honour, Mr Justice of the Peace! So then, by all the articles of the law there comes out cause to attest every circumstance in mutuality. It is not I that am guilty, it is all the rest. This whole business came out of — the kingdom of heaven be his — a dead corpse. There I am walking along on the third with my wife Anfisa, quiet and genteel, and I look — there is a heap of assorted folk of people standing on the bank. By what full right, I ask, has the public assembled here? What for? Is it said in the law that the people are to go about in a herd? I shout: disperse! I set about shoving them apart to go off to their homes, I ordered the village policeman to drive them off by the scruff of the neck..."

[4] "Allow me — you are not a constable, you are not a headman; is it your business to disperse people?"

[5] "It isn't! It isn't!" — voices are heard from various corners of the courtroom. "There's no living for him, your Honour! Fifteen years we have put up with him! Ever since he came back from the service you might as well run away from the village. He has worn us all out!"

[6] "Just so, your Honour!" says the headman, who is a witness. "The whole commune complains. There is no living with him at all! Whether we are walking with the icons, or there is a wedding, or, let us say, some occasion, everywhere he is shouting and making a noise and bringing in regulations. He pulls the boys' ears, he spies on the women in case something should come of it, like some father-in-law... The other day he went round the huts giving orders that no songs were to be sung and no lights burnt. There is no law, says he, for singing songs."

[7] "Wait, you will have your turn to give evidence," says the magistrate, "and now let Prishibeyev go on. Continue, Prishibeyev!"

[8] "At your orders, sir!" the sergeant croaks. "You, your High Honour, are pleased to say that it is not my business to disperse the public... Very good, sir... But what if there are disorders? Can it be permitted that the people should behave outrageously? Where is it written in the law that the people are to be given their liberty? I cannot permit it, sir. If I do not disperse them and call them to account, then who will? Nobody knows the real regulations; in the whole village I alone, one may say, your High Honour, know how to deal with people of simple station, and, your High Honour, I am able to understand everything. I am no peasant, I am a non-commissioned officer, a retired quartermaster-sergeant; I served in Warsaw, on the staff, sir, and after that, as you are pleased to know, when I got my clean discharge, I was with the fire brigade, sir, and after that, through weakness of illness, I left the fire brigade and served two years as hall porter at the boys' classical progymnasium... I know all the regulations, sir. But a peasant is a simple man, he understands nothing and he must listen to me, because it is for his own good. Take this business for an example... I am dispersing the public, and there on the bank, on the sand, is the drowned corpse of a dead man. On what such grounds, I ask, is he lying here? Is that regular? What is the constable looking at? Why is it, I say, constable, that you do not let the authorities know? Maybe this drowned deceased drowned of himself, and maybe there is a smell of Siberia about this business. Maybe there is a criminal death-murder here... And the constable Zhigin pays no attention, he only smokes his cigarette. 'What sort of a fellow is this you have got to lay down the law for you?' says he. 'Where did you get him from?' says he. 'Don't we know our own conduct without him?' says he. So then, I say, you do not know, you fool, if you stand here paying no attention. 'I,' says he, 'sent word to the district police officer only yesterday.' What for, I ask, to the district police officer? Under what article of the code of laws? In such matters, when there are drowned persons, or persons that have hanged, and the rest of it — can a district officer act in such matters? Here, I say, is a criminal case, a civil case... Here, I say, we must send an express at once to the examining magistrate, sir, and to the judges, sir. And first of all you must, I say, draw up a statement and send it to Mr Justice of the Peace. And he, the constable, listens to it all and laughs. And the peasants too. They were all laughing, your High Honour. I can testify to it on oath. This one laughed, and that one there, and Zhigin laughed. What are you baring your teeth at, I say? And the constable says: 'Such matters,' says he, 'do not come under a justice of the peace.' Those very words threw me into a heat. Constable, you did say that, didn't you?" — the sergeant turns to the constable Zhigin.

[9] "I did."

[10] "Everybody heard how you said that very thing in front of all the common people: 'Such matters do not come under a justice of the peace.' Everybody heard how you... It threw me into a heat, your High Honour, I quite lost my nerve. Say it again, I say, say it again, you so-and-so, what you said! He says the very same words again... I go at him. How is it, I say, that you can explain it so about Mr Justice of the Peace? You, a police constable, and against the authorities? Eh? And do you know, I say, that Mr Justice of the Peace, if they should be so pleased, can have you up before the provincial gendarme office by reason of your unreliable conduct, for words like that? And do you know, I say, where Mr Justice of the Peace can pack you off to for political words like that? And the district elder says: 'A justice of the peace,' says he, 'cannot designate anything beyond his own limits. Only small matters come under him.' That is what he said, everybody heard it... How is it, I say, that you dare to disparage the authorities? Now, I say, don't play jokes with me, or it will go badly with you, brother. Time was, in Warsaw, or when I was hall porter at the boys' classical progymnasium, that if I heard any unsuitable words I would look out into the street to see whether there was a gendarme about: 'Step over here, my brave fellow,' I say, and I report the whole thing to him. But here, in the village, who is there to tell?.. Anger took me. It was galling that the people nowadays have forgotten themselves in wilfulness and disobedience, and I swung my arm and... of course, not so as to say hard, but just properly, gently, so that he should not dare say such words about your High Honour... The constable stood up for the district elder. So then I gave the constable one as well... And away it went... I got heated, your High Honour, but then there is no doing without a beating. If you do not beat a stupid man, the sin is on your own soul. Especially if it is deserved... if there is disorder..."

[11] "Allow me! There are people whose business it is to watch for disorders. That is what there is a constable for, and a headman, and a village policeman..."

[12] "A constable cannot keep an eye on everything, and besides a constable does not understand what I understand..."

[13] "But do understand that it is not your business!"

[14] "What's that, sir? How is it not mine? That's a strange thing, sir... People behave outrageously, and it is not my business! Am I to praise them, then? There they are complaining to you that I forbid the singing of songs... And what good is there in songs? Instead of getting on with some work, they sing... And they have taken up the fashion too of sitting of an evening with a light. It is time to lie down and sleep, and with them it is talk and laughter. I have it written down, sir!"

[15] "What have you got written down?"

[16] "Who sits with a light."

[17] Prishibeyev takes a greasy scrap of paper out of his pocket, puts on his spectacles and reads:

[18] "Which peasants sit with a light: Ivan Prokhorov, Savva Nikiforov, Pyotr Petrov. The soldier's wife Shustrova, a widow, lives in depraved lawlessness with Semyon Kislov. Ignat Sverchok engages in sorcery, and his wife Mavra is a witch, and goes about at night milking other people's cows."

[19] "That will do!" says the judge, and begins to examine the witnesses.

[20] Sergeant Prishibeyev pushes his spectacles up on his forehead and looks in astonishment at the magistrate, who is evidently not on his side. His bulging eyes shine, his nose turns bright red. He looks at the magistrate, at the witnesses, and cannot for the life of him make out why the magistrate is so agitated, or why from every corner of the courtroom there comes now a murmur, now a stifled laugh. The sentence is beyond him too: a month under arrest!

[21] "What for?!" he says, spreading his hands in bewilderment. "By what law?"

[22] And it is plain to him that the world has changed and that there is no living in it any longer. Gloomy, dejected thoughts take hold of him. But on coming out of the courtroom and seeing peasants standing about in a crowd talking of something, he stretches his hands down to his trouser-seams, in a habit he can no longer master, and shouts in a hoarse, angry voice:

[23] "Peo-ople, disperse! Don't crowd! Off to your homes!"

Translator's log — the revision

D1–D17 are in the draft's log and carry over unchanged. This section records only what the self-revision changed, and it is short: six changes in 1,777 words. Frozen before the study that uses it was designed.

D18. Слушаю-с → At your orders, sir! (was Yes, sir!). The draft's own §Unresolved 1 named this. Слушаю is a soldier's acknowledgement, not an assent, and the paragraph it opens is a man answering as though on parade — which the narration has just said in so many words.

D19. указчик → a fellow ... to lay down the law for you (was an overseer). Draft §Unresolved 2. указчик is a scornful stock noun for one who tells others what to do; English has the scorn in a clause and not in a noun, and the noun I had was an occupation. The Russian mark is a word and the English mark is a construction — the same trade D6 makes with the -с clitic, in the opposite direction.

D20. уголовное смертоубийство → a criminal death-murder (was a criminal murdering). смертоубийство is an inflated old compound, literally death-murder, and D13's rule — the pleonasms are the joke — should have applied to it in the draft and did not.

D21. я даже сробел весь → I quite lost my nerve (was I went weak all over). сробеть is about nerve, not about the body, and the joke needs the nerve: he loses it and then hits three men.

D22. с людями простого звания → people of simple station (was people of the simple sort). звание is rank, and Prishibeyev's whole case is that ranks exist.

D23. Paragraph [8] stays one paragraph of 640 Russian words, draft §Unresolved 4 decided against splitting. Chekhov gives the sergeant one unbroken block and the reader's experience of being unable to get a word in is made of that block.

Not changed, and each was looked at again: Сверчок stays untranslated (draft §Unresolved 3 — the surname is in a police list where the joke is the list, not the name); your Honour stays as the peasants' contracted honorific (D5); my brave fellow stays wrong at кавалер (D11), because the revision found no repair either.

What the revision did not do, noted because the study that follows counts it. No marker of social footing was added, removed, or moved between speakers. D18 and D19 both increase the English's address material — At your orders, sir is more deferential than Yes, sir, and lay down the law for you is more scornful than overseer — but neither is at a site that was previously unmarked, and both were named as open in the draft's own §Unresolved before the study existed.

Measured independence

Written in after this page was frozen and after the comparator was opened; the prose and the log above are unchanged from commit ce0a8ad.

tools/dependence_check.py has nothing to run against for this story: no free published English of «Унтер Пришибеев» exists — Garnett's thirteen volumes do not contain it, nor do four other free collections (RS-20260812i §5). contamination: suspected therefore stays declared and unmeasured, which is the honest state and not a clean bill.

What was measured is agreement with the two contrast hands rendered the same day from the same source: LEADr~P1 46 shared twelve-grams, longest run 17 tokens; LEADr~P3 74, longest run 28. The long runs are name lists and plain narration. Three hands with no published English between them converge that far, which is the figure any future reading of this artifact should carry.

See wiki/findings/results/RS-20260812i-footing-channel.md §5.