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

T-unter-prishibeyev-R06-v1 — Anton Chekhov, «Унтер Пришибеев» (1885), whole

Source. Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904), «Унтер Пришибеев», first published in «Петербургская газета», no. 273, 5 October 1885, under the title «Кляузник (Сценка)» over the signature А. Чехонте. Copy-text: Russian Wikisource, page Унтер Пришибеев (Чехов), the ПСС-based text (vol. 4, pp. 121–125), fetched 2026-08-12 via the MediaWiki action=raw API and stored as workshop/translations/unter-prishibeyev/source.txt — the Отексте header template, category links and the interwiki link removed, non-breaking spaces normalised to ordinary spaces, nothing else altered. SHA-256 6f51d7215ae4e49d1cf3ae67dc8e49a3b5c744a1f192f7d7f672094159b376f3. Public domain (author died 1904). 23 paragraphs, 1,225 Russian words.

Regime. R06 (lead single pass, source-only, no revision), v1.0. Written straight through from the Russian alone. Where a choice was unresolved at the moment of writing, the option written is the one that stands and the alternative is in the log below. This draft is frozen before the R04 self-revision begins (R06 §Procedure 4, R04 §2a), so that the revision delta is a real paired observation and not a reconstruction.

Scope. The whole story, 23 of 23 paragraphs. 1,225 Russian words → 1,777 English words (Python str.split() over the body below, paragraph numbers stripped).

Cost. $0. Lead translation, never ledgered (charter §3, A4).

Contamination: suspected, and the basis is stated rather than measured at the time of writing. Chekhov is among the most translated authors in any language and at least one out-of-copyright English rendering of this story exists in the lead's plausible training data. No English rendering of this story was read before this freeze, and the quarantine was operational, not merely intended: a Gutenberg compilation containing Chekhov in English was on disk in this session's scratchpad and was renamed out of the working path before the source was fetched. The overlap measurement (tools/dependence_check.py) is run after this commit, because running it earlier would require reading the comparator and would destroy the independence it is meant to measure; the design that uses this translation registers in advance what happens at each outcome (wiki/experiments/E-20260812-footing-channel.md §Failure criteria).

One further disclosure, and it is unusual. The translator knew, while translating, that this session's subject is how English handles a source's grammatical marking of social footing. It did not know the census criteria, the site list, or the predictions, none of which existed until after this freeze. This hand is therefore hypothesis-aware and is excluded from the primary of the study that uses it; the primary rests on hands that are not.

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] "Yes, 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 the simple sort, 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 murdering here... And the constable Zhigin pays no attention, he only smokes his cigarette. 'What sort of an overseer is this you have got?' 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 went weak all over. 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

Frozen with the draft (R06 §3). Decisions and alternatives, not quality claims. Any evaluative sentence here carries internal-judgment-only, which the front matter already asserts for the page.

The offices, which had to be fixed before the first sentence

D1. The five rural offices are given plain descriptive English and never a British office-name. урядник → constable; волостной старшина → district elder; сотский → village policeman; староста → headman; становой пристав → district police officer; мировой судья → justice of the peace / magistrate. Rejected: parish constable and tithing-man for сотский, both of which are the genuinely parallel English offices and both of which put the story in an English village. The project has measured that road: RS-20260811h on the three roads out of a culture-bound word. The descriptive route loses the fact that сотский is an elected peasant and урядник a salaried policeman — a difference the story's hierarchy actually uses.

D2. мировой судья is justice of the peace in Prishibeyev's mouth and the magistrate in the narration. The Russian is the same phrase in both, but Prishibeyev says it as a title with господин attached and the narrator says it as мировой, clipped. Splitting the English keeps the narrator's shortening visible; the cost is that a reader cannot see they are one phrase.

D3. понятые → attesting witnesses. They are the bystanders a Russian police procedure was required to have present. Witnesses alone would collide with the trial's own witnesses, who appear four paragraphs later.

Address and rank — the decisions this story is made of

D4. ваше высокородие → your High Honour, and it is kept at every one of its seven occurrences. It is the address for civil ranks 6–8, one step above ваше благородие (your Honour). English has no ladder here, but it does have the two words, and the story needs the gap because the peasants use the lower form.

D5. The peasants' contracted вашескородие is carried by a shortened title — your Honour — and NOT by respelling. The Russian mark is phonetic: the peasants swallow the honorific into one word. The obvious English is an eye-dialect spelling (yer 'onour), and this project has measured what that costs: RS-20260809g and RS-20260810c, two independent runs, found that nonstandard respelling is not a placeless lowness marker — judges place it, and name the respelling itself, in the rural American South. Writing the peasants in eye-dialect would move this courtroom to Alabama. So the contraction is carried as a drop in rank of the title instead: the sergeant says your High Honour, the peasants say your Honour. This is a substitution of channel, lexical for phonetic, and it is not equivalent: in the Russian the peasants are using the same honorific badly, and in the English they are using a lower one correctly.

D6. The -с clitic (словоерс) is carried by sir wherever it falls, at nine of its ten occurrences. Слушаю-с → Yes, sir; Хорошо-с → Very good, sir; в штабе-с → on the staff, sir; в пожарных-с → with the fire brigade, sir; не могу дозволять-с → I cannot permit it, sir; судьям-с → to the judges, sir; Чего-с → What's that, sir; Чудно-с → That's a strange thing, sir; записано-с → I have it written down, sir. The tenth, следователю ... и судьям-с, takes one sir for the pair. Alternative rejected: dropping it, which is what the clitic's own history in this project suggested would happen (RS-20260808b: Constance Garnett's published English deletes the deference clitic at every one of seven floor utterances in two other Chekhov stories, and the standing still transferred). The reason for keeping it is that sir is doing work here the clitic does not do — it is a word, addressed to a person, where -с is a syllable stuck on the end of any word at all, including ones addressed to nobody. The English marks the sentence; the Russian marks the syllable. I could not find an English device with that distribution.

D7. The honorific plural for a single person is carried as far as English lets it and no further. At господин мировой судья, ежели пожелают, могут тебя ... угнать Prishibeyev puts a singular man — the magistrate sitting three feet in front of him — into plural verbs, twice, as a mark of deference. English has a singular they, and I used it: if they should be so pleased, can have you up. The form survives and the mark does not. English singular they is unmarked for deference; a reader gets a slightly odd pronoun and no bow. Then Chekhov lets the plural lapse a sentence later (может, singular) and the English cannot show the lapse either, because can was never marked to begin with. Alternatives considered and rejected: his Worship, if he should be pleased to — which converts the grammatical mark into a lexical one and would have made the site look carried when it is not; and inverted word order, which marks nothing in English.

D8. изволите говорить / изволите знать → are pleased to say / as you are pleased to know. The deferential auxiliary has a real English equivalent and it is used. This is the one place where the Russian's grammatical deference has a same-category English slot, and the difference from D7 is worth recording: изволить is a verb, and English keeps verbs.

D9. Prishibeyev's ты to the constable is carried by nothing at all — five sites. He addresses Zhigin as ты throughout the reported quarrel (Отчего ты ... не даёшь, ты не знаешь, ты это сказывал, ты смеешь, ты можешь) while addressing the magistrate as вы. The whole social point of the scene is in that switch and English has one you. Where the Russian attached a word to the ты I have it — you fool (дурак этакой), you so-and-so (такой-сякой), brother (брат) — and where it did not, the English says you and the footing is gone.

D10. брат → brother, kept, and it is a downward marker. Now, I say, don't play jokes with me, or it will go badly with you, brother. Rejected mate, my lad, my friend: the first two are British-placed, the third is not the same threat.

D11. кавалер, addressed to a gendarme, defeated me and the English goes the wrong way. «Поди, говорю, сюда, кавалер» — кавалер here is a flattering address to a man wearing a decoration; Prishibeyev is ingratiating himself upward. Every English I could find for it — my brave fellow, my fine fellow, my man, soldier — is spoken downward, from a superior to an inferior. I wrote Step over here, my brave fellow, and it inverts the footing. Recorded as a loss with the direction named rather than repaired, because I do not have a repair: an English that flatters a policeman without patronising him wants a word English does not keep in stock.

D12. господин before a title is Mr and it is not dropped. Mr Justice of the Peace is stiff, and it should be: Prishibeyev is a man who says a rank whenever he can.

The voice

D13. The pleonasms are all kept. мёртвого трупа → a dead corpse; утоплый труп мёртвого человека → the drowned corpse of a dead man; куча разного народа людей → a heap of assorted folk of people; уголовное смертоубийство → a criminal murdering. These are the joke. Any tidying of them translates a different man.

D14. The bureaucratic nonsense is kept as nonsense. по всем статьям закона выходит причина аттестовать всякое обстоятельство во взаимности → by all the articles of the law there comes out cause to attest every circumstance in mutuality. It must not become a sentence that means something.

D15. Prishibeyev's ungrammatical Russian is not carried by ungrammatical English. людями for людьми, зубья for зубы, удавившие for удавившиеся, Которые крестьяне for Крестьяне, которые — four sub-standard forms, and the English is standard at all four except the last, where Which peasants sit with a light is odd enough to survive as a police-blotter idiom. The reason is D5's reason: nonstandard English morphology reads as place. The loss is real and this note is the only place it is visible.

D16. Наррод → Peo-ople. The doubled Russian r is a held consonant in a barked drill-command; English cannot hold p, so the length went onto the vowel. It is a respelling and D5 argues against respellings — the defence is that this one marks paralinguistic length, not dialect, and there is no dialect anywhere near it to be reinforced.

D17. мир in Всем миром жалимся → the whole commune. Not the whole world, though the pun is live in Russian and returns at [22] in мир изменился, where I wrote the world has changed. The two мирs are one word in the Russian and two in the English, and the story's last irony — Prishibeyev broken by the мир in both senses — is halved.

Unresolved at the freeze, for the revision to decide

1. Слушаю-с — Yes, sir is flat for a man who answers as though on parade. At your orders, sir was live and not taken.
2. указчик — overseer is a guess at a word that means "one who tells others what to do". Boss-about, director and him that lays down the law were all considered.
3. Аляпов, Пришибеев, Сверчок — three speaking names (аляповатый* "botched",пришибить"to strike down/cow",сверчок"cricket"), all left untranslated. Whether the register should translateСверчок` inside a police list of witches is open.
4. [8] is one paragraph of 640 Russian words and the English keeps it as one. Whether that is readable is a question for the revision.