Repository path: workshop/translations/zapiski-oct3/R19-v2/translation.md · rendered 2026-09-09

T-zapiski-oct3-R19-v2 — the same paragraph, specification A: the five named carriers moved

• Source. Identical to T-zapiski-oct3-R19-v1: Gogol, «Записки сумасшедшего», Октября 3 ¶1, 306 Russian words, materials/source.txt.
• Regime. R19 v1.0. Specification A — MOVE K1 register, K2 rhythm, K3 diction temperature, K4 idiosyncrasy, K5 distance; HOLD K6 self-knowledge. Single pass, no revision.
• Drafting order and the dependence it creates (R19 Q4). C was written first. This member was written from the Russian, with C's propositional inventory in view, because propositional parity cannot be achieved otherwise. It is therefore not an independent second translation of this paragraph, and any wording it shares with C is carryover, not convergence.
• Dialect: British English, as C. Register point is the declared MOVE and is the one thing this member is licensed to take off the baseline.
• Translated by the lead agent, in session. Cost $0; not ledgered.
• No published rendering was read before all three members and their logs were frozen.

The present day has been the occasion of a most singular incident. Having risen at a somewhat advanced hour, and Mavra having delivered my boots in a cleaned condition, I enquired as to the time; and on being informed that ten o'clock had long since struck, I completed my dress with such expedition as was possible. It must be confessed that I should not have proceeded to the department at all, being aware in advance of the disagreeable expression which our head of section would assume. It has long been his practice to address me, and in the familiar form, in these terms: that my head is perpetually in a condition of disorder; that I am upon occasion precipitate in my movements; that I have been known to confuse a case beyond the capacity of Satan himself to disentangle; that I have written a title with a small initial, and have omitted both the date and the number. The man is a heron, and it is to be presumed that he is moved by envy at the circumstance that I am seated in the Director's own cabinet and prepare the quills for His Excellency. In sum, I should not have proceeded to the department but for the expectation of an interview with the treasurer, and of obtaining from that Jew some portion of my salary in advance of the term. He is a creature of a certain description. That he should disburse a month's money before its date is a thing less probable than the arrival of the Last Judgment; a petitioner may solicit him to the point of rupture, may be in the extremity of want, and will obtain nothing, grey devil that he is. It is further to be observed that in his own lodging his cook administers blows to his face, a circumstance universally known. The advantages of service in a department are not apparent to me. Resources are entirely wanting. In the provincial board, and in the civil and treasury chambers, the case is altogether otherwise: there an individual may be observed established in a corner and engaged in writing. His coat is of a contemptible description and his countenance such as to provoke disgust, and yet the country house which he rents is of quite another order. A cup of gilt porcelain is not to be offered to such a person, it being his practice to describe that article as a present suitable to a physician; his requirements extend to a pair of trotting horses, or a droshky, or a beaver to the value of three hundred roubles. His demeanour is of the mildest and his address of the most delicate — a request for the loan of a knife, for the mending of a pen — and the petitioner is thereafter stripped of all he has but his shirt. It remains the case that our own service is a noble one, and that it maintains a cleanliness in all things which the provincial board will never at any period attain: the desks are of mahogany, and every superior employs the polite form of address. It must be confessed that but for the nobility of the service I should have quitted the department long since.

Translator's log

Frozen before any evaluation of this triple was designed. Decisions and alternatives, not quality claims.

The five moves, and what each cost

K6 was held, and here is the check on it

The HOLD is the whole point of this member, so the sites where self-knowledge could have leaked are listed rather than asserted to be absent:

1. The jealousy gloss. C: He is jealous — jealous that I sit in the Director's own study. Here: it is to be presumed that he is moved by envy at the circumstance that I am seated... To be presumed is a formality, not a hedge — the presumption is still his and he still makes it without noticing that it flatters him.
2. The errand. Obtaining from that Jew some portion of my salary in advance of the term is the same act C names, in office language. C's verb was wheedling and it was kept out of A for register, not for self-knowledge — and the substitution is nonetheless a HOLD strain, because a man who says obtaining is telling himself less than a man who says wheedling. It is recorded here as the one place where the register move may have carried K6 with it, and it is the site the manipulation check should be read against first.
3. The denunciation. The provincial clerk is condemned at the same length and with the same charges, and no sentence connects the condemnation to the errand three sentences above it. The connection is the reader's to make in both members.
4. The close. It remains the case that our own service is a noble one asserts the nobility flatly. No marking, no irony, no self-quotation.

Two things that could not be moved

• Site 9 of C's log (the slur) is held identical, by construction: it is neither register nor rhythm nor temperature, and moving it would have been a content change.
• Site 16 (the T/V loss) is held identical in fact and moved in surface: every superior employs the polite form of address. The English is now more explicit about the form than C's speaking to you politely — and the category is still absent. A register lift cannot restore a missing grammatical category; it can only make the periphrasis sound more official. (internal-judgment-only)