Repository path: workshop/translations/zloumyshlennik/R26-v1/translation.md · rendered 2026-09-09

«Злоумышленник» under R26 — light ennoblement, one step and no more

• Source: as R06-v1. Anton Chekhov, «Злоумышленник» (1885), 1,074 Russian words.
• Regime: R26 v1.0 (light ennoblement), rules N1–N7, cited by number below.
• Translated by: the lead agent, as a labeled subject. Cost $0; not ledgered.
• Order of composition: written second, after R06 and before R25. R06's text was on disk when this was written and this arm is therefore not independent of it — see §Contamination and the sibling-arm figures.
• Contamination: suspected against published hands and known-high against R06, measured in workshop/experiments/E-20260815-register-room/dependence.json. No published rendering was read.
• Evaluation: workshop/experiments/E-20260815-register-room/design.md, wiki/findings/results/RS-20260815-register-room.md. The lead never judges its own translation.

Why this arm exists on this source. RS-20260814d measured R26 against R06 on Andersen's «Flipperne» and found the two arms 0.0833 apart where the Danish drops below its own level and 0.6667 apart where it sits at it. Its §6 explains the first number by span length: six of seven low sites in that tale are shorter than four words, and "a policy that raises by one step has nowhere to go inside a one-word shout." Chekhov's story is the test of that explanation, because its low register comes in both sizes — «Чаво?» three times, and Denis's 79-, 60- and 55-word speeches.

Translation

Before the examining magistrate stands a small, exceedingly thin peasant in a homespun shirt and patched trousers. His hairy, pockmarked face and his eyes, barely visible under thick, overhanging brows, have an expression of sullen severity. On his head is a whole thatch of long-uncombed, tangled hair, which gives him a still greater, spiderish severity. He is barefoot.

"Denis Grigoryev!" the magistrate begins. "Come closer and answer my questions. On the seventh of this July the railway watchman Ivan Semyonov Akinfov, walking along the line in the morning at the 141st verst, found you unscrewing a nut, by which the rails are fastened to the sleepers. Here it is, this nut!.. With which nut he then detained you. Was that how it was?"

"What was that?"

"Was it all as Akinfov explains it?"

"It was, to be sure."

"Good; well, and what were you unscrewing the nut for?"

"What was that?"

"Drop that 'what was that' of yours and answer the question! What were you unscrewing the nut for?"

"If it had not been needed, I would not have unscrewed it," Denis rasps, squinting up at the ceiling.

"And what did you need this nut for?"

"The nut? We make sinkers out of nuts…"

"Who's 'we'?"

"We, the people… the Klimovo peasants, that is."

"Listen, my man, don't play the idiot with me, talk sense. No lying to me about sinkers!"

"Never in my life have I told a lie, and now I am lying…" Denis mutters, blinking. "But is it possible to manage without a sinker, your honour? If you put a live bait or a worm on the hook, will it go to the bottom without a sinker? Lying…" Denis smiles. "What use is there in a live bait if it floats on the surface! Perch, pike and burbot always go along the bottom, and a bait that floats on the surface will be taken only by an asp, and even that rarely… There is no asp in our river… That fish is fond of room."

"What are you telling me about asp for?"

"What was that? Why, you are asking me yourself! The gentry fish in that way among us too. The very smallest boy will not fish for you without a sinker. Of course, a man who does not understand will go fishing without one. There is no law written for a fool…"

"So you say you unscrewed this nut in order to make a sinker out of it?"

"What else? It was not to play knucklebones with!"

"But for a sinker you could have taken lead, a bullet… some sort of nail…"

"Lead is not to be found lying in the road, it must be bought, and a nail will not do. There is nothing better than a nut… It is heavy, and it has a hole."

"What an idiot he's pretending to be! As if he was born yesterday or dropped out of the sky. Don't you understand, you stupid head, what this unscrewing leads to? If the watchman hadn't looked, the train might have gone off the rails, people would have been killed! You would have killed people!"

"God preserve us, your honour! Why should we kill? Are we unchristened, or villains of some sort? God be thanked, kind sir, we have lived out our lives and have not only never killed, but have never had such thoughts in our heads… Save us and have mercy, Queen of Heaven… What are you saying, sir!"

"And what do you suppose train wrecks happen from? Unscrew two or three nuts and there's your wreck!"

Denis smiles and screws up his eyes at the magistrate incredulously.

"Well! For how many years now the whole village has been unscrewing nuts, and the Lord has preserved us, and now a wreck… killed people… If I had carried off a rail, or, let us say, laid a log across her track, well, then perhaps the train would have been turned over, but this… pah! a nut!"

"But do understand, the rail is fastened to the sleepers with nuts!"

"That we understand… We do not unscrew them all… we leave some… We do not do it without sense… we understand…"

Denis yawns and crosses his mouth.

"Last year a train went off the rails here," says the magistrate. "Now it's clear why…"

"What is your pleasure?"

"Now, I say, it's clear why the train went off the rails last year… I understand!"

"That is what you are educated for, to understand, our benefactors… The Lord knew to whom to give understanding… You have reasoned out the how and the what, while the watchman is a peasant like any other, with no understanding at all — he seizes you by the collar and drags you off… Reason first, and drag afterwards! It is said — a peasant, and a peasant's wit… Write down as well, your honour, that he struck me twice in the teeth and in the chest."

"When they searched your place, they found another nut… Where did you unscrew that one, and when?"

"Is that the one that was lying under the little red chest?"

"I don't know where it was lying, only it was found. When did you unscrew it?"

"I did not unscrew that one; Ignashka, the son of one-eyed Semyon, gave it me. That is the one under the chest; and the one in the sledge in the yard, that one Mitrofan and I unscrewed together."

"Which Mitrofan?"

"Mitrofan Petrov… Have you not heard of him? He makes seines and sells them to the gentry. He requires a great many of these same nuts. Ten to a seine, near enough…"

"Listen… Article 1081 of the code of punishments states that for any wilfully committed damage to a railway, when it may endanger the transport travelling on that railway and the guilty party knew that the consequence of it must be a disaster… you understand? knew! And you could not but have known what this unscrewing leads to… he is sentenced to penal servitude with exile."

"Of course, you know better… We are dark people… how should we understand?"

"You understand everything! You're lying, pretending!"

"Why should I lie? Ask in the village, if you do not believe me… It is only bleak that are caught without a sinker, and what is worse than a gudgeon, yet even a gudgeon will not come to you without one."

"Tell me about the asp again!" the magistrate smiles.

"The asp is not found among us… We let the line out without a sinker, on the surface of the water, with a fly, and a chub comes, and even that rarely."

"Now, be quiet…"

A silence falls. Denis shifts from foot to foot, looks at the table with its green baize and blinks hard, as though it were not baize before him but the sun. The magistrate writes rapidly.

"Am I to go?" Denis asks after some silence.

"No. I must take you into custody and send you to prison."

Denis stops blinking and, raising his thick brows, looks questioningly at the official.

"That is, how do you mean, to prison? Your honour! I have no time, I must go to the fair; I have three roubles to receive from Yegor for the lard…"

"Be quiet, don't interrupt."

"To prison… If there were anything to go for, I would go, but as it is… for no reason at all… What for? I have not stolen, it seems, and I have not been fighting… And if it is the arrears you are in doubt about, your honour, do not believe the village elder… Ask the gentleman, the permanent member… There is no cross upon him, upon that elder…"

"Be quiet!"

"I am being quiet…" Denis mutters. "But that the elder told falsehoods in the accounts, that I would swear to… There are three of us brothers: Kuzma Grigoryev, then, Yegor Grigoryev, and I, Denis Grigoryev…"

"You're interrupting me… Hey, Semyon!" the magistrate shouts. "Take him away!"

"There are three of us brothers," Denis mutters as two burly soldiers take him and lead him out of the chamber. "A brother is not answerable for a brother… Kuzma does not pay, and you, Denis, must answer for it… Judges! The old master, the general, is dead, God rest him, or he would have shown you judges… One must judge with knowledge, not at random… Flog me, if you will, but let it be for a reason, in conscience…"

Translator's log

Frozen with the draft, before the evaluation was designed. Coverage codes per R26 §5b: P the rule set predicted it · D deviation, with reason · INT decided by an interpretation of the source · L a loss the rule set caused.

The governing fact about this source, and it decided the shape of the whole arm. N1's second clause — where the source is neutral, the English is neutral — is the rule that separates R26 from R25, and on this story it does something drastic: two of the three voices are untouched. Chekhov's narration is neutral literary Russian and the magistrate's speech is neutral-to-chancery. N1 leaves both exactly where R06 put them. So R26 acts on one voice only, and that voice is the one the story is about. I did not choose this; it fell out of the rule.

That is worth stating plainly because it is the opposite of what happened on «Flipperne», where the rule's visible work was in the narration.

(L overlaps the other codes: a loss is recorded on the decision that caused it.)

Denis

1. «Чаво?» → What was that? P, N3. R06 has Eh?. N3 asks for "an ordinary complete English exclamation — the minimum that stops it reading as a bark", and What was that? is that minimum. This is the arm's most consequential single decision, because the magistrate then quotes the phrase back («Ты это своё «чаво» брось») and the quotation had to follow, which makes the magistrate's line the one place where a rule about Denis reaches into another voice. L: the mispronunciation is gone in both arms; here the class marking goes with it.
2. «Знамо, было» → It was, to be sure. P, N1. R06: Sure it was. One step: the dialect particle becomes an ordinary written English tag.
3. «Коли б не нужна была, не отвинчивал бы» → If it had not been needed, I would not have unscrewed it. P, N1. The contractions go. This is the device that does most of the work in this arm and it is nearly invisible one instance at a time: across Denis's 26 turns the count falls from 49 to 0 (counts.py, verbal and negative contractions only, genitives excluded), which is a change to almost every sentence he speaks and to no word anyone would point at.
4. «Мы, народ…» → We, the people… P, N1; R06 had Us, the people. The case error goes.
5. «Отродясь не врал, а тут вру» → Never in my life have I told a lie, and now I am lying. P, N1. Inversion, and told a lie for lied. Note that N4 forbids expansion and this is the same number of clauses.
6. «Да нешто… можно без грузила?» → But is it possible to manage without a sinker? P, N1. «нешто» is the dialectal interrogative particle; it has no English word at any register, and at R06 I dropped it too. L, shared with R06.
7. «Чёрт ли в нём, в живце-то» → What use is there in a live bait… P, N1 and N3. The devil goes out. L — and a real one: Denis swears exactly twice in the story and this is one.
8. «поверху плавать будет» → floats on the surface (R06: swims on top). P, N1.
9. «Эта рыба простор любит» → That fish is fond of room. P, N1; R06 likes room. INT on room: I kept R06's noun rather than moving to open water, because N4 forbids expansion and open water is two words explaining one.
10. «Самый последний мальчишка не станет тебе без грузила ловить» → The very smallest boy will not fish for you without a sinker. P, N1. The ethical dative «тебе» survives as for you in both arms.
11. «Не в бабки ж играть!» → It was not to play knucklebones with! P, N3 — the bare fragment becomes a formed sentence. R06 left it a fragment. This is a clean instance of the one thing N3 does, and it is 4 words longer.
12. «Избави господи» → God preserve us (R06: God forbid). P, N1/N3.
13. «Слава те господи» → God be thanked (R06: Thanks be to God). P. «те» is the substandard clitic; neither arm carries it. L, shared.
14. «не токмо что убивать, но и мыслей таких… не было» → have not only never killed, but have never had such thoughts… P, N1. «токмо» is archaic-peasant; the English correlative pair is ordinary written English, which is exactly one step up.
15. «тьфу! гайка!» → pah! a nut! D, N3 not applied. N3 would form this into a sentence and I did not: it is Denis's second oath, it is a spat consonant, and forming it would have destroyed the only place in the story where he interrupts himself with a noise. Deviation recorded with its reason, per §5b.
16. «ейного пути» → her track. D, N1 not applied. The substandard possessive is below the source's neutral and N1 would raise it to its. I kept R06's her, because her for a train is not substandard English but nautical-familiar English, and raising it would have removed a correspondence rather than a solecism. L either way.
17. «Мне идтить?» → Am I to go? P, N1; R06 Can I go?. The substandard infinitive cannot be carried at any register (L, shared with R06), but Am I to go? is the form a man asks in when he is not sure he is free to.
18. «набрехал в учёте» → told falsehoods in the accounts (R06: lied about the accounts). P, N1. L: брехать is what dogs do, and told falsehoods is further from the dog than lied is. The clearest case in the arm of N1 costing something.
19. «Надо судить умеючи, не зря» → One must judge with knowledge, not at random. P, N1; R06: You have to judge knowing how, not just anyhow. The impersonal one is the one-step form; R06's you is the colloquial one.
20. «Хоть и высеки, но чтоб за дело, по совести» → Flog me, if you will, but let it be for a reason, in conscience. P, N1. R06 has Flog me, even. The familiar singular imperative to a magistrate is not carriable in English (L, shared) and this remains the largest loss in both arms.

The magistrate, and the narration

21. The magistrate's turns are R06's, verbatim, with one forced exception — the quoted «чаво» at decision 1. P, N1: his Russian is neutral-to-chancery, and neutral stays.
22. «усмехается» → smiles (R06: grins). P, N1 — grins is below neutral written English and «усмехается» is not. Two occurrences, both changed.
23. «мужичонко» → thin peasant (R06: scrawny little peasant). D — I applied N1 to a narration word, which N1's second clause says not to do. Reason: scrawny is below neutral in English and «тощий» is not, so this is not raising the neutral but restoring it. Recorded as a deviation anyway, because the rule as written did not license it and a reader of this log should be able to see that I made the call.
24. Everything else in the narration is R06's, verbatim. P, N1.

The numbers the rules require

• N4 (do not expand), checked numerically per §5e and computed by counts.py: 1,074 Russian words → 1,429 English, ratio 1.331, against R06's 1.300 and R25's 1.756. The R26 − R06 difference is +0.031, i.e. 33 words in 1,396. N4 holds, and the contrast with R25 is the whole point of the arm: the light rule adds 2.4% to the length and the heavy one adds 35.1%.
• N6 (content complete), checked clause by clause per §5c: no fact, participant, event or causal relation differs between this arm and the source. One place was checked twice and passed — decision 14, where the correlative pair could have been read as adding an assertion; it does not.
• N7 (neither parodic nor flat), checked in both directions per §5d. Nearest to burlesque: decision 5, Never in my life have I told a lie, where the inversion in a peasant's mouth comes close to mock-dignity; kept, because the Russian «отродясь» is itself an emphatic and Denis is being emphatic. Nearest to flat: decision 8, where floats on the surface twice in three lines is duller English than R06's swims on top; kept, because N1 governs and the dullness is the rule's, not an accident.

One observation about the rule set, made while translating and before any evaluation exists (internal-judgment-only): N1 on this source is almost entirely a rule about grammar, not about words. Of the 20 decisions on Denis's speech, the ones that changed a word are 2, 7, 12, 13, 18 and 22; the rest changed a contraction, an inversion, a case, a tense, or turned a fragment into a sentence. The lexicon of a peasant's speech in English is not where his register lives.