English translation — complete

This folder holds the complete English translation of Biryukov’s Biography of L. N. Tolstoy, Volume III: one chapter-NN.md per Russian source file in ../ru/. All 22 chapters are translated (Parts I–IV). Chapter 18 is the approved quality sample and the worked reference for the conventions below. See the volume index for chapter titles, word counts, and capture notes, and translation-notes.md for the editorial ledger of non-obvious calls.

Translation spec

Carry over the approach that worked for the Doukhobor sections (../../extracts/biryukov-biography-doukhobors-EN.md):

• Faithful and complete — no abridging, no summarising.
• Render Biryukov’s verbatim quotations of Tolstoy’s letters and diaries as Markdown block quotes (they are primary Tolstoy text, public domain).
• Names: standard English / Library of Congress forms — Doukhobors, Verigin, Khilkov, Chertkov, Tregubov, Maude, Sulerzhitsky; the Caucasus, Tiflis, Kars, Cyprus, Canada.
• Preserve dates, paragraph structure, and footnote numbering.
• Keep each chapter’s # H1 and any ## Часть divider, translated.
• The ru/ capture is continuous (the JS-encoded fragments were decoded), so the bracketed “[… the source drops the opening of this sentence …]” notes used in the earlier Doukhobor-only translation should rarely be needed; add such a note only where a genuine gap remains, and flag any non-narrative cruft.
• Source fidelity for suspect readings. Silently restore only garbled / nonsense tokens to their obviously-intended word (e.g. издержать → “preserve”, flans → flancs, “Commonnal wealth” → “Commonwealth”, Коппе → Coppée). But for source values that are themselves valid yet probably mistaken — a real title, a plausible numeral, a name — reproduce the source literally (e.g. Bjørnson’s «Король» → The King, not the conjectural Beyond Human Power; Resurrection “chapters XXXIX and XI”, not the conjectural XL). No conjectural substitution, and no inline editorial bracket inside quotes.

Suggested execution

≈178k Russian words → ≈235k English (chapter 18 ran 1.33× — Russian is the more compact language, so the English is longer, not shorter). Dispatch per-chapter translation agents in parallel (model opus), each writing its own chapter-NN.md against the locked conventions above; verify each against the Russian before presenting. Budget ≈30k Russian words (≈4 average chapters) per session to keep the verification pass honest. Keep these files public-self-contained — no links into _generated/.