Translation notes — editorial judgment calls

Editorial decisions made while translating Biryukov’s Biography of L. N. Tolstoy, Volume III, into English (see README.md for the locked conventions and the Policy-A source-fidelity rule). This file records calls where the source is ambiguous or suspect and a choice had to be made, so the reasoning stays traceable.

Chapter 9 — «соска» and «преувеличивать»

Two calls in the Part II batch (2026-05-27):

• «соска» → “the dummy.” A first draft glossed the word inside Marya Lvovna’s quoted letter as “the [infant’s] dummy”; the bracket was removed in review, because the README forbids editorial brackets inside quotations (and the same word is rendered bracket-free, “a passage about the dummy,” a few lines later in the chapter).
• «преувеличивать» → “magnify.” Tolstoy’s closing diary-prayer reads «Дело же Твое в том, чтобы преувеличивать силу Твою в себе и во всем мире». «Преувеличивать» literally means “to exaggerate” — a valid word, so strict Policy A would reproduce it as “exaggerate.” But in English “exaggerate Thy power” carries a false connotation of overstatement that is absent in the devotional Russian, whereas “magnify” is the verb English prayer uses for enlarging/extolling divine power (cf. the Magnificat). Decision (Johan, 2026-05-27): keep “magnify” as the more faithful rendering of the sense.

Also preserved literally: the two distinct working titles of The Fruits of Enlightenment — «Исхитрилась» (sg.) → She Got Out of It and «Исхитрились» (pl.) → They Got Out of It — reproducing the source’s differing forms rather than normalising them to one.

Chapter 10 — «Перле»/«Кройдоне» and the Acts 4:32 citation

• «Перле» → “Purleigh,” «Кройдоне» → “Croydon.” The garbled transliterations are restored to the real English places — the Tolstoyan Brotherhood-Church agricultural colony at Purleigh, Essex (the source itself locates it «недалеко от Лондона, в Эссексе»), and Croydon. Under Policy A these are garbled tokens restored to their obviously-intended word, not valid-but-suspect values.
• Acts IV, 32 rendered as a block quote. Biryukov introduces the verse exactly as he introduces Tolstoy’s verbatim letters (introduction + colon + quoted text), so it is set as a Markdown block quote like every other verbatim citation in the chapter. (A first draft left it inline, citing a ch.18 precedent for run-in Scripture that does not actually exist.)

Chapter 11 — What Is Truth (no question mark), and literal readings kept

• «Что есть истина» → What Is Truth, without a question mark — applied corpus-wide. The chapter narrates that N. N. Ge deliberately titled the painting «без вопросительного знака», reading Pilate’s line as an ironic statement rather than a question; the RU never prints the “?”. Decision (Johan, 2026-05-27): drop the “?” everywhere — ch.11 (H1 and in-text), the passing mention in ch.12, and the volume index — for fidelity and internal consistency, even though the painting is conventionally known in English as “What Is Truth?”.
• Literal Scripture references. «1 посл. Иоанн, 14» → “1 Epistle of John, 14” is reproduced as the source gives it, though it is almost certainly meant as 1 John 3:14; likewise “John, XVIII, 38” and “Matt., ch. VI” — no conjectural correction (Policy A).
• Garbled English inside Tolstoy’s own quotations kept literal. Emerson’s “I can get alone without it” (for “get along”) and Swift’s “the best fruit which the birds have pitching it” sit inside Tolstoy’s verbatim diary/letter, so they are kept as primary-text artifacts, with the RU’s meaning-gloss carried in the (* … *) footnote, rather than silently corrected.
• Out-of-order prayer-diary dates (16 July → 30 June → 5 July → …) are reproduced in the source’s order, not re-sorted.

Chapter 12 — French OCR restoration, and the renunciation numerals

• Heavy French restoration in Alexandra Andreyevna Tolstaya’s quoted speech (and Turgenev’s saying). The source’s French is badly corrupted (dropped accents, Cyrillic «се» for «ce», OCR garble such as «cuibite» → culbuté, «eronnee» → étonnée). Each token was repaired to standard accented French as garble-repair under Policy A; no grammar that was actually present was rewritten. Turgenev’s saying is kept in French in the body with the Russian gloss rendered as an English footnote, parallel to the chapter’s other two French passages (a first draft had translated it into the body, leaving the footnote redundant).
• Literal numerals/dates kept: “5,000” (the running-the-gauntlet diary entry); the renunciation declaration’s “XIIth volume of the 1886 edition” and “XIIIth volume … 1891.”
• «Екатер. губ.» → “Yekaterinoslav Province” — an obvious abbreviation expanded (consistent with Feinerman’s documented move to that province).

Chapter 16 — «Прудки осин» → “Prudki” (treated as a place name)

In a quoted diary/letter passage, L. N. writes that one evening he rode «на Осиновую гору и Прудки осин». «Осиновую гору» is rendered as the toponym “Osinovaya Hill.” The parallel destination «Прудки осин» is ambiguous in the source (lowercase, no capitalisation to mark a proper name):

• Literal/common-noun sense: «Прудки» = “little ponds,” «осин» = genitive plural of осина (aspen) → “ponds of aspens” / “aspen ponds.”
• Toponym sense: «Прудки» is a common Russian village name; paired with a named hill as a riding destination, the phrase most plausibly names a place.

Decision (Johan, 2026-05-27): treat it as a place. Rendered “Prudki,” for consistency with the parallel toponym “Osinovaya Hill” and with Policy A (prefer literal reproduction of a valid-but-suspect source value over a conjectural common-noun gloss). The descriptive «осин» (“of aspens”) is not separately transliterated; it is recorded here as the residual ambiguity. The first draft had read “the aspen ponds.”

Chapter 1 — preface, the 51-source bibliography, and literal numerals

The volume’s structurally unusual opener (Biryukov’s Author’s Preface to Vol. III + a numbered 51-entry source bibliography + the ## Part I divider + the chapter narrative, in that order). Calls in the Part-I / Part-II-tail batch (2026-05-27):

• «trouble fete» → trouble-fête, no reader gloss. The dropped hyphen/accents are repaired to the real French (garble under Policy A), but the word is kept in the body without a bracketed gloss — Biryukov supplies none, and the README forbids editorial brackets inside quotations. (Translator and reviewer concurred.)
• Bibliography entry 22: «т. 11» → “vol. 11” (literal). A first draft silently normalised Koni’s On Life’s Path «т. 11» to the probably-intended “vol. II”; reverted to the literal “vol. 11” under Policy A (reproduce plausible numerals literally; no conjectural substitution — cf. the Resurrection “XXXIX and XI” precedent). The likely “II” reading is recorded here, not in the text.
• Other bibliography entries reproduced literally (valid-but-suspect real-world strings, not nonsense garble): 30) “Staddling … James Clark et C№” (prob. Stadling / Clarke & Co.); 31) “Cassel & C№” (prob. Cassell); 37/38/44) French titles with dropped accents; 39) “Kuhne … Denkweis” (prob. Kühne / Denkweise); 40) “Luxembourg, Rosa … Nachlasz” (prob. Luxemburg / Nachlass); 41) “G-ie” (= Cie); 42) “Esser” (?Essor); 51) “Tuckton House Tuckton” (repeated word kept).
• «сочинения неопровержимыми» → “the works … irrefutable” (plural). A first draft smoothed the plural to “the work”; restored to the literal plural.
• «Симурден» → Cimourdain (Hugo, Quatrevingt-treize), and the stray «ј» in «Библиографический указательј» dropped — garble-repairs under Policy A.
• Matt 5:45, quoted inside Biryukov’s own sentence (not introduced as verbatim Tolstoy text), is rendered inline rather than as a block quote — per the ch.10 principle that block-quoting is triggered by the introduce-and-colon framing.

Chapter 7 — a mis-set narrative line, and a faithful dangling colon

• Quote-boundary fix. Biryukov’s own remark «Какой парадокс! И, однако, он в него верил.» (“What a paradox! And yet he believed in it.”) had been wrapped as a block quote with an orphan opening quote mark; reset to plain narrative. That orphan mark was the displaced close of Alexandra Andreyevna’s preceding reminiscence, which is now closed at its proper end; her second excerpt, split by a (* … *) footnote, is treated as one quotation (no re-opening quote mark at the resumption).
• Dangling colon kept. The medicine letter to Chertkov ends in the source with «…решение их в душе каждого:» — a trailing colon with no continuation before the next paragraph. The RU capture itself dangles (verified), so the colon is reproduced literally rather than “completed” (Policy A).
• French OCR in Alexandra Andreyevna’s quoted exchanges repaired to standard accented French (garble-repair, as in ch.12): «suis»→sois, «par»→pas, «та gloire»→ma gloire, «Nabuchodonsor»→Nabuchodonosor, and similar.

Chapter 8 — «Николай Палкин» house form, and the vinovat pun

• «Николай Палкин» → Nikolai Palkin, no gloss — applied corpus-wide. A first draft glossed Tolstoy’s article as Nikolai the Stick. Decision (Johan, 2026-05-27): use the standard transliterated title Nikolai Palkin everywhere, with no descriptive gloss — for fidelity (Policy A favours the title value), for the conventional English title, and for consistency with the ch.5 index entry “Palkin”. The pre-existing occurrence in ch.14 (« “Nicholas Stick” (Nikolai Palkin) ») was normalised to Nikolai Palkin to match.
• The «Виноват…/вино» pun — diminuendo + a translator’s footnote. Tolstoy opens a letter «Виноват… винов… вино… вин…», trailing off from vinovat (“at fault”) through vino (“wine”) to the bare letter в. Rendered as the English diminuendo “Guilty… guilt… gui… gu… g…” (the vino layer cannot survive). Decision (Johan, 2026-05-27): add a (* … *) translator’s footnote flagging the lost wordplay — the corpus’s first net-new explanatory footnote (as opposed to footnotes that reproduce Biryukov’s own). Russian terms are transliterated in it to keep the EN body Cyrillic-free.
• The source’s own initial-switch in the Rakhmanov memoir («матери М. Н.» … then «матери П.») is reproduced literally, not normalised.

Chapter 2 — the doubled title «Так что же нам делать?» / «Что же нам делать?»

The volume’s recurring book title appears in two Russian forms: the full «Так что же нам делать?» (H1 + narration) and a shorter colloquial «Что же нам делать?» — the latter inside two verbatim Tolstoy letters and as the second half of the doubled exclamation «”Так что же нам делать? Что же нам делать?”». Both are rendered uniformly as What Then Must We Do?: the «Так» (“so/then”) is already carried idiomatically by “then,” both forms map naturally onto the one English title, and a bare “What must we do?” would read to an English reader as a different work. Decision (Johan, 2026-05-27): keep the uniform title and document the deliberate flattening here, rather than vary the short form, for readability. (Recorded because the title recurs corpus-wide.)

Chapter 3 — a reversed proverb-title, a literal Rousseau title, a bracket-free gloss

• «Упустишь огонь — не погасишь» → “If You Let the Fire Slip, You Won’t Put It Out.” A first draft read “Let the Fire Go Out and You Cannot Put It Out,” which reverses the sense — the proverb is about a neglected/escaped spark becoming an unquenchable blaze, not a fire dying out. Corrected to a literal rendering of «упустишь… не погасишь». (The conventional published English title is “A Spark Neglected Burns the House”; the literal form is kept, per the corpus’s preference for the source’s own wording.)
• Rousseau «Confession» → Confession (literal singular). Inside Tolstoy’s verbatim letter the source reads «”Emile” и “Confession”». A draft pluralised it to the standard Confessions; reverted to the literal singular under Policy A — a valid-but-suspect real title inside a quotation, the strongest literal zone (cf. the ch.11 “garbled English inside Tolstoy’s own quotations kept literal”). The adjacent «Emile» → Émile is a clean accent garble-repair and stands.
• «посланничество» → “mission,” no translator bracket. A draft glossed it “the doctrine of mission [poslannichestvo, ‘being sent’].” The bracket sat in Biryukov’s narration (not inside a quote, so not a strict README violation), but it broke the corpus’s consistent bracket-free discipline (cf. «trouble-fête», «соска», «Николай Палкин», all kept gloss-free). Recast in Biryukov’s own voice as “the doctrine of mission — of being sent”; the quoted sentences that follow gloss the term in Tolstoy’s own words.

Chapter 4 — name and number tensions in the source, preserved literally

• Zalyubovsky. Biryukov’s narration names the conscientious objector «Алексей Петрович Залюбовский» (“Alexei Petrovich Zalyubovsky”); Tolstoy’s quoted letter names his correspondent «Анат. Петров. Залюбовского» (“Anat. Petrov. Zalyubovsky”), the objector’s brother. The two differing names are reproduced as the source gives them, not harmonised (Policy A).
• “four days” vs “five days.” Tolstoy’s quoted letter says Frey stayed four days; Frey’s own account says five. Both preserved, not reconciled.
• «индейцы» → “the Indians” (literal). In the spiritualism postscript, amid Schopenhauer, mystics and “Indian wisdom,” the word most likely means Indian/Hindu sages, but the source’s own loose «индейцы» is reproduced literally rather than disambiguated.

Chapter 5 — «Ч. Н. Д.» kept as literal initials

• «продолжение статьи Ч. Н. Д.» → “the continuation of the article Ch. N. D.“ A first draft rendered the initials as What Men Live By, which is impossible: that is a finished 1881 folk tale (not a «статья» being “continued” in 1886), and its initials would be Ч.Л.Ж., not Ч.Н.Д. The initials, the “article” genre, and the spring-1886 dating all converge on «Что [же] нам делать» = What Then Must We Do?, the long article Tolstoy was then still expanding. Decision (Johan, 2026-05-27): reproduce the bare initials literally as Ch. N. D. — Policy A forbids conjecturally substituting a title for a valid-but-suspect source value (parallel to the ch.1 «т. 11» → “vol. 11” call). The near-certain What Then Must We Do? reading is recorded here, not in the text.
• Cross-chapter consistency note: «XII том» is spelled “the twelfth volume” in ch.5 but “volume XII” in ch.3; both acceptable, left as written.

Chapter 6 — the «писаной торбой» idiom, dog removed

• «как с писаной торбой» → “like a painted feed-bag.” A first draft read “like a dog with a painted feed-bag,” inserting a dog absent from the Russian idiom (which means fussing over something worthless as if precious) and breaking Tolstoy’s own image — «она [торба] болтается перед ногами» (“it dangles before their feet”), where the dangling thing is the feed-bag (the faculty of thought), not a dog. The invented animal was removed.