Inputs read: chapter text, reading guide, voice cards, packet, chapter card, tic state, gate report, and Chapter 09 as the June close-third calibration sample. The audit below is the deliverable.

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# Plain-Translation Audit — Chapter 11, "Categories"

id: plain_translation | owner: claude | tier: risk | stage: drafter
chapter: `output/chapters/chapter_11.md` | mechanical gate: 0 open findings, 51 WATCH (non-blocking)
calibration sources used by name: **June voice card** (`style_and_voice.md`, Voice Card — June Park, incl. Dialogue Spec and operation snapshot), **Ch09 "Local Work" close-third sample** (`chapter_09.md` ¶1–¶8: blade/tape/toggle-hole/value-run material), **plain-speech floor** (READING_GUIDE §2), **Ruth Kim / Sam Rivera / Priya Nair / Ben Adler voice cards**, **comedy register** (READING_GUIDE §2 tone; warmth floor §8).
Locked text: none declared by calibration for this chapter — no LOCKED entries; every paragraph audited.

## Form map

Narration is June close-third throughout (no narrator-essay form present). Dialogue blocks are conversation form, checked only against the plain-speech floor and the speakers' voice cards, never against literary clarity. One documentary-adjacent insert (the kraft ticket and the half-sheet form fields, ¶5/¶13) checked against its own form: form fields rendered verbatim in caps.

## Paragraph verdicts

- `HOLDS — "The repaired corner was better than it had any right to be..." — sample compared: Ch09 ¶1 (blade/score/peel opening) + June voice card (visual nouns, craft verdicts) — binding-register rewrite is worse because: "She checked the repaired corner and found it solid" loses miter/spline/re-glue and the worn-gold-vs-bright toning fact, which is the chapter's entire category argument planted as craft. One sentence in this paragraph fails the Aphorism Gate separately — see gate section; the paragraph otherwise holds.`

- `HOLDS — "That's Aiello senior. Nobody tells him anything." / DOM tape — sample compared: comedy register (character/situation-sourced) + June card ("accurate, cheap, removable" is her triadic craft-verdict shape, cf. Ch09 "fill, cross-stroke, leave it a hair proud") — binding-register rewrite is worse because: "June approved of the improvised name tag" deletes the three exact criteria that make the joke hers and not a narrator's.`

- `HOLDS — "Aiello Frame & Glass was on Orchard Street..." — sample compared: Ch09 ¶4 (the job described in worker's terms) — binding-register rewrite is worse because: "The shop was small and crowded" loses "roughly the width of a parked van," the pegboard L-shapes walnut-to-ramin-to-gold, the sightline-to-door blocking (June's exit-noticing per card), and the self-correction "Probably not. It was older than Dom," which is the card's self-interruption tic doing real work.`

- `HOLDS — "Three frames were going back to Marchetti Rooms..." — sample compared: documentary insert form (ticket caps, cf. Ch09 GALLERY WHITE lid) — binding-register rewrite is worse because: paraphrasing the ticket loses the dated, paid-in-full specificity that makes the errand real and the Saturday concrete.`

- `HOLDS — conversation block "You want paper, or paper and board?" through "the principle of the dollar" — sample compared: plain-speech floor + comedy register — binding-register rewrite is worse because: every line is already functional speech; June's "It's twelve blocks of Saturday" and "Either the glass arrives or it doesn't" are honest-warning-dressed-as-joke per her card's care move. "It's the principle of the dollar" is Dom-sourced situational comedy, speakable, not a zinger. Ordinary lines remain ordinary; nothing here to translate down.`

- `HOLDS — "June was there because she knew how to carry glass..." — sample compared: June voice card (self-deflecting plainness; "jokes aimed at herself") — HIGH-RISK ¶1 of 5. Binding-register rewrite attempted: "She had said yes quickly because she wanted to be there." Worse because: it names the want the card says June cannot yet name; "typed I'm in before she reached the part about timing. She was choosing to call that efficiency" performs the deflection visibly *as* deflection (READING_GUIDE §2), which is the binding move. The rewrite is plainer and falser to the wound.`

- `HOLDS — "Ruth stood at the register end... and it was Ruth's." — sample compared: chapter card ("arrangement legible through action... paperwork, emergencies, pickup names") + Ruth/Sam cards — HIGH-RISK ¶2 of 5. Binding-register rewrite attempted: "They clearly functioned as partners without saying so." Worse because: that is a caption; the original proves it with the ticket, the order number known without looking, and the simultaneous callback number. Density strictly higher in the original; zero interpretation added.`

- `HOLDS — conversation block "Dom slid a half-sheet across..." through "It was the nicest thing about him." — sample compared: plain-speech floor + Sam card ("Put 'authorized'" = access protection in plain words) + Ruth card ("Abbreviate" = her economy under category pressure) — binding-register rewrite is worse because: the form fields (RELEASED TO / RELATIONSHIP TO TICKET HOLDER) carry the category pressure literally, as the card orders; "Box is small" / "Abbreviate" is the chapter's thesis enacted in four words of shop talk with no thesis stated. June's closing tag "It was the nicest thing about him" is her dry register, not narrator wit.`

- `HOLDS — "We do both numbers now," Sam said... "I was forty feet from the desk." — sample compared: Sam voice card (stress response: "names the issue softly"; sample "I think quiet cost us something this time") — binding-register rewrite is worse because: the chapter actually *out-plains* the card sample — "Quiet cost us six hours" replaces the card's "something" with a number, and "I was forty feet from the desk" is the unguarded direct sentence the floor requires. Concrete throughout: gallbladder, keys, tote, sister in Annandale. No translation possible without losing the six hours.`

- `DRIFTED — original: "We didn't have those documents, and I wasn't going to build a paper household for HR." — binding-register version: "We didn't have those documents, and I wasn't going to fake them for HR. I withdrew the form." — what the rewrite preserves and what drift it removes: preserves the refusal, the affidavit list's force, and the withdrawal; removes the *second* editorial-sharp figure in a single Ruth appearance. Her voice card caps her at one sharp editorial line per appearance, and this scene contains two: "build a paper household" here and "the other version has its own waiting room" at the folder-flat beat. The waiting-room line is the keeper — it converts Sam's literal six hours into the symmetric cost, and June's closing paragraph leans on its logic. With the cap consumed there, binding-register Ruth for this line is plain Ruth, and the plain version loses nothing the cap permits her to keep. (The sympathy email with the flower in the subject line stays; that is situation comedy, not an editorial figure.) — ORDER: REPLACE`

- `HOLDS — "June taped the second corner... She did not volunteer this." — sample compared: June voice card (interiority rhythm: perception, judgment, self-rebuke; craft nouns instead of feeling words) — HIGH-RISK ¶3 of 5, two ways. (1) Refusal-to-conclude family: "She did not volunteer this" was checked against the banned "left it alone / let it stand" variants and passes — those dodge having the thought; June has the thought (both Ruth and Sam are right) and declines to *say* it in a live argument, a dramatized social action consistent with the card's goal "stay outside other people's definitions." (2) Aphorism check on "A mixed gray could be warm and cool at once" — see gate section, cleared. Binding-register rewrite attempted: "She saw both sides and stayed out of it." Worse: deletes the paint fact, which is the only register June owns for this judgment.`

- `HOLDS — conversation block: Ben's entrance through the email reading — sample compared: Ben voice card (more words when nervous; jokes speakable, not sitcom) + plain-speech floor — binding-register rewrite is worse because: "Can I read an email out loud in a store. Is that allowed." is nervous-Ben syntax doing characterization; the email's contents arrive as documentary fact (rent, floor, deadline, credit check, 40x income), exactly the concreteness the card demands of the lease flare. "Holding his phone out in front of him as if it were leaking" is comic and physical, not literary.`

- `HOLDS — "June pulled the board square against the walnut frame. Forty times rent had a clean arithmetic sound. Mid-December did not." — sample compared: June voice card (compression when exposed) + packet rule (Nia stays an unanswered thread, not plot) — HIGH-RISK ¶4 of 5. Binding-register rewrite attempted: "The deadline reminded her of her own unanswered decision." Worse: the original carries the Philadelphia clock in six words via sound-of-numbers, with the phone literally kept in the coat — pressure without plot, exactly as the packet orders. Any plainer version names what June is not ready to name.`

- `HOLDS — conversation block: the lease argument ("Let's hear the case for" through "It's a good label.") — sample compared: plain-speech floor + Priya/Ben/Sam/Ruth cards — binding-register rewrite is worse because: this is the chapter's followability showcase — a cold reader can state what each party wants, fears, and refuses without decoding. Priya's "I want to sign it on a day I'd sign it anyway" and Ben's "I'm scared we lose it, and I end up with a spreadsheet about an apartment other people live in" are the floor's direct sentences; both first-person, both specific, neither a maxim. Sam's "the occupant negotiates from the hallway" was checked as a Sam-aphorism risk and passes: it is a factual tenancy consequence rendered in Sam's documented room/space idiom (cf. card sample "Sit here. No, not symbolically. The chair is better."), not teacher wisdom. Ruth's "I'm not telling either of you what to sign" + folding the receipt into thirds is her card's restraint exactly, and seeds the Ch20 care-without-advice beat per the chapter card. One echo finding inside this block — see Verbatim-Echo. Separate continuity order, outside register scope: Ben states the difference as "six hundred forty a month"; Priya then says "five hundred a month makes being scared look responsible." Either align the number or make her rounding visibly pointed; as written it reads as an error in the mouth of the cast's most precise speaker. ORDER: fix in line edit.`

- `HOLDS — "June smoothed tape over the board edge. Occupant was an ugly word for a person carrying groceries up four flights." — sample compared: June voice card ("ugly" is on her word list; judgment second after perception) — binding-register rewrite is worse because: "She disliked the term" is the same content with the four flights (tied to the no-elevator fact) and the groceries deleted. The shape "X was an ugly word for Y" was gate-checked and passes: it is anchored to this apartment's stairs, not portable.`

- `HOLDS — "Fourth-floor north light is real light..." through "Cargo just gave it." — sample compared: June voice card (care move: precise, unsentimental naming of the actual good) + reading guide light-image cap — HIGH-RISK ¶5 of 5, fully argued in the gate section. The binding-register rewrite ("The light in that room would be steady") loses the painter facts — doesn't lie at noon (no direct sun swing), doesn't quit at three (no west dependence) — and the card-mandated beat is precisely this: Priya asks for one true thing and June gives a true thing. The cargo volley (three exchanges) is transformative comic handoff, not echo — each turn changes the word's owner and meaning. Light-cap note: the chapter's one deliberate narration light-image is the transom stripe in ¶1; the apartment-photo grays and this speech are information, not imagery. At cap, not over it.`

- `HOLDS — "Ben stood, photographed the wall of corner samples 'for no reason I can defend'... whether anyone applied or not." — sample compared: Ch09 close-third (clock pressure as fact: "Truck's at two. Walk-through at four.") — binding-register rewrite attempted: "The deadline was Monday at five either way." Marginal call, and the closest narration comes to drift after ¶1 — but the rewrite is worse on dramatic content: "went on closing" keeps the clock running *during* the goodbye, which is the chapter card's order ("make the clock active"), and the construction stays attached to the literal application window from the email. Holds, narrowly. Do not let this construction recur.`

- `HOLDS — "Dom tied twine handles..." + the street-door parting through "without discussing it." — sample compared: plain-speech floor + Ruth card (direct questions are her allowed plainness) — binding-register rewrite is worse because: "If the ticket had said PARK, who picks up for you?" is already the plainest possible form of the chapter's question — concrete, form-derived, unanswerable by June, and Ruth withholds her conclusion per card ("That was my answer for about twenty years" claims the *content* of June's dodge as her own history; it does not rate the dodge's delivery, so it clears the dialogue-diagnosis zero-tolerance rule — checked deliberately, since this is the beat nearest the line). "Tuesday." / "Tuesday, June" is transformative echo (Sam adds the name; two time-words close the scene). The dollar payoff ("revised her opinion of the dollar") closes the ¶6 setup cleanly.`

- `HOLDS — front desk, empty studio, stowing ("The Saturday person..." / "The studio between Tuesdays..." / "She leaned the wrapped frames...") — sample compared: Ch09 ¶8–9 (work done right, described procedurally) + June card — binding-register rewrite is worse because: "no Odile saying no," "turpentine gone faint and historical," "squared the stack... until all the edges agreed" are June-optical and procedural; the rack sentence ("kept showing what it had shown since Tuesday, to anyone who came in") was rewritten as "Her panel was still facing out" and the rewrite loses the durative exposure — the painting as ongoing public fact — which is the dramatic content. Buzzed-through-without-asking ("Either Odile had called ahead or the tote was famous") quietly extends the category theme: she is already a known unit here.`

- `HOLDS — "The packet cubbies ran along the shelf... The cubbies were all one width." — sample compared: June voice card (perception first; visual fact as judgment) — binding-register rewrite attempted: "Her and Theo's label looked like the real couples' labels." Worse: that is the caption the original refuses. The slash and the uniform width carry it; gate-checked below and cleared because the sentence is inert out of context — its charge exists only here. This is theme through object, the book's sanctioned method.`

- `HOLDS — "Her phone went off in her coat... Sent it." — sample compared: June card (compresses when exposed; exits before asks) + packet (Nia unanswered, not plot) — binding-register rewrite is worse because: typing *he wasn't* and deleting it letter by letter is the fake-couple cost dramatized in one keystroke action — Mara has filled in the line again, and June lets it stand by sending logistics instead. Any plainer version would have to narrate the choice it currently performs.`

- `HOLDS — "Who picks up for you. At the street door..." (the final pickup-question paragraph, focused check) — sample compared: June voice card (interiority rhythm: perception, judgment, self-rebuke) — binding-register rewrite attempted: "She knew the honest answer was Theo, and his name was already on the cubby, and she didn't want to think about it here." The rewrite is measurably worse: it loses the number→name→cubby chain that walks the abstraction back into objects eight feet away, loses "Other people had been filling in that line for them since the first night at Sonia's" (which retroactively organizes four chapters of cohort behavior), and loses "The box, like Dom's, was too small for authorized" — a transformative reuse of the form-field material, not an echo (see gate). "She'd meant her answer as a dodge" is June assessing her own utterance, which the dialogue-diagnosis rule (aimed at characterizing one another's language) permits; deflection visible as deflection is the §2 requirement. The paragraph ends on "She did not want the question... standing in an empty studio" — a stated want, the card's allowed plainness.`

- `HOLDS — "She put the phone away... carrying nothing." — sample compared: packet closing-beat rule (end on action/consequence, not stillness) + Ch09 procedural close — binding-register rewrite is worse because: the close is a job-site checklist (frames stowed, receipt visible, rack untouched, nothing leaning that could fall) plus a concrete Tuesday plan ("cut her own tape at the corners") that gives June agency the card requires; "carrying nothing" was checked as a profundity-close risk and passes — it is literally true after a chapter of carrying glass, attached to a sentence of physical action, and its second meaning is left entirely to the reader. "That part was simple, and it was hers alone" plants the choosing-alone error named on her card without captioning it.`

## APHORISM-GATE (zero tolerance; focused checks: Ruth/Sam form/access lines, June's frame-form reflection, final pickup-question paragraph)

- `APHORISM-GATE — "That was the difference between a repair and a disguise." — FAILURE. Standalone declarative, abstract-noun antithesis, narration not dialogue, fully detachable: it works as an epigraph for the entire book (the fake relationship is the disguise), which is exactly the pull-quote shape the gate exists to catch. The Ch09 calibration's craft declaratives ("Raking light was a tool. It was how you found the flaws.") stay inside the craft; this one announces theme. The fix keeps the distinction but binds it to the object: "Whoever had toned the regilding had matched the worn gold instead of the bright — a repair, not a disguise." (Appositive on this frame; no longer a free-standing law. Avoids the capped evaluative-which construction.) — ORDER: de-quotablize as above.`

Strongest candidates considered and cleared, with work shown:

- `"I'm saying the other version has its own waiting room." (Ruth) — PASSES. Bound to the literal waiting room of Sam's story fourteen lines up; out of context "the other version" refers to nothing. This is Ruth's one permitted editorial-sharp line per appearance — permitted only because the "paper household" figure is removed per the DRIFTED order above. If both survive, this becomes a second gate/cap failure.`
- `"Whatever you put near that window will look like itself." (June) — PASSES, the hardest call in the chapter. The sentence alone has epigraph glow, but: it answers a direct request ("One true thing about it"), it is craft-true of north light specifically, the two preceding sentences ground it in hours of the day, and June detonates her own quotability in the next breath — "That's not a vote. I'm cargo." The in-text deflation is the de-quotablizer; cutting the line would replace the card-mandated beat with weather data.`
- `"The occupant negotiates from the hallway." (Sam) — PASSES: tenancy fact in Sam's owned spatial idiom; consequence, not wisdom. Watch Sam for accumulation in later chapters; the card sample "Labels are for folders until they are for safety" was notably NOT imported here, which is the right restraint.`
- `"A mixed gray could be warm and cool at once." — PASSES: paint fact immediately re-concretized and self-undercut ("she disliked meeting it on a half-sheet at a frame shop. She did not volunteer this."). The undercut blocks portability.`
- `"The cubbies were all one width." — PASSES: inert out of context; charge is entirely situational. This is the model for how the chapter should carry theme — which is why the ¶1 sentence above, which does the same work in detachable form, must be repaired.`
- `"Occupant was an ugly word for a person carrying groceries up four flights." — PASSES: anchored to this listing's stairs; "ugly" is June's documented vocabulary.`

## VERBATIM-ECHO (focused tokens: line, box, category, label, authorized, waiting room, cargo, slashes)

- `VERBATIM-ECHO — "That's the whole story." (Sam) / "That's the whole email, honestly." (Ben) — FAILURE. Two speakers, same chapter, identical confessional-cap template ("That's the whole ___") doing the same job (document stands in for the feeling). Not motif-declared, not transformative — the second instance is a rhythm reuse, not a development. — ORDER: vary Ben's to "That's the email, honestly. The rest is formatting." (tighter, keeps his joke, breaks the template).`

Token sweep, cleared with instances quoted:

- `"line" (5+ uses: "Insurance wants the second line filled" → "There was a line for it and we'd never filled it in" → "Dom's second line" → "Other people had been filling in that line for them") — CLEARED as the chapter's declared spine per the card ("the shop or paperwork puts pressure on categories"); every recurrence escalates from literal field to lived consequence; none is inert repetition.`
- `"box" ("Box is small." → "the other box cost me a year of wedding questions" → "The box, like Dom's, was too small for authorized") — CLEARED: three uses, each transformed (shop form → benefits form → June's own situation); the third explicitly cites the first ("like Dom's"), which is callback, not echo.`
- `"authorized" (Sam's "Put 'authorized.'" → Dom's AUTH → June's "too small for authorized") — CLEARED: the final use inverts the first (Sam shrinks themself to fit the box; June finds the box cannot hold what she'd have to write). Transformative.`
- `"waiting room" ("sat in the waiting room for six hours" → "has its own waiting room") — CLEARED: literal-to-figurative is the definition of transformative reuse.`
- `"cargo" (×3 in one volley) — CLEARED: comic handoff, ownership changes each turn (self-deprecation → Priya's reframe → June's capitulation). Dialogue riff, not echo.`
- `"label" ("It's labeled 'don't push.'" / "It's a good label." / cubby labels) — CLEARED: the Priya/Ben exchange is one beat; the cubby use is literal.`
- `"category" — zero occurrences in the body; the title does the only naming. Correct restraint, noted for the record.`
- `slashes (KIM / RIVERA, NAIR / ADLER, PARK / BRENNAN; "a slash holding it to hers") — CLEARED: the triple listing is the point (three different arrangements, one orthography), and the final-paragraph reuse converts it.`
- `"anything further" ×2 / "twelve blocks" ×3 / "the dollar" ×2 / "Tuesday." ×2 — CLEARED: single-sentence rhetorical doubling; joke-and-payoff; setup-and-revision; name-added parting. All transformative or structural.`

## Chapter verdict

`DRIFT-FOUND — 3 orders:`
1. **REPLACE** Ruth's "build a paper household for HR" line (voice-card cap: one editorial-sharp line per appearance; the waiting-room line is the keeper).
2. **DE-QUOTABLIZE** "That was the difference between a repair and a disguise." per the gate fix.
3. **VARY** Ben's "That's the whole email" to break the template echo with Sam's "That's the whole story."

Plus one continuity order for the line edit: reconcile Priya's "five hundred a month" with Ben's "six hundred forty."

Everything else holds against the named samples, including every focused-check passage: the Ruth/Sam form/access lines, June's frame-form reflection, and the final pickup-question paragraph all survive generative comparison — in each case the binding-register rewrite was produced and was measurably worse on density, drama, or card fidelity, as documented per entry. The register defended here is June's, not generic clarity; no ordinary line was "improved" into literariness, and none needed translating out of it except the three ordered above.
