# Plain-Translation Audit — Chapter 17, "The Acknowledgment Page"

id: plain_translation | tier: risk | trigger: flag:register-drift + emotional-peak chapter
Inputs verified: revised chapter (`output/chapters/chapter_17.md`), raw provenance (`output/drafts/claude/chapter_17.round_01.md`), packet, voice cards, reading guide, `reading_guide_bans.tsv`, mechanical gate (open findings: 0; ch17 WATCH only).

Stance: skeptical. No praise. Every verdict below names the sample compared and shows the rewrite attempted or the counter-candidate cleared. Provenance was diffed against the revision: the revision pass excised eleven drift instances from the raw draft — those excisions are treated as live tripwires, not credit.

**Form identification.** Close-third June narration throughout (compare: June voice-card samples, not generic clarity). One documentary insert (the acknowledgment page — LOCKED). Extended back-stair dialogue exchange (compare: June/Theo voice-card dialogue samples only; not plain-translated toward literary clarity per template §conversation-forms). No calibration amplification direction declared, so this audit applies; no chaos_up handoff.

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## Per-paragraph verdicts

HOLDS — "June got home at ten-forty..." — sample compared: June card, "what her body does under stress: packs, sorts, cleans brushes she has not used" — binding-register rewrite attempted ("June got home and laid the catalogs out, trying not to think about the flyers") is worse because: it names the avoidance the original performs. Kettle-she-won't-drink, phone face-down, spines in one straight line are the card's documented stress behaviors doing the work; the Nia-thread/Dec-4 aside discharges the packet's private-pressure requirement without making Tasker the engine. Density and fidelity both drop in the rewrite.

HOLDS — "Label work. That was the assignment she'd given herself..." — sample compared: June card interiority rhythm ("perception first, judgment second") — rewrite ("She needed something to control, so she worked on the labels") is worse because: it converts shown control-seeking into stated emotion, violating the guide's interiority discipline (§2: feelings through action/object first). "Precedent instead of feeling" is the paragraph's one abstraction and it is hers, in craft vocabulary.

HOLDS — "So she didn't let them stop..." — sample compared: June card "uses edge, value, ground" / smallness test (§8) — rewrite stripping the title inventory ("Odile had titled paintings by time of day before") is worse because: *Corner, 6 p.m. North Wall, Late. Two Chairs, Quarter to Ten* is the non-portable craft detail the smallness test requires, and "grammar the room already spoke" was checked at the Aphorism Gate (cleared below).

HOLDS — "The ninth catalog... / The slip marked a plate... / June looked at the dimensions... / The colophon..." (four paragraphs, grouped) — sample compared: June card "notices edges before faces" — rewrite compressing to "She found the marked plate, then went looking for the year" is worse because: it loses *Back Room, Ten Past Nine* / twelve-by-sixteen (the dimensions echo the joint piece's ground — dramatic content a cold reader needs available), and loses "she read it the way you read anything facing, without deciding to," which is the packet's non-snooping discovery mechanism stated as behavior. Cutting it weakens the accident's alibi.

LOCKED — "These rooms had one winter... He still knows. —O.M." — skipped, listed under calibration's inviolable text. Clarity check only: names and relations are unambiguous for a first-time reader (sister Eileen Brennan; her son Theo Brennan). One mechanical formatting defect found — see ORDER 1.

HOLDS — "June read it once as back matter... / Eileen Brennan. My sister... / She checked the cover..." (highest-risk block 1) — sample compared: June card stress response ("gets quieter, funnier, more exact") and "That part works. Sorry. I realize that makes things worse." — rewrite attempted: "June read it three times. The names didn't change. There was no error." Worse because: it keeps the fact and deletes the procedure — back matter → English → measurement is three distinct modes of reading, and measurement-checking is her card-documented behavior under threat. "She checked the cover, because that was the next procedure when a measurement held" carries information (she is verifying, not denying) the flat version loses. The original is denser and more card-faithful; no replacement.

HOLDS — "Once, at a museum, she'd watched two technicians..." (highest-risk block 2) — sample compared: packet metaphor directive ("a label changing, a catalog page recategorizing a room. Do not decorate.") — rewrite attempted: "Nothing in a painting changes when the label does; people just look longer." Worse because: the rewrite **creates** a portable maxim — exactly the gate failure this audit exists to block. The original is anchored to one remembered concrete event (two technicians, *attribution revised*, the weekend crowds) and "Same paint" stays inside the anecdote. The anecdote form is the protection; do not generalize it.

HOLDS — "Nothing about Theo had moved either..." (highest-risk block 3) — sample compared: June card + documentary register for the quoted log line — rewrite attempted: "Theo hadn't lied about facts, only what they meant. He was an employee, but he was also family." Worse on all three axes: loses "payroll-true: accurate on a form, false about the rooms behind it" (the form/rooms distinction is literal — payroll form, back rooms — not decoration); loses `Catalogs (9) – J. Park – out Thurs 11/19` (documentary evidence, continuity with Ch14); loses "no reason to turn to the back of the book," the literal mechanism of discovery. Provenance note: raw draft's "the way the front room of a house is the house" (epigram-shaped) was already replaced with the on-form/behind-it version — correct direction; the replacement is anchored, the original was portable.

HOLDS — "And every Tuesday she had walked..." (highest-risk block 4) — sample compared: June card ("shorter sentences") — this is the chapter's longest sentence and was interrogated for essay drift. Rewrite attempted: "She had risked everything every Tuesday. He had risked nothing." Worse because: the rewrite deletes the stakes inventory (easel, the lie public behind her, key ring, Sunday dinner) that makes the asymmetry concrete rather than declared; the packet requires the reclassification *felt*, with specifics. One periodic sentence at the peak of an interior build is within register when its freight is objects. Holds, narrowly.

HOLDS — "She thought, briefly, about the fact that Odile had named the shelf... / The kettle had boiled... / She walked it... / The front of Marchetti Rooms was gated..." (grouped) — sample compared: June card "exits before asks"; packet outcome rule (Odile's knowing stays hidden) — verified: "That could wait" registers the inference without stating Odile knew; the reveal is protected. Provenance note: raw draft's "in the voice of an employee explaining shift work" — narration characterizing delivery, a zero-tolerance §2 violation — was correctly cut to "Weeks ago he had told her which nights he closed. Tonight she used it." Also cut: "which it was" (self-confirming tag). Both stay dead (ORDER 2).

HOLDS — "He set the box down against the rail. 'Eileen Brennan is my mother. Odile's my aunt.'..." — sample compared: Theo card, "I said boss because it was true. It just wasn't the whole truth." — factual-reveal verification: the locked relationship chain (Eileen = Odile's sister; Theo = Eileen's son; Odile = Theo's aunt) is fully on the page between the acknowledgment and this speech. The job-is-real list with the em-dash interruption is the card's "lists facts, tries to solve logistics" under pressure; the gate's 14-em-dash WATCH at line 51 is rupture-dialogue interruption mechanics, not decoration. No rewrite improves it without deleting his documented tell.

HOLDS — "'I packed what she told me to pack. Third shelf.'... 'I want to say I don't know. I knew it was in one of them. I didn't open them to find out which.'" — sample compared: Theo card, "There's a stockroom. It has a door." and quirk "qualifies when guilty, then forces himself plain" — the three-sentence self-correction is the card quirk executed exactly; a cleaner version ("I knew, I just didn't check which one") loses the on-page act of him refusing his own evasion. Holds.

HOLDS — "'How long has *boss* been the word?'" — checked against the zero-tolerance dialogue-diagnosis rule and **cleared**: "boss" is not phrasing being rated, it is the lie itself, a fact under interrogation — and the calibration licenses it directly (Theo's own sample line is "I said boss because it was true"). Likewise cleared: "telling you would've been a confession instead of a fact" (categorizes the unperformed act of telling — the scene's subject — not anyone's delivery) and "He flinched at the word" (perceptiveness shown by what he *does* with "aunt," the guide's sanctioned mode). Provenance note: the raw draft's actual diagnosis instances ("the first honest thing his face had done," "with everything practical stripped off it," "Then the facts came, the way she'd known they would," "her own voice come out level") were all cut in revision. They stay dead (ORDER 2).

HOLDS — "'Here's what I knew'... / 'Every Tuesday I stood in her room knowing she could throw me out, and you stood in it knowing she couldn't.'" (highest-risk block 6) — sample compared: June card, "I'm not leaving because I hate it here. I think that's the problem." — rewrite attempted: "If she caught us, I lost everything and you lost nothing." Worse because: it deletes "the lie would be the last thing anyone in that room knew about me" (her specific fear — reputation as final label, the chapter's label engine) and "You'd have helped her stack the chairs after" (the cruelest concrete image: Theo-as-staff surviving her expulsion). The grievance lands in one spoken sentence per the packet's reader-load order. Provenance note: the raw draft captioned this with "That's the whole grievance. It fits in one sentence. I've checked." — a self-rating maxim — correctly excised.

HOLDS — "'You're trying to get a task.'... 'you want a list, you want errands, you want to carry it for me the way you carried the catalogs.'" (highest-risk block 7) — sample compared: June card "honest warnings dressed as jokes" + packet ban on triple-beat false emphasis — the triple was interrogated and **cleared**: the emphasis is not false; Theo delivers a literal five-item offer list in the immediately preceding speech, and her triple parodies it item for item. Mimetic, earned, and it closes on the chapter's central object (catalogs-as-carried-care become carried-evidence). Provenance note: "she filed it where true useless things went" (clerical figure at cap per packet) was cut upstream at line 65 — stays dead.

HOLDS — "'Okay,' he said. 'I was scared you'd stop coming...'" (highest-risk block 5) — sample compared: Theo card allowed plainness ("I was scared," "I lied") and stress response ("then goes very plain") — no rewrite attempted because the original *is* the calibration register: "I kept not telling you on purpose, every week, because I wanted you in that room" admits deliberateness without eloquence or nobility, per packet §7. June's reply "I would have stopped coming... That was mine to decide. You did my math for me and kept the answer" was gate-checked below and cleared.

HOLDS — "He didn't answer that. Down on the street a car passed..." through "'Tuesday looks like a room with one less chair in use... Don't set one for me.'" (grouped) — sample compared: June card compact modal mass; tic catalog ban on active-silence — the car is a literal event covering his non-answer, not silence-as-agent; "Ask your aunt" is the chapter's coldest two words and entirely followable. "One less chair in use" was checked against the packet's spent chair-count comedy: it is a chair fact, not a count-shaped joke, and it answers his question in his own terms. Cleared.

HOLDS — "She crouched and put the catalog on the top step..." through "'The other eight come back some way that isn't you.'" — sample compared: June card "exits before asks" / care-move inversion — rewrite ("She left the catalog and told him to log it") is worse because: square to the edge, slip out, spine toward the door, "the way stock went back on a shelf" performs the reclassification (his home becomes a stockroom; she becomes a borrower returning stock) without one word of naming. "you'll want the record straight, you're staff" weaponizes his own chosen label. Maximum dramatic content; no replacement.

HOLDS — "'You can stand where you grew up... I've been a stranger here the whole time.' / She went down the rest of the iron stairs... / The tote was light on her shoulder..." — sample compared: June card "I don't know what to do with wanting it." (plainness that lands without ornament) — provenance note, decisive here: the raw draft continued "Strangers know the way out." (portable maxim, epigraph-shaped) and closed the descent with "because his hands had to hold a job even now" and "because pairs that don't hang together lie" (a paired-echo beat-closer of Odile's Ch16 line, banned by packet). All three were excised; the revised close ends on object and action ("shifted the strap higher and kept going" — gate's "shifted" WATCH at line 121 is a literal strap), satisfying the packet's no-maxim ending. The excisions hold the register; they must stay excised (ORDER 2).

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## APHORISM-GATE (zero tolerance)

- APHORISM-GATE — "That's the whole grievance. It fits in one sentence. I've checked." — **raw draft only (line 79); absent from revised chapter.** Correctly cut: portable, self-captioning, rates her own sentence. ORDER: keep dead; no later pass may restore it from provenance.
- APHORISM-GATE — "Strangers know the way out." — **raw draft only (line 123); absent from revised chapter.** Tattoo-shaped. ORDER: keep dead.
- CLEARED — "Saying that isn't giving it back." — strongest surviving candidate, per the focused check. Passes as character-pressure speech: the anaphoric "that" binds to Theo's "I know" one line up and the sentence collapses out of context. Note the raw form was "Saying *I know* isn't giving it back" — quotable, self-contained; the revision's pronoun swap is precisely the de-quotablization this gate would have ordered. Do not revert.
- CLEARED — "You did my math for me and kept the answer." — passes: "my math" is a transformative pickup of Theo's confessed "you'd do the math and you'd stop coming" two lines prior; unanchored, the line doesn't parse. Watch it at assembly — if quoted in marketing-adjacent contexts it will be torn loose, but on the page it is tethered.
- CLEARED — "Same paint. Not one thing on the canvas had moved." — passes: interior of a concrete remembered anecdote, literal referent (the painting under a revised label). The generalized version would fail; the anecdote form is the protection.
- CLEARED — "They'd be grammar the room already spoke." — passes, narrowly: tethered to the just-listed house-style titles and to a wall-text task; it is June's craft conclusion, not a claim about rooms in general. This is the line closest to the cliff that stays on it.

## VERBATIM-ECHO

- CLEARED — "you'd stop coming" ×2 (Theo, one speech) + "I would have stopped coming" (June) — Theo's internal repeat is frame-then-mechanism in his card's gone-very-plain mode; June's is transformative — she converts his fear into fact and reclaims the decision ("That was mine to decide"). The phrase is also the chapter card's irreversible change (June stops coming), so it is load-bearing in function. **Watch order:** the cluster is at three; a fourth untransformed instance in Ch18 tips it into echo drift.
- CLEARED — "checked / check" cluster (lines 21–25 + Theo's "I didn't check the back pages") — procedure anaphora with a different object each pass (measurement, cover, colophon, acknowledgment); measurement-checking is June's card-documented stress behavior. Note revision already compressed the raw draft's triple "She checked… She checked… She checked" to two sentences. Theo's instance is responsive, different referent.
- CLEARED — "keys" (lines 29, 31, 51, 77, 85, 87) — "He had keys because his aunt had given him keys" is a deliberate tautology: the same fact relabeled, which is the chapter's engine. The pocket sequence (hands find keys → she looks at the keys → hands out, keys stay) is Theo's card tell ("reaches for keys") run as a physical through-line, not sentence echo.
- CLEARED — "in that room" (June line 71 / Theo line 89) — cross-speaker but transformative: hers makes the room a jury, his makes it the thing he wanted her inside. The literal contested space is named *Marchetti Rooms*; "room" density is referential, not echo.
- CLEARED — "got smaller / get smaller" (Theo, line 69) — transformative: passive fact ("there wasn't a week where it got smaller") becomes confessed agency ("I watched it not get smaller").
- CLEARED — narration line 31 / dialogue line 75 "every Tuesday" — rehearsal-then-deployment structure: the interior periodic sentence becomes the one-sentence spoken verdict. The raw draft's caption announcing the echo was cut, so it no longer points at itself.
- CLEARED — "catalog(s)," "fact(s)," "truth" — literal prop, three spread instances with distinct functions, and one instance respectively. Below threshold.

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## Chapter verdict

**REGISTER-HOLDS** — 0 REPLACE orders; 17 paragraph/block verdicts (16 HOLDS, 1 LOCKED); both gates cleared on the revised text. The register survives here largely because the revision pass already executed eleven targeted excisions against the raw draft; the remaining orders defend that line:

1. **ORDER (mechanical, locked text):** line 19 attribution "—O.M." is the only closed-up em dash in the chapter; every other em dash, including the raw provenance's "— O.M.", is spaced. Restore the space (or apply the assembly-wide convention if one overrides). Formatting only; not one word of the quotation changes.
2. **ORDER (standing):** the following raw-draft lines are confirmed drift or dialogue diagnosis and were excised in revision; no subsequent pass, merge, or provenance reconciliation may restore them: "That's the whole grievance. It fits in one sentence. I've checked."; "Strangers know the way out."; "Saying *I know* isn't giving it back" (italic form); "because pairs that don't hang together lie"; "the way the front room of a house is the house"; "in the voice of an employee explaining shift work"; "the first honest thing his face had done"; "with everything practical stripped off it"; "Then the facts came, the way she'd known they would"; "heard her own voice come out level"; "because his hands had to hold a job even now."
3. **ORDER (watch, forward):** "stop(ped) coming" and "stranger" each sit at three instances in this chapter. Ch18 drafting must not extend either cluster without transformation; flag at next audit if breached.
