Chapter 4. Inside the Pride and Prejudice Work Folder

Opening Part 2. In Part 1, we set out the place of the work called , the six-stage framework, and the classification of thirty-odd kinds of materials. In Part 2, we look directly at the shape those abstractions take when applied to a single volume of Pride and Prejudice. This installment examines the exterior of the work folder; the next examines the segment tables and event index, the most basic data inside it; the following installment traces how the thirty-five kinds of materials were determined. We will open one complete folder from beginning to end.

The result of our work on Pride and Prejudice fits in one folder, named for the work. It contains about seventy to eighty files. This installment shows the form of that folder: where each thing is, and in which stage each file was made.

Picture one compartment of a small library. Seventy or eighty books stand on its shelves, all about the same work. The top shelf holds guides and indexes; the shelf below contains tables ordered by time; below that are notes for individual characters; below that are materials about the work’s world; and on the bottom shelf lies a verification report. Someone arriving for the first time and scanning shelf by shelf encounters deeper information as they go down. The five levels of our folder correspond to those five shelves.

The folder is organized into five levels.

First Level — Guide and Master Index

The first thing visible when the folder opens is four files.

At the top is the guide (README), a short guide for someone entering the folder for the first time. One page states the full volume of materials, the order in which to read them, a map of where each item is, and the verification status. It is designed so that a colleague newly joining the work can gain a sense of the entire folder just by reading it.

Next is the work profile, the two-page document made in Stage 1. It holds our diagnosis of what kind of work Pride and Prejudice is: period, genre, motifs, and translation difficulty. It is both the starting point of the work and the standard for all material decisions.

Third is the materials list, a map of which materials appear in the folder and under what classification. In Pride and Prejudice, thirty-five types are classified into five groups—common core 8, novel pack 5, Regency encyclopedia 1, motif pack 15, and work-specific 6—and every material’s filename is listed on its own line.

Fourth is the event master index, the largest table made in Stage 3. Forty-nine main events and forty-one background events before the work begins appear in one chronological table. Each row records an event number, when it occurs, related characters, and preceding events.

These four files form the folder’s first impression. From them alone, one can grasp what kind of work Pride and Prejudice is and the broad outline of how we approached it.

Second Level — Segment-by-Segment Raw Data

Below the first level is the segment-by-segment raw-data folder. It contains eighteen files: the eighteen segment tables made in Stage 2.

Files are ordered from Segment 1 through Segment 18. Each contains both every keyword for its segment and the events occurring there. Segment 1 (Chapters 1–6) contains Bingley’s arrival and the Meryton ball; Segment 9 (Chapters 33–34) contains Darcy’s first proposal and its refusal; Segment 18 (Chapters 60–61) contains the two sisters’ marriages and the ending.

At the end of each table is a short handover note. In one paragraph, it summarizes the state of the work at the end of the segment and the foreshadowing left unresolved. It lets someone beginning the next segment recover the context simply by reading that note.

These eighteen tables are the source of all materials. The thirty-five types made in Stage 5 and the thirty-four character notes made in Stage 4 are all extracted from them.

Third Level — The Character-Note Collection

The next level is the character-notes folder, named [Character Sheets]. It holds thirty-six files.

The two largest are notes for the two protagonists: Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy. At about 7,000 Korean characters per person, they detail five-act development in event order, arcs of core relationships, and translation cautions.

Notes for major figures then appear at standard length: Jane, Bingley, Wickham, Collins, Lydia, and Mr. and Mrs. Bennet, among others. They compress development by event and organize key relationships.

Supporting and minor figures are included without omission: Lady Catherine, Colonel Fitzwilliam, Georgiana Darcy, Miss Bingley, the Gardiners, the Lucas family, militia members, Pemberley’s housekeeper Mrs. Reynolds, and Meryton’s physician Mr. Jones. Every person named even once in the work has a note.

This folder has two additional special files. One is the character relationship map, a single composite chart with family trees, six narrative arcs, and a Mermaid diagram. The other is two integrated couple-relationship notes. Couples who act together throughout the work, such as the Gardiners and the Forsters, have notes about the relationship itself in addition to individual notes. At the top of each integrated note is a guide: “This document treats only the couple’s relationship; see individual character notes for individual information.”

Fourth Level — Thirty-Five Kinds of Materials

The largest level is the materials folder, named [Setting Sheets], and contains thirty-five files. It is arranged according to the four-layer classification explained in the previous installment.

Briefly, its classifications are as follows.

Common core (8) — character relationship map, chronology, complete character list, complete place list, complete object list, chapter-by-chapter translation guide, period-language mistranslation-prevention dictionary, and honorific/tone translation guide.

Novel pack (5) — narrator guide, nuance list, recurring-motif tracker, epistolary collection, and character-psychology change curve.

Period encyclopedia (1) — Regency-period encyclopedia.

Motif pack (15) — dictionary of objects as class symbols; institution-and-economic-term relationship map (marriage economics); servant system; menus and food culture; clothing inventory; music and sound environment; bodily-language etiquette; Korean–English emotion-vocabulary correspondence; French foreign-word dictionary; building floor plans; scene-set composition; gardens and landscaping; Meryton shopping street; religious life; and character daily schedules.

Work-specific supplements (6) — complete group list, complete miscellany list, complete list of unspecified referents, anachronistic forbidden words, hidden networks of character relationships, and character/event/place relation maps.

There is also one separate adaptation guide.

The intent and contents of each material will be opened one kind at a time in the following part (Chapters 8–10). For now, it is enough to see the exterior of this folder: thirty-five kinds of materials arranged together in one place.

Fifth Level — Verification Report

On the final level of the folder is one verification report, prepared in Stage 6.

It records, by grade, which items were inconsistent between materials, which event numbers pointed wrongly, and which character notes were missing. It also states which items were corrected immediately and which were carried forward to the next cycle.

The report both guarantees the folder’s reliability and serves as a handover document for the next worker. The Pride and Prejudice report contains about ninety checklist items; five were corrected immediately, while the rest remain future reinforcement targets.

How the Time Was Distributed

One final point is worth adding.

Making one Pride and Prejudice folder took about fifteen hours. Its distribution is revealing.

Stage 1, work profiling: 30 minutes Stage 2, eighteen segment tables: 3 hours Stage 3, event master: 1 hour Stage 4, thirty-four character notes: 2 hours Stage 5, thirty-five kinds of materials: 7 hours Stage 6, cross-verification: 1 hour 30 minutes

Stage 5 is longest, followed by Stage 2 and then Stage 4. Stage 5 took seven hours—an average of twelve minutes per kind across thirty-five materials—but that average conceals wide differences. Some took five minutes, some an hour. The longest were the character relationship map and chapter-by-chapter translation guide, which synthesize all other materials.

This distribution means one thing: the most expensive time in making materials is not time spent filling them in, but time spent deciding what they must say. Without separating work into six stages, that decision time becomes mixed into filling time and the whole task blurs. The path by which we reduced work time from six months to a simplified two hours was the path of placing that decision time in its most appropriate location.

How the Folder Is Actually Used

Having seen the folder’s exterior, let us briefly see how it opens in real translation work.

Imagine a translator carrying a chapter of Pride and Prejudice into Korean and stopping at one line. Darcy says to Elizabeth:

"My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you."

The word “ardently” catches the translator. A dictionary says “passionately” or “fervently.” But when an English gentleman in 1813 proposes, would “I love you passionately” preserve the weight of the moment? Is it too impassioned? Too modern?

The translator opens the folder.

First, they consult the guide on the first level. It says the work is a Regency social novel (1811–1813) in which free indirect discourse operates strongly. Then they open the period-language dictionary on the fourth level to check for “ardently”; if it is absent, they open the Korean–English emotion-vocabulary correspondence table and inspect the gradient for “love.” Esteem, regard, gratitude, admiration, attachment, and love are divided into seven levels, letting them identify Darcy’s level in this scene. Then they open Darcy’s note on the third level and find his state at that point: just before the rejection of his first proposal, with his pride still upright.

After opening these three materials within five minutes, the translator decides how to render “ardently.” Rather than “passionately,” “steadfastly” or “deeply” may be fitting, so that the character’s stature remains alive.

That is why the folder is a collection of materials. When one word stops the translator, material must make it possible to find an answer at the point of obstruction. Material that cannot yield an answer within thirty minutes is not material, but merely a page.

The next installment goes one step further into the second level, the eighteen segment tables. We will meet the inside of the most basic data: how one segment becomes one table, how one row in that table becomes an event, and how events form a chain of causality.