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Spanish to English: The Common Lodging Houses Act 1851 General field: Social Sciences Detailed field: History
Source text - Spanish The Common Lodging Houses Act 1851 had many failings but probably its biggest was that it did not provide any regulation on the way the proprietors made their money. Consequently, prices for beds were self-regulating. Anyone could go into business running one, provided they had a suitable property at their disposal. In Spitalfields, the downward slide of the local economy meant that by the mid-nineteenth century property prices were at an all-time low and that no self-respecting house-hunter would even consider living there. The elegant master weavers’ homes that had been so lovingly designed and furnished in the 1700’s were now suffering from severe neglect. Rooves leaked, plaster fell off the walls, the kitchen ranges were clogged with grease and floorboards began to crumble. As a result, these houses, which had once been only within the reach of the reasonably wealthy, could now be picked up for next to nothing, and this combination of inexpensive property and demand for cheap housing made Spitalfields into one of the key areas for men and women keen to make their living from the misfortune of the poor. Most of the new landlords were previously itinerant entrepreneurs who acquired their property with money won gambling on the horses, or by direct robbery. Furnishings were often obtained from hospitals or houses in which contagious diseases had been rife. Furniture from these sources was cheap, as no-one else wanted to risk buying it for fear of infection. Aspiring property magnates with little or no collateral soon hit on the idea of selling shares in their business in order to raise the start-up capital. Advertisements started appearing in the newspapers, offering a 4% return to those who invested in common lodging houses. Once a project had reached the required number of investors, the property was converted and quickly let out. Most of the investors in this type of scheme lived far away and had little or no idea of how their ‘customers’ were being treated; if they had, it is doubtful they would have slept easily in their beds at night.
The Spitalfields common lodging houses catered for three major types of customer: those too ill or too old to work, those too lazy to work, and the common criminal. Generally speaking, lodging house proprietors employed a deputy whose job it was to ensure that all inmates paid for their beds every night, and a night-watchman, who acted as a bouncer, keeping away the unwanted visitors. Hence it often meant ejecting pregnant women, the sick and the elderly, knowing full well they would have to sleep rough; lodging house staff didn’t have much of a conscience. But the proprietors possessed even less concern for their fellow men. In addition to allowing desperate people to sleep in disgusting conditions, they also made more money from seizing the local monopoly on essentials such as bread, soap, and candles, which they then sold on to lodgers at hugely inflated prices. A detective sergeant who patrolled the area at the time wrote of the common lodging houses that their landlords were to his mind greater criminals than the unfortunate wretches who had to live in them.
Translation - English La ley de Albergues Comunes de 1851 tenía muchos fallos, y probablemente el mayor de ellos fue el no regular la manera en la cual los propietarios se ganaban la vida. En consecuencia, los precios de las camas se auto regulaban. Cualquiera podía establecer tal negocio por cuenta propia, siempre que tuviera una propiedad adecuada a su disposición. En Spitalfields, la espiral descendente de la economía local conllevó la bajada de los precios de los inmuebles hasta un mínimo histórico a mediados del siglo diecinueve, a tal punto que ningún cazador de propiedades que se preciara consideraría vivir allí. Las elegantes casas de los maestros tejedores de seda, tan cariñosamente diseñadas y amuebladas en 1700, ahora sufrían un gran descuido y falta de mantenimiento. Los tejados tenían fugas, el yeso se caía de las paredes, los fogones estaban obstruidos con grasa, y las tablas del suelo se iban derrumbando. En consecuencia, esas casas, que en su día solo estaban al alcance de la gente lo suficientemente rica, ahora se pillaban por casi nada, esta mezcla de propiedades baratas y de una demanda de viviendas económicas logró convertir Spitalfields en uno de los barrios clave para hombres y mujeres con afán de aprovecharse de la desgracia de los pobres. La mayoría de los nuevos propietarios fueron anteriormente empresarios ambulantes que adquirieron sus bienes con el dinero procedente de las apuestas en las carreras de caballos o directamente de los atracos. Los muebles procedían muy a menudo de hospitales o de casas en las que las enfermedades contagiosas abundaban, por lo que solían ser baratos, ya que nadie correría el riesgo de comprarlos por miedo a contagiarse. Pronto se les ocurrió a magnates inmobiliarios ambiciosos con poca o ninguna garantía vender participaciones en sus negocios a fin de aumentar el capital inicial. Anuncios empezaron a publicarse en los periódicos, ofreciendo una rentabilidad del 4% a quienes estuvieran dispuestos a invertir en albergues comunes. Una vez que un proyecto alcanzaba el número requerido de inversores, los bienes se liquidaban rápidamente y se alquilaban. La mayoría de los inversores que participaba en tales proyectos vivía muy lejos de ahí, y poco o nada sabían de la manera en la cual se trataba a sus “clientes”; de saberlo, es poco probable que hubieran conseguido dormir plácidamente por las noches. Los albergues comunes de Spitalfields atendían a tres categorías principales de clientes: aquellos demasiado enfermos, viejos o perezosos para trabajar, y los delincuentes comunes. En general, los propietarios de albergues empleaban ayudantes cuya tarea consistía en asegurarse que todos los huéspedes pagaran su cama todas las noches, así como un vigilante nocturno, que actuaba como gorila, manteniendo a los huéspedes no deseados alejados. Por tanto, conllevaba a menudo la expulsión de mujeres embarazadas, enfermos y ancianos, sabiendo perfectamente que tendrían que dormir en la calle. El personal de los albergues no poseía mucha conciencia; pero los propietarios se preocupaban aún menos de sus semejantes. Además de permitir que la gente desesperada durmiera en condiciones indecentes, ganaron más dinero haciéndose con el monopolio local de lo imprescindible, como el pan, el jabón y las velas, y vendiéndolo a los huéspedes a precios totalmente desorbitados. Un oficial de policía que patrullaba por el barrio en aquella época escribió sobre los alberques comunes… en su opinión, “los propietarios de los mismos eran delincuentes mucho mayores que los pobres diablos que tenían que vivir en ellos”.
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Years of experience: 20. Registered at ProZ.com: Sep 2010.
I am an English native speaker and a graduate in German and Spanish from the University of Southampton. I have lived in Germany and Spain and have spent prolonged periods abroad. I am resident in East London, and spent almost twenty years working in construction in the U.K. Prior to this I worked as a freelance translator, an occupation to which I have returned, which for me is the indulgence of a life long love. My spheres of interest are literary and creative ,with specialist knowledge of ceramics and construction terminology, with a wide understanding of legal and academic terminology and a flair for tourism literature and abstract ideas and concepts.
I am not only fascinated by what languages are, but also by what they have the potential to become, and the older I get the more their subtleties reveal themselves to me, which are exactly the qualities I try to capture and convey in my translation work.
To me a translator is someone who creates a parallel document. He takes a text in one language and converts it into another. With language knowledge and painstaking attention to detail, allied to flair and imagination he creates a second document which stands alone, without the need for cross-referencing.
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