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11th ProZ.com translation contest: "Contemporary society" » English to Slovenian » Entry by Ljerka Švagel


Source text in English

Translation by Ljerka Švagel (#14248)

We're accustomed to glamour in London SE26: Kelly Brook and Jason Statham used to live above the dentist. But when Anouska Hempel's heels hit the cracked cement of the parking space outside my flat, it's hard not to think of those Picture Post photographs of royalty visiting bombed-out families during the second world war. Her mission in my modest tract of suburbia is, however, about more than offering sympathy. Hempel—the woman who invented the boutique hotel before it bore any such proprietary name—has come to give me information for which, judging by the spreads in interiors magazines and anxious postings on online DIY forums, half the property-owners in the Western world seem desperate: how to give an ordinary home the look and the vibe of a five-star, £750-a-night hotel suite. To Hem­pelise, in this case, a modest conversion flat formed from the middle slice of a three-storey Victorian semi.

"You could do it," she says, casting an eye around my kitchen. "Anyone could do it. Absolutely no reason why not. But there has to be continuity between the rooms. A single idea must be followed through." She looks out wistfully over the fire escape. "And you'd have to buy the house next door, of course." That's a joke. I think.

...

It's worth pausing, though, to consider the oddness of this impulse. The hotel room is an amnesiac space. We would be troubled if it bore any sign of a previous occupant, particularly as many of us go to hotels in order to do things we would not do at home. We expect a hotel room to be cleaned as thoroughly as if a corpse had just been hauled from the bed. (In some cases, this will actually have happened.) The domestic interior embodies the opposite idea: it is a repository of memories. The story of its inhabitants ought to be there in the photos on the mantelpiece, the pictures on the wall, the books on the shelves. If hotel rooms were people, they would be smiling lobotomy patients or plausible psychopaths.
Navajeni smo na blišč v jugovzhodnem Londonu. Kelly Brook in Jason Satham sta včasih živela tukaj nad zobozdravnikom. Toda, ko so petke Anouske Hempel udarile po razpokanem cementu na parkirišču pred mojim stanovanjem, je bilo težko ne spomniti se tistih fotografij v Picture Postu, ko so člani kraljevske družine obiskovali bombardirane družine v času druge svetovne vojne. Njena misija pa se je v mojem skromnem delu predmestja, zdela več kot le znamenje sočutja. Hempel – ženska, ki je izumila butik hotel, še preden je kaj takega sploh dobilo ime – je prišla, da bi mi dala informacijo, ki bi se – sodeč po govoricah v časopisih posvečenih notranjem opremljanju, in nestrpnih piscih na spletnih forumih s tematiko sam svoj mojster, polovici lastnikov nepremičnin v zahodnem svetu zdela kot znak obupa: kako preurediti navadno stanovanje v domovanje z videzom in utripom hotelskega apartmaja s petimi zvezdicami in ceno 750 funtov na noč. V tem primeru, to pomeni »hempelizirati« skromno preurejeno stanovanje v srednjem delu trinadstropnega viktorijanskega dvojčka

»Vi to zmorete«, pravi in se ozre po moji kuhinji. »Vsakdo bi to zmogel. Nobenega razloga ni, da ne bi, vendar morajo biti vsi prostori usklajeni. Ena sama ideja mora biti vidna povsod.« Otožno je pogledala skozi požarne stopnice.« In morali bi, seveda, kupiti sosednjo hišo.« Samo šali se. Mislim.
…

Kljub temu, se velja za trenutek ustaviti in premisliti o tem, kako nenavaden je ta impulz. Hotelska soba je prostor brez spomina. Motilo bi nas, če bi nosil kakršen koli znak prejšnjega stanovalca, posebej zato, ker gremo pogosto v hotel zato, da tam počnemo reči, ki jih doma ne bi. Pričakujemo, da bo hotelska soba tako temeljito očiščena, kot da so iz nje pravkar izvlekli truplo (v nekaterih primerih se prav to tudi zgodi). Notranjost doma izraža ravno nasprotno idejo: to je odlagališče spominov. Zgodba stanovalcev mora biti vidna na fotografijah s kamina, slikah na steni, v knjigah na polici.
Če bi hotelske sobe bile ljudje, bi se smehljale kot pacienti, ki so prestali lobotomijo ali pa kot prepričljivi psihopati.


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