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


Source text in English

Translation by Lili Potpara (#14126) — Winner

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.
V Londonski četrti SE26 smo navajeni na glamur: nad našim zobozdravnikom sta svoj čas stanovala Kelly Brook in Jason Statham. A ko Anouska Hempel s petkami zatoklja po razpokanem cementu parkirišča pred mojim stanovanjem, nehote pomislim na tiste fotografije kraljevskih glav v reviji Picture Post med obiski pri družinah, ki so jim bombe med drugo svetovno vojno uničile domove. Toda Anouska Hempel me v skromnem predmestnem domovanju seveda ni obiskala zato, da bi mi izkazala sočutje. Ženska, ki je izumila butični hotel, še preden je sploh dobil to zaščiteno ime, je prišla k meni z nasvetom, po katerem — sodeč po oglasih v revijah za notranjo opremo in živčnih objavah na spletnih forumih Naredi sam — obupno koprni polovica lastnikov nepremičnin v zahodnem svetu: kako običajnemu domu vdihniti videz in vzdušje hotelskega apartmaja s petimi zvezdicami, vrednega 750 funtov na noč. Kako, v mojem primeru, skromno stanovanje, predelano iz srednje rezine trinadstropnega viktorijanskega dvojčka, prenoviti v slogu Hemplove.

»Bi šlo,« reče in se razgleduje po moji kuhinji. »Vsekakor bi šlo. Sploh ni razloga, zakaj ne. A je potrebna kontinuiteta med sobami. Enovita zamisel, ki bo tekla skoznje.« Hrepeneče se zazre proti požarnim stopnicam. »In seveda bi morali kupiti tudi sosednjo hišo.« To je šala. Upam vsaj.

…

Toda zdaj si je treba vzeti kratek predah za premislek o tem nenavadnem vzgibu. Hotelska soba je prostor s izbrisanim spominom. Motilo bi nas, če bi v njej ostala kakršna koli sled za prejšnjim gostom, sploh ker nas večina v hotele hodi zato, da bi tam počeli stvari, ki jih doma ne. Pričakujemo, da bo hotelska soba očiščena tako temeljito, kot bi s postelje pravkar odvlekli truplo. (V nekaterih primerih so ga celo res.) Notranjost doma pa uteleša nasprotno zamisel: je skladišče spominov. Normalno se nam zdi, da je zgodba o stanovalcih zapisana v fotografijah nad kaminom, v slikah po zidovih, v knjigah na policah. Če bi bile hotelske sobe ljudje, bi bile nasmejani bolniki po opravljeni lobotomiji ali prepričljivi psihopati.


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