Exercises in translation (II)

from: Avui, October 11, 2009, p. 23

Spain will continue being the EU's leader in job destruction

Editorial office, Barcelona

At year's end, 3 of every ten new unemployed in the EU will be Spanish. According to the "labor euro-index," elaborated by IESE business school and temp-work agency Adecco, Spain will continue leading the job destruction, though it will be more moderate if compared to earlier trimesters. The report analyses the job market's evolution of seven European countries: Spain, France, Germany, Ital, Portugal, United Kingdom and Poland (similar to Spain in population). Taken together, these markets have registered three million people less in employment, double the number than in the three months before. "Never before in a twelve-months span our group of seven countries had destroyed so many jobs," the authors of the document stress. Germany is the country that has had a better evolution, while Spain's is the most "dramatic."

The future jobless rate
Spain has lost within a year 1,480,000 jobs, a fall of more than 7%. That means it has counted for nearly one in every two jobs lost in the EU during the past year. As to the unemployment rate, the study published by IESE and Adecco calculates that the European community rate will rise by 2.5%, as as to be at 10.3% at year's end. That means an increase of 3% in two years. If you took out Spain of this calculation, the increase would be smaller, 1.8%.

(The original in Catalan is as confusing as to numbers and semesters, trimester, years,... observed...)

A ride on a regional train

About three weeks ago, on a sunny Saturday afternoon, I went by train back from the capital to our village on the Barcelona-Zaragoza regional train. The train model was that normally used as a local train: the overhead baggage racks were very small, so there were bags all over the place. The air-conditioning did not work properly and they train shuddered heavily at higher speeds. There was a homeless-looking traveller who tried to discuss the price of the fare with the ticket inspector; later on he was talking to himself while manipulating empty beer cans into objects whose utility I could not imagine. There were "internal immigrants" from other parts of Spain who led very loud mobile phone conversations and "real immigrants" with hardly any luggage but a bicycle they needed to leave somewhere. There were young parents adoring their shouting offspring. Then a guy with expensive clothing (e.g. Munich shoes, a luxury trainer fashion shoe brand from Barcelona)and a plastic bag of a local "hard" discount store (Dia, headquartered near Madrid but part of Carrefour of France; there are no local hard discounters; Lidl is ubiquitous in Catalan cities, Aldi only in middle-sized towns; Mercadona from Valencia is a very good local discounter as they avoid cardboard boxes in their stores and have a line of good exclusive products -- in the countryside where we live, there is only Dia:( ). Hardly anybody was looking outside at the fascinating landscape: first the Mediterranean at the feet of the rail tracks, then olive groves and vineyards...