conventillo

Hi!
I'm Paola from Buenos Aires and I would like to know how I can translate the word "conventillo" into English. "Conventillo" is a word used to describle the houses where the poor immigrants lived at the beginning of XX century when they first arrived to Buenos Aires. They used to be big houses where the tenants rented a room for a family, so they lived in miserable conditions. They are typical of neighbourhoods like La Boca or San Telmo.
Thank you very much!
Paola.

shanty...shanties

creo que puedes usar esa palabra....

I think shanty would mean a small, individual house.
I think conventillo is a word that you should use, and then explain, perhaps as a "boarding house for poor families in early twentieth-century Buenos Aires." (There's no way to get all that into a word!)

Indeed, a "shanty" is a separate house. I don't think "boarding house" would be correct either; a boarding house offers boarders more than just a room.

Impoverished, early twentieth-century immigrants to this country took up residence in "slum tenements." That term carries all the appropriate connotations. I think "ghetto" would also work.

"Tenement" is perfect. (I hadn't thought of it.)
It would be understood as housing for the poor in the US without any additional descriptive word ("slum" makes it a good deal more pejorative).
Oh well, since the thread is old, I hope someone can profit later on from the discussion. Regards.

allauda said:

Hi!
I'm Paola from Buenos Aires and I would like to know how I can translate the word "conventillo" into English. "Conventillo" is a word used to describle the houses where the poor immigrants lived at the beginning of XX century when they first arrived to Buenos Aires. They used to be big houses where the tenants rented a room for a family, so they lived in miserable conditions. They are typical of neighbourhoods like La Boca or San Telmo.
Thank you very much!
Paola.

Perhaps you might have to go at lenght writing conventillo in italics and explaining that it was usually a big old one-family house where rooms were rented to different families who had to share sanitary, washing and cooking facilities in poor conditions.
http://entregraficos.valparaisotv.com/valparaiso/wp-content/uploads/conventillo.jpg

Please note that conventillos already appeared at the end of the XIX century with the massive arrival of immigrants (say 1888 when immigration laws were issued in Argentina). It's not far from what you could have seen in New York at about the same days. La Boca with its Italian influence can in a way be compared with Little Italy, with families crowded in one room, though conventillos also spread isolated in other working class districts.