I'm an aspiring novelist who is outlining a draft for an alternate history story I want to write. It's about Pirates and takes place in the Caribbean and so in the processes of world building I've been researching The Golden Age of Piracy and the histories of various Caribbean islands. Right now I'm researching Cuba and I found a source that was originally written in Spanish but translated into English.
"Historia de Cuba - EcuRed" https://www.ecured.cu/Historia_de_Cuba
It's rather poorly translated so when I found a reference to something called the "Peace of Ryswick" in allusion to "Spain's smuggling problem" without any decipherable context I was intrigued. I did some digging and found a pdf containing a photocopy of one of the Ryswick treaties, the one between France and Spain published September 20th 1697, since Cuba was a Spanish colony it seemed relevant to my research. Only one problem, it's entirely in French. I don't know any French and it's a photocopy on a pdf so I can't run it through any translation software. Any suggestions would be most appreciated thank you.
If you really want this done, I would hire a graduate student to do this. They’re always looking for money and would be familiar with old legal French. Maybe try your local university. If you can find the graduate program coordinator, they would probably send an email out to the students to see if anyone is interested. I’d offer whatever their hourly rate is as a TA—probably 25-35 bucks an hour.
There's a 1698 translation here - the Franco-Spanish treaty is on pages 129-150 of the book - or you can view page-by-page starting here. The language and spellings are of the day and it does waffle on a bit: skimming through the text I couldn't find a reference to the Caribbean or specifically (I'm guessing this is the relevance) to the provision recognising French possession of what was to become Haiti, then a notorious pirate hangout. I'll take another look when my eyes are in better shape.