Labor Day Language Challenge

Interpreting Names of Trades & Professions

by Irene Radillo & Yvette Citizen

How do you celebrate Labor Day? In the USA it’s celebrated on the first Monday of September. Most of the rest of the world celebrates it in May. A lot has been written about why the US celebrates on a different day – might be fun for you to research it.

 This Labor Day, we at The Confident Interpreter would like to pay homage to all those who helped professionalize the interpreting profession and those who continue to work very hard to get us better wages and working conditions. In that spirit, we invite you to take our Labor Day Challenge Exercise.  Interpreters are frequently thrown off by job titles during jury selection and also during depositions for injured workers and presentence interviews.

 Your challenge is to see if you can translate the following job titles into your working languages.

1.⁠ ⁠IT Specialist

 2.⁠ ⁠Senior Software Engineer

 3.⁠ ⁠Slumlord – This one came up in a different context. We had to look that up on the fly and ended up saying Arrendador de infravivienda o vivienda de mala calidad. We also considered Arrendador explotador andCasero explotador.

 4.⁠ ⁠Senior Research Scientist

 5.⁠ ⁠Quality Assurance Engineer

 6.⁠ ⁠Janitor / Superintendent (of a building)

 7.⁠ ⁠Deputy in the X County Sheriff’s Office

 8.⁠ ⁠Housekeeper in a hotel

 9.⁠ ⁠Certified Home Attendant

10.⁠ ⁠Bakery Confectioner Specialist

11.⁠ ⁠Receptionist

12.⁠ ⁠Administrative Assistant

13.⁠ ⁠CEO / CFO

14.⁠ ⁠Coach (sports)

15.⁠ ⁠Coach (life/professional)

16.⁠ ⁠⁠Phlebotomist

17.⁠ ⁠Stylist / Barber

18.⁠ ⁠Dog Walker

19.⁠ ⁠Veterinary Tech

20. HVAC Repair Specialist

 Let us know which ones tripped you up or if there are other trades and professions that you find tricky. 

And of course, don’t forget to check out the Free (and the not free but affordable) resources in this website.

As always, feel free to re-post as long as you give us credit.

copyright: 2024. The Confident Interpreter. All rights reserved.

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Legal Terminology Challenge: Combatting Human Trafficking

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The Interpreter as Word Detective: An exercise to test the fluency of your languages