On professions and occupations
Explanation: This post is not for grading, since it does not offer any answer. I do not know if the word أجير as used in Moroccan documents is coterminous with the word أجير as used in Middle Eastern countries, so I will leave that issue to the experts. I merely want to comment on how the field "profession" or "occupation" is filled in forms and documents from many Arab countries. Most of my first-hand information is based on my experience in Saudi Arabia, but I have second-hand information, based on exposure to documents from other Arab countries, especially Egypt. In Western countries, the field "occupation" or "profession" in most official forms and documents is filled in with a level of specificity that will tell the reader what the person does for a living, giving a fairly good indication of the person's technical training, education, level of expertise, and professional licensing, all summed up in a short phrase: physician, lawyer, architect, translator, cabinet-maker, software developer, etc. In Arab countries, however, the field is often used merely to classify the source of income of the individual. So a person, for instance, may be a government employee, which in some countries is simply called موظف and is often surprisingly rendered "official" in English (the English used by government bureaucrats in many Arab countries rarely has anything to do with English as we know it). Anther person may be an employee of a private concern. Such a person is often simply called عامل, and is often rendered "employee" or "worker" in English, and so on. When I was a medical interpreter at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, I often encountered situations where the doctor would ask about the line of work that the patient had practiced (which may be etiologically relevant), but the patient would simply identify himself as موظف, or متسبب, or whatever the source of income was, with no specificity regarding the actual work. This would typically prompt a refining of the question, like, "what kind of work did you do daily in your employment?" There is a social history behind this. To explain adequately, it would require a lengthier discussion, which may not be appropriate here, but I thought this much may be relevant to your inquiry.
| Fuad Yahya Works in field Native speaker of: Arabic, English PRO pts in category: 12
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