I often see the word อาชีพ used to translate 'career', but the literal meaning of อาชีพ is profession.

The word profession describes a particular line of work or skillset, whereas a career is particular to an individual and can be made up from experience in a single profession or across multiple professions during the time an individual has been working.

So is there a better word to describe career in thai ?

Carrer and profession are used interchangeably. Remember Thai has a much more limited vocabulary than English.

อาชีพ - aa·chêep - It means both career and profession.

งานการ - ngaan·gaan - Same thing....?

Edited September 21, 200817 yr by Hobgoblin

Carrer and profession are used interchangeably. Remember Thai has a much more limited vocabulary than English.

อาชีพ - aa·chêep - It means both career and profession.

งานการ - ngaan·gaan - Same thing....?

I have to disagree with your second sentence, do you know how many words there are for the sun or moon in Thai for instance, or for oneself?

หน้าที่การงาน ?

This surely is a feature of all languages, that its not a one-to-one situation in terms of translating vocabulary. How much easier life would be if it were the case, and how much more boring "language" would be.

We were actually discussing this very subject in a class at my school today: how concepts which are easy to express in one language are very difficult in another, and vice-versa. A Finnish boy in the class told us that there is no word for "please" in Finnish, and that you have to convey the concept in a completely different way.

So, to us "profession", "job", "occupation" and "career" are different, in Thai they're mainly the same.

On the other hand, we also looked at the number of words for "you" in Thai, and what this says about the language and the culture.

[For anyone who is interested, this was an International Baccalaureate TOK (Theory of Knowledge) class, in which we were discussing language as a "Way of Knowing".]

Edited September 22, 200817 yr by grtaylor

If we define "career" in the sense you're looking for, it means the working period of one's life, that generally begins whenever education ends and continues until retirement. As stated, it can cover a number of jobs or positions, within more than one field of work.

Perhaps this helps our native Thai contributors point us to the right phrase. It's kind of like วัยการทำงาน, but I don't think that's quite right. The period of one's working life up until the present, regardless of changes in type of work.

I'm sure Thai isn't lacking in words to explain the concept, but it might not be a common expression the way it is in English.

Edited September 22, 200817 yr by Rikker

Not knowing a smooth short word, I'd try with something like 'prasòbkaan thaang dâan kaan tham ngaan' (work experience) or something like 'prawàd nai kaan tham ngaan'... knowing that neither are ideal but would hopefully get the message through.

Thanks all for the responses, very interesting.

I suspect that a word like career or at least the meaning as i intepret it is relatively new in the english language. Unless you were a scholor or merchant etc people only had jobs/occupations until 100 or so years ago in the west.

Thanks all for the responses, very interesting.

I suspect that a word like career or at least the meaning as i intepret it is relatively new in the english language. Unless you were a scholor or merchant etc people only had jobs/occupations until 100 or so years ago in the west.

From http://www.etymonline.com - seems you're right about it being a fairly recent addition:

career (n.)

c.1534, "a running course" (especially of the sun, etc., across the sky), from M.Fr. carriere "road, racecourse," from O.Prov. carriera, from V.L. *(via) cararia "carriage (road), track for wheeled vehicles," from L. carrus "chariot" (see car). Sense of "course of a working life" first attested 1803. The verb is first attested in 1594 from the notion of a horse "passing a career" on the jousting field, etc. Careerist is from 1917.