Sunday, August 19, 2007

living wage

living wage: salario digno

living wage is completely misdefined on answers.com, which led to great frustration as I tried to explain this concept to colleagues doing translation for Democracy Now! It is NOT a minimum wage, but precisely more than that. It is better defined here

On proz they have living wage translated as salario vital, but I really don't like that rendition. I don't think it's nearly as immediately intelligible.

I came up with salario digno many years ago and have been propagating it amongst movement interps since. I've seen it pop up in all sorts of documents - not sure if others came up with it too, or if I was truly that successful in getting it adopted : )

I'm in Glasgow, Scotland at the moment, and was happy to hear at lunch today that activists in the UK are picking up this tactic, which I believe started in the US, and are pushing to have all of the purchasing associated with the London Olympics be required to offer a living wage. Note though that this term is still new to English speakers over here, and if you're not speaking to a union crowd they may not know it.

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