Expert: Dan Smith - 11/2/2005

Question
Could you explain the differences between the words below, with some examples e.g. a bulldozer, please?

1 heavy industrial vehicle
2 light industrial vehicle
3 work vehicle
4 working vehicle

No english dictionary I consulted gives any hints, and search over the Internet also doesn't.

(I'm a technical translator translating documents written in Japanese to those in English.)


Answer
First of all, the words "heavy" and "light" are relative, so different speakers might put different vehicles into one or the other of the first two categories. In other words, there is no clear cut-off at, say 5 tons. Even so, most native speakers would have pretty clear from those two phrases.

1. Heavy industrial vehicle. A big one. Large, heavier than a light one. Examples might be large bulldozers (Caterpillar D9), scrapers, the very large, track-driven draglines used in some mining operations, heavy trucks (cement trucks, 18-wheel tractor-trailers, etc.). Used in industry.

2. Light industrial vehicle. A light vehicle (backhoe, smaller truck, etc.)

3. Work vehicle. A vehicles used primarily in work activities rather than in recreational or family activities. Obviously, some people might use the same vehicle for either work or play, so an SUV might be used by a carpenter as a work vehicle or by a family to transport the kids to school. In the first case, the SUV is a "work vehicles," while in the second case it is a "family vehicle."

4. Working vehicle. Most native speakers would interpret the phrase "working vehicle" as "a vehicle that functions" as opposed to one that is broken and does not function. This would be true of many things. If I say, "My watch doesn't work," I mean that it is broken and does not keep time. If the air conditioning on a car "doesn't work," that means it needs repair. This meaning of "working" is the one I would expect you to use in technical documentation. I would think that in a technical manual it would always be assumed that any vehicle you were discussing would be "working," that is, it would function properly.

It is true that there might be instances in which native speakers might use the phrase "working vehicle" to describe one used in work rather than family or leisure activities. But they would usually say "work vehicle" to describe that. I think you should just stay away from the phrase "working vehicle" in your technical documents because it will usually be confusing or awkward to native speakers in that context.

Some of these distinctions are fairly fine, and native speakers will have little difficulty with them, while even well-trained non-native speakers will stumble now and then as you have. That would be true no matter the languages or the direction of the translation. That is why translations should always be worked on by at least two people: one who is a native speaker of the original document and one who is a native speaker of the language into which the document is being translated. And there will probably be times when they need to talk to each other and work out such subtle distinctions.

I do that kind of thing as a native English speaker fairly frequently in the normal course of my business. So if you or your company has an interest in someone to polish such technical documents, you can get in touch with me directly at: dan@wordsmithofaustin.com

Hope this helps.