In my last comment I talked about moving up professionally. Well, there is “general translation” and “specialist translation”. But not all specialist translation is equally specialist. Sure, I’ve done my share of translation projects where actual familiarity with the subject matter was required, but what is “too specialist” when it comes to what I do?

I am effectively a professional linguist, so how about I invoke an example related to what I do (language)? It does seem to me that chances are that a fair number of people who are poorly educated won’t have a clue what a “noun”, an “adjective” or a “verb” is. Yet these are things that people use all the time, in basic conversation, AND they are just so easy to define. A noun is a word which relates to an object; it’s a label of something. An adjective is a word which indicates a characteristic about a noun. And a verb is a word denoting some kind of action. It’s as simple as that.

But I have also tried to think about this further, and I would say that, sometimes, a phrase or sentence is a whole lot less complicated than it may sound. For example, take “conducting research”. You might think that “conducting research” usually means something that is anything but straightforward, and that a person cannot do it without leaving their own personal comfort zone.
But take this scenario: a young child’s father is away, and their mother has told them that he will be coming home on Day X. The child believes it, but agrees for himself / herself that it would nice if they could know exactly (or roughly) what time he will be home – it’s just that, as far as they’re concerned, their mother doesn’t know when it will be; or else wouldn’t she have said so at the time she said that he was coming home on Day X at all? However, the child knows that their father left for wherever he was going on a train from their local station – maybe he / she was there at the station and his / her father gave them a hug goodbye before boarding the train; you can imagine that that happened if you want.

Anyway, the child has an idea. He / she does happen to know where their father went, as well as the company of the train he should be arriving home on (they overheard it in a conversation between their parents or whatever). He / she walks past the train station when walking to / from school. Before Day X, on one occasion when they walk past the train station they walk up to it for a bit, to have a look at the timetables, so they can find out the times when trains will be arriving at their local station in the evening of Day X. Put two and two together and they will agree, “Well, if a train [which is a train of the company that their father will be arriving home on] will be arriving here at so-and-so time in the evening of Day X, that means that Daddy should be at home about fifteen minutes after this.” To me, the child’s looking at the timetables for this reason is essentially an example of “conducting research”.