This is the second in our course of English Spanish Parallel Texts and we are going to practice discussing Professions in Spanish. Start by reading the texts in Spanish below. The English translations are provided later but please try not to look at them until you have read the Spanish versions various times and tried your best to understand them.

There may be some words and phrases in the text that you are unfamiliar with, but you should be aiming to capture the main essence of what is happening. There will always be words and phrases popping up in real-life situations that you have never heard before, so it is important never to get too distracted by details.

If you want to investigate some of the words you don’t know with a dictionary that would be great, please do, but do this after trying your best to understand with what you already have in your head.

Check out this video lesson with information relevant to this topic:

Professions

Image by Sony Mony Electronics from Pixabay

Spanish Texts

Text 1 in Spanish:

Sara: Hola, buenos días Juan. ¿Cómo estás? Disculpa, ¿eres un electricista?
Juan: Hola, buenas Sara. No trabajo como electricista. Soy policía. ¿Tienes un problema eléctrico?
Sara: Sí, mi nevera no funciona.
Juan: Vale, ¿dónde está tu nevera?
Sara: Aquí.
Juan: Oh, sí. Mmmhh. Un segundo. ¡No está enchufada!
Sara: Oh, lo siento mucho. Soy muy tonta.

Text 2 in Spanish:

Irene: Hola, buenas tardes. ¿Cuál es tu profesión?
Jennifer: Soy estudiante. Una estudiante de idiomas. ¿Y tú?
Irene: Yo soy escritora. Escribo libros para niños.
Jennifer: ¡Guau! Qué interesante.
Irene: Sí, está bien. Y tú, ¿donde estudias? ¿Y qué idiomas estudias?
Jennifer: Soy de Los Estados Unidos, pero vivo en Londres. Estudio italiano, español, ruso y chino.
Irene: ¡Maravilloso! ¡¡Cinco idiomas: inglés, italiano, español, ruso y chino!!
Jennifer: Francés también. Hablo seis idiomas. ¿Y tú? ¿Cuántos idiomas hablas?
Irene: Solo uno. Español. Soy española, de Madrid.

English Texts

Text 1 in English:

Sara: Hi, good morning Juan. How are you? Excuse me, are you an electrician?
Juan: I don’t work as an electrician. I am a policeman. Do you have an electrical problem?
Sara: Yes, my fridge is not working.
Juan: OK, where is your fridge?
Sara: Here.
Juan: Oh yes. Mmmhh. One moment. It is not plugged in!
Sara: Oh I am so sorry. I am very silly.

Text 2 in English:

Irene: Hello, good afternoon. What is your profession?
Jennifer: I’m a student. A student of languages. And you?
Irene: I am a writer. I write books for children.
Jennifer: Wow! How interesting.
Irene: Yes, it’s fine. Where do you study? And what languages do you study?
Jennifer: I’m from the United States, but I live in London. I study Italian, Spanish, Russian, and Chinese.
Irene: Wonderful! Five languages: English, Italian, Spanish, Russian and Chinese!!
Jennifer: French too. I speak six languages. And you? How many languages do you speak?
Irene: Only one. Spanish. I’m Spanish from Madrid.

So, how did you get on? How much did you understand of the original text before checking the translation? Please let me know in the comments section below…

Don’t worry if you didn’t understand that much, practice makes perfect! Be patient and keep reading, hearing, writing, and speaking Spanish. See you next time!