Thread: Una Palabrita

Hi! I'm an environmental scientist and my specialty is NEPA (National Environmental Policy Act) work for federal agencies. I was born in Venezuela and for the most part my Spanish is pretty fluent, but I have hit a road block with this one!!
Does anyone have any suggestions as to how to translate "Scoping Meetings"? 'Scope' in NEPA consists of the range of actions, alternatives, and impacts to be considered when writing an environmental impact statement. These meetings are intended to educate the public and get their comments and feedback about the project BEFORE we start the environmental review process. Any ideas?
La traduccion mas exacta que he encontrado para 'Scope' es esfera de accion. Pero no estoy segura como poner esto en terminos de una reunion para el publico.
Agradeceria cualquier sugerencia.

This sort of workplace jargon makes me crazy!! "Scoping meetings" is hard to translate because no one knows what it means even in English except the person who invented the phrase. Wouldn't it have been better if that person had used a phrase that already had meaning in the general community so that people would know what he/she was talking about? Isn't that the purpose of communication? Maybe something like: community feedback sessions?

In my opinion, you would have to turn "scoping meetings" back into something that people can understand and then translate that.

For example: reuniones de comunicación con la comunidad, para recoger opiniones, sugerencias y comentarios...or whatever description sounds appropriate. Or is there a standard phrase in Spanish for "community feedback session?"

Muchas gracias. Lamentablemente, scoping meetings son las primeras reuniones, y luego, despues de que comience el proceso de investigacion tendremos otra serie de "public involvement meetings" y es importante distinguir entre las dos. Por eso necesito encontrar un termino que verdaderamente signifique que estas son reuniones que exploran la esfera de accion del projecto.

Ingles tiene la facilidad de inventar estos términos especializados en parte para ofuscar y para e inflar la importancia del grupo o proyecto. Concuerdo con Maria que ha de hacer una frase de ilustración en vez de buscar un termino que no va definir el propósito de la reunión con claridad. Quza algo como reunion de sondeo (primer paso).
Dennis en Indiana

neither. it is an "openhouse" style meeting where we have posters around the roomand informational factsheets and we try to explain to people what the federal agency is proposing to do and inform them we will study how this action may or may not affect them and the environment. the end result is to obtain comments and suggestions from the community regarding the proposed action.