livery driver 復習
法律の改正により、ニューヨークのタクシードライバーは英語の熟達度を測る試験を受ける必要がなくなりました。
Know English? For New York Cabdrivers, That’s No Longer Required
Hail a yellow taxi in New York City, and there is a good chance the driver is from another country. Passengers are regularly exposed to a range of languages that span the globe, from Spanish to Bengali to Urdu.
It can be charming, but also maddening for riders who feel that drivers do not understand where they want to go. Don’t you have to speak English, some wonder, to drive a taxi here?
As of Friday, the answer is no.
That is when new rules went into effect eliminating the requirement that taxi drivers take an English proficiency exam. Now, the test for a taxi license is available in several languages, to accommodate non-English speakers.
中略
Even in an era of global positioning devices and mapping apps, drivers and passengers often have exchanges over directions, fares and tolls. And there are those who simply want to chat about their day, the weather or even the sorry state of their love lives.
Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez, who sponsored the bill and is himself a former livery driver, said the legislation was intended to level the playing field so yellow-taxi and Uber drivers faced the same licensing requirements. Thousands of people, he said, now drive for companies like Uber and Lyft, another app-based service.
“They don’t have any language requirement, and no one has complained that they can’t communicate with them,” Mr. Rodriguez, a Democrat who represents northern Manhattan, said.
A spokesman for the mayor, Austin Finan, said the taxi commission and the mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs were developing an educational program for drivers to teach them industry-specific English. Ending the test would not do harm to the “safe and reliable customer service” in the industry, he said.
“The new legislation recognized the reality of an industry that has long been supported by the city’s hardworking immigrant community,” Mr. Finan said in a statement. “We do not want to prevent that community from access to jobs to support themselves and their families.”
今回取り上げる表現は “livery driver” です。livery /lív(ə)ri/を『ライトハウス英和辞典』（第5版 研究社）で調べてみますと、「1（普通は所有格の後で）（英）（製品、乗物などに見られる）会社のシンボルマーク（カラー） 2そろいの制服、仕着せ」という意味があることがわかりました。しかし、今回はどちらの意味もしっくりときません。そこで、電子辞書に内蔵されている『ジーニアス英和辞典』（第4版 大修館書店）でも調べてみますと「（複合語で）乗り物貸し業」という意味が見つかりました。乗り物貸し業（livery）のdriverとなると、タクシーの運転手という意味ではないかと思われました。最後にインターネットで検索してみると、weblioに「タクシー運転手、タクシーの運転で生計を立てる人」という意味が載っておりました。
タクシードライバーを表す英語はtaxi driver という直接的な表現の他にもlivery driverがあることを覚えておきたいです。（aqua）
liveryは過去にも取り上げられておりました。
livery - 田邉祐司ゼミ 常時英心：言葉の森から
