Cyril Tollari Oct 1, 2020:

Haiti's rural population was more than 80% in the 1960s.
https://tradingeconomics.com/haiti/rural-population-percent-...

Maybe this explains the frequent abbreviation of cultivateur, a common occurrence in birth certificates back then.

AllegroTrans Oct 1, 2020:

Another vague possibility "cultes" - i.e. religious (e.g. church) marriage?

Elisabeth Coles (asker) Oct 1, 2020:

Actually, this would also line up with another instance of this later in the text, where it has two names and then "cults" which I presumed meant that they were married, but it would make way more sense for it to say their profession in the context. I think this is probably the answer! Thank you so much everyone!

Elisabeth Coles (asker) Oct 1, 2020:

Sorry- ProZ decided not to notify me that there was any activity on this question so I hadn't seen anyone's comments. Thank you all for your advice so far!

Cyril, I haven't omitted any commas- the entire document is written as one run-on sentence, with no commas, full stops or paragraph breaks. Most translations in this vein that I've stumbled across have punctuation inserted just so it's not a huge mess, but your guess is as good as mine as to where the punctuation should go, so you may well be correct.

Cyril Tollari Oct 1, 2020:

Ph-B The Asker needs to explain why there are no comma. The sentence you put as an example has lots of commas.

I thought of what you explained, but I'm going to submit farmer as an answer, which works for both female and male in English. I don't understand the lack of commas though.

Gordon Matthews Oct 1, 2020:

Suggested answer Having read the discussion, I would suggest that Cyril (or Marco) post an answer along the following lines: "... with his wife, citizen (name), a farmer ..."

ph-b (X) Oct 1, 2020:

Sleuthing... Any chance domiciliée should be in the masculine, in which case we'd have something like "[X, a male farmer, having had a child??] avec la citoyenne [...], son épouse, cult[ivateur] demeurant et domicilié... ? A bit like here: …François Siohan , cult. 35 ans , …, domicilié a Cléder , fils de Christophe SIOHAN et de Froise LARVOR , son épouse , cult. domicil a tréflaouénan
(http://www.cgf-forum.fr/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=5369&start=90... I realise it's from a different country and time, but thought I'd mention it.

Marco Solinas Sep 30, 2020:

To Cyril Tollari "épouse, cult." (as a phrase) gets you a handful of hits. "époux, cult." gets about 50. "épouse, cultivatrice" gets about 2380 hits and "époux, cultivateur" gets about 7,800 hits (many of them from Haïti.
In addition, see these two Kudoz, both referring to birth certificates from Haïti: https://www.proz.com/kudoz/french-to-english/agriculture/195... and https://www.proz.com/kudoz/french-to-english/certificates-di...

Cyril Tollari Sep 30, 2020:

Before posting this answer, I'd like to check the term épouse cult. first with or without comma

philgoddard Sep 30, 2020:

Cyril may be right. I didn't find any relevant hits for "culturelle".

Cyril Tollari Sep 30, 2020:

I'm thinking the occupation (cultivatrice, ie farmer) is something that you would see in this type of document

Cyril Tollari Sep 30, 2020:

@Asker Did you omit any comma, eg after citoyenne, from the ST at all?

Mpoma Sep 30, 2020:

Hello and welcome Yes, there is a small handful of google hits for "épouse culturelle", so looks like you're right. Whether that is the exact same thing as plasaj, God only knows. Haitian person needed, and failing that an anthropologist.