If you are searching for how to translate ICATUS 2016 codes, how to translate time-use survey activities, how to translate unpaid care work and domestic work categories, or how to preserve daily-activity meaning across languages, the central rule is to translate the activity label and definition without changing what people were actually doing. ICATUS is a statistical activity classification, not a casual list of lifestyle words.
This matters in time-use surveys, gender statistics, unpaid-care research, labour statistics, household studies, education research, health studies, social policy, transport analysis, wellbeing research and international comparisons. A translation can sound natural and still be statistically wrong if childcare becomes general family time, if fetching water becomes ordinary shopping, if paid work travel becomes leisure travel, if volunteer activity becomes household help, or if resting is confused with sleep.
This guide explains how to translate ICATUS 2016 safely: how the hierarchy works; how employment, own-use production, unpaid domestic services, unpaid caregiving, volunteer work, learning, social participation, leisure and self-care differ; how travel and accompanying activities are coded; how simultaneous activities and survey diaries complicate translation; and how to protect codes, definitions and time values in multilingual datasets. It solves one specialist search intent beneath the existing eduKateSG translation architecture rather than creating another broad translation hub.
1. ICATUS classifies activities, not people
The International Classification of Activities for Time-Use Statistics classifies what people do during time intervals. It does not classify the person’s occupation, employment status, social class or household role. The same person can move through many ICATUS categories in one day: employment, travel, cooking, caregiving, learning, socializing, exercise and sleep. Translation must preserve the activity performed at each episode.
2. ICATUS 2016 is the current UN time-use activity classification
The United Nations Statistics Division publishes ICATUS 2016 for classifying activities in time-use statistics. The online version reflects refinements made after comments from national statistical offices in 2017. A translator should therefore identify the version used by the source dataset and avoid mixing older time-use categories with ICATUS 2016 labels.
3. The classification has nine major divisions
ICATUS 2016 organizes activities into nine broad divisions: employment and related activities; production of goods for own final use; unpaid domestic services for household and family members; unpaid caregiving services for household and family members; unpaid volunteer, trainee and other unpaid work; learning; socializing and communication, community participation and religious practice; culture, leisure, mass-media and sports practices; and self-care and maintenance. Each division contains more detailed groups and classes.
4. Codes are reference data, not translated abbreviations
An ICATUS activity code remains the same when the label moves into another language. Do not replace code 4 with a target-language initial for care, or code 91 with a localized shorthand for sleep. Keep the code protected and translate the official label and explanatory definition separately.
5. Employment and related activities are broader than “being at work”
The employment division includes work for pay or profit and related activities. Time-use diaries can distinguish core employment from breaks, training, travel or other employment-related episodes. Translating every employment-related code as “working” may erase important distinctions. Preserve the specific activity where the source provides it.
6. Employment activity is different from occupation
A teacher, nurse, driver and engineer can all record employment episodes. ICATUS codes the activity and purpose of time, while ISCO classifies occupation. A translated time-use dataset should not replace an activity label with a job title. If occupation is also recorded, keep it in a separate field.
7. Employment activity is also different from employment status
An employee, employer, own-account worker and dependent contractor can all spend time in employment activities. ICSE-18 describes the work relationship; ICATUS describes what time was used for. Translation should preserve both dimensions instead of inferring one from the other.
8. Own-use production of goods is a separate major division
ICATUS distinguishes production of goods for own final use from market-oriented employment and from unpaid domestic services. Activities can include agriculture, fishing, making goods, construction, collecting fuel or fetching water when performed mainly for own final use. Translating them as hobbies, chores or unpaid employment can change their statistical meaning.
9. “Own final use” needs precise translation
This phrase indicates that the goods are produced mainly for consumption or use by the producer’s household rather than for sale on the market. It is not the same as personal enjoyment or recreational activity. A family growing vegetables for its own consumption belongs in a different analytical space from gardening purely for leisure.
10. Growing food for own use is not automatically leisure gardening
The same physical action can have different classifications depending on purpose. Planting vegetables mainly to feed the household can be own-use production; tending ornamental plants for pleasure can be leisure. Translation must preserve contextual qualifiers instead of classifying from the verb “garden” alone.
11. Fetching water can be economically and socially significant
ICATUS explicitly identifies supplying water and fuel for own household or final use. In some settings, water collection consumes substantial time and is central to gender and infrastructure analysis. Translating it vaguely as errands or household work can hide the activity’s policy significance. Preserve the collection, transport and own-use purpose.
12. Gathering fuel is not the same as recreational walking
A person walking to collect firewood is travelling in connection with own-use production, not simply exercising or taking a walk. Time-use classification depends on activity purpose. Translation should keep that purpose visible, especially when diary text is short.
13. Unpaid domestic services form their own major division
ICATUS major division 3 covers unpaid domestic services for household and family members. This includes food preparation, cleaning, household maintenance, textile and footwear care, household management, pet care, shopping and related travel. Do not flatten these into one generic housework label when the source records detail.
14. Food preparation is different from food production
Preparing a meal for immediate household consumption is an unpaid domestic service. Growing crops or processing goods for own final use can belong to own-use production. Translators should distinguish cooking, preserving, producing and processing according to the source definitions rather than treating all food-related activity as cooking.
15. Cleaning and household maintenance are separate from major construction
Routine cleaning, maintaining the dwelling and small do-it-yourself tasks can fall under domestic services, while major construction for own final use can belong to own-use production. A target-language word such as repair may cover both. Use the scale, purpose and official definition to preserve the boundary.
16. Household management is real time use
Planning, budgeting, organizing household duties and paying bills consume time even when they do not involve visible physical labour. Time-use statistics can classify these activities separately. Translation should not omit mental and administrative household work because it looks less concrete than cooking or cleaning.
17. Pet care is distinct from human caregiving
ICATUS places pet care within unpaid domestic services, while caring for children or dependent adults belongs to unpaid caregiving. Languages that use a broad word equivalent to care for both can blur the distinction. Keep the object of care explicit.
18. Shopping for the household is not leisure shopping
Purchasing goods for household and family needs is an unpaid domestic service. Browsing shops for entertainment or personal leisure can have another classification. Translate the purpose and beneficiary when the diary or code specifies them. A generic shopping label can be insufficient for analysis.
19. Unpaid caregiving is separate from unpaid domestic work
ICATUS major division 4 covers unpaid caregiving services for household and family members. This includes childcare and instruction, care for dependent adults, help to non-dependent adults, and related accompanying or travel. The distinction matters strongly in gender statistics. Translating all unpaid household work as domestic work can make care invisible.
20. Childcare is more than physical supervision
Childcare can include feeding, washing, physical care, teaching, helping with learning, playing in a caregiving context and other direct care activities depending on the detailed code. Translators should not reduce it to babysitting if the source classification is broader.
21. Child instruction can sit inside unpaid caregiving
Helping a household child learn or develop skills can be coded as caregiving rather than the respondent’s own learning. The same word “study” can therefore refer to different people and categories. Translate who is learning and who is providing care explicitly.
22. Care for dependent adults needs dependency context
Care for a dependent adult is different from ordinary socializing or helping a non-dependent adult. The target language should preserve dependency when the source does. Omitting the qualifier can make care burden measures less accurate.
23. Helping non-dependent adults is still distinct
ICATUS also distinguishes help to non-dependent adult household and family members. A person may assist another adult with tasks without that adult being classified as dependent. Translating all family help as caregiving for dependent persons can overstate care needs.
24. Accompanying someone is not the same as travelling alone
Taking a child to school, accompanying an older relative to a clinic and travelling alone to provide care can carry different meanings. ICATUS includes detailed accompanying and travel categories because the care relationship matters. Translate who is being accompanied and why, not only the movement verb.
25. Travel purpose follows the associated activity
Time spent travelling can be coded differently depending on whether it relates to employment, own-use production, domestic services, caregiving, learning, volunteering, social participation, leisure or self-care. Translating every journey simply as travel removes the analytical link. Keep the associated purpose in the label or metadata.
26. Unpaid volunteer, trainee and other unpaid work is another major division
ICATUS major division 5 distinguishes unpaid volunteer work, unpaid trainee work and other unpaid work from domestic services and caregiving for one’s own household and family. A volunteer repairing a community building is not doing household maintenance, even if the physical task is similar.
27. Volunteer work is not simply unpaid activity
Volunteer work has a defined relationship to producing goods or services for others without pay, subject to the statistical definition. Many unpaid activities are not volunteer work: housework for one’s own household, caregiving for family, self-care and leisure are examples. Preserve the beneficiary and work character in translation.
28. Unpaid trainee work is different from paid apprenticeship
A person can perform work to acquire experience or skills without pay. That differs from paid apprentices, trainees and interns classified within employment-status frameworks. Time-use translation should preserve whether the episode is paid, unpaid, formal learning or work-based training.
29. Learning is a major division in its own right
ICATUS major division 6 covers formal education, homework and related activities, additional study, non-formal education and courses, travel related to learning, and other learning activities. Translate the learner’s own activity carefully and distinguish it from teaching or caring for another person.
30. Formal education differs from homework and course review
Being in class and doing homework are both learning, but they can have separate detailed codes. This matters when researchers examine school attendance, study burden or travel. A broad translation such as studying can hide the distinction.
31. Non-formal learning should not automatically become hobby time
Courses, lessons and skill development outside formal education can still be classified as learning. A music lesson taken to learn, a language course or a structured training activity may belong here even if the subject is enjoyable. Translate the learning purpose rather than judging whether the activity feels recreational.
32. Travel to learning has its own meaning
Walking to school, waiting for a university bus and travelling to a course are not generic transport episodes when the classification retains learning purpose. Preserve that connection in multilingual diaries and summary tables.
33. Socializing and communication form part of major division 7
ICATUS distinguishes talking, visiting, gathering and personal communication from other activities such as media use or community participation. Digital communication can complicate translation because the device does not determine the activity. Messaging a friend is social communication; reading news may be mass-media use; working in chat software may be employment.
34. Community participation is not the same as private socializing
Community cultural and social events, civic responsibilities and related activities can be coded separately from private socializing. A target language may use one broad word for gathering, meeting or event. Keep the community or civic function visible.
35. Religious practice has its own place
Private prayer, meditation and collective religious practice can be distinguished within ICATUS. Translators should use neutral descriptive language and preserve whether an activity is individual, collective or travel related. Do not move all meditation into leisure or self-care when the source codes it as religious or spiritual practice.
36. Leisure, culture, media and sports form major division 8
This division includes attending cultural or sporting events, hobbies, games, sports participation, exercise, mass-media use, reflecting, resting, relaxing and related travel. Because modern leisure is digitally mediated, translators must identify activity purpose rather than classify solely from words such as phone, television or computer.
37. Watching media is not the same as social communication
A person can use the same smartphone to watch a film, talk with family, study, work or manage household finances. Device vocabulary should not replace activity vocabulary. Translate what the person was doing, not merely what technology they used.
38. Resting is not automatically sleeping
ICATUS distinguishes resting or relaxing from sleep and related activities. A diary entry such as “lying down” can be ambiguous without context. Translators should preserve whether the source indicates sleep, rest, illness, meditation or another state rather than choose the most convenient target word.
39. Sports participation is different from watching sports
Playing football, jogging or exercising are participation activities; attending or watching a sporting event can belong to a different detailed code. Translate active participation and spectating distinctly, especially in languages where one verb can cover both.
40. Self-care and maintenance form major division 9
This division includes sleep, eating and drinking, personal hygiene and care, receiving personal or medical care, related travel and other self-care activities. These are activities required by the individual in relation to biological and personal needs. Do not merge them with unpaid caregiving simply because another person may sometimes assist.
41. Sleeping needs a clear boundary from resting
Time-use research often depends on accurate sleep duration. Words such as nap, doze, rest and lie down can carry different meanings. Translate the recorded activity and interviewer guidance consistently so sleep does not expand to include every inactive episode.
42. Eating and drinking can overlap with socializing
A meal can also be a social event. Time-use surveys may record primary and secondary activities or apply rules for coding the main activity. Translation should preserve the survey’s approach instead of deciding that eating or socializing is always primary.
43. Receiving care is different from providing care
A person receiving medical treatment or personal care is engaged in self-care and maintenance, while the family member providing unpaid care may be in the caregiving division. The same event can therefore generate different activity codes for different participants. Translate perspective explicitly.
44. Simultaneous activities create translation challenges
People often cook while supervising a child, commute while listening to news, or eat while socializing. A diary can record primary and secondary activities. Translators must preserve fields such as primary, secondary, simultaneous and main activity rather than flattening them into one sentence.
45. Primary activity is not always the most important activity
Survey rules define how primary activity is reported or coded. It may be the respondent’s main activity in that interval, not an ethical judgment about importance. Translating primary as “most important” can bias interpretation. Use terminology consistent with the survey instructions.
46. Diary text can be shorter than classification meaning
Respondents may write “helped Mum,” “phone,” “garden,” “school run” or “online.” Coders need context to place these entries correctly. Translators should preserve ambiguity where the source is ambiguous rather than invent detailed activity meaning from a short phrase.
47. Who benefited from the activity can change the code
Cooking for one’s household, cooking as paid employment, cooking for a volunteer organization and cooking for leisure can fall into different categories. The physical action is similar, but beneficiary and purpose differ. A strong translation workflow keeps beneficiary fields and context attached to the diary episode.
48. Market versus own-use purpose can change the code
Fishing for sale, fishing mainly for household consumption and fishing for recreation can belong to employment, own-use production or leisure. Translating all three as fishing is linguistically correct but statistically incomplete. The surrounding purpose must stay visible.
49. Travel should inherit context, not erase it
A dataset that translates every transport episode as “travel” loses why the journey occurred. ICATUS includes travel linked to several major divisions. Preserve phrases such as employment-related travel, travel related to learning or accompanying a dependent adult when the source provides them.
50. Time values are data, not prose
Start time, end time, duration and time-of-day fields must remain numerically correct across localization. Changing 07:30 into a culturally appropriate display format is presentation; changing the duration is not. Keep canonical time data separate from localized display strings.
51. Midnight crossings need careful handling
An activity beginning before midnight and ending after midnight can produce negative duration if software treats both times as one date. Translation is not the cause, but localized date-time formatting can expose the error. Validate episode chronology after localization.
52. Spreadsheets can separate code from description accidentally
A sort on the translated-label column alone can shift activities away from their codes and durations. Because labels remain plausible, the error can escape review. Use stable episode identifiers and whole-row operations, then compare code, start time, duration and target label together.
53. APIs should keep canonical activity codes
A multilingual time-use API can expose one ICATUS code and localized labels by locale. Do not create language-specific activity codes. The code is the common analytical key that allows researchers to compare datasets across languages.
54. Translation memories need context metadata
Words such as care, work, travel, study, visit, rest and help recur across many ICATUS categories. A translation memory without code context can suggest the wrong meaning. Key terminology entries to the activity code, parent division and definition wherever possible.
55. Machine translation should not infer activity from one verb
A model seeing “cooked” cannot know whether the respondent cooked for pay, for their household, for a volunteer event or for recreation. Use structured context such as beneficiary, location, payment and purpose. If context is absent, preserve uncertainty rather than fabricating a precise code.
56. Generative AI can assist coding review but needs deterministic checks
AI can flag diary entries that appear inconsistent with assigned codes or propose candidate categories for human review. Final coding should still follow the classification rules and survey methodology. Record why a code was assigned and do not let fluent explanations substitute for evidence.
57. Worked example: parent cooks while supervising a child
The diary records meal preparation as the primary activity and childcare as a simultaneous activity. The target-language version keeps both fields. It does not collapse the episode into “family time,” because researchers may be measuring unpaid domestic work and unpaid care separately.
58. Worked example: collecting firewood
A household member spends ninety minutes gathering firewood for home use. Translating the diary entry as a walk or outdoor activity would move productive own-use work into leisure. The target preserves the fuel-collection purpose and the associated travel or collection code according to the source coding.
59. Worked example: accompanying an older parent to a clinic
The adult child provides unpaid caregiving by accompanying a dependent parent. The parent is receiving medical care. The same trip therefore has different activity meanings for the two people. Translation keeps perspective and dependency explicit instead of labelling both records simply “doctor visit.”
60. Worked example: online course after work
A worker spends an evening completing a non-formal online language course. The device is a laptop and the location is home, but the activity is learning rather than leisure media use. A translation based on device or location would be wrong; purpose determines the category.
61. Search intent: “translate unpaid care work”
Users often need to distinguish unpaid domestic services from unpaid caregiving. Explain the beneficiary and activity type clearly. Cooking, cleaning and household management belong to domestic services; direct care of children or dependent adults belongs to caregiving. The target language should make that division visible.
62. Search intent: “ICATUS childcare code”
The correct answer depends on the detailed childcare activity, such as physical care, instruction, accompanying or other care. Preserve the official code from the source and translate the precise label. Do not replace all childcare detail with one generic word.
63. Search intent: “time use survey translation”
Good time-use translation requires more than a bilingual list of activities. It must preserve episode order, duration, primary and secondary activities, beneficiary, location, travel purpose, household relationship and classification version. The language layer and the diary data structure have to be quality-checked together.
64. A practical ICATUS translation workflow
Identify the ICATUS version, code, official label, definition, inclusions, exclusions and parent division. Protect codes and time values. Translate labels and survey instructions with a controlled glossary. Keep diary context such as beneficiary and simultaneous activity attached. Reassemble by stable episode ID, then validate code-label relationships, chronology, duration, hierarchy and survey metadata.
65. Reference route: United Nations Statistics Division
The authoritative online classification is the UNSD International Classification of Activities for Time-Use Statistics 2016. It provides codes, definitions, inclusions, exclusions and examples across the hierarchy. Production translation should use these definitions and the methodology of the source survey rather than relying on everyday activity vocabulary alone.
66. Connection to the eduKateSG language ecosystem
This specialist owner belongs beneath the Master Art of Translation — Technical Translation System. It also connects conceptually to the protected Vocabulary Learning Hub because ordinary verbs such as work, help, care, study, travel and rest acquire precise meanings inside time-use statistics. The broader language system explains meaning; this page protects one statistical application of that meaning.
67. Final rule: translate what the person was doing, and preserve why it was coded that way
ICATUS translation succeeds when the target reader sees the same activity, purpose, beneficiary, time relationship and statistical boundary as the source. Preserve codes and durations, distinguish paid work from own-use production, domestic work from caregiving, learning from leisure, and receiving care from providing it. The result should be readable in the target language without rewriting the person’s day.