One of the things that we discussed at the French conversation group last night was how to translate the term handyman into French.

According to Wikipedia, a handyman, or handyperson or handyworker is:

a person skilled at a wide range of repairs, typically around the home. These tasks include trade skills, repair work, maintenance work, are both interior and exterior, and are sometimes described as “side work”, “odd jobs” or “fix-up tasks”. Specifically, these jobs could be light plumbing jobs such as fixing a leaky toilet or light electric jobs such as changing a light fixture.

The term may apply to someone who makes a living doing such work, or to do-it-yourselfers.

The French equivalent on Wikipedia is homme à tout faire (“man who does everything”).

In the Reverso Dictionary a handyman is translated into French as a bricoleur or homme à tout faire. The former is labelled as a do-it-yourselfer, and the latter as a servant. So it seems the connotations of these words are not quite the same as in English.

Perhaps a better translation of homme à tout faire is factotum, which is Latin for “do everything”, and is an old word for a person having many diverse activities or responsibilities, or a general servant.

When you hear the word handyman, what does it mean to you?

What equivalents are there in other languages?