Translating numbers 2: thousands and decimals

Translating numerals is more complicated than it seems. The number 20.525, for example, would be just over 20 in English, but more than twenty thousand in German. But that is just the beginning. There is a chaotic variety of conventions for writing numerals in different languages. Let us start exploring.

Tradition

Historically, there was a fairly simple rule for translating numerals between English and German. English has a comma as the thousands separator and a dot (full stop) as the decimal point. German uses a dot (point/full stop) to separate the digits in thousands, and a comma to signify decimals. Therefore:

English 100,000,000 becomes German 100.000.000
and
English 23.52 becomes German 23,52.

Swiss German is a special case. Thousands are often written with an asterisk to separate groups of three digits, i.e. as 100’000’000. And there are special rules for decimals in Swiss German. General numbers with decimals are usually written with a decimal comma (23,52), but currencies are written with a decimal point (23.52).

Standardisation

This is where things get complicated. As early as 1948, the international standardisation body “General Conference on Weights and Measures” defined how numerals should be written. It stated that “the decimal marker shall be either the point on the line or the comma on the line”. In other words, the institute was unable to decide between the different national traditions and left both of them in place. But it was far stricter with numbers above a thousand. It stated that the groups of three digits should only be divided by spaces (e.g. 100 000 000), and that “neither dots nor commas are ever inserted in the spaces between groups“.

Never dots or commas? Seventy-five years later this utopia has still not been achieved. In the German source texts which I translate, I now see three different conventions for numbers over a thousand (100.000.000, 100’000’000 and 100 000 000). In English I see two conventions in Internet texts and printed books (100,000,000 and 100 000 000).

This is partly due to the eternal tension between natural language development and centralised language control. Many people have never heard of the standardised regulations, or they do not accept that a centrally imposed convention should take precedence over their traditional patterns. But even the official statements made by standardisation authorities, publishers and other major institutions show a surprising variety.

Different standards and style guides

The German DIN standards DIN 1333, DIN 5008 and ISO 80000 state that the thin space is the correct form in German, but the use of a dot to separate thousands is permitted for amounts of money.

The EU interinstitutional style guide requires that a space must be used to group the digits in thousands in English, and it prohibits the use of a comma.

The house style of the British Office for National Statistics states: “Use commas to separate thousands ... and never spaces”.

The style manual of the Australian government also stipulates commas to separate thousands, and forbids the use of a non-breaking space.

The Chicago Manual of Style  also stipulates commas as the thousand separator.

Oxford University Press issues a mini style checklist for its academic journals. For “HUMSOC” (humanities and social sciences) it prescribes commas as the thousand separator, but for “SCIMED” (science and medicine) it prescribes thin spaces.

Wikipedia: the English style manual stipulates that digit groups should be separated either by commas or by “narrow gaps” (i.e. as 100,000,000 or 100 000 000). The use of narrow gaps is particularly recommended for articles on science, technology, engineering and mathematics. The German style manual only suggests the use of dots (100.000.000) and states that the use of non-breaking spaces is controversial within the German Wikipedia organisation.

The Microsoft globalization documentation states that the thousands separator is a comma in the USA, a dot in Germany and a space in Sweden.

What sort of “spaces between groups”?

Care is needed if we use spaces as the separators. A normal space is not a good solution, because the number could easily be split in a normal paragraph, e.g. 100 000 (line break) 000. Therefore, the space must at least be a non-breaking space (CTRL-Shift-Space). But most regulations state that it should be a “thin space”, otherwise known as a “narrow no-break space” (German: schmales geschütztes Leerzeichen). Typographers can create this space character as “U+202F”, on my computer I can create it with “Alt-8239”.

What should translators do?

The decimal marker (point or comma) is fairly clear: follow the traditional convention of the target language. The thousand separator is more complicated. Translating into English, I would use the traditional format (with commas for thousands) unless I have specific information that the other convention (with thin spaces) should be used. For translations into German, the simple answer is “it depends”. In texts for casual readers and in financial texts I would tend to use the traditional form (with dots) unless there is a specific reason to use a different version. In academic and formal texts, the standardised “thin space” is probably best. For Swiss German, of course, specific knowledge of the Swiss conventions for the text type and audience is needed.

This article is not exhaustive. I have not covered the formatting of dates or the grouping of digits in phone numbers, bank account numbers or other contexts. And there are many countries and languages which have completely different ways of writing numbers. Wikipedia is a useful starting point for research into the many different numeral systems in the world.

Translation - fast and slow

We live in an age of instant information. Has a major event happened somewhere in the world? In the twinkling of an eye it is streamed, tweeted and live-tickered to every corner of the globe. Has a war broken out? A volcano erupted? A plane crashed? A ship stranded in the Suez Canal? We know it within minutes. We call this “real time”.

This strange realm of “real time” is also the land of instant coffee, fast food, real-time stock prices, express deliveries and just-in-time logistics. Its followers sometimes claim that “time is money”. This is the fertile ground in which the dream of instant automatic translation takes root and grows. Services such as Google Translate, DeepL and others are immensely popular, and it is claimed that the vast majority of language translation which is done in the world today is carried out by “machine translation”.

Is there an alternative to this expectation of an instant culture? I am reminded of a character in the epic novel and film trilogy “Lord of the Rings”. Treebeard looks like a tree but can move about, he is a “tree-herder” or “Ent”. In the book and film he explains his idea of communication to the hobbits:
“You must understand that it takes a long time to say anything in Old Entish. And we never say anything unless it is worth taking a long time to say“.
That contrasts sharply with our impatient and short-lived culture. It is worth remembering some pioneer translators who took a long time to complete major translation projects.

Saint Jerome (Hieronymus)

Jerome lived and died over 1600 years ago. He was a priest in the Catholic church, but today he is better known for his translation of the Hebrew Old Testament into Latin. This project, the Vulgate, took 17 years from 382 to 405, and during this period he lived in Bethlehem - in the country where the language of the original texts was spoken. He is commemorated in a wood carving in the crypt of the Church of the Nativity and a statue outside the Church of St. Catherine, which I photographed in Bethlehem in 2017.

Jerome died on 30th September 420 in Bethlehem. This day is now celebrated each year as International Translation Day. Many modern translators can relate to Jerome’s international biography. He was born in an area north of the Adriatic Sea (now in Croatia or Slovenia) and later spent time in Rome, Antioch (Syria), Jerusalem and Alexandria (Egypt). He moved to Bethlehem when he started his monumental translation. This helped him to learn the language of the original manuscript better, because he had to use it regularly in everyday life. Many modern translators also live in the country of their acquired language. I am one of them: I come from England but have been settled in Germany for very many years. And Jerome’s perseverance, working on a single translation project for many years, is also something that many translators can sympathise with.

Martin Luther

Martin Luther lived in Germany from 1483 to 1546. He is perhaps best known for his role in the Reformation and for the founding of the Protestant church in Germany. But he is also remembered as a translator. His German translation of the Bible was widely published, and it is still used in a revised form today. Luther’s translation even influenced the development of the modern German language. He did much of the translation work while he was in hiding at Wartburg Castle near Eisenach.

Luther was determined to translate the Bible into the language of the common people. This drew criticism from some conservative scholars of the time, and in 1530 he wrote the “Sendbrief vom Dolmetschen”, a letter in which he justified his work and explained his methods. For example:

“In my translation I have taken great care to write pure and clear German. We often had to spend a fortnight or three to four weeks searching for a single word, and even then we sometimes didn’t find it. We should not use Latin ideas when we speak German, we should ask mothers at home, children on the street, the common man on the market. We need to listen to them and learn how they speak. Then we should translate so that they will understand it.”

As translators today, we have on-line and off-line resources which Jerome and Luther could not imagine even in their wildest dreams. Sometimes our tools can help us to translate texts far more quickly. But sometimes we, too, need to take our time, explore the subject matter of our texts and search for creative ways to convey the content of the original. As Treebeard said in the Lord of the Rings:
“We never say anything unless it is worth taking a long time to say“.

Dear translation colleagues, is the content of our translation projects really worth taking a long time to say?

More German construction terminology

Here are some more German terms used in the building trade.

Qualifizierung/qualifizieren – Leistungsphase
Gebäudetechnik / Haustechnik

Qualifizierung/qualifizieren
The standard dictionary translation here is qualification or qualifications, and qualify when the word is used as a verb. In many cases that is a perfectly good translation, but the German terms sometimes have broader implications, so different translations may be needed. One such use is indicated by the dictionary alternative “classification/classify” (Langenscheidt). But sometimes it is a good idea to rearrange the sentence to use other equivalents such as “be interpreted as”, “constitute”, “amount to” or similar.

But there are other uses too. For example, company brochures sometimes claim that they pay great attention to “Mitarbeiterqualifizierung”. This usually involves offering training courses of various types. Such courses may end with some form of examination which gives the employees new qualifications, but often the term can best be translated as a staff training programme or similar.

There is another special case in the technical testing and acceptance of machines and buildings. German has a number of compound nouns for this process which include the term “Qualifizierung”: Installationsqualifizierung, Anlagenqualifizierung and similar terms. In essence this is a form of certification or validation, but the English technical term usually involves the concepts of “design qualification” or “performance qualification”. As always, the translator will need to consider what is actually being tested, verified or validated, how the term is actually being used in the specific test and how it can best be transposed into the flow of a clearly worded English sentence.

Leistungsphase
This term is used in a legal ordinance issued by the German government, the “Honorarordnung für Architekten und Ingenieure“ (Schedule of Services and Fees for Architects and Engineers, HOAI). This document defines 9 steps in the design and construction process, the “Leistungsphasen” which are often abbreviated as LP1, LP2 or LPH1, LPH2 etc.

A similar list of steps in the design and construction process is also used in the UK, the “RIBA Plan of Work” issued by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA). The current version of the Plan of Work (2013) defines 8 steps in the process, which it calls the “project stages”. The previous edition (2007) proposed 11 steps which it called “work stages”. So the German word “Leistungsphase” now normally indicates a “project stage” in British English.

There are of course differences. The German project stages only apply to the work of the architects and engineers and are allocated a proportion of the total project fee for such services. The costs of the land and the construction work are calculated separately.

The project stages in the RIBA Plan of Work are numbered from 0 to 7 as follows: 0 = Strategic Definition; 1 = Preparation and Brief; 2 = Concept Design; 3 = Developed Design; 4 = Technical Design; 5 = Construction; 6 = Handover and Close Out; 7 = In Use.

The project stages in the German HOAI regulations for buildings, with suggested translations, are LP1 Grundlagenermittlung (Appraisal/preparation); LP2 Vorplanung mit Kostenschätzung (Preliminary planning & estimate); LP3 Entwurfsplanung und Kostenberechnung (Design planning & cost calculation); LP4 Genehmigungsplanung (Planning for the planning approval process); LP5 Ausführungsplanung (Execution planning); LP6 Vorbereitung der Vergabe (Preparation for award of contracts); LP7 Mitwirkung bei der Vergabe (Cooperation in award of contracts); LP8 Objektüberwachung (Project supervision); LP9 Objektbetreuung (Project management).

Gebäudetechnik / Haustechnik
These terms refer to the infrastructure systems which provide services within buildings. “Gebäudetechnik” is normally more comprehensive, including heating, ventilation, air conditioning, room cooling, sanitary facilities/plumbing, electrical fittings and building automation. The term “Haustechnik” is often more restricted and usually refers only to areas such as heating systems, sanitary facilities/plumbing and air conditioning.

The general English equivalent is “building services”. This term is comprehensive in scope and can include heating, electricity, sanitary facilities/plumbing, ventilation, air conditioning, cooling, building automation and more. You may also come across other terms such as “installations”, “facilities”, “technical building services”, “building systems” etc. I have also seen the translation “building technology”, although I suspect that this is often a mistranslation.

Technical construction documents often use abbreviations for such systems. Sometimes these are internal abbreviations used only within the company or in a project. Here are some of the general abbreviations in both languages:

German: TGA = Technische Gebäudeausrüstung (technical building services in general); ELT = Elektrotechnik (electrical systems); HLK = Heizung, Lüftung, Klima (heating, ventilation and air conditioning); RLT = Raumlufttechnische Anlagen (air circulation systems)

English: HVAC = heating, ventilation and air conditioning; HVAC&R = heating, ventilation, air conditioning and refrigeration, MEP = mechanical, electrical, plumbing (mainly in USA); A/C = air conditioning.