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.

Translating numbers: 1. How much is a billion?

This question is not as easy as it looks. Historically, there are two naming systems for very large numbers, known as the “short scale” and the “long scale”. In the short scale, a billion is defined as a thousand million (i.e. 1,000,000,000 or 10⁹), but in the long scale, a billion is defined as a million million (i.e. 1,000,000,000,000 or 10¹²). These two systems first arose in the 17^th century in Europe. The long scale is the standard system in Germany and most other countries in continental Europe. So German uses the word “Billion” for a million million (i.e. 1,000,000,000,000 or 10¹²), and a thousand million (i.e. 1,000,000,000 or 10⁹) is called “Milliarde”.

Until the 20^th century, Britain and most other English-speaking countries also used the long scale, so the terms were usually similar to the German words. However, the early settlers in North America used the “short scale”, and this became the standard system in the USA. Due to the influence of American usage, especially in the development of computers, short scale numbers were often used even in British English, so the situation was extremely confusing. In 1974, the British government decided to adopt the system which was used in the USA, i.e. the ”short scale” system.

Problem solved? Yes and no. The official use is now the same in British and American English, and most other English-speaking countries now use the same system. But there are still people who prefer the traditional “long scale” system. This means that the short scale numbers should now be used when we translate into English. But when we translate from English, especially older texts, confusion may arise and it may be wise to find out which system is being used.

This history of the number systems has also created “false friends” for translators. A German “Billion” is not the same as an English “billion”. The words “Trillion” and “Quadrillion” are also misleading. And a German “Milliarde” is not a “milliard”.

Here is a short list of the German terms and their modern English equivalents (with the old British terms in red and italics):

10³    Tausend        thousand

10⁶    Million           million

10⁹    Milliarde        billion  

                             thousand million / milliard

          (Milliardär = billionaire)

10¹²   Billion           trillion         
       billion

10¹⁵   Billiarde        quadrillion  
       thousand billion / billiard

10¹⁸   Trillion          quintillion   
       trillion

10²¹   Trilliarde       sextillion    
       thousand trillion / trilliard

10²⁴   Quadrillion    septillion    
       quadrillion

Another way of saying it

There is another way of naming big numbers which is not ambiguous, although it is not used in general counting and in texts about finance and investments. This system uses prefixes which are mainly derived from Greek, and it gives us a few familiar words such as kilometre, kilogram, megabyte and gigabyte. Each prefix has a rigidly defined value and does not change between German and English (except for minor spelling adjustments and the initial capital in most German contexts). The values are:

10      Deka-/deca- (zehn / ten)

10²    Hekto-/hecto- (hundert / hundred)

10³    kilo- (Tausend / thousand)

10⁶    mega (Million / million)

10⁹    giga- (Milliarde / billion)

10¹²   tera- (Billion / trillion)

10¹⁵   peta- (Billiarde / quadrillion)

10¹⁸   exa- (Trillion / quintillion)

10²¹   Zeta-/zetta- (Trilliarde / sextillion)

10²⁴   yotta (Quadrillion / septillion)

There are also prefixes for numbers smaller than 1, for example Dezi-/deci-, Zenti-/centi-, milli-, Mikro-/micro-, nano-, Piko-/pico- etc. Familiar words including these prefixes include centimetre, milligram, millimetre and others.

There is more to be said about numbers in translation, for example the punctuation in numbers, the use of abbreviations in financial texts, the dimensions used in the building trade or industry and much more. But these are topics for another day. Watch this space.

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.

Terminology in the construction industry (German/English)

Terminology is more than just words. Dictionaries and glossaries are helpful, but often they do not tell us the whole story. Meaning always involves the context - not only the way the word is used within the sentence, but often also the social context in which the word is used in the country where the text originates. This is illustrated by a few terms that I have seen in the course of my translation work:

Baumeister - Entscheidungsvorlage - Decke 

Baurecht - Bestand - Erschließung

Baumeister
This is usually translated as “master builder”.
In Germany it is used mainly as a historic term for the architects and builders who created projects such as cathedrals, palaces or major public buildings. In many cases, the same person was responsible for the design, the planning and the construction work on the building site. In Germany the term was still used as an official qualification and job title until the 1980s. Now, it only survives in job titles in some regions, such as the “Regierungsbaumeister” as a grade in the civil service system or the “Dombaumeister”,  the person responsible for conservation and repairs in a large cathedral.
However, the term “Baumeister” still represents an official job title and professional qualification in Austria and Switzerland. It is an all-round qualification which includes building skills, engineering, architecture and design, detailed planning, legal knowledge, building and project management.
What about the English term “master builder”? It is also used historically for the all-round experts who worked as architects and builders in former centuries. Nowadays, the term is mainly used for high quality building contractor firms who join together to promote their services, e.g. through the Federation of Master Builders in the UK, the Registered Master Builder scheme in New Zealand and similar organisations in other English-speaking countries. However, there is a relatively new trend in English which is similar to the historical master builder model: the concept of “design build”. In projects based on the design/build concept, there is a single contractor which is responsible for both the design and the construction of the project. The modern “design build” idea originated in the 1960s, but it is very similar to the historical model. However, the focus is on the project itself and the team of specialists, not on the qualification of any individual person.
So where does this leave us as translators? As so often, it depends on the context and the purpose of the translation. To translate the German “Baumeister” we have two key terms - the traditional “master builder” and the modern “design build” concept. In each case, we must decide how these terms can be combined to give the best rendering in the specific context.

Entscheidungsvorlage
In construction projects this term refers to information or a report which is presented to the client or developer. It usually outlines the advantages, disadvantages and costs involved in various options for details in the building plans, so that the client can make an informed decision. Possible translations are “decision memo”, “decision paper” or “proposal”. One of my translation clients is designing a major building and uses the term “decision memo” to describe such reports. In this context, I find this a good solution.
In other contexts, however, it may be completely wrong. In governments, for example, the preparatory work by civil servants to help ministers draw up new legislation may be described as an “Entscheidungsvorlage”. In English this would probably be a “draft”, or perhaps a “draft bill”. In other contexts, “Entscheidungsvorlage” could be used for a “change request” in factory or office management processes, a “credit report” in banking, and so on.

Decke
The basic meaning of the word “Decke” in buildings is the “ceiling” in rooms. But in multi-storey buildings, the ceiling of one level is also the structural floor of the next level. In building descriptions, the term “Decke” is often used to refer to the concrete floor/ceiling slab in such buildings. In road construction the word “Decke” is also used for the top road surface. Therefore it is important to find out what the word actually refers to in context.

Baurecht
In general and legal texts this term may refer to building law as a branch of law. But in texts about specific building projects it usually means “planning permission” or a “building permit”. So the phrase “Baurecht beschaffen” means “obtaining a building permit”.

Bestand
This can refer to the pre-existing state of a building, an urban district, a facade, a wall, a floor or some other detail of the built environment. When used in texts about monument conservation or restoration it may mean the historical original condition - and sometimes the goal of the project is to restore a building so that it is as close as possible to the original. In other texts about functional refurbishment or construction it usually refers to the existing building, the existing urban context or similar.

Erschließung
Another deceptively simple term. A dictionary suggests development, access or opening up, but the actual use in construction-related texts is rather more complex.
When used in connection with a whole building or a building development area, the word may refer to the road traffic system leading to the property, the public transport system or the supply of infrastructure services such as electricity, water, sewers, gas or other facilities.
In a single building the word may refer to the points at which the building can be entered, i.e. the main entrance doors and any entry ramps or other entry points for vehicles, or to the pathways or entrance roads leading to these access points.
Within a building, especially in large commercial buildings, the term is also used for the features designed to enable movement within the building, such as lifts and stairs (for vertical access), corridors, and in some cases moving walkways.
Often, these different meanings can only be deduced from the context. The translation will usually include words such as access, development or entrance, but the translator must add other elements to explain what type of access, development or entrance is meant.

“We ran out of legs”

This sentence appeared this week in an Internet newspaper report. How would you translate it into other languages? Surely it can't be that difficult! Every word is short, and I'm sure you had no difficulty understanding any of the words. So what is the speaker trying to tell us?

I looked at various on-line machine translation engines to see how they would translate it into my second language, German.

I entered the English sentence “We ran out of legs." and found four different suggestions:
Wir liefen aus Beinen (Google Translate)
Wir rannten aus Beinen (Microsoft Translation)
Wir sind an Beinen knapp geworden (Promt online translator)
Wir hatten keine Beine mehr (Systranet)

So Google and Microsoft seem to think that Beinen (legs) is a place and that we left this place by running. Promt thinks that there is a shortage in the supply of legs, and Systranet says “We had no legs left”. I looked at a few other on-line translation websites, but I found that they had simply copied from one or more of the above sites.

Time for some context?
I found the above sentence in a BBC report on Tuesday's football match between Germany and Northern Ireland. The sentence was a quote from the Northern Ireland Manager Michael O'Neill: “In the last 20 minutes of the first half we had opportunities on the counter-attack and we could possibly have done a little bit better with those. We ran out of legs a little bit to threaten them.” So in context he is saying: our legs were tired, we weren't fit enough, we couldn't run fast enough. And it turns out that one of the on-line translations would actually work in a translation of the report (the one by Systranet), although in this case I suspect that this was more by accident than by design.

Easy if you know how?
Would you have understood the sentence from the outset if I had given you the context? I'm sure most of my readers would have had no problem, although some familiarity with football jargon (in this case the frequent metaphorical use of “legs”) would be helpful. But how would you fare if a report on a football match told you that one team had “parked the bus”? Or if the German report on the same game spoke of “Beton anmischen” (mixing concrete)? Would you instantly recognise that these images denote a densely packed defensive approach to the game? And how well would you understand the use of the word “leg” in another sporting context, such as cricket (leg before, leg sweep, leg spin, leg slip, leg side, short fine leg, leg boundary)?

The lesson for today
This very simple example sentence tells us a few things about translation.

1. Context is everything. Even a very simple sentence consisting of well-known words can be a complete mystery if you don't know the situation that it refers to.

2. Dictionaries will never catch up with usage. The way words are used is constantly changing, indeed they are often used in new and unique ways at the whim of the individual writer. Writing a dictionary is like trying to pin down a moving target.

3. Computers can only go so far. Humans are creative in the way they speak and write. If you use language creatively, I can normally understand you – as long as you do it in a language that I know well. But the computer hasn't a clue what we are talking about. The computer can recognise and manipulate patterns in the data, and some computer programs can do this very very well. But if our use of language goes off into uncharted territory, the computer is often up the creek without a paddle.

4. Subject knowledge is crucial. I can understand reports on football and cricket matches because I know the games and played them myself once upon a time. But show me a report about motorcycle speedway, deep sea diving or Mah Jong, and your guess is probably much much better than mine.
Applying this to my regular translation work: I have developed expertise in translating materials such as contracts, legal reports, court papers, architectural descriptions, building specifications and similar areas. I can understand what the writers are talking about in German, and this enables me to translate their texts into English. But I would be hopeless in subject areas such as cookery and textile design, and I am uncomfortable with medical texts.

5. There's more to it than meets the eye. Translation is a highly specialised skill, and most people don't understand what it involves. And to my translator friends and colleagues: I would suggest that you specialise, learn to understand your subject areas extremely well in all of your languages, and never forget that you are offering a specialised expert service.

The (almost) speechless translator

It is estimated that there are over 7,000 languages in the world. As a translator, this brings me down to earth. I can communicate properly in just two of these languages (English and German), with a reasonable reading level in one more (French). I know a few isolated words in one or two other languages, but I would not be capable of holding a conversation in any of them. This means that I am speechless in 99.9996% of the world’s languages.

This is underlined whenever I travel to a country where one of these 99.9996% of languages is spoken. Over recent years I have had language adventures in Italy, Mexico, Spain, Kenya, Turkey, Iceland and Israel. In all of these countries I am dependent on people who speak an “international” language. Usually this is my native English, sometimes my adopted German.

On my latest international holiday earlier this month, I was intrigued by this road sign, and I still don’t know what the author wants me to do:

I also found it challenging to cope with this parking ticket machine in Jerusalem:

However, in my experience Israel was usually good at catering for multilingual needs, and traffic signs and road names were usually given in three languages:

In some cases, monolingual Hebrew signs were supported by pictograms, and in a few cases pictograms were used without any text.

A special curiosity was this clock in the town of Zikhron Ya’akov, which uses the traditional numerical values which are expressed by using the first few letters of the Hebrew alphabet.

For the record, the clock shows half past one (1:30 or 13:30 hrs). Otherwise, I only saw western numerals in Israel – except on the automatic car park information signs in Tel Aviv, which show the number of free spaces in Hebrew numerals.

As a final remark, I was very encouraged by a sign that I saw in the small town of Mas’ada in the very north-east of the country, a town with a large Arabic-speaking population close to the borders with Lebanon and Syria. As we drove out of the town, we saw a sign in three languages (Hebrew, Arabic and English) which said “Peace be with you”. I hope that this multilingual and multicultural attitude will prevail more and more in Israel.