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defining thousand of euro

English translation: Avoid it if you can...

12:24 Mar 30, 2003
English language (monolingual) [PRO]
Bus/Financial
English term or phrase: defining thousand of euro
Good afternoon,
In the financial statements I am currently checking, the company has used three contrasting methods to define thousands of euro, viz (for example) 100 thousand euro; €/000 100; 100 €/000. In pointing this out to them, I feel that I should offer a proposal based on "standard practice" but I lack the necessary experience to be able to choose (searches for this kind of info on the Internet have proved rather unproductive). Can anyone shed any light?
Thank you for your time and trouble.
Derek
(P.S. my apologies for mispelling an answerer's name in my previous note)
Derek Smith
Local time: 14:40
Selected answer:Avoid it if you can...
Explanation:
I have the same problem when translating German financial documents into English - quite often, you will find "TEUR" in German documents, meaning "Tausend Euro" = euro thousand(s). Wherever possible, I try to restate this in million euros, for example:

[DEU] TEUR 1.234.567 => [ENG] EUR 1,234.567 mn

If the amounts are too small to achieve this effect, I would state the full figure:

[DEU] TEUR 25 => [ENG] EUR 25,000

In situations where you just cannot avoid it, I tend to use "EUR 000's".

HTH - Ralf
Selected response from:

Ralf Lemster
Germany
Local time: 15:40
Grading comment
Thanks as always for your helpful ideas on this point, even if the consensus, as summed up by CB (thanks) seems to deny me a hard and fast answer. From what I have been able to fish up in the interim it seems that millions, as suggested by Ralf (thanks), is the preferred unit, resorting freely to decimals wherever necessary. I still have customers who want me to write, for example "1,100 thousand euro", which is obviously a bit of a tongue twister if not downright barmey, but for the record I will point them to this link on the web and recommend the "€1.1 million" or "EUR 1.1 million" solution if challenged in the future.
Thanks once to you all for your time and trouble. I look forward to being able to reciprocate.
Total respect
Derek
4 KudoZ points were awarded for this answer



SUMMARY OF ALL EXPLANATIONS PROVIDED
5 +2100,000€
Gayle Wallimann
4 +1Avoid it if you can...
Ralf Lemster
5more on the euro
Catherine Bolton
4ˆ 100 000
Empty Whiskey Glass
4Common practice in financial tables / unaudited financial analysis.
#41698 (LSF)


Discussion entries: 1





  

Answers


7 mins   confidence: Answerer confidence 5/5 peer agreement (net): +2
100,000€


Explanation:
In most countries, the comma is used, in some countries, like France, the period is used to mark off every three digits.
Thus, one thousand Euros= 1,ooo€
or as for France, = 1.000€

Gayle Wallimann
Local time: 15:40
Native speaker of: Native in EnglishEnglish
PRO pts in pair: 172

Peer comments on this answer (and responses from the answerer)
agree  Florence Bremond: yes, the target country has to be taken in consideration. As to France, I always hear my husband talking about Kilo Euros for his company's financial statements - here, 1,ooo€ means ONE euro.
20 mins
neutral  Lia Fail (X): The symbol goes BEFORE in English, surely????????
7 hrs
agree  Masam123: My query is that how can we interpret this amount in German system:€1.500 per semester for students from the EU, €4.000 per semester for non-EU students
4360 days
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10 mins   confidence: Answerer confidence 4/5Answerer confidence 4/5 peer agreement (net): +1
Avoid it if you can...


Explanation:
I have the same problem when translating German financial documents into English - quite often, you will find "TEUR" in German documents, meaning "Tausend Euro" = euro thousand(s). Wherever possible, I try to restate this in million euros, for example:

[DEU] TEUR 1.234.567 => [ENG] EUR 1,234.567 mn

If the amounts are too small to achieve this effect, I would state the full figure:

[DEU] TEUR 25 => [ENG] EUR 25,000

In situations where you just cannot avoid it, I tend to use "EUR 000's".

HTH - Ralf

Ralf Lemster
Germany
Local time: 15:40
Native speaker of: German
PRO pts in pair: 377
Grading comment
Thanks as always for your helpful ideas on this point, even if the consensus, as summed up by CB (thanks) seems to deny me a hard and fast answer. From what I have been able to fish up in the interim it seems that millions, as suggested by Ralf (thanks), is the preferred unit, resorting freely to decimals wherever necessary. I still have customers who want me to write, for example "1,100 thousand euro", which is obviously a bit of a tongue twister if not downright barmey, but for the record I will point them to this link on the web and recommend the "€1.1 million" or "EUR 1.1 million" solution if challenged in the future.
Thanks once to you all for your time and trouble. I look forward to being able to reciprocate.
Total respect
Derek

Peer comments on this answer (and responses from the answerer)
agree  Gayle Wallimann
19 mins
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3 hrs   confidence: Answerer confidence 4/5Answerer confidence 4/5
ˆ 100 000


Explanation:
Official papers usually have the currency code preceding the figures.

Slainte!

--------------------------------------------------
Note added at 2003-03-30 15:32:51 (GMT)
--------------------------------------------------

Ooops, forgot something.
Depending on the target readers you should insert or omit \",\" as a divider of the figures preceding the decimal point.
UK patteren : ˆ 100,000.00
Bulgarian pattern: ˆ 100 000.00

Slainte!

Empty Whiskey Glass
Local time: 16:40
Native speaker of: Native in BulgarianBulgarian
PRO pts in pair: 61
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4 hrs   confidence: Answerer confidence 4/5Answerer confidence 4/5
Common practice in financial tables / unaudited financial analysis.


Explanation:
This is the common prctise in financial statements. Reason being the figures are normally very large, in millions, usually.

And the financial statements usually come in table format. So, at the top of the table (the header row), it would give something like US$'000 or (US$000).

In some financial analysis, in order to keep things short, they also adopt things like US$172m without bothering to give an exact figure (since it is an analysis, not an audited financial report)

I think what you want to know is whether the Euro should be in front or the back. If it is in numerics, it should be in front (in brackets, perhaps), if spelled out then it should be following the numerics. I would suggest something like US$172.362m for US$172,362,000 since normally it is the millions or thousands of millions that come to play in financial reports.

--------------------------------------------------
Note added at 2003-03-30 16:29:17 (GMT)
--------------------------------------------------

come to play -> comes into play

#41698 (LSF)
Malaysia
Local time: 21:40
Native speaker of: Native in EnglishEnglish
PRO pts in pair: 53
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1 day 25 mins   confidence: Answerer confidence 5/5
more on the euro


Explanation:
Hi Derek,
As far as I can see, there IS no standard practice. I've worked on financial statements where the customer has even asked for €100K (no spaces)!
Others request Euro 100 thousand, others EUR 100,000, or €100 thousand.
Likewise, I've seen financials indicating USD 100,000 and US$ 100 thousand, and combinations thereof.

You may want to look at this link and scroll to "currency and number formats" (you can switch from dollars to euro to yen), and then scroll down further.
Here they use €100 (no space), followed by zeros in the tables and "million" in the text.


I think the important thing is to select a standard and stick with it.



    Reference: http://trusted.resource.org/consolidated-financials.html#toc
Catherine Bolton
Local time: 15:40
Native speaker of: English
PRO pts in pair: 98
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