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Jun 5, 2020 12:48
3 yrs ago
32 viewers *
French term

Number formats , or . ?

French to English Bus/Financial Accounting
I'm struggling with the number formats used in a French annual report for a company's turnover. Most of the numbers are written in this format:

"2 054 millions d'euros", which I've translated as 2,054 million euros, or

"2.398,7 millions d'euros", which I've translated as 2,398.7 million euros.

And then I found these two numbers that I'm not sure what to do with:

"209.54 millions" and "8.08 millions". What should this be in English? 209,54 and 8,08 million? The client has confirmed that the numbers are in the French format.

thanks!
Proposed translations (English)
4 accounting number format
Change log

Jun 5, 2020 13:47: writeaway changed "Visibility" from "Visible" to "Squashed"

Jun 6, 2020 13:09: Mariano Marchesini changed "Visibility" from "Squashed" to "Visible"

Discussion

Libby Cohen Jun 5, 2020:
French is not consistent I sympathize -- the client seems so falsely self-assured but clearly he/she is not being consistent. And I do not agree with Leighton's answer. To me, "209,54 millions" would be 209.54 million, also written 209.54M -- at least in North American English. Also, I have NEVER seen "millions" written as "mios" on either side of the Atlantic...
philgoddard Jun 5, 2020:
This is a very common mistake. If this is the prose narrative of the report, you can often check the figures against those in the accounting tables. If not, you should highlight them.
Jane RM (asker) Jun 5, 2020:
I checked with the client who said it was French format, but seems strange to me
Elisabeth Richard Jun 5, 2020:
It's actually not surprising Since people need to navigate between French format and English format all the time, and not all softwares act alike, which can make things even more confusing, they will often write a dot where there should be a comma (but never vice versa though). So as Leighton pointed out, the fact that the numbers only have two digits after the dot and the numbers involved themselves allow us to be sure this is what happened here.
Leighton Jacobs Jun 5, 2020:
Are you sure those 2 numbers are in French format? 209,54(0) million is of course 209.54 billion which would be a massive number (approaching the revenue figure for e.g. apple and amazon) and I can't think of any French company in whose annual report you might expect to find a figure so large.

It looks very much like those two are already in English format, especially given the "0" missing from the end of each to complete the thousand.
Elisabeth Richard Jun 5, 2020:
not that well formatted :D but yes, you are correct. It's 209mios and 8mios.

Proposed translations

1 day 14 hrs
Selected

accounting number format

https://www.wallstreetmojo.com/accounting-number-format-in-e...

2.054 millions d'euros = € 2,054,000,000

2.398,7 millions d'euros = € 2,398,700,000



--------------------------------------------------
Note added at 2 days 1 hr (2020-06-07 14:29:56 GMT)
--------------------------------------------------

209, 54 millions d'euros = €209,540, 000

8,08 millions d'euros = €8,080,000
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4 KudoZ points awarded for this answer.
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