Charles Davis Dec 9, 2018:

Sorry! :-)

Manuel Cedeño Berrueta (asker) Dec 9, 2018:

Charles:
I guess so; if you English speakers don’t use the word “milliard”, much less its derivative “milliardaire”.
It was a slightly humorous answer to your (I suppose) rhetorical question.
Many thanks for your help!

Charles Davis Dec 9, 2018:

@Manuel That must be referring to the French word milliardaire. I don't think the word milliardaire exists in English at all.

Charles Davis Dec 9, 2018:

By the way, I find that comment in the Guardian thread from a teacher in Manchester who says that the the old British billion is still being taught at school absolutely mind-boggling. The whole thread is full of people who seem to find it impossible to abandon what they were taught at school.

Manuel Cedeño Berrueta (asker) Dec 9, 2018:

Charles:
Milliardaire? :-)
Trends of 'milliardaire'
Used Occasionally. milliardaire is one of the 30000 most commonly used words in the Collins dictionary
(https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/french-english/...

Charles Davis Dec 9, 2018:

@Tony I withdraw the Brexit jibe!
I was taught the British long-scale billion at school too; everyone was in those days. But I can't say I felt any particular regret at abandoning it. I don't like indiscriminate and unnecessary use of Americanisms in British English, but I don't feel a visceral resistance to them either. I always felt this change was a positive move. It's very inconvenient to have two different uses of "billion" in use in English and very useful to have a word for a thousand million, which we didn't before (I've never met anyone who used the word "milliard").

Björn has a point. Being a pound millionaire was really something half a century ago, but nowadays it's nothing special; a substantial proportion of the British middle classes are millionaires. We need a word for the really rich, people who have over a thousand million pounds, euros or dollars, and if we still clung to the long-scale billion, what would we call them? "Thousand-millionaire", I suppose.

Björn Vrooman Dec 9, 2018:

Hello Tony "AFAIK, there isn't a single 'billionaire'..."

Billionaire rolls off the tongue, though, doesn't it? Jeff Bezos has a net worth of about 165 billions (short scale); if you used the old scale, what would you call him in one word?

Best

Tony M Dec 9, 2018:

@ Charles I think it's like all those people who preface everything with "allegedly" — it's more to cover their backsides for fear of being proved wrong later!
And don't forget, that Plain English document, although dates 2018, might not actually have been wholly revised at that date.
And I'll have you know I'm one of those old dinosaurs who always used to cling on to the GB meaning of 'billion' — and I most certainly did NOT vote to leave!
I hated it when I first heard the Americans talking about 'a billionaire', and thought "Oh that's just typical Yankee hype!" — AFAIK, there isn't a single 'billionaire' in the worlds according to the old GB definition. I was definitely taught the old definition when I was at school 50 years ago, and I only stopped using it when I came to France 22 years ago, as it got too confusing with FR 'milliard' on top, so I capitulated.

Björn Vrooman Dec 9, 2018:

Hello Charles As you had written, the change was introduced in 1974. Now, I don't want anyone to feel old (heck, I do sometimes and I'm supposed to be in my prime or something), but that was 44 years ago, i.e., more than a generation (in sociology) and nearly half a century(!). That there is still some lingering doubt about this is interesting to me; even for most people thrice my age, it's half a lifetime ago.

The Guardian thread is a bit long, but here are 3 quotes:
"...I think that colloquially many Brits still use the original 1000,000,000,000 version. That was certainly the way I was taught growing up, even though I was born almost a decade after the change."

"In the Chinese language, a billion is 100,000,000. It is still widely used today. When I first picked up the English language, I was often confused. One billion (1,000,000,000) is equivalent to 10 Chinese billion."

"An article above written by an American mentions that older British people use the 'French' billion. Rubbish! The British billion is a million millions and I can assure you that as a teacher that is what we teach at school, not the U.S. billion..."

Though it'd be nice to have one system in a globalized world.

Best

Charles Davis Dec 9, 2018:

@Björn I'm sure this must have come up in a number of KudoZ language pairs.

Thanks for your links. I am surprised to find that there are people who seem to think that the old British billion (10^12) is still alive and well. The Plain English campaign page says "Increasingly in this country we are using the USA meaning of a billion for these big numbers". This is dated 2018. Increasingly? This makes it sound as though there are still plenty of people who aren't doing so. Who are they? I haven't met one for years. Whoever they are, I bet they voted for Brexit.

Manuel Cedeño Berrueta (asker) Dec 9, 2018:

Christian:
Creo que, además de los artículos de Wikipedia sobre “billón” y “millardo” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1,000,000,000), (https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billón), también puede interesarte el de Fundéu sobre este mismo tema (https://www.fundeu.es/noticia/millardos-3274/)

Björn Vrooman Dec 9, 2018:

@Charles and Christian We had this discussion on the DE-EN forum about two years ago.

Two links from one of my posts there:
"The UK government has been using the American meaning of billion since 1974 for the numbers it gives out."
http://www.plainenglish.co.uk/campaigning/past-campaigns/bud...

https://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-61...

They haven't been posted here, so I thought why not.

Best

Charles Davis Dec 9, 2018:

@Manuel I must admit I didn't know either. In 1520, Estienne de la Roche defined a billion as "mille milliers de millions" (i.e., 1,000,000,000,000). But from 1762 to 1932 inclusive, the French Academy dictionary (4th to 8th editions inclusive) defined it as "mille millions" (1,000,000,000), and the 6th to 8th editions explicitly say it was a synonym of milliard.
https://dvlf.uchicago.edu/mot/billion

The current Trésor says
"1. Vx. Synon. de milliard [...]
2. Un million de millions (10^12)."
http://www.cnrtl.fr/definition/billion

So they've changed their minds twice :-)

Manuel Cedeño Berrueta (asker) Dec 9, 2018:

Charles: I didn’t know that “billion” had been used in French with the meaning of one thousand million; I thought they had always used “milliard” to express this number:

[Millardo]
Es una palabra derivada de la francesa milliard, que existe en la gran mayoría de los idiomas europeos (en Italia y Alemania desde el siglo XVIII),2 pero que no correspondía a ningún uso en España ni en la mayor parte de Hispanoamérica. La excepción está en Venezuela, donde se usa corrientemente en los periódicos de circulación nacional, como por ejemplo El Nacional y El Universal, así como en todos los grandes medios de comunicación de ese país.
(https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millardo)

Charles Davis Dec 9, 2018:

Once the country officially decided to change, for better or worse, the change was very rapidly adopted in public discourse and education. Obviously it is very undesirable to have two different meanings in use. The change can be dated to 1974:

"In a written answer to Robin Maxwell-Hyslop MP, who asked whether official usage would conform to the traditional British meaning of a million million, [Prime Minister Harold] Wilson stated: "No. The word 'billion' is now used internationally to mean 1,000 million and it would be confusing if British Ministers were to use it in any other sense."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billion

The "short-scale" use of billion as a thousand million wasn't an American innovation. It was introduced by the French, and adopted by the US in the 19th century. Then France reverted to the long scale in 1948. So yes, when Wilson said "internationally" he was effectively acknowledging that American usage prevailed.

Christian [email protected] Dec 9, 2018:

Thanks for the update Disappointed that another country adapted to the US version. I never know if the writer/translator knows for sure what the accurate number is.

Charles Davis Dec 9, 2018:

@Christian As of 2018, the statement that a billion "still commonly" means a million millions in Great Britain is untrue. It is very rarely used with that meaning in the UK nowadays, except by very old-fashioned speakers (admittedly there are some of those in Britain). Bear in mind that the definition you have posted is from the OED Second Edition (1989) and has not been updated since. Even in 1989 I would say that it was an exaggeration to say that it "commonly" retained that meaning. It was common up to the 1970s, but rapidly declined from that point on. I lived through this so I am sure of my facts.

Christian [email protected] Dec 9, 2018:

OED http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/19024?redirectedFrom=billion#e...

Christian [email protected] Dec 9, 2018:

1000 million? I thought the Oxford dictionary said a "billion" was 1000000 million, and that only in the US is it 1000 times less.
In any case, the Bolívar from my native Venezuela is worth so little now, that the sum is probably worth about US $11.00 today.

Manuel Cedeño Berrueta (asker) Dec 9, 2018:

Thanks a lot, Charles

Charles Davis Dec 8, 2018:

@Manuel The old British English ("long-scale") use of billion to mean a million million is obsolete. So a thousand million is a billion in British as well as American English. You would write "three billion" in BrE.

Here is a British maths test on how to write large numbers in words. Look at the last few pages (from no. 221 onwards):
http://www.mathsmutt.co.uk/tests/place6.pdf

As to whether you should write the number in words as well as digits in the translation, I think it is optional, though personally I do so when the source does. When drafting contracts in English, it is generally considered unnecessary, though in sensitive documents many people do so. Here is Ken Adams on the subject:
https://www.adamsdrafting.com/stating-amounts-of-money/

Manuel Cedeño Berrueta (asker) Dec 8, 2018:

Many thanks, Phil and Charles.
This is the context/situation:
“El Capital Social del Banco XX es de Tres Mil Novecientos Ochenta y Dos Millones Trescientos Cuarenta y Un Mil Doscientos Nueve Bolívares (Bs.3.982.341.209), representado en Tres Mil Novecientas Ochenta y Dos Millones Trescientas Cuarenta y Un Mil Doscientas Nueve (3.982.341.209) acciones nominativas de Un Bolívar (Bs. 1,00) cada una”