Several days before, I encountered with the following sentence when dealing with a project:

Each Qualifying Purchase shall entitle the Member to earn points in the ratio of 1 Point for every INR 1000 (Indian Rupees One Thousand Only) of the invoiced amount, or such amount that may be decided by the Company from time to time, in the Qualifying Purchase.

The content in brackets “Indian Rupees One Thousand Only” is translated into 仅一千印度卢比. This sounds a little inappropriate. After referring to the material through internet, I found “only” here does not mean “solely” or “no one or nothing else”. Instead, it means “exactly”; in Chinese we say 整. Thus, the translation should be changed into 一千印度卢比整.

Money amount is very important, especially in contract. It should be translated in the proper way and expressed correctly; otherwise this may cause trouble or even lawsuit. In order to prevent falsify, it cannot be showed in Arabic numerals. Usually, it should be written in Arabic numerals, for the sake of recognization. And then followed by capital letters in brackets, to avoid tampering. For example:

46597.00 美元（美元肆万陆仟伍佰玖拾柒元整）

US$ 46597.00 (SAY FORTY-SIX THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED NINTY SEVEN US DOLLAR ONLY)

Reading difference of British and America Numbers

Sometimes, even the same number, British and American have different readings. This make the situation even worse. For example, for some 4-digit numbers with one comma, British read them in thousand, while American reads them in hundred. Another example, for some 10-digit numbers with three commas, American reads in billion, while British reads in thousand million. Please see the samples below:

Read Also: SPARKLING SECRETS’-TRANSLATION OF ADJECTIVES IN SALT MAGAZINE

6,300: British: six thousand, three hundred

American: sixty three hundred

2,000,000,000 British: twenty thousand million

American: two billion

US dollar and sterling are the most common currency.

US dollar is made of dollar and cent. One dollar equals to 100 cents. When expressing US dollar in numbers, we usually put US$ in front of the number. Such as US$600. And out C in the end of the number to indicate cent, such as 40C. And most commonly, we express a money amount with both dollar and cent in the way of US$569.65.

Sterling is made of pound and pence, 100 pence equals to 1 pound. We usually add ￡ in front of the number to indicate pound and add P in the end to indicate pence, such as ￡98 and 60P. When reading a number with both pound and pence, we always say forty seven pounds and fifty (￡47.50), omitting the word pence. A saying related is “Penny wise, pound foolish.”, which means 小事聪明，大事糊涂.