What it is
An amount of money is written as a figure and a currency indication, and three decisions attach to the indication alone: whether it appears as a three-letter code or as a symbol, whether it stands before or after the figure, and what separates the two. The figure itself is governed by the grouping and decimal conventions of the neighbouring record.
The options are occupied in every combination. The euro sign, U+20AC, and the three-letter code are both current; each is found on either side of the figure; and the gap between them is a space, U+0020, an unbreakable space, U+00A0, or nothing. A currency indication is one of the few notations whose correct form cannot be guessed from the target language alone.
Amounts reproduced inside quoted matter follow quotation-marks-and-quoted-matter, for the reason given below.
Where the expectation comes from
The Codified expectation rested on ISO 4217, and ISO 4217 answers a different question from the one this record asks.
- ISO 4217:2015 standardizes the identity of the code. Currencies "are represented both numerically and alphabetically, using either three digits or three letters", the alphabetic code taking its first two letters from the country code. The organization's public description says nothing about where the code stands relative to an amount or what separates them, and the standard's own text is sold rather than published.
- The English Style Guide puts the currency abbreviation before the amount, separated from it by a hard space, and closes a currency symbol up to the figure. Its illustrations run to amounts in the thousands, set off by hard spaces.
- The Stijlgids Nederlands of the same Directorate-General reverses the order at 8.2: "De ISO-code komt na het getal en wordt daarvan gescheiden door een spatie: een bedrag van 30 EUR". The same rule then names the exception in its own words, "in het Engels, Iers en Maltees staat de code voor het getal".
- For French the question is not left to guides. The Office québécois de la langue française rules at article 21400 of its Banque de dépannage linguistique that monetary unit symbols are written to the right of the figure and separated from it by a space, and its printed examples place the euro sign in that position.
One institution therefore holds two opposite rules in two of its language departments, and it knows it: the Dutch guide states the English practice as a fact about English rather than as a divergence. The tier is House because the record's examples are institutional texts whose form the issuing bodies could revise without any standard changing. The French case shows the axis note's first item at work, the placement there being ruled by a state language body rather than by a house.
Consequences for translation
The record's main work is to say which half of a currency expression can be checked against a standard and which half only against a style sheet.
- The code is not converted. Like an act number, it is carried across unchanged, and a translator who localizes it has destroyed the element designed to be language-independent. A text that writes a code ISO 4217 does not contain has erred at the Codified tier; a text that puts a valid code on the wrong side has erred against a guide.
- Order, spacing and the choice between code and symbol are determinate once the commissioning authority is known, and checkable thereafter.
- Carrying the source order across is a real finding and an easy one to miss, because both forms are well formed and neither changes the amount.
- Amounts inside quoted matter keep the quoted document's notation, because the notation is part of what is being evidenced. The test is whether the sentence is reporting a text or writing one, not whether the amount looks foreign.
- The Turkish side is unevidenced here: the only Turkish example reached did not survive retrieval intact, and that code states no rule on placement.
Examples
EN>NL
- Source: a fixed sum of EUR 40
- Target: een vast bedrag van 40 EUR
- Comment: Directive 2011/7/EU on late payment, Article 6(1), English and Dutch official versions. One provision, one amount, and the code on opposite sides of the figure. Each version obeys its own department's guide, so the English form carried into Dutch would breach Stijlgids 8.2 while looking entirely ordinary.
EN>FR
- Source: EUR 50
- Target: 50 €
- Comment: The English guide's own illustration, code before the figure with a hard space after it. The French target follows article 21400, which puts the monetary symbol to the right of the figure with a space between. It is shown in the symbol form because that is what the Quebec rule governs; the placement of an ISO code in French was not opened here.
References
- Directive 2011/7/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 16 February 2011 on combating late payment in commercial transactions (recast), English and Dutch language versions, Article 6(1).
- ISO 4217:2015, Codes for the representation of currencies. International Organization for Standardization. Cited from the organization's public description of the standard; the standard's own text was not opened.
- English Style Guide. Directorate-General for Translation, European Commission, eighth edition January 2016, file consulted 3 August 2026. The currency rule is cited by edition: it was read in the guide's front matter, and chapter 8 (Currencies), which begins at page 53, lies beyond the reach of the retrieval route.
- Banque de dépannage linguistique, "Unités monétaires: symboles", article 21400, Office québécois de la langue française, last updated 2019.
- Stijlgids Nederlands. Directoraat-generaal Vertaling, Europese Commissie, vijfde uitgave mei 2025, last amended 21 October 2025. Section 8.2.