By extension, XCIX represents ninety nine.
Therefore, IX represents nine, XC represents ninety and CM represents nine hundred. When there are two letters together, each of them are worth powers of ten and the second letter is worth ten times the first, the value of this group is equal to the second letter subtracted by the first letter. The whole combination represents a number. A combination is made of smaller groups of letters, each group in increasing order from right to left. It is possible to represent numbers different from these, through combinations of letters, such as XIII, MMMCCV and MCMXCIX. There is no symbol to represent a null quantity. They are, in this order, from lower to higher: I, V, X, L, C, D and M.Įach said symbol represents a different number, in this order: one, five, ten, fifty, one hundred, five hundred and one thousand. More on this in a future post.The Roman numerals are a numerical system composed of seven Latin letters. For instance, there is a Korean calendar, Islamic calendar, Bengali calendar, Hebrew calendar, Iranian calendar – to name a few. The Western (or Gregorian) calendar is the generally accepted international calendar, but there are others in use around the world within particular countries or languages. Who knew the Kentish Old English pronunciation of “1”? Foreign language calendarsĪ brief aside as it is distantly related to numbers, but not all languages share the same calendar. It is certainly a comprehensive article, perhaps too much so for day to day use, but it makes for fascinating browsing. There is also lengthy list of numbers in various languages on Wikipedia, containing both the symbols and transliterations of the pronunciations. Try fitting “kaksikymmentäkahdeksan”, the Finnish for “two tens and seven”, into a narrow column width! You can read some more information on how languages count here. Also, how langauges put numbers together can lead to long compound words. Most typesetting will not have to get involved in the details of this, but it’s interesting stuff. The Finish for one is “yksi” while eleven is “yksitoista” – one repeated. For instance, the French for 81 translates literally as “Four twenties and one”. Of course, numbers that are writen out in words can reveal interesting patterns too. That’s the same amount as 7 billion, just a different way of thinking about it. So the world population has just hit 70 hundred million. In Chinese, you don’t “lump” quantities together in billions but in hundred millions. The headline highlights the challenges for the planet, but the interesting part from a strictly translation point of view is the “ 70亿“. In English, we count large amounts in millions, billions, trillions and so on, but not everyone breaks things up like this.įor instance, the BBC website recently ran a Chinese headline announcing the birth of the “7 billionth child”: The way of grouping together large quantities can be different too. It is not just the symbols used to represent numbers that can vary.
For instance, InDesign ME allows users to special Arabic, Farsi or Hindi numerals. The translator types the numbers as part of the translation, you import into InDesign (or whatever), apply the font and hey presto! You can sometimes control the form numerals take from within your typesetting software. The characters for a given language should be in the multilingual font being used for the rest of foreign language typesetting. The typesetting of numbers is usually straightforward. Also, I would argue the first label should be “Arabic Hindi” or “Eastern Arabic” to differentiate from the numerals used in English, which are correctly referred to as “Arabic numerals”. For instance, it is very common for Chinese text to use the same numerals as English. This is a great illustration of the range of numeral systems out there, but it should be used combined with some local knowledge. The French might say “dix” when the English say “ten”, but we both write “10”.īut many languages do not use the same symbols. Many of these use the same symbols for these amounts as we do in English. The vast majority of languages have separate words for particular amounts. Whatever language we speak, we all count. A page design that plays on the shape of a number might fall apart when typeset in a foreign language.įirst, what we all have in common. Not all languages share the same numerals something it can be importantly to remember from the start of the design process.