company

Which translation, when

Why

Colloquial German says Firma for any business and the training data listened, legal German never does. The Firma is defined as a name, § 17 HGB, the Gesellschaft is the person that bears it, das Unternehmen is the business both of them sit on, and German commercial law makes the distinction expensive to blur: whoever acquires a Handelsgeschäft and continues under the old Firma answers for the debts contracted in that business, § 25 Abs. 1 HGB, and escapes only if the exclusion is registered and published or told to the creditor directly, § 25 Abs. 2 HGB. So the name is a liability trigger, not decoration. The entity vocabulary matters at the other end too, the asset deal buys das Unternehmen, the share deal buys die Gesellschaft, and a text that says Firma for person, name and business alike has flattened the one three-way split the transaction structure runs on. Die Firma haftet, the machine’s favourite sentence, is living-room German, names do not owe money.

Typical mistakes

• Die Firma haftet is living-room German, in legal German the Firma is a name and names do not owe money, die Gesellschaft haftet.
• The name has teeth of its own, continuing the seller’s Firma after an asset deal imports the old liabilities, § 25 Abs. 1 HGB, unless the exclusion reaches the register or the creditor, § 25 Abs. 2 HGB, so loose name vocabulary hides a liability trigger.
• Unternehmen is the business, not the person, the asset deal buys das Unternehmen, the share deal buys die Gesellschaft, and swapping the two mislabels the whole transaction structure.

What matters

Asset deals put all three words on one page: the buyer acquires das Unternehmen, from die Gesellschaft, and must decide whether to continue die Firma, because § 25 Abs. 1 HGB attaches the old debts to the continued name unless the exclusion reaches the register or the creditor, § 25 Abs. 2 HGB. The translation that says Firma for all three has erased the one distinction the liability rule runs on.

Examples