lease

Which translation, when

Why

One English word covers three German contracts and one gap. The line between the first two is the fruits, Miete grants use, § 535 BGB, Pacht grants use and the Genuss der Früchte, § 581 BGB, so the empty premises are gemietet and the running restaurant is gepachtet, with the Pacht regime, and for farmland the Landpacht rules, taking over from there. Leasing is neither, German practice keeps the English word for the finance product. The gap is the leasehold, English law slices ownership of land by time, German land law does not, the functional cousin is the Erbbaurecht, § 1 ErbbauRG, a registrable right to have a building on foreign soil, and no vocabulary bridges the rest. One German rule deserves its own alarm, § 550 BGB, carried into commercial space by § 578 BGB, a lease for more than a year needs Schriftform, and without it the contract counts as concluded for an indefinite term, ordinarily terminable, so the ten-year security the English reader sees in the translated term sheet can evaporate on a form defect.

Typical mistakes

• Leasing for a property lease misfiles the deal, German Leasing is the finance product, the office floor runs on Miete, and the word choice sends the reader to the wrong contract type entirely.
• The fruits decide, a leased business or restaurant as going concern is Pacht, § 581 BGB, the bare premises are Miete, § 535 BGB, and the wrong label invokes the wrong statutory regime.
• § 550 BGB is the quiet killer, § 578 BGB carries it into commercial space, long-term leases without Schriftform count as indefinite and become ordinarily terminable, so the fixed term the English text promises depends on a German form rule the words alone do not show.

What matters

Portfolio deals across the Channel sort the premises by fruits: the office lease is ein Mietvertrag, § 535 BGB, the leased hotel operation ein Pachtvertrag, § 581 BGB, and the sale-and-leaseback of the fleet is Leasing and stays English. The rendering also decides what the buyer’s German counsel checks first, because a translated ten-year lease is only as fixed as its Schriftform, §§ 550, 578 BGB.

Examples