provision
noun · Bestimmung
Bestimmung for the clause, and hands off the identical twin, die deutsche Provision is a commission, § 87 HGB, while Rückstellung, the accounting sense, § 249 HGB, waits one register away. Die Provisionen dieses Vertrages is sales pay, not boilerplate.
Which translation, when
Why
Provision is the perfect false twin, the German word with the identical letters means something else entirely, die Provision is the intermediary’s pay, the agent’s commission, § 87 HGB. Around that trap the English word splits three honest ways: the clause sense is Bestimmung, die Bestimmungen dieses Vertrages, with Vorschriften alongside for statutes, the accounting sense is Rückstellung, § 249 HGB, the reserve for uncertain liabilities and pending losses, and the supply sense is Erbringung or Bereitstellung, the provision of services. Machine output wanders among all of them by corpus proximity, and the collision becomes untranslatable comedy in the one document where both languages genuinely meet, the Handelsvertretervertrag, whose English provisions govern German Provisionen, clauses about commissions, and a rendering that confuses the two pays the agent with boilerplate.
Typical mistakes
- Die Provisionen dieses Vertrages pays the sales agent, § 87 HGB, the clauses are die Bestimmungen, and the identical spelling makes this the least visible substitution on the page.
- Rückstellungen belong to the balance sheet, § 249 HGB, and in a contract text they announce an accounting reserve where clauses stood.
- The supply sense travels separately, provision of services is die Erbringung von Dienstleistungen, and Bestimmung there turns performance into paperwork.
What matters
Commission-agent contracts stage the perfect collision: the English provisions of the agency agreement govern the agent’s German Provisionen, § 87 HGB, clauses on one side, commission on the other, identical letters throughout. The translation must keep Bestimmungen and Provisionen apart line by line, because the machine will not, and the agent reads the version that suits him.
What the machine misses
Provision is a perfect false twin, the German word with the same letters pays the sales agent, and machine output slides between Bestimmungen, Provisionen and Rückstellungen depending on which corpus spoke last. The provisions of this Agreement can come back as commissions or as balance-sheet reserves, and in a Handelsvertretervertrag, where echte Provisionen genuinely live next door, the reader has no way to tell the clauses from the pay.
Examples
| the provisions of this Agreement | die Bestimmungen dieses Vertrages |
| statutory provisions | die gesetzlichen Vorschriften |
| to make provision for | Vorsorge treffen für |
| provisions in the balance sheet | die Rückstellungen in der Bilanz |