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Currency codes like USD, EUR and CNY are well known in English. In accountancy documentation prepared in non-English languages, are these same terms used for foreign currency or are they translated?

For instance, Google Translate gives these translations. Are they used in financial statements?

English Chinese Russian
USD 美元 доллар США
EUR 欧元 евро
CNY 中国新年 китайский юань
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  • 44
    "中国新年" is a literal translation of "Chinese New Year". CNY is 人民币 in Chinese.
    – Flux
    Commented Sep 15, 2021 at 6:39
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    Those currency codes are internationally standardized. Refer to ISO 4217.
    – Flux
    Commented Sep 15, 2021 at 6:45
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    Okay, I should have translated back to English to ensure it understood me. 😅
    – Hand-E-Food
    Commented Sep 16, 2021 at 7:11
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    China has their own standards.
    – Nelson
    Commented Sep 16, 2021 at 8:49
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    FYI, google translations are utterly irrelevant in this situation
    – Fattie
    Commented Sep 16, 2021 at 15:55

3 Answers 3

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As Flux said, "中国新年" is a literal translation of "Chinese New Year". CNY is 人民币 in Chinese.

USD, EUR and CNY are not known from English. They are known from ISO 4217 standard.

In fact, ISO 4217 could be different from what people ordinarily use. For example, CNY (ISO) is called RMB in China, CAD (ISO) is called CDN in Canada.

To determine the local translation of ISO 4217, one does not simply look at translated versions of ISO 4217, but rather the equivalent local standard.

For example, China has published "National Standard" GB/T 12406-2008, where it contains Simplified Chinese names of each ISO currency on Page 9 and beyond.

Similarly, Russia has published its standard known as ОКВ:2000.

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    Western Canadian here. In my experience, we use the ISO CAD almost universally. Sometimes software shows it as CA$, but CDN looks foreign to me.
    – Phillip Elm
    Commented Sep 17, 2021 at 4:21
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    @PhillipElm "CDN" instead of CAD is used in Air Canada annual report and Manulife annual report. I doubt that it is foreign.
    – base64
    Commented Sep 17, 2021 at 4:44
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    @base64 btb.termiumplus.gc.ca/tpv2guides/guides/wrtps/… says: "In the area of finance, ... the universal code CAD is the usual symbol used." and "Note that the symbols Can and CDN, with or without the dollar sign, are not recommended in French", so "CAD (ISO) is called CDN in Canada." definitely seems a bit too strong of a statement.
    – muru
    Commented Sep 17, 2021 at 5:29
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    Something to add is that the reason we have a standard is to aid cross-language communication and avoid ambiguity. In 2005, Romania chopped off four zeros from its currency. The everyday name of the currency is still the same, but there are different ISO codes for the old an new version (ROL and RON). This shows how the common or translated name can be ambiguous.
    – Szabolcs
    Commented Sep 17, 2021 at 16:47
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    I'm Canadian and CDN definitely means "content delivery network". If I saw it on a financial statement I still wouldn't recognize it as meaning CAD unless it had a flag or something next to it.
    – Paul
    Commented Sep 17, 2021 at 20:44
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Just adding to the other answer. You asked

In accountancy documentation prepared in non-English languages, are these same terms used for foreign currency or are they translated?

I obviously can't speak for all countries, languages and companies, but if what you're really asking is whether those currency codes would be commonly understood by most non-native English speakers working in financial fields, in my experience the answer is yes.

I expect that in most cases, unless there is some ambiguity in the target languages, the ISO code would be perfectly clear.

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  • No, the reverse. Would a US accountancy system understand currency symbols defined by another country, particularly those with non-Latin character sets? I'm building such a system and am concerned it's too US-centric to sell to other territories.
    – Hand-E-Food
    Commented Sep 17, 2021 at 0:03
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    Finance professionals for sure, accountancy professionals, maybe? End users, not really. I worked on such a system and we had pushback against ISO 3 letter codes in favour of symbols, e.g: $ or HK$.
    – Rich
    Commented Sep 17, 2021 at 1:02
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In Russia, they are widely used in banking services, usually in pair with translation, for example Sber Bank application:

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