Björn Vrooman Sep 6, 2016:

Hello Robin Incidentally, the US ref posted by Adrian in response to your disagreement says: "The formal use of extraordinary items has recently been eliminated under Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), so the following discussion should be considered historical in nature."

So this is a non-issue for me - I'm not sure what kind of "joint reverse logic" Adrian speaks of.

To your second part:

I think it's somewhat similar to, say, a political system. I won't suddenly call the German chancellor a president, just because I translate into AmE. Nor will I use the language of the Utah state legislature if I need to reference a certain EU directive. Like you, I don't see the logic in that. This isn't about convenience as in articles of journalism, where you may want to adjust your terminology, so the "average reader" can understand you.

One thing I'd like to ask you, though. Funnily enough, I have had the same term come up in one of my translations recently and the official ENS press release called them "other items incurred periodically, which are not the result of the Company's normal business operations."

Isn't that more in line with what you explained in your first post?

RobinB Sep 5, 2016:

Björn,
Thanks for posting the corroboration. I have to admit that I've taken my eye off US GAAP because it is of practically no relevance whatsoever for German preparers nowadays. There are at most a handful a couple of German companies reporting under US GAAP and reconciling to IFRSs (notably SAP), and last year a set of IFRS financial statements I was translating made reference to elements of US GAAP to "fill in the gap" in industry GAAP, but it really is extremely rare nowadays for DACH preparers to have anything to do with US GAAP.

It's interesting to see that all three accounting systems (IFRSs, US GAAP, German GAAP/HGB) now no longer permit "extraordinary" items (außerordentliche Posten).

Adrian's comment about the country of residence of the asker is, of course, also irrelevant: the terminology of the accounting system in question (IFRSs, German GAAP/HGB, Austrian GAAP/UGB, Swiss GAAP/FER) stays the same no matter what flavo(u)r of English you're translating into, in other words you don't suddenly start using (allegedly) US GAAP terms just because the client wants American English or the translator (or the target readership) is presumed to be in the US.

Björn Vrooman Sep 4, 2016:

Robin Might the following be used to corroborate what you said to Adrian, since it seems that even in the US, "extraordinary" is no longer popular:
"The FASB on January 9, 2015, eliminated the seldom-used concept of 'extraordinary items' from U.S. GAAP."
https://tax.thomsonreuters.com/media-resources/news-media-re...

"It is extremely rare in current practice for a transaction or event to meet the requirements to be presented as an extraordinary item, but preparers nonetheless were spending time and incurring costs to assess whether events or transactions were extraordinary. The new standard eliminates the need for those assessments and eliminates the need for preparers, auditors, and regulators to evaluate whether a preparer treated an unusual and/or infrequent item appropriately."
http://www.journalofaccountancy.com/news/2015/jan/gaap-extra...

Differences between non-recurring and extraordinary:
http://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/042413/financ...

RobinB Sep 3, 2016:

A really problematic term... ... not least because just about every German corporate has its own preference for a particular term, e.g. non-recurring items/factors/effects, one-time items/factors/effects, one-off items/factors/effects, special items/factors/effects, exceptional items/factors/effects.

Left to my own devices, I normally opt for something neutral like "non(-)recurring factors", but that's only if I can be absolutely sure that they really are one-time expense or income items. The problem is that very often, these things actually repeat from year to year, which means of course that they're not really "Sonder" at all, but rather an artificial device intended to obscure the fact that the company concerned didn't match its bottom-line or operating P&L target.

Anglosphere companies tend to talk about things like "adjusted" P&L and "P&L adjustments", that sort of thing, not least because many of them are actually prohibited by their regulator from indulging in the sort of faintly ludicrous word games that German CFOs get up to.