Specialized German dictionary
for certificate descriptions

Online translators

I have always recommended American collectors shop with German, Swiss, and Belgian auction houses and dealers. Although their minimum bid prices tends to be high by American standards, their catalogs are always excellent and their selections often include hard-to-find certificates. Collectors should understand that there are some "must-have" certificates that only appear for sale in Europe. It therefore behooves advanced collectors to follow European sales.

Thankfully, language (and currency) translation is easier now than ever before

Most European dealers converse in English. Feel free to write them in English. Mario Boone's catalogs are published in English. Most other catalogs are written in German. Thankfully, translation software makes it much easier these days to read those catalogs without tremendous struggle.

The best and cheapest (free!) translation software I've seen is Google Translate. If the catalog is online (and most are!), all you need to do is cut the text from the catalog, paste it into Google Translate, and click on "Translate".

The German to English translation will, of course, never be perfect, but it is very acceptable and getting better all the time.

You will discover that the stock and bond hobby has its own specialized language . Tanslation software will never translate collector jargon 100% correctly. Below is a short dictionary of some of the most common certificate description terms.

One of the operating rules of German

English tends to use hyphens to combine words, whereas German speakers create new words by welding several words together. For instance, Güterwagendepot means freight depot. English speakers can make more sense of the word if they separate it into Güter wagen depot.

It is very common for German compound words to baffle translation software. If you encounter that problem, simply guess how to break the problem word into component parts and re-translate. For instance, if the software fails to translate Nachfolgegesellschaft, break the word into Nachfolge gesellschaft and try again. If one break does not work, try two breaks and then three. Just like English compound words, the more you break German compound words, the further the meaning migrates from its intended use.

German capitalization

Like English, German capitalizes the first words of sentences and all proper names. It also capitalizes nouns, just as English used to do.