German
Abbreviation Resources
Compiled by Dr. Geoffrey
S. Koby, Kent State University
Caution:
Use at your own risk.
The correctness or completeness of the information provided through
these links is the responsibility of their owners.
The compiler teaches commercial, legal
and financial translation. Therefore, the coverage of sites here may be
uneven.
The
first step in understanding any abbreviation is
discovering the full or expanded form. Once that has been
determined, the next step is to determine whether an official,
standard, or accepted translation of the full form already exists,
possibly with an official, standard, or accepted acronym in English. If
not, the translator is free to create a new translation and even, if
appropriate, to create a new abbreviation, acronym, or initialism.
(A terminological note: an
abbreviation is any shortened form of a word, multi-word term, name, or
phrase. Acronyms and initialisms are subcategories of abbreviations,
both of which are formed from the initial parts of name. An acronym can
be pronounced (e.g., NATO, OPEC), while an initialism cannot (e.g.,
FBI, BBC). In this article I use abbreviation to cover all three types.)
Note that
general abbreviation/acronym pages will provide only general-language
information. For more technical or complex abbreviations, the
subject-matter-specific glossaries will provide the best information.
The
first thing to remember is context, context, context! Like any other
words,
abbreviations and acronyms are used meaningfully in a text, so
translators
cannot simply blindly accept the first solution that appears on the
screen.
Instead, translators have to consider whether that resolution of the
abbreviation actually makes sense in the text it came from. When
searching
on-line for abbreviations, it’s very common to encounter many
different
full
forms for a single abbreviation—and they’re all correct!
For this
reason, the
first strategy when trying to resolve a particular abbreviation is to
search in
a list of abbreviations for the specific domain of the source text.
Then, it’s
up to the translator to use knowledge of the source text, professional
skill,
and common sense to pick the correct full form.
E-mail suggestions for additional sites to be added to
the list, or notices of dead sites,
to gkoby [AT] kent [DOT] edu.
Start Here:
- German Wikipedia Portal:Abkürzungen. This site is a
good starting point. The page includes links to "Abkürzungen nach
Thema" as well as sub-pages with all possible two-letter and three-letter abbreviations, along
with an extensive list of four-letter abbreviations, each of
which links to the corresponding page in Wikipedia. The individual
topic pages are not
included below.
General language and collections
- Duden, Wörterbuch
der Abkürzungen. E-book. Highly
recommended. Buy
it here.
- Akronyme und Abkürzungen / Acronyms and
Abbreviations. This site, from the Free University of Berlin,
is quite extensive in German and English. Searchable. "Although most of
the entries are correct, some of them may
be erroneous or garbage. The data base, consisting of more than
12.000 acronyms, is not "complete", of course.
There is a bias towards acronyms used in chemistry or spectroscopy."
- Acronym
Finder, which claims to be
"the world's largest and most comprehensive dictionary of acronyms and
initialisms." Searchable. A
disadvantage here is that the list is not language-specific.
- Abkuerzungen.de,
“die ****maschine für
Abkürzungen.”
- Abkürzung.info
includes a search engine and a program for practicing/memorizing
abbreviations. Presumably it has at least 2600 abbreviations, because clicking
on a letter shows a listing of 100 abbreviations.
- Abkuerzungen.org,
which states "über 10.000
Abkürzungen
in der Datenbank."
- Liste
von Abkürzungen collected by Dr. Dieter Guicking of
Göttingen. Over 12,000 abbreviations,
mostly in English. Search using browser search.
- Woxikon Abkürzungen
& Akronyme Datenbank.
25340 Abkürzungen, 40265 Bedeutungen.
- YAAS
| Yet Another Acronym Server. This listing contains 6200
acronyms in German. Searchable, but can also obtain a list of all
acronyms.
- Google
Books - some of these sources are older, and some are
previews that are missing some pages. Take what you can from them.
Searchable.
Business language
- Abkürzungen
der Betriebswirte.
About 725
business management
abbreviations, some with English translations, from
Harry Zingel.
- Immobilien-Fachwissen Lexikon. 4431 terms from the real estate business, with many
abbreviations. Searchable.
- Official European Verzeichnis der Länder, Gebiete und Währungen.
Two-letter country codes
and three-letter currency
codes for the countries of the world, with full forms and
much additional information. Can be switched to English or other
languages.
- Google
Books - some of these sources are older, and some
are
previews that are missing some pages. Take what you can from them.
Searchable.
- Hache, Sander, & Sander, Taschenlexikon
Abkürzungen.
Abkürzungen Wirtschaft - Recht - Steuern - Datenverarbeitung,
1995.
Missing occasional pages.
Financial/tax language
- Abkürzungen
der Betriebswirte.
About 725
business management
abbreviations, some with English translations, from
Harry Zingel.
- GELD.ORG -
Abkürzungen. Specialized glossary for money transactions and related terms.
- SAP Bibliothek.
Clickable and searchable list of terms for the well-known SAP
enterprise business management and financial software. Many
abbreviations.
- Google
Books - some of these sources are older, and some
are
previews that are missing some pages. Take what you can from them.
Searchable.
- Hache, Sander, & Sander, Taschenlexikon
Abkürzungen.
Abkürzungen Wirtschaft - Recht - Steuern - Datenverarbeitung,
1995.
Missing occasional pages.
Legal language
- Kirchner, Abkürzungsverzeichnis
der Rechtssprache. E-book. Highly
recommended for
hard-to-find legal abbreviations. Buy it here.
- 123recht.net
rechtliches Wörterbuch. This brief Swiss glossary
is mostly terms but has some abbreviations.
- Abkürzungen
der Juristen. About 2000 legal
abbreviations, from Harry Zingel.
- beck-online
- Die Datenbank. Beck is a very well respected legal publisher, so this
information is reliable. Many
legal terms, particularly abbreviations of German laws and regulations,
can be found here. A nice feature is a pop-up that appears if the
abbreviation is ambiguous, offering a choice of possible full forms for
the abbreviation.
- Begriffe
und Abkürzungen zum
Arbeitsschutzmanagement und Gesundheitsschutzmanagement.
From Unternehmensberatung
Stottrop, Cologne. About 280 occupational
health and safety terms relating specifically to the
German situation.
- Brennecke & Partner juristische
Abkürzungen. A collection of 1547 legal abbreviations compiled
by attorney Harald Brennecke und Nathalie Käuper.
- Gesetze im Internet.
Official site from the German Ministry of Justice. Allows searches for
German laws, which all have an official full form, short form, and
abbreviation. Use "Volltextsuche." Also has links to translations of
selected laws.
- Juristische
Abkürzungen von A bis Z.
Sebastian Einbock's collection of legal abbreviations. Hard to
estimate, but perhaps less than 1000
legal abbreviations. Not
searchable, and divided by letter.
- Official European Kürzel und Akronyme. Over 800 terms
focusing on European
political and legal institutions. Can be switched to
English or other languages.
- Polizeiliche Abkürzungen. Over 500 abbreviations relating to police work compiled by Detlef
Wipperfürth on his radio frequencies site.
- ProZ Juristische Abkürzungen. This personal user
glossary of legal abbreviations
from "xxxSzantaiGabo" lists 1175
terms, including some very specialized ones.
- UNESCO.ch.
Glossary of 158 abbreviations
and terms frequently used by UNESCO on their Swiss website, some
German, many English.
- Google
Books - some of these sources are older, and some
are
previews that are missing some pages. Take what you can from them.
Searchable.
- Hache, Sander, & Sander, Taschenlexikon
Abkürzungen.
Abkürzungen Wirtschaft - Recht - Steuern - Datenverarbeitung,
1995.
Missing occasional pages.
- Kirchner, Abkürzungen
für Juristen, 2.
Auflage, 1993. ("Diese Studienausgabe stellt eine Teiledition der
großen Aufgabe dar.") Preview. Missing occasional pages, and the
end,
from TVO on.
Technical language (focus area in bold)
- ABKLEX
Abkürzungsliste/Acronyms.
Wulf Alex's list of over 15,000
computer science
and telecommunications
acronyms. Search using browser.
- Abkuerzung.ch.
"Eine Datenbank mit
19984
Abkürzungen aus Informatik, Telekommunikation und Elektronik." Allows
wildcard searches. Links to Wikipedia and Google, as well as other
abbreviation sites.
- Abkürzungen und Begriffe aus der IT.
1859
terms from IT
and related areas.
- Computer Modell Katalog Glossar.
About 400 computer
abbreviations. The site limits itself to information before 1995.
- DFÜ
Abkürzungen. About 375
terms relating
to data communications
from Shamrock Software GmbH.
- EDV-Abkuerzungen.de.
An unknown number of
terms relating to IT.
Searchable, and suggests related terms. Users can suggest abbreviations.
- Eflight
Glossar Abkürzungen.
(Click on Abkürzungen in the left bar.) About 200 abbreviations
relating to aviation,
with German and English full-form equivalants.
- Flugzeuginfo.net Luftfahrtabkürzungen.
Almost all
of these 775
aviation-related
abbreviations are in English, but there are a few German and European
abbreviations.
- Hypertext Glossar informatikbezogener
Abkürzungen und ausgewählter Begriffe. "Die letzte
Aktualisierung dieses Glossars erfolgte am 7. Februar 2012 und
bietet 58787
Einträge." Thousands of entries relating to computer science.
- MPeX
Glossary. About 50 terms,
many of them abbreviations, relating to MP3 technology.
- Maritimes Abkürzungsverzeichnis - Maritime
Abbreviations. Hard to estimate volume, but hundreds of mostly English
maritime terms with a few German terms, but with German and English
full forms or definitions.
- Umweltschutz.
212 abbreviations in
the area of environmental
protection.
- Wasser- und Schifffahrtsverwaltung des Bundes. Abkürzungen und Zuständigkeiten der
Binnenwasserstraßen. Abbreviations for waterways in Germany.
- webchat.de Abkürzungen. About 450 searchable
abbreviations relating to web
chat. Mostly English terms with German
translations.
- web-akronym.de.
"Rund
2.500 Abkürzungen, 1.200 Akronyme und 700
Smilie-Erklärungen."
Difficult to use, and the search facility is clumsy, but many
internet-related terms.
- Google
Books - some of these sources are older, and some
are
previews that are missing some pages. Take what you can from
them. Searchable.
Medical language
- Beckers Abkürzungslexikon
medizinischer Begriffe. "Die umfangreichste medizinische
Abkürzungslexikon." More than 150,000 abbreviations, acronyms, and
symbols.
- Google
Books - some of these sources are older, and some
are
previews that are missing some pages. Take what you can from
them. Searchable.
Miscellaneous