Laufleistung

[dummzeuch 1505]

I need an English translation for the German Word "Laufleistung" (Kilometerleistung), which gives e.g. the distance a car or a tyre has travelled in its lifetime.

 

Every translation service suggests "mileage", but showing "mileage [km]" (mileage in kilometres) looks wrong to me.

 

DeepL also suggests "kilometrage", which I had never heard before. Is that really used? Probably not in the US and UK. What about other English speaking countries with a more sane unit system? (Are there any? 😉 )

 

I would prefer a word that is unit agnostic (Like the German "Laufleistung" which does not include the unit itself).

 

DeepL also suggested "running performance" but that's even wider than the German word and I have also never heard it before.

[Mike Torrettinni 198]

What about "Lifetime km/mi:" ?

[toms 29]

Read the comments on this page:

https://painintheenglish.com/case/451

[David Heffernan 2345]

No English speaker I know, here in the UK, would say anything other than mileage.

 

This is one of those words whose meaning is now detached from its etymology. 

[WillH 33]

Could you use odometer ?

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odometer

[Guest]

@David Heffernan is correct IMHO. It's a "word". We have lots of words that feel "illogical" to people learning a language or having a serious hangover. But the etymology will show why this word is heard as [some other meaning].

Now with English it's a bit more difficult because there are at least 14 official versions of the language and it has become a "lingua franca".

The people having most problems being understood on international fora are the native speakers because they have problems distinguishing between "local" proverbs and what non-native speakers can actually understand. This may be an argument for your preferred solution (to create a new word) but even to me [non-english-native] "mileage" is the accumulated distance of an object.

So i would definitely write "Mileage (km)" or "Mileage (kilometres)". Looks completely OK to my eyes at least.

 

HTH

[Guest]

Oh, BTW 🙂 ... In Sweden we have a length unit called "Mil". One "mil" is exactly 10 kilometres. This is archaic. The unit is seldom used in technical writings or research.

It is however, still frequently used in spoken language. Phonetically the "mil" sounds like a mile (more correctly pronounced like "meal" as when you are hungry). But a mile is 1,6 kilometres (or some such). There is also the Nautical mile, 1.8 kilometres "everywhere".

Motor journalists has managed to get rid of the "Mil" when writing about fuel consumption (litres/kilometres nowadays), but regarding the mileage of a car people in my age tend to still use "Mil" even in writing.

I had some laughs when i read my daughters Irish friends commenting on a train accident that took place in Sweden. The journo had converted the speed of the train correctly to MPH. However, the kids that had been to Sweden started a thread about the "Swedish mile" having endless fun over the speed the train was going (X / 1.6 * 10). The confusion made for some funny reading.

 

[dummzeuch 1505]

1 hour ago, WillH said:

Could you use odometer ?

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odometer

No. An Odometer is a device to measure mileage. "Odometer value" or something like that would probably be OK for some usages but not in my particular case (which is the "mileage" of a special type of tyre).

[dummzeuch 1505]

I will probably go with "mileage" then, even though that will raise questions whenever some translator stumbles upon it (the next translation will be to Portugese, that's going to be interesting).

[David Heffernan 2345]

3 hours ago, WillH said:

Could you use odometer ?

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odometer

No, that is the device that measures mileage 

[Guest]

Odometer, Odometry, Odometric properties. Odomericiality [adv.]???

[timfrost 78]

I have seen "kilometrage" used in UK English, and kilométrage in French.  I would vote for it if you organized a competition, although it is ugly and not in wide use.  If you are using the word as a column heading, you need something short.  But in a descriptive sentence I would prefer a phrase like, "lifetime rolling kilometres" or "total kilometric distance".  Googling lifetime kilometres only turns up FitBit links.

[A.M. Hoornweg 144]

How about "total mileage" (in the sense of Gesamtlaufleistung) ?

[Darian Miller 361]

(I've been coding in the automotive industry in the U.S. for 20+ years.)  IMO, if you want to service the U.S. market and you are displaying the distance a vehicle has traveled to a user then use "Mileage" or "Miles" and convert KM to Miles for display.  Very few in the U.S. will want to see KM for vehicle mileage (at least for personal vehicle mileage.)

[dummzeuch 1505]

32 minutes ago, Darian Miller said:

(I've been coding in the automotive industry in the U.S. for 20+ years.)  IMO, if you want to service the U.S. market and you are displaying the distance a vehicle has traveled to a user then use "Mileage" or "Miles" and convert KM to Miles for display.  Very few in the U.S. will want to see KM for vehicle mileage (at least for personal vehicle mileage.)

Thanks, but the US is not a market for this program (and probably will never be, but who knows? It's probably as likely as the US converting to metric. 😉 )

[stijnsanders 35]

I like alliterations, what about "total tire travel"? https://dictionary.reverso.net/german-english/Leistung

[Bernard 18]

"the distance a car or a tyre has travelled in its lifetime."

 

Could be written as distance clocked.

 

I clocked 250000 miles on my old VW Golf.

I probably only clocked 60 miles on the last set of tyres.  And that made me sad.  

 

[Sue King 5]

Mileage has a wider use than just a measure of miles.  For example, it is not uncommon to hear a phrase such as 'We had good mileage from that' where that can refer to clothes, appliances, tools or something that get used.

[Lars Fosdal 1792]

Mileage or Distance traveled.  And, IMO, although the origin of mileage is miles traveled, today it is fine to use a mileage measured in km - if that is the local distance unit.

In Norwegian, the word "kilometerstand" is used, meaning the current standing of the kilometer counter in the odometer.

 

[Sherlock 663]

On 6/20/2019 at 6:25 PM, dummzeuch said:

Thanks, but the US is not a market for this program (and probably will never be, but who knows? It's probably as likely as the US converting to metric. 😉 )

Well then get to it.

The US have switched to the metric system as of June 2013, when the imperial measurements were rebased to depend on their corresponding metric units. Source: Wikipedia

[dummzeuch 1505]

31 minutes ago, Sherlock said:

Well then get to it.

The US have switched to the metric system as of June 2013, when the imperial measurements were rebased to depend on their corresponding metric units. Source: Wikipedia

Wow, I totally missed that. (This still doesn't increase the likelyhood of that particular software ever being used in the US.)

Now, if they switched to a sane date and time format, that would be cool. Or did that happen and I missed it too?

[Sherlock 663]

Nope, dates are still "M D Y" including ordinal indicators for the day (June 24th 2019).