T o b i a s Jul 22, 2014:

Format The format is common in Br Pt. Note that by adding the word 'mil', instead of '000' the writer makes it harder to surreptitiously add or mess with the number of zeros.

Mario Freitas Jul 22, 2014:

Robert said that the documents refer to the profits of a construction company, not that the 1.138.651 mil correspond to its net profits. If, for example, the 31.351 mil are the net profits, for a large construction company it is obvious that the profits require three more zeros. Furthermore, I repeat, the dot does not represent a decimal point in Portuguese.

António Ribeiro Jul 21, 2014:

profits of a construction company??? Deve ser alguma que construiu os estádios de futebol. Na minha opinião o "mil" está a mais.

R. Alex Jenkins Jul 21, 2014:

I think you should send a note to the agency/client and ask them to clarify this, just to be on the safe side. The difference between R$ 1.138 million in profits and R$ 1.138 BILLION in profits is enormous, and would be a gross translation error if you get it wrong. Better check those figures.

Mario Freitas Jul 21, 2014:

I don't think you can just remove it, The "mil" unit is very common in finance, above all in tables, to reduce the numbers. The numbers are separated by dots ".", which, in Portuguese, do not stand for decimal points, yet to mere separators. The "mil" should be replaced by three zeros, as suggested by Eduardo. When you see a number with a comma (e.g. 1,357) in Portuguese, then you can eliminate the mil.

Robert Long (asker) Jul 21, 2014:

The context is regarding the profits of a construction company, so the suggestion made by Eduardo to render them as 31,351,000, etc., though confusing, seems to make sense in the context. I just thought it was very bizarre for them to write mil after the number like that instead of just writing out the entire number.

Ana Ribeiro Olson (X) Jul 21, 2014:

I agree that it's probably an error. I'd report this to the client, explaining that you omitted the word "mil", just to be on the safe side.

Paulinho Fonseca Jul 21, 2014:

Have you got the context, please?

Paulinho Fonseca Jul 21, 2014:

It's redundant. The numbers speak for themselves. Unless source writer wants to specify amount and that should be done in parentheses and for complete amount.