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What is a good German translation for the verb "to plateau"?

I tried searching around, but it seems that online dictionaries such as dict.cc only recognize plateau as a noun.

If I wanted to say something like:

"Prices have pretty much plateaued."

would it make sense in German to say:

"Preise haben eine Hochebene erreicht."

? Or does that not carry the intended meaning?

Thank you for your help!

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3 Answers

up vote 10 down vote accepted

The closest one I have found is "sich stabilisieren": Die Preise haben sich stabilisiert.

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1  
Tell me if this fits your request. :) – Alenanno May 27 '11 at 18:16
I think "to plateau" implies a monotonous stabilisation, wherease "to stabilise" could oscillate around the final value. – Tim N May 27 '11 at 19:04
@Tim: What do you mean by "monotonous"? By the way, I've proposed "sich stabilisieren" because where I have looked up, it said it was related to Economy and such, so since the question was about "prices" I thought it would be pretty much related. – Alenanno May 27 '11 at 19:07
I mean that it is not decreasing, always rising towards the final value. – Tim N May 27 '11 at 19:20
@Tim: Uhm, isn't plateau just flat, or you mean that although being flat it won't go down anyway? I even thought of "stagnieren" but it had some negative connotation in it, so I left it out but I should have included it. – Alenanno May 27 '11 at 22:01
up vote 13 down vote

"Hochebene" sounds wrong in this sentence. It means plateau in the sense of high plane.

A definition of "to plateau" is

to reach a state or level of little or no growth or decline, especially to stop increasing or progressing; remain at a stable level of achievement.

I would translate it this way (I presume you want to emphasize that prices are high):

Die Preise stagnieren auf hohem Niveau.

or just

Die Preise stagnieren.

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5  
"stagnieren" is great. – Hellenologophilist May 27 '11 at 18:30
+1, but note that "stagnieren" has a distinctly negative connotation ("stagnant growth") that "plateau" doesn't necessarily carry as I understand it. In many contexts, you want to prefer "sich stabilisieren" – Pekka 웃 May 28 '11 at 7:20
@Pekka it depends on the economic context. Sure, it's negative for companies if the number of new customers "stagniert" or if a market is saturated. But it's not necessarily true in this case (Financial Times): "Japan: Während andere Länder gegen die Inflation kämpfen, stagnieren auf der Insel die Preise." – splattne♦ May 28 '11 at 7:27
@splattne: Would there be such as word as "verplatten," "verebenen," or anything close to them? – Tom Au 0 secs ago edit – Tom Au Jul 15 '11 at 13:28
1  
Isn't it funny that both german and english speaking people use french words, albeit different ones, to express this? – Ingo Sep 12 '11 at 10:25
up vote 8 down vote

What about

Die Preise haben einen Höchststand erreicht.

or

Die Preise haben sich auf einem Höchststand / auf hohem Niveau eingependelt.

?

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+1 for eingependelt. – fzwo Nov 16 '11 at 11:26

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