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I need to make a fictional German organization for a movie in a German class. I want it to end in the German translation for "corp(oration)", which is Handelsgesellschaft. Is there an abbreviation, or shortened term for this?

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    These terms are required by law and very specific. But as you are doing a mere fiction, you can e.g. use offene Handelsgesellschaft, abbreviated oHG (or OHG, lately). More typical terms however are GmbH (Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung, "limited"), KG (Kommanditgesellschaft, "limited partnership"), and AG (Aktiengesellschaft, "incorporated").
    – Janka
    May 10, 2017 at 0:39
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    According to this german Wikipedia-article a corp(oration) is a specific form of an "Aktiengesellschaft" in Canada and US. So the abbreviation would be "AG".
    – IQV
    May 10, 2017 at 5:47
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    @Janka: "These terms are required by law and very specific. But as you are doing a mere fiction" - who says "a mere fiction" (assuming it plays in our world) should not get the facts right? In any case, kudos for your suggested list of equivalents. That's the kind of "vocabulary" that language classes never teach, even though native speakers encounter such terms on a daily basis.
    – O. R. Mapper
    May 10, 2017 at 7:06
  • Another vote for AG if you want to make it a potentially large and impersonal corporation. OHG and KG don't have to be small, but frequently are, especially the former.
    – Ingmar
    May 10, 2017 at 8:04
  • Fiction should get the facts right but I assumed it's not crucial in this case. The only case it is crucial I think is if someone from the management talks about shareholder value, someone of the staff about shares going into a pension fund or something like that. In that case, it has to be an AG, because otherwise there are no shares or shares aren't marketable. (Of course, there are also AGs which have non-marketable shares.)
    – Janka
    May 10, 2017 at 8:48

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Die Abk. für Handelsgesellschaft wäre HG laut DUDEN - Das Wörterbuch der Abkürzungen, ich besitze die 5. Auflage in PDF-Format und man kann folgendes lesen:

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PS=gerade jetzt habe ich in der 6. Auflage bei Google-Books nachgeschlagen und du kannst die gleiche Abk. für Handelsgesellschaft lesen, nämlich:

enter image description here

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