round up or down..

[mii]

Hello.
I am now translating some manual and have got difficulty understanding the sentence below (the italic part);

If no Scale bar information is found in the
header the software will create a bar
with about 1/3 of the images width.It is
automatically rounded up or down to
the next fitting even number of 10s,
100s….

I do not get the meaning of "the next fitting even number of 10s,
100s….", and if it is "round ~ to the nearest 10, 100(without 's')", I understand it.
This sentence was written by a non-native speaker by the way.

Thanks for your help in advance.

[Marius Hancu]

My reading:

Even numbers: 0, 2, 4, 6 ...

Say the value is 66.
It should be rounded down to 60, which is the closest even (6) number of tens.

Say the value is 76.
It should be rounded up to 80, which is the closest even number (8) of tens.

Difficult to say more/make more sense from such a context.

[Pete]

Hello.
I am now translating some manual and have got difficulty understanding the sentence below (the italic part);

If no Scale bar information is found in the
header the software will create a bar
with about 1/3 of the images width.It is
automatically rounded up or down to
the next fitting even number of 10s,
100s….

I do not get the meaning of "the next fitting even number of 10s,
100s….", and if it is "round ~ to the nearest 10, 100(without 's')", I understand it.
This sentence was written by a non-native speaker by the way.

Thanks for your help in advance.
I don't think that anyone reading this explanation can be at all certain what the software will do in different situations. If you have access to the software and can experiment and determine what it really does under various circumstances, (or if you can ask someone who knows what it really does - maybe an experienced user or the one who wrote the software) you should do that and document its actual behavior in your target language rather than try to translate ambiguous/meaningless English. Documentation is different from literature, where it might be appropriate to translate nonsense in one language to corresponding nonsense in another.

[Marius Hancu]

Pete offers the best solution here.

[Bridget]

It is automatically rounded up or down to the next fitting/suitable even number of 10s, 100s….

[OddThomas]

Mii, assuming you follow Pete's advice, which is the best way to find out for certain what the software will do, then you will still need to write good sentences about it. Let's guess that the result of your testing comes close to what the manual says now. Here is a way to rewrite those sentences to make better sense: If no Scale Bar information is found in the header, the software will create a bar of about 1/3 of the image's width. The width is automatically rounded up or down to the nearest exact measurement expressed in 100ths [of an inch/of a centimeter].
I can see that rounding is necessary since division will produce fractions that cannot be expressed as even (exact) numbers in whatever measurement system the software is using. Perhaps 100ths is not right. Your testing will confirm or dispute this. I also recommend that you clearly name the unit of measure--I offered inch or centimeter, but your units may be different.

Let us know of your success.

[MrPedantic]

It is
automatically rounded up or down to
the next fitting even number of 10s,
100s….


As a sidenote:

"Even" can be discarded: 10s and 100s will always be even numbers.

MrP

__________

Edit:

Disregard the above. The Necker Cube has switched. (Cf. "It should be rounded down to 60, which is the closest even (6) number of tens.")

[Bridget]

As a sidenote:

"Even" can be discarded: 10s and 100s will always be even numbers.

MrP

As will 1000s 10,000, etc, but which even number/s do you want to specify?

[OddThomas]

Mr P, I think the question here is one of divisibility, or fit to a scale, rather than the classic odd/even test. Evenly divisible by three is the operation, and the original translator may have chosen poorly when he selected the ambiguous even. Only every third whole number is evenly divisible by three, and likewise, only every third non-repeating decimal fraction is also evenly divisible by three. Thus, when scaling the graphic to one-third, some fuzzing of its linear dimension is probable (~0.67), and the software will approximate the resulting new dimension to fit the ability of the hardware to represent it. Exactly how, Pete has suggested a way for Mii to ascertain. Then it is up to a tech writer to express clearly, without the ambiguity of the word even, one hopes. (I tried the word exact.)

[mii]

Thanks very much for all of your replies.
I did not expect to get so many responses like this.
All of them are useful and assured me that the sentence is ambiguous or not correct.
Thanks again.