Spanish Translation
Su oficina está en el octavo piso.
In spanish it says achten Stock in german siebten Stock, do germans count different to us spaniards, or is it an error?
The ground-level floor is “Erdgeschoss”. Counting starts with the one above as “erster Stock” or “erstes (Ober-)Geschoss”.
So if spanish does the same as english and starts with “1st” at ground level, then yes, there is a difference.
Edit:
Looking at tatoeba, this seems to be a bit of a translation mess.
The original sentence was an english one:
https://tatoeba.org/de/sentences/show/286528
This got translated (correctly) to german “im siebten Stock”
and to spanish “en el octavo piso”.
But then someone created a new english sentence from this german one, but with “seventh floor”, and there was also a second spanish one created, but with “séptimo piso”.
3 Likes
We count the floors the same way as you do. Thank you!!
I’ll just point out that it isn’t the case that ‘in English’ the “1st” floor is at ground level, as it isn’t related to language. What you state is indeed the case in the USA, but in the UK, Australia, New Zealand etc. the same system as in Germany applies i.e. the base floor is the ground floor, and then any numbered floors are all at higher levels in the building.
There is a map of the mess that exists in floor numbering systems around the world on this Wikipedia page -
The map on that Wikipedia page indicates that the Spanish speaking countries of South and Central America have a similar confusion about whether the 1st floor should be on the ground or above ground.
P.S. Using these definitions, someone could now go to the Tatoeba page and start adding sixth floor and ninth floor translations, then fifth and tenth etc. 
3 Likes