English Translation
The bill amounts to fifty dollars.
It sounds more like this means “There are a total of 50 banknotes.” – not specifying their value, but rather the number of individual bills/banknotes.
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@kebukebu
You are correct. Here are my alternative translations in Japanese:
The bill amounts to fifty dollars. = 請求金額は計50ドルに上る。(せいきゅうきんがくはけい50ドルにのぼる) or お会計は50ドルになります。(おかいけいは…)
The first translation is from a payer’s or a third person’s observational perspective. The speaker received the bill, and found that it says 50 dollars. Or the speaker observed a third person got the bill from someone. The nuance of the verb のぼる is “to exceed my initial projection” or “to be accumulated and finally amount to”.
The second one is from a receiver’s perspective in a dialogue. The speaker is a shop clerk or a restaurant waiter, and the listener is his customer. You cannot use 上る in this context because it even implies that the account receivable is intentionally overcharged by the clerk/waiter.
Back to the original Japanese lesson sentence. It doesn’t match the English sentence, and it sounds even unnatural because of になる. The banknotes don’t duplicate themselves to “become/pile up” 50 sheets of banknote. The only situation I can imagine from this sentence is:
A machine was printing banknotes, and now the number of finished banknotes on the rack reached 50 sheets.
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