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I'm doing some translation and I'm doubting between three choices in the translation:

subject: "these actions"

  1. in the event of them being charged to Performance Department
  2. in the event of them being accountable to Performance Department
  3. in the event of them being accountable on Performance Department

meaning that the Performance Department will be responsible for the previously mentioned actions. All googled examples I found are always with some human being responsible for something but I don't know if I can use this structure for giving this passive structure. Or maybe I should use "charged" as alternative.

Thanks in advance

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    If activity X is charged to department Y, this means that within the company's accounts, any costs associated with doing X will be booked against Y's budget. That's not the same thing as X being accountable to Y, where the people doing X have to report to Y, because Y is in charge (even though the job might be "paid for" by a different department). So which of those words to use depends on what you mean, but the preposition is normally to for both.
    – FumbleFingers
    Oct 30, 2020 at 11:53
  • "charged" would only have a meaning in the economic domain?
    – madtyn
    Oct 30, 2020 at 12:12
  • Do you mean "accountable" in the financial sense?
    – DJClayworth
    Oct 30, 2020 at 15:04

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You state

meaning that the Performance Department will be responsible for the previously mentioned actions

In that case I suggest none of your suggestions fits well. So I would prefer

in the event of them being the responsibility of the Performance Department

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"accountable to X" means that they have to justify themselves to if there is a problem with their actions. You say "John is accountable to the Board of Directors" to mean that if there is a problem with John's work, he needs to explain himself to the Board. If "them" means "these actions" then the verb "accountable" doesn't work.

So "charged to" is better. I assume it means that the Performance department is asked to pay for these actions.

You probably can avoid the passive voice:

in the event of the client charging the performance department for these actions...

Which also suggests verbs like "invoicing" or "billing" might be better.

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  • But "charged" means only economically or can also be used for responsibility? Could I use accounted instead of accountable then?
    – madtyn
    Oct 30, 2020 at 12:11
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    Charged has a range of meanings. But I've suggested two alternatives that are better than "accountable" or "accounted": invoiced or bill. These are more explictly about money
    – James K
    Oct 30, 2020 at 12:44

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