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Technical forums » General technical issues »
measuring text length in words or in signs
Thread poster: jeanledu
jeanledu
jeanledu
Local time: 18:00
Irish to French
+ ...
Sep 26, 2004

Texts in English are usually measured in so many words. How does that compare with the sign measurement in other languages like French ?
Thanks
 
Heinrich Pesch
Heinrich Pesch  Identity Verified
Finland
Local time: 19:00
Member (2003)
Finnish to German
+ ...
Compare different texts and get a factor Sep 27, 2004

Of course it differes between text-samples, but usually the amount of characters corresponds rather closely to the number of words. But in additions to the word-character-distinction the Anglosaxon habit of measuring words is usually related to the source-text, whereas character-based pricing often refers to the target text. So when bidding for a job with a fixed word-price one knows the final price already in advance, but when charging on the base of the amount of characters one knows the final... See more
Of course it differes between text-samples, but usually the amount of characters corresponds rather closely to the number of words. But in additions to the word-character-distinction the Anglosaxon habit of measuring words is usually related to the source-text, whereas character-based pricing often refers to the target text. So when bidding for a job with a fixed word-price one knows the final price already in advance, but when charging on the base of the amount of characters one knows the final price only after delivering the translation.
Translators are required to be able to bid for jobs according to the pricing habits of the client, so we have to estimate the actual pricing according to our expectations. ▲ Collapse
 


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