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Word count troubles in Trados- help
Thread poster: Brandis (X)
Brandis (X)
Brandis (X)
Local time: 14:53
English to German
+ ...
Feb 20, 2006

Hello all!,
I have a strange situation. The outsourcer sent me about 44 FrameMaker files and according to him the word count is 22000, So I took an analysis and ended with about 41000 words. The files came in three sets (booklets or manuals) The outsourcer has recd. the tagged .rtf files from me and used an invoicing tool like practicount and came with a different resuolt, lesser than what he had quoted, and again used manual counting while in tag editor or word, marking a segment and too... See more
Hello all!,
I have a strange situation. The outsourcer sent me about 44 FrameMaker files and according to him the word count is 22000, So I took an analysis and ended with about 41000 words. The files came in three sets (booklets or manuals) The outsourcer has recd. the tagged .rtf files from me and used an invoicing tool like practicount and came with a different resuolt, lesser than what he had quoted, and again used manual counting while in tag editor or word, marking a segment and took count of all similarly formatted segments and came up with 5000 words. Now I am finished with 70% of the project and the outsourcer says he would pay me 100 bucks for all the trouble I had undergone and he would pay for the last variation, which is about 5000 odd words. But when he analyses using tagged .rtf files in trados he was getting my result. So he complains that he cannot take that count because Trados counts tags also as symbols, and since there are so many tags, it could very well be that we get a high count What is the truth. Can someone help me. ▲ Collapse
 
Balttext
Balttext  Identity Verified
Latvia
Local time: 15:53
English to Latvian
+ ...
Similar problem Feb 21, 2006

Sorry for not providing a solution, but I have come accross a very similar problem with a tagged rtf (and even in common WORD documents), namely, each counting/analysing software comes up with a different number.

Ok, I can understand that the word count option in WORD is not perfect, since it does not count in text boxes, headers/footers, etc, but even when counting in Trados and then checking it in AnyCount and PractiCount (with "do not count numerals") I get results that differ wa... See more
Sorry for not providing a solution, but I have come accross a very similar problem with a tagged rtf (and even in common WORD documents), namely, each counting/analysing software comes up with a different number.

Ok, I can understand that the word count option in WORD is not perfect, since it does not count in text boxes, headers/footers, etc, but even when counting in Trados and then checking it in AnyCount and PractiCount (with "do not count numerals") I get results that differ way too much - by more than 400 words in a 3000-word simple document (a contract with only a couple of numerals, no text boxes, headers or footers).

I find it necessary to agree on the exact word count before accepting the job, but such situation makes it difficult to provide the justification for the number that I quote.

So I am also interested in finding out how does our fellow translators deal with it.

Thank you in advance,

Uldis ▲ Collapse
 
Brandis (X)
Brandis (X)
Local time: 14:53
English to German
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
Thank you for your view to help Feb 21, 2006

Balttext wrote:

Sorry for not providing a solution, but I have come accross a very similar problem with a tagged rtf (and even in common WORD documents), namely, each counting/analysing software comes up with a different number.

Ok, I can understand that the word count option in WORD is not perfect, since it does not count in text boxes, headers/footers, etc, but even when counting in Trados and then checking it in AnyCount and PractiCount (with "do not count numerals") I get results that differ way too much - by more than 400 words in a 3000-word simple document (a contract with only a couple of numerals, no text boxes, headers or footers).

I find it necessary to agree on the exact word count before accepting the job, but such situation makes it difficult to provide the justification for the number that I quote.

So I am also interested in finding out how does our fellow translators deal with it.

Thank you in advance,

Uldis
but I wanted to know from professional, whether it is true or not that Trados 7.0 counts the tags and treats them as special symbols. If yes, if would mean very fat count, if not trados design is for counting functionality is not good. Brandis
 
Jerzy Czopik
Jerzy Czopik  Identity Verified
Germany
Local time: 14:53
Member (2003)
Polish to German
+ ...
I would say, Trados does not count TAGs Feb 21, 2006

You can prove that in easy way.
Take a heavy TAG loaded RTF file and analyse it.
Then open the same file in Word, replace TAGs with spaces (ie by replacing the style connected to TAGs by spaces), save the file and analyse again. If the result differs much, than Trados does count TAGs. A slight difference might now occure due to different segmentation with/without TAGs.

IMO the Trados cout is quite reliable.

HTH
Jerzy
 
Brandis (X)
Brandis (X)
Local time: 14:53
English to German
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
that is an idea Jerzy Feb 21, 2006

Thank you. I sent this link to the outsourcer, so that he can recheck himself. Best Brandis
p.s Now I am going to offer this outsourcer, removal of all tags and spaces, which is setting all characters together without punctuation, hyphenation or format and count lines at 55 strokes translate and ship, if necessary remount in FM. Let us see what comes back.

[Edited at 2006-02-21 19:26]
 


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Word count troubles in Trados- help







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