Effect of English words on original character count

[Geoffrey Trousselot]

I recently received an offer from rather a desperate coordinator with a job offering a rate that I normally would accept. But the character count that she quoted was a gross underestimate. The text itself was powerpoint notes mostly consisting of English terms with 化 or a する　after them, and I wondered how an accurate word count could be made. Because the slides had a heap of other English that did not need translating, the English nestled in with the Japanese was probably being totally ignored. 

I lost faith in the coordinator and refused the job, as I don't like coordinators who can't properly count a job. But has anyone else been caught up with character counts of text that includes an enormous amount of English terms? Does Microsoft word count give a word count of [English words + Japanese characters] as the word count when providing the general word count? I am thinking that each English word needs to be counted as two characters.

Geoffrey Trousselot

[John Stroman]

Geoffrey,

I don't know which version of Word you are using, but if the word count appears in the lower lefthand corner of your Word window, you can click (or double click) on it to get the detailed information.

When eyeballing a file, 2 characters (including punctuation) = 1 word is usually a good general estimate, but it varies depending on the writing style and context. If your file contains lots of katakana, the English word count will be lower and if it is dense with kanji, the English word count will be higher.

If you are offered the kind of mixed file you describe, I think you simply need to negotiate a special rate, perhaps even hourly. The agency will have a budget already in place, so they'll tell you if you are asking more than they can (or will) pay.

John Stroman

​

[Jon Johanning]

Geoffrey,

I thought that Word might give separate counts for Japanese and English (Japanese and alphabetic) characters, but my version, at least, doesn’t.

One possibility I came up with was using a macro in Nisus Writer which generates a list of words (other word processors probably can do it too). When I tried this on a document with mixed J and E, it separated the Japanese and English parts. Then one could just delete the English and end up with a pure J document that could be counted.

Jon Johanning // jjoha...@igc.org

[Tom Donahue]

Geoffrey Trousselot wrote:

> Does Microsoft word count give a word count of [English words +
> Japanese characters] as the word count when providing the
> general word count?

Yes. In Word 2010, click the "ABC123" word count button on the far
left of the 校閲 tab. I attached a screen shot so you can see what the
output looks like.

The total char count is 文字数, and 単語数 is the sum of English words and
Japanese chars. You can get the number of English chars by subtracting
Japanese chars from total chars.

Remember to check the check box. That wasn't there in Word 2000, so it
regularly ignored everything in text boxes.

If you are using a CAT tool with an analysis function, another option
would be to look at those statistics. Both of the tools I'm using now
will give you the number of Japanese and English chars.
On one of them, the analysis isn't available to translators, but I
always ask the agency to send it to me before I accept a job. It shows
the amount of internal repetition in the text, which is helpful when
estimating how long it will take to finish.

> I lost faith in the coordinator and refused the job, as I don't like
> coordinators who can't properly count a job.

Maybe she's new. In my experience, coordinators just want to get the
job assigned and aren't as interested as we are in details of counting
characters.
But if possible I think it's a good idea to agree in advance on how to
do this. Different tools will give slightly different counts, so it
helps if everyone is on the same page.

--
Tom Donahue

[Jon Johanning]

Interesting. I’m using Word for Mac 2011, which doesn’t have an ABC123 word count button.

Curses again, Black Bart Microsoft!

Jon Johanning // jjoha...@igc.org

[John Stroman]

Jon,

Maybe not so evil after all?

https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20101128020301AAQ27xq

John Stroman​

----------------

[Benjamin Barrett]

The Windows version of Word unfortunately does not provide separate counts for Asian and non-Asian characters. It is one of the many small differences that can make using Word on the Mac more difficult than Word for Windows. 

Benjamin Barrett

Formerly of Seattle, WA

Learn Ainu! https://sites.google.com/site/aynuitak1/videos

[Jon Johanning]

On Mar 29, 2014, at 4:47 PM, John Stroman <stromana...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Jon,
>
> Maybe not so evil after all?
>
> https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20101128020301AAQ27xq
>

Yeah, the word count is shown at the bottom of the window, but it’s the total word count, not broken down into alphabetic and non-alphabetic.

Jon Johanning // jjoha...@igc.org

[Scott Reynolds]

In Word 2011 for Mac, just click on the word count that appears in the status bar at the bottom of the window to display the Word Count popup window. There you will see a breakdown showing Pages, Words, Characters (no spaces), Characters (with spaces), Non-Asian words, Asian characters, Paragraphs, and Lines. (I'm pretty sure this window is similar to the one in the Windows version of word.)

You can also display the Word Count window by selecting Tools > Word Count... in the menu bar.

--
Scott Reynolds
scot...@gmail.com

[Benjamin Barrett]

I have the Asian and non-Asian breakdown in Word for Windows but not Word for Mac. I even tried to report it once but have only a vague recollection of my report being ignored.

Are you saying that you have the breakdown in both or just that there is a popup in both?

[Jon Johanning]

On Mar 29, 2014, at 9:16 PM, Scott Reynolds <scot...@gmail.com> wrote:

> In Word 2011 for Mac, just click on the word count that appears in the status bar at the bottom of the window to display the Word Count popup window. There you will see a breakdown showing Pages, Words, Characters (no spaces), Characters (with spaces), Non-Asian words, Asian characters, Paragraphs, and Lines. (I'm pretty sure this window is similar to the one in the Windows version of word.)

Nope, I just did a test with a document I wrote containing both English and Japanese. It shows the word count, but doesn’t break it down between alphabetic and non-alphabetic words. Unfortunately, the Mac version is behind the Windows version on this.

But then, Word is pretty sucky in a lot of ways, so I generally don’t use it except to convert a document I produced with other software into a Word version to email to an agency or client, or on a very simple job that doesn’t require any special tricks.

Jon Johanning // jjoha...@igc.org

[Scott Reynolds]

I have the breakdown in Word 2011 for Mac. The only explanations for your not having it that I can think of is that a) you may be using an older version of Word for Mac (I've only ever used Word 2011 on the Mac, and it has always shown the breakdown for me; I use it all the time), or b) it may be linked to the language settings for Office.

If the reason is b), you might be able to fix it using the Microsoft Language Register app that is located in Applications/Microsoft Office 2011/Additional Tools/Microsoft Language Register. Enabling Japanese in this way also enables new "Japanese Editing Preferences" in the Word Preferences window.

Here are links to screenshots of the Microsoft Language Register app and the Word Preferences window with the Japanese Editing Preferences items enabled.

http://1drv.ms/1f82LaS

http://1drv.ms/1f82Rzp

--
Scott Reynolds
scot...@gmail.com

[Scott Reynolds]

On Mar 30, 2014, at 11:02 AM, Jon Johanning <jjoha...@igc.org> wrote:

> On Mar 29, 2014, at 9:16 PM, Scott Reynolds <scot...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> In Word 2011 for Mac, just click on the word count that appears in the status bar at the bottom of the window to display the Word Count popup window. There you will see a breakdown showing Pages, Words, Characters (no spaces), Characters (with spaces), Non-Asian words, Asian characters, Paragraphs, and Lines. (I'm pretty sure this window is similar to the one in the Windows version of word.)
>
> Nope, I just did a test with a document I wrote containing both English and Japanese. It shows the word count, but doesn't break it down between alphabetic and non-alphabetic words. Unfortunately, the Mac version is behind the Windows version on this.

Well, it works for me. <g> Here's a screenshot:

http://1drv.ms/1prkvBj

Like I mentioned in my reply to Benjamin, I suspect that the problem may be your language settings in Word.

> But then, Word is pretty sucky in a lot of ways, so I generally don't use it except to convert a document I produced with other software into a Word version to email to an agency or client, or on a very simple job that doesn't require any special tricks.

I've often considered this, but since all of my clients use Word and since they often ask me to type the English translation in over the Japanese I'm pretty much stuck using Word. Perhaps the new version (Word 2014?) that is rumored to appear later this year will be an improvement. One can always hope!

> Jon Johanning // jjoha...@igc.org
>
> --
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--
Scott Reynolds
scot...@gmail.com

[Benjamin Barrett]

Thank you! I have the 2011 version but did not know that was available!

After installing the app, I restarted Word and it worked as advertised.

[Scott Reynolds]

Sent from my iPad

Hooray, problem solved. I didn't know whether or not my suggestion would work, but I'm glad it did!

Scott Reynolds