[Q] German/English word count conversion
Makoto Sakamoto
a document consisting of 5,000 German words into the target laguage?
The word count of an English document translated from a German text
is normally greater than the original and may differ with the nature of
the content, but there may be some rule of thumb or conversion ratio
between the two languages.
I have tried to retrieve good references from Honyaku Archives and found
no data on the conversion. My rough estimate of the ratio is somewhere
between 1.1 to 1.3. Am I totally mistaken?
Your guidance will be much appreciated.
Makoto SAKAMOTO <saka...@e-mail.jp>
E/G>J Technical translator specializing in functional materials,
aerospace, automotive, electronic, and plant engineering fields
Advisor to JTF and member JAT
Saitama, Japan
Edward Lipsett /t
> My rough estimate of the ratio is somewhere
> between 1.1 to 1.3.
German words are very long, Mak...
Are you sure you really want to talk about word counts?
----------
Edward Lipsett, Intercom, Ltd.
translation€@intercomltd.com
Publishing: http://www.kurodahan.com
Translation & layout: http://www.intercomltd.com
Makoto Sakamoto
> between 1.1 to 1.3.
German words are very long, Mak...
Are you sure you really want to talk about word counts?
----------
Edward Lipsett, Intercom, Ltd.
timl...@aol.com
some years ago; I took a fair number of German source documents in Word
format, and my translations into English of these, and divided total
English words by total German words, but I don't have access to my
records of this at present.
HTH a bit
Tim Leeney
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Makoto Sakamoto
> German words are very long, Mak...
> Are you sure you really want to talk about word counts?
thus I thought the number of German words used to express
the same thing written in English is smaller than that of
English. I guess it take about 110 to 130 English words to
translate a German text containing 100 words. Could it be
much more than 130 English words?
On May 2, 2007, Tim Lee wrote:
> In general, I insist on Japanese character counts, but
> from other languages I have on some occasions agreed the German approach, of
> counting per keystroke rather than per word. If I remember rightly, 1 word is
> taken to be equivalent to about 6.5 keystrokes (counting spaces as keystrokes).
I guess that's a reasonable system.
On second thought, as you say, German sentences are very long,
possibly because German texts tend to be more exhaustive in
decribing the same subject than an English equivalent.
Thanks and regards,
Mak
Edward Lipsett /t
> the number of German words used to express
> the same thing written in English is smaller than that of
> English.
I believe you are right, but a German translation of an English text, IIRC,
is 20% to 30% longer by character count... I have found the elusive "word"
to be a very poor choice when evaluating translation volume.
In any case, though, German is not my field, and I cheerfully yield to other
better informed yakkers.
----------
Edward Lipsett, Intercom, Ltd.
translation€@intercomltd.com
Makoto Sakamoto
> Are you sure you really want to talk about word counts?
translate a German text containing 100 words. Could it be
much more than 130 English words?
Makoto Sakamoto
> 1.1 to 1.3 sounds about right. I seem to remember needing this ratio
> some years ago; I took a fair number of German source documents in Word
> format, and my translations into English of these, and divided total
> English words by total German words, but I don't have access to my
> records of this at present.
>
> HTH a bit
> Tim Leeney
If all of us here concerned with DE/EN/JA translations agree on a reasonable
ratio, I will let a translation agency now working on a DE/EN project in
the automotive field. I hope will will get some concrete job offers in the near
future.
Thanks and regards,
Mak
timl...@aol.com
keystrokes rather than word count. Although a nuisance if one is not
used to it, this can be much fairer, especially for chemical names
since for example something like:
N,N-dimethyl-2,3-dichloro-4-carbomethoxy-5-nitrobenzamide would be one
word, but x keystrokes, where x is a reasonably large positive integer.
I think about 6 or 7 keystrokes are regarded as equivalent to one
word, but you need to check.
Regards
Tim
Jim Lockhart
On Wed, 25 Feb 2009 07:45:24 -0500
timleeney wrote:
> I should perhaps add that in Germany invoicing is often based on
> keystrokes rather than word count. Although a nuisance if one is not
> used to it, this can be much fairer, especially for chemical names
> since for example something like:
> N,N-dimethyl-2,3-dichloro-4-carbomethoxy-5-nitrobenzamide would be one
> word, but x keystrokes, where x is a reasonably large positive integer.
> I think about 6 or 7 keystrokes are regarded as equivalent to one
> word, but you need to check.
I agree with this! My company has always paid translators and editors (and
billed customers) according to a byte-based wordcount, which essentially
is what keystroke-based counting is. And we have always used six bytes
as the equivalent of one word. In almost 17 years in business, only one
client has asked us to use something else (Word 2003's wordcount).
Fwiw, for English documents, the deviation between what Word 2003
reports and our wordcounts averages about 6% (our counts are higher),
except when the translation contains a lot of lists consisting of short
lines--then the difference can be as high as ca. 15%. With text-heavy
documents containing few short lines, the difference tends to go down
(fewer carriage returns, which essentially are two bytes).
Hope this is of interest to somebody,
----------------------------------------------
Jim Lockhart
Principal
Japan Translation Services
Yokohama, Kanagawa, Japan
Web site: http://www.jpntranslations.com/
----------------------------------------------
Edward Lipsett /ht
> I should perhaps add that in Germany invoicing is often based on
> keystrokes rather than word count.
Which is exactly what I was talking about... Nice to know I'm not alone!
=====
Edward Lipsett
Fukuoka, Japan
Friedemann Horn
> I should perhaps add that in Germany invoicing is often based on
> keystrokes rather than word count.
Actually, I believe even more common in Germany (Europe?) is billing
by line of text. Except for patents which are usually billed by target word
count.
In the end, I don't think it makes much of a difference, if a standard
line is taken to be 55 (65?) keystrokes.
I have found that the word count in English texts is about 15% - 20%
higher than in that of German texts.
In any case, it doesn't really matter which billing scheme you use,
but one thing to keep in mind is that customers are lazy. And
they want to compare prices. So if everybody else gives their
rates in terms of unit price/target word count, you might be at a
disadvantage if your rates are based on something else.
Friedemann Horn
www.horn-uchida.jp
pls
>
> On Wed, Feb 25, 2009 at 9:45 PM, <timl...@aol.com> wrote:
> > I should perhaps add that in Germany invoicing is often based on
> > keystrokes rather than word count.
>
> Actually, I believe even more common in Germany (Europe?) is billing
> by line of text.
Coming really late to the party, i'd like to concur with the above. And
since a line is considered to mean 55 keystrokes, if someone's rate is
given as 220 Euro-Cent per line you know it means 4 Cent per keystroke. :-)
Regards: Hendrik
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