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Client frequently deletes spaces to reduce wordcount
Thread poster: Bart Vergauwe
Christine Andersen
Christine Andersen  Identity Verified
Denmark
Local time: 14:09
Member (2003)
Danish to English
+ ...
Word incompatibility 2 May 11, 2016

My first thought was the same as Katalin's.
I had this problem too, solved when I went over to a new computer and Word 2010.

There was a fix, but it was far from 100% reliable.
It was extremely annoying with one client who mostly sent proofreading jobs. We both had the fix...
Textsarrivedwithoutanyspaces, and I would carefully insert them and save as instructed.
His reply came back: Whyisallmytextred?Ican'tseeanyerrors ...
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My first thought was the same as Katalin's.
I had this problem too, solved when I went over to a new computer and Word 2010.

There was a fix, but it was far from 100% reliable.
It was extremely annoying with one client who mostly sent proofreading jobs. We both had the fix...
Textsarrivedwithoutanyspaces, and I would carefully insert them and save as instructed.
His reply came back: Whyisallmytextred?Ican'tseeanyerrors
That client found another proofreader, but he came back to me recently.

Check it out with your client before you make any accusations. It is always easier to stay friends if you can blame the technology - and then solve it!
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Andrea Halbritter
Andrea Halbritter  Identity Verified
France
Local time: 14:09
French to German
+ ...
Incompatibility May 11, 2016

I also think this can be an incompatibility.

 
Jeff Whittaker
Jeff Whittaker  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 09:09
Member (2002)
Spanish to English
+ ...
I always charge by the target word count May 11, 2016

I have charged by the target word count for 23 years.

 
Fiona Grace Peterson
Fiona Grace Peterson  Identity Verified
Italy
Local time: 14:09
Italian to English
TW count not always possible May 11, 2016

LegalTransform wrote:

I have charged by the target word count for 23 years.


It's not always possible to charge by target words where agencies are concerned. Source word count also has the advantage of letting customers know the price up front.


 
Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida
Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida  Identity Verified
Portugal
Local time: 13:09
Member (2007)
English to Portuguese
+ ...
Now, I understand! May 11, 2016

Peter Shortall wrote:

Teresa Borges wrote:

Words are words and spaces are spaces, even if you add 100 spaces between 2 words there's still 2 words!


This is about spaces being deleted, not added. This reduces the word count.


Anyway, never happened to me and if it ever happens I will check it out with the client. Very recently, I had the first case of Word incompatibility other colleagues are mentioning: when proofreading a document in Portuguese the hyphen had disappeared from all hyphenated words...


 
Jeff Whittaker
Jeff Whittaker  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 09:09
Member (2002)
Spanish to English
+ ...
Why? May 11, 2016

Fiona Grace Peterson wrote:


It's not always possible to charge by target words where agencies are concerned.


 
Katalin Horváth McClure
Katalin Horváth McClure  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 09:09
Member (2002)
English to Hungarian
+ ...
Target word count is only known when the translation is finished May 11, 2016

LegalTransform wrote:
Why?

Fiona Grace Peterson wrote:


It's not always possible to charge by target words where agencies are concerned.


Agencies often need a firm quote, and you cannot provide that if you are charging by the target count.
The target count also changes after editing, so the agency has no way to figure out the exact cost of getting the material "client ready". End clients want firm quotes, they do not want a price that depends on target word count, so the agency would bear the risk of differences between an estimated wordcount and the actual final count.
Charging by target count also opens up the possibility of disputes about being "too wordy" and such nonsense. It is safer for everyone to give a firm quote up front.


 
Thomas T. Frost
Thomas T. Frost  Identity Verified
Portugal
Local time: 13:09
Danish to English
+ ...
Indeed May 11, 2016

Katalin Horváth McClure wrote:

Charging by target count also opens up the possibility of disputes about being "too wordy"


Indeed. As in translating "Salz, bitte" to "I'm frightfully sorry, but I wonder if I might possibly obtain your permission to intrude in your delicious meal in order to make a request to the effect that you pass me the salt".

A bit like selling rubber band by the metre.


 
Jennifer Forbes
Jennifer Forbes  Identity Verified
Local time: 13:09
French to English
+ ...
In memoriam
If an agency insists on the source word count ... May 12, 2016

,,, then it stands to reason that they must provide files in which the words can be reliably counted, not files in which many words have been run together (either deliberately or due to some technical hitch) so as to reduce their number.
Incidentally, in the case of my language pairs, the target count is usually a little lower than the source count.

[Edited at 2016-05-12 02:50 GMT]


 
CafeTran Training (X)
CafeTran Training (X)
Netherlands
Local time: 14:09
Word boundaries May 12, 2016

Bart Vergauwe wrote:

I have a client who frequently deletes spaces in the original texts to reduce the total wordcount, for example after colons, spaces, numbers etc.


What software are you using for counting?

Most word processors will treat : and ; as a word boundary, regardless of the presence of a trailing space. For numbers, it's a different story, e.g. Galaxy2000, part # TRS288q, will be counted as one word. Do your texts contain mixed words like these?

Is it possible that you share a few lines of text to analyze? You can scramble it by replacing all letters with an X.

[Edited at 2016-05-12 04:13 GMT]


 
Laura Pascual
Laura Pascual  Identity Verified
Finland
Local time: 15:09
Finnish to Spanish
+ ...
Quote by the page May 12, 2016

If you are sure the client does that on purpose, here is what I would do:

Say that due to difficult formatting, you cannot longer charge by the word, so you will charge by the page, for example every 2100 characters would be a page.

Calculate approximately how much a page would cost according to your word rate. Give the client a quote considering that page rate.

Deliver the translation in the same format as the original, that is, without spaces.


 
Oliver Walter
Oliver Walter  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 13:09
German to English
+ ...
1. Determine why, 2. a different kind of count May 12, 2016

I agreed with the replies of, for example, Sheila and Tom when I read them and now I think it might be possible that the client does not realise this is happening. So, you need to find out which of these it is and stop working for them if it is deliberate, or find a mutually acceptable solution (e.g. Word 2010) if it isn't.

Most of my work comes from an agency that counts characters, not words, and it's based on the target text (to which I respond by still providing good translation
... See more
I agreed with the replies of, for example, Sheila and Tom when I read them and now I think it might be possible that the client does not realise this is happening. So, you need to find out which of these it is and stop working for them if it is deliberate, or find a mutually acceptable solution (e.g. Word 2010) if it isn't.

Most of my work comes from an agency that counts characters, not words, and it's based on the target text (to which I respond by still providing good translations, not using as many words as I possibly can!). The character count is done by asking Word to count the total of characters in the text, excluding spaces (it has a menu item to do that), and then add 1 character per word (to represent one space per word).

As regards numbers of words: I find that in translating from German to English, the word count usually increases by 10 to 15 percent (e.g. "Umsatzzahlen" becomes "turnover figures", "Lebenmittelverpackung" becomes "food packaging"; in French to English, the word count is roughly the same. In both cases, the character count is roughly the same for source and target.

Oliver
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Łukasz Gos-Furmankiewicz
Łukasz Gos-Furmankiewicz  Identity Verified
Poland
Local time: 14:09
English to Polish
+ ...
Not a client you want to have May 16, 2016

Bart Vergauwe wrote:

I have a client who frequently deletes spaces in the original texts to reduce the total wordcount, for example after colons, spaces, numbers etc.

In this last particular case I have received a text of 2500 words that actually contains 3200 words when the spaces are back in place. Have any of you ever experienced such a thing and how have you dealt with it?


Sounds like fraud. Why would you even talk to such a person after the first time it happened and he or she didn't apologize? Note: This is based on your question verbatim ('frequently deletes spaces') and not speculation about (soft) hyphens.

[Edited at 2016-05-16 13:18 GMT]


 
Gabriele Demuth
Gabriele Demuth  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 13:09
English to German
Some kind of incompatibility? May 16, 2016

I would point this out to the client, maybe they are not aware this is happening?

To be honest I find it very hard to imagine the client sitting there and labouring over documents, deleting spaces between words in order to safe a few pennies, this would probably take more time than it is worth?

Besides, it makes the text close to unreadable, unless you do the reverse and fill in all the spaces before translating....
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I would point this out to the client, maybe they are not aware this is happening?

To be honest I find it very hard to imagine the client sitting there and labouring over documents, deleting spaces between words in order to safe a few pennies, this would probably take more time than it is worth?

Besides, it makes the text close to unreadable, unless you do the reverse and fill in all the spaces before translating.
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Jeff Whittaker
Jeff Whittaker  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 09:09
Member (2002)
Spanish to English
+ ...
I've never had a problem... May 16, 2016

Of course, one compares the source word count with the target word count and if the discrepancy is too large, then there is a problem.

Besides, charging by source count for German would sometimes result in a 20% loss of the word count.

At any rate, I have never been asked to charge by source word. Perhaps it is a U.S. thing.

Thomas T. Frost wrote:

Katalin Horváth McClure wrote:

Charging by target count also opens up the possibility of disputes about being "too wordy"


Indeed. As in translating "Salz, bitte" to "I'm frightfully sorry, but I wonder if I might possibly obtain your permission to intrude in your delicious meal in order to make a request to the effect that you pass me the salt".

A bit like selling rubber band by the metre.


 
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Client frequently deletes spaces to reduce wordcount







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