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Translation - art & business » Money matters »
Including emoji's in word count
Thread poster: Elma de Jong
Elma de Jong
Elma de Jong  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 07:43
Member (2009)
English to Dutch
+ ...
Nov 14, 2019

A client asked me this morning whether I do or don't include the emoji's in the text in the word count. My answer was I use the Microsoft word count, because counting manually would be too time-consuming. However, thinking about it, it made me wonder how to deal with this. What do other translators do with emoji's?

[Edited at 2019-11-14 17:06 GMT]

Filippo Liberati
 
Samuel Murray
Samuel Murray  Identity Verified
Netherlands
Local time: 07:43
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
@Elma Nov 14, 2019

Elma de Jong wrote:
My answer was I use the Microsoft Word word count.


Microsoft Word counts/ one emoji as one word, unless the emoji is directly next to another word. So asdf😀asdf is one word, asdf😀 asdf is two words, and asdf 😀asdf is two words, and asdf 😀 asdf is three words.

Erm, I just trust the word count given by the tool (Word, Trados, Wordfast, etc.).

Elma de Jong
Yolanda Broad
 
Kay Denney
Kay Denney  Identity Verified
France
Local time: 07:43
French to English
. Nov 14, 2019

Insofar as you have to look at it, understand what it's doing there, decide whether it's appropriate for your target language and culture, decide where to put it in the translated text, just as you do for names and punctuation signs, I'd say yes, they should be counted. They do have a role in the text.

If the client doesn't want to pay for them, they should remove them before sending you the text. I have already had to tell a client this when he quibbled that I didn't have to trans... See more
Insofar as you have to look at it, understand what it's doing there, decide whether it's appropriate for your target language and culture, decide where to put it in the translated text, just as you do for names and punctuation signs, I'd say yes, they should be counted. They do have a role in the text.

If the client doesn't want to pay for them, they should remove them before sending you the text. I have already had to tell a client this when he quibbled that I didn't have to translate "BusinessName SàRL" and should discount them from my wordcount. I wouldn't think twice about saying the same for emojis or whatever other gimmicks might crop up in the text. ▲ Collapse


Elma de Jong
Robert Rietvelt
Katya Kesten
Yolanda Broad
Tina Vonhof (X)
Philip Lees
Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida
 
Eva Stoppa
Eva Stoppa  Identity Verified
Germany
Local time: 07:43
English to German
+ ...
Differences in the wordcounts Nov 15, 2019

Samuel Murray wrote:


Erm, I just trust the word count given by the tool (Word, Trados, Wordfast, etc.).


How about the differences that might occur in the wordcount? What do you answer if your Client asks why you state a different wordcount from that from the Word's wordcount?
 
Kay Denney
Kay Denney  Identity Verified
France
Local time: 07:43
French to English
. Nov 15, 2019

Eva Stoppa wrote:

How about the differences that might occur in the wordcount? What do you answer if your Client asks why you state a different wordcount from that from the Word's wordcount?


I have no idea where differences might stem from. In that the direct client is not likely to use a CAT tool I would refer to Word. If the file is in another format, I'll paste the text into Word and send that file along with my estimate to show where I got the wordcount from.

If it's an agency using a CAT tool I'll just go with what the CAT tool says.

Elma de Jong
Christine Andersen
Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida
 


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Including emoji's in word count


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