Best method or software to count Japanese characters - suggestions needed
Thread poster: Orrin Cummins
Orrin Cummins
Orrin Cummins  Identity Verified
Japan
Local time: 04:05
Japanese to English
+ ...
Mar 22, 2013

Hello,

I'm trying to find the best way to count Japanese characters (primarily in Word documents). I have access to a Japanese version of MS Word, but I have read elsewhere online that Word does not count characters inside of tables or charts. Is this true? I'd like to trust the count given in Word, since that would obviously be the easiest solution, but these documents are scientific reports so they have many such objects.

I also have Trados 2011, but again I have read
... See more
Hello,

I'm trying to find the best way to count Japanese characters (primarily in Word documents). I have access to a Japanese version of MS Word, but I have read elsewhere online that Word does not count characters inside of tables or charts. Is this true? I'd like to trust the count given in Word, since that would obviously be the easiest solution, but these documents are scientific reports so they have many such objects.

I also have Trados 2011, but again I have read that Trados has problems counting numbers. Or maybe this was an older version? It's all very confusing, but as these documents are hundreds of pages long each, I really need something that counts accurately, as any discrepancies could make a significant difference in the totals.

I'm even willing to pay a small fee for such a program, but I have been so far unable to find one online. I tried Total Assistant, but it was unable to even open the document. I'm not sure if it supports Asian fonts, anyways.

Any ideas?
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Roderick Anderson
Roderick Anderson  Identity Verified
Japan
Local time: 04:05
Japanese to English
+ ...
Try this free tool Mar 22, 2013

Here's a link to free software designed by a Japanese to English translator that may prove useful.

http://ginstrom.com/CountAnything/

Hope this helps.



[Edited at 2013-03-22 21:54 GMT]


 
Mario Cerutti
Mario Cerutti  Identity Verified
Japan
Local time: 04:05
Italian to Japanese
+ ...
No problems with Word Mar 23, 2013

valymer wrote:
...but I have read elsewhere online that Word does not count characters inside of tables or charts. Is this true?
Any ideas?


Hi Valymer,

Word counts words and characters in tables and text boxes without problems. Of course it doesn't count characters in images, unless they are OCRed first.

Regards

Mario Cerutti
http://www.aliseo.com/english/


 
Mario Cerutti
Mario Cerutti  Identity Verified
Japan
Local time: 04:05
Italian to Japanese
+ ...
Many Thanks Mar 23, 2013

Rod Anderson wrote:
Here's a link to free software designed by a Japanese to English translator that may prove useful.


Many thanks for sharing this, Rod. I'm going to try it out right away.

Mario Cerutti


 
Orrin Cummins
Orrin Cummins  Identity Verified
Japan
Local time: 04:05
Japanese to English
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
Thanks, but it can't handle some Word files Mar 23, 2013

I should have mentioned in my original post that I tried this nice free tool yesterday, but it is unable to process some of the Word documents. I don't know if it is because they are too large, or what, but it hangs when trying to count them. There is no difference in filetype between the ones it succeeds with and the ones that it doesn't, so I'm not sure of the problem. I have already used it to successfully count the smaller documents, and it worked great for those. I wish it worked as well fo... See more
I should have mentioned in my original post that I tried this nice free tool yesterday, but it is unable to process some of the Word documents. I don't know if it is because they are too large, or what, but it hangs when trying to count them. There is no difference in filetype between the ones it succeeds with and the ones that it doesn't, so I'm not sure of the problem. I have already used it to successfully count the smaller documents, and it worked great for those. I wish it worked as well for all of them.

So I guess my only resort is Word? If the count produced by it can be reasonably trusted, perhaps that is my best option?

EDIT: I should have double-checked before I posted. There actually IS a difference in filetype! Apparently, Count Anything doesn't support .docx files - but the ones it was succeeding on are Word 97 - 2003 files. Converting the .docx to that format allowed the program to count them. Sorry for any confusion!

[Edited at 2013-03-23 00:23 GMT]
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Roderick Anderson
Roderick Anderson  Identity Verified
Japan
Local time: 04:05
Japanese to English
+ ...
MS Word word count function limitation Mar 23, 2013

Yes it's true.

I just started a project from a new client that they quoted at 12K characters (using the MS Word word count function). I checked the text boxes and auto-shapes of the file and found that they contained an additional 4K characters.

The MS Word counting function does not include text from text boxes, auto-shapes, headers, footers, comments nor embedded objects (OLE: Object Linking and Embedding.)
... See more
Yes it's true.

I just started a project from a new client that they quoted at 12K characters (using the MS Word word count function). I checked the text boxes and auto-shapes of the file and found that they contained an additional 4K characters.

The MS Word counting function does not include text from text boxes, auto-shapes, headers, footers, comments nor embedded objects (OLE: Object Linking and Embedding.)

See link: http://www.wintranslation.com/articles/translation-articles/translation-word-counts

[Edited at 2013-03-23 10:42 GMT]

[Edited at 2013-03-23 10:44 GMT]

[Edited at 2013-03-23 10:45 GMT]
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Mario Cerutti
Mario Cerutti  Identity Verified
Japan
Local time: 04:05
Italian to Japanese
+ ...
What Word version are you using? Mar 23, 2013

Rod Anderson wrote:
The MS Word counting function does not include text from text boxes, auto-shapes, headers, footers, comments nor embedded objects (OLE: Object Linking and Embedding.)


What version of Word are you using? In Word 2007 there is a little box to tick to have text in boxes counted too. For headers, footers and embedded objects I have to check.

Mario Cerutti


 
Roderick Anderson
Roderick Anderson  Identity Verified
Japan
Local time: 04:05
Japanese to English
+ ...
Word 2007 tick box Mar 23, 2013

>What version of Word are you using? In Word 2007 there is a little box to tick to have text in boxes >counted too. For headers, footers and embedded objects I have to check.

That's good news. I use Word 2010.
Where is this box in 2007? Perhaps it's in the same spot in Word 2010.

Thanks.

Roderick Anderson


 
Mario Cerutti
Mario Cerutti  Identity Verified
Japan
Local time: 04:05
Italian to Japanese
+ ...
In Word 2007 Mar 24, 2013

Rod Anderson wrote:
Where is this box in 2007? Perhaps it's in the same spot in Word 2010.

In Word 2007, when I click on "Word Count" (I don't know exactly how it is said in English as I am using the Italian version) the word count windows appears showing all sorts of counting options (pages, words, characters, etc.) plus an "Include text boxes, headers and footers" little box to tick. I would surprised if Word 2010 didn't include such additional option.

Mario Cerutti


 
Orrin Cummins
Orrin Cummins  Identity Verified
Japan
Local time: 04:05
Japanese to English
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
After some testing... Mar 29, 2013

A small update:

I ran a couple of test counts on some smaller files using both the Japanese version of Word 2010 and Count Anything. Totals in Microsoft Word were taken from the bottom-most line of the count window (全角文字+半角カタカナの数).

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

Document #1:

Word (text boxes, etc. NOT counted) = 10,121字
Word (t
... See more
A small update:

I ran a couple of test counts on some smaller files using both the Japanese version of Word 2010 and Count Anything. Totals in Microsoft Word were taken from the bottom-most line of the count window (全角文字+半角カタカナの数).

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

Document #1:

Word (text boxes, etc. NOT counted) = 10,121字
Word (text boxes counted) = 11,767字
Count Anything = 11, 731字


Document #2:

Word (text boxes counted, although the file was simple and contained no such objects) = 1,616字
Count Anything = 1,616字

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

Not sure what brought about the discrepancy in Document #1, but its so tiny that I don't think it really matters.

The problem that I have with Count Anything is that it seems to take an awfully long time to output the results of the count, and it hangs for me a lot (especially when trying to count .docx files). It's good to have options, though, so thanks for the advice, everyone.
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Chié_JP
Chié_JP
Japan
Local time: 04:05
Member (2013)
English to Japanese
+ ...
it counts inside boxes Mar 30, 2013

I use 2007 to count characters.

Copied a whole table from EXCEL, pasted to word and simply counted the document.
It seemed it counted all the characters.


I recommend you not to use free software, I tried similar soft once only to find
characters turned into simplified Chinese.


 
Roderick Anderson
Roderick Anderson  Identity Verified
Japan
Local time: 04:05
Japanese to English
+ ...
Not made for docx files Mar 31, 2013

>The problem that I have with Count Anything is that it seems to take an awfully long time to output the results of >the count, and it hangs for me a lot (especially when trying to count .docx files). It's good to have options, >though, so thanks for the advice, everyone.

"Count Anything counts the words and characters in a variety of file formats. While it doesn't quite count anything, it supports the following file types:

Microsoft Office:
Word (.doc
... See more
>The problem that I have with Count Anything is that it seems to take an awfully long time to output the results of >the count, and it hangs for me a lot (especially when trying to count .docx files). It's good to have options, >though, so thanks for the advice, everyone.

"Count Anything counts the words and characters in a variety of file formats. While it doesn't quite count anything, it supports the following file types:

Microsoft Office:
Word (.doc, .rtf)
Excel (.xls, .csv)
PowerPoint (.ppt)
Open Office (New!):
Writer (.odt)
Impress (.odp)
Calc (.ods)
HTML
XML
Text
PDF"

This is taken from Mr. Ginstrom's website. CountAnything is not compatible with docx files.
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Best method or software to count Japanese characters - suggestions needed







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