Forum: CAT Tools Technical Help
Topic: Are tags/placeholders counted in word counts?
Poster: Samuel Murray
Post title: Sometimes...
[quote]Heloísa Helena Benetton Costa wrote:
Are tags/placeholders counted in word counts? It just occurred to me, after a huge job full of placeholders with long texts [gave me a terrible fright]! [/quote]
Sometimes, tags are counted as words, yes. But since tags are often placed, not typed, and often using either the mouse or a keyboard shortcut that is difficult to type blind, a tag "costs" the translator far more than just 1 word. Yet most analyses I've seen assume that tags do not really add a lot to translation time.
The worst offenders are CAT tools that consider segments to be 99% matches if only the tags differ, because fixing tag errors takes time. In fact, in some workflows where I'm usually the proofreader, the translators simply refuse to fix tag errors on 99% matches.
Topic: Are tags/placeholders counted in word counts?
Poster: Samuel Murray
Post title: Sometimes...
[quote]Heloísa Helena Benetton Costa wrote:
Are tags/placeholders counted in word counts? It just occurred to me, after a huge job full of placeholders with long texts [gave me a terrible fright]! [/quote]
Sometimes, tags are counted as words, yes. But since tags are often placed, not typed, and often using either the mouse or a keyboard shortcut that is difficult to type blind, a tag "costs" the translator far more than just 1 word. Yet most analyses I've seen assume that tags do not really add a lot to translation time.
The worst offenders are CAT tools that consider segments to be 99% matches if only the tags differ, because fixing tag errors takes time. In fact, in some workflows where I'm usually the proofreader, the translators simply refuse to fix tag errors on 99% matches.