Counting characters in a website - HELP!
Thread poster: Sarah Downing
Sarah Downing
Sarah Downing  Identity Verified
Local time: 02:36
German to English
+ ...
Jul 12, 2004

Hello all,

I've been asked to give a quote for the translation of a website. Apparently we are going to be sent text files once we have given the quote, but the end customer refuses to send the files before he or she has the quote. I also asked and it seems like they haven't produced all files yet. If we had the files, the whole thing would obviously be a lot easier ...

My problem is how to get the character count. I cannot and will not spend hours on counting the chara
... See more
Hello all,

I've been asked to give a quote for the translation of a website. Apparently we are going to be sent text files once we have given the quote, but the end customer refuses to send the files before he or she has the quote. I also asked and it seems like they haven't produced all files yet. If we had the files, the whole thing would obviously be a lot easier ...

My problem is how to get the character count. I cannot and will not spend hours on counting the characters (it's an extremely large website).

I think there is some way of downloading the text from the site, using tools such as Cat's Cradle etc. but I'm really not very savvy with that kind of thing and don't have any special tools either. Also, a webdesigner friend of mine told me that it could be a problem with this site - wwww.sangerhausen.de - because of the large number of graphics.

Does anyone have any suggestions as how I could quickly and easily count the characters - I'm tempted to tell the customer where to go for being so difficult, but it does seem like a rather large and potentially lucrative job ...

This question is also rather urgent, because the customer wants a quote today. Oh joy!:-)

Thank you very much in advance,

Sarah Downing
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Rahi Moosavi
Rahi Moosavi  Identity Verified
Canada
Local time: 02:36
Member (2004)
English to Persian (Farsi)
+ ...
Webzip/Total Assistant Jul 12, 2004

Hi

I had a similar experience last week but I insisted to get all the html files and the client accepted eventually.

You could use tools like webzip to download the whole of that website and then apply tools like Total Assis
... See more
Hi

I had a similar experience last week but I insisted to get all the html files and the client accepted eventually.

You could use tools like webzip to download the whole of that website and then apply tools like Total Assistant to do the word count.

Webzip: www.spidersoft.com
Total Assistant: www.surefiresoftware.com

Hope this helps.

Best wishes from Iran
Rahi


P.S. But be very careful, there's always a risk of missing some link and considering a link that the client doesn't want it's translation, i.e. link to pdf file or doc files scattered around a website

[Edited at 2004-07-12 12:14]
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bergazy
bergazy  Identity Verified
Croatia
Local time: 08:36
Croatian to Italian
+ ...
Translator's Abacus Jul 12, 2004

Nice and simple tool you can get from
http://www.globalrendering.com/

Good luck

Marko


 
Sarah Downing
Sarah Downing  Identity Verified
Local time: 02:36
German to English
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
I've actually got Practicount - It's the html files I need to extract Jul 12, 2004

Marko Kovacic wrote:

Nice and simple tool you can get from
http://www.globalrendering.com/

Good luck

Marko



Hi!

Maybe I should point out that I've already got Practicount. I really need to know how to extract the files, so that I can then count them with Practicount. I've just tried it with the Webzip tool that was recommended, but that didn't seem to work - I'm going to have to put the customer under pressure to get hold of at least the html files because otherwise I can't make a quote.


 
Sonja Tomaskovic (X)
Sonja Tomaskovic (X)  Identity Verified
Germany
Local time: 08:36
English to German
+ ...
Don't quote by wordcount Jul 12, 2004

Hi,

it seems that this customer is particularly reluctant to provide any form of help.

I would therefore provide a quote that is not based on the wordcount, e.g. by page or by hour.

By the way, there are a lot of graphics on this page, I would therefore recommend to definitely go for the hourly rate. Even if you were able to extract all html files you would still miss the text from the graphics. Therefore a wordcount does not truely reflect the effort and t
... See more
Hi,

it seems that this customer is particularly reluctant to provide any form of help.

I would therefore provide a quote that is not based on the wordcount, e.g. by page or by hour.

By the way, there are a lot of graphics on this page, I would therefore recommend to definitely go for the hourly rate. Even if you were able to extract all html files you would still miss the text from the graphics. Therefore a wordcount does not truely reflect the effort and time you would have to spend on this project.

I wouldn't hesitate to let the customer know that it took me a lot of time to figure out how to quote, and that everything would have been much easier with a little cooperation from his side.

HTH.

Sonja
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Sarah Downing
Sarah Downing  Identity Verified
Local time: 02:36
German to English
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
Thank you to everyone! Jul 12, 2004

[quote]Sonja Tomaskovic wrote:

Hi,

it seems that this customer is particularly reluctant to provide any form of help.

I would therefore provide a quote that is not based on the wordcount, e.g. by page or by hour.

I wouldn't hesitate to let the customer know that it took me a lot of time to figure out how to quote, and that everything would have been much easier with a little cooperation from his side.

I tried using Webzip, but it didn't seem to work - either I did it wrong or, as I suspected, there was problem with the many graphics.
__________________________________________________________________
Yours is a good suggestion, Sonja, but I see the risk of the customer getting all uppity because he won't be able to check whether I'm being honest ... some customers ...

Quite frankly I could do without customers like this - he will have the texts, but didn't want to send me them in advance. Finally, the agency has managed to persuade the customer to provide them with some files on CD (hopefully they'll be countable) so that I will then be able to give a quote, but that doesn't undo the fact that this customer has wasted the time of the agency, myself and all those who answered this question ... And life could be sooo easy!

Thanks again!

Sarah


 
Hynek Palatin
Hynek Palatin  Identity Verified
Czech Republic
Local time: 08:36
English to Czech
+ ...
Troubles ahead Jul 12, 2004

Just a few thoughts:

- Do they expect a quote (a total amount) for a website that hasn't been finished yet?

- There is a Flash version of the website. Do they want to translate it as well? Do they (and you) know what it means?

- It seems that many parts of the website are stored in a database. They would have to extract its contents for you to translate it.

- The design of the website is not very professinal, to say the least. Do you think they
... See more
Just a few thoughts:

- Do they expect a quote (a total amount) for a website that hasn't been finished yet?

- There is a Flash version of the website. Do they want to translate it as well? Do they (and you) know what it means?

- It seems that many parts of the website are stored in a database. They would have to extract its contents for you to translate it.

- The design of the website is not very professinal, to say the least. Do you think they will be willing to pay for a professional translation?
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Sarah Downing
Sarah Downing  Identity Verified
Local time: 02:36
German to English
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
Troubles ahead ... Jul 12, 2004

Hynek Palatin wrote:

Just a few thoughts:

- Do they expect a quote (a total amount) for a website that hasn't been finished yet?

- There is a Flash version of the website. Do they want to translate it as well? Do they (and you) know what it means?

- It seems that many parts of the website are stored in a database. They would have to extract its contents for you to translate it.

- The design of the website is not very professinal, to say the least. Do you think they will be willing to pay for a professional translation?


Hi Hynek,

Thanks for your concerns.

The website is finished, but the customer was just a bit difficult about sending me any files whatsoever on which to base my quote. I have nothing to do with the website - eventually, if I get the job I am simply provided with the files to translate - nothing more, nothing less.

Frankly, I don't care about how they extract it - they just better had, because I'm not keen on translating that volume if I don't even have it as files. That's just not my problem.

The design is irrelevant - I'm working for an agency and the agency, as far as I'm concerned, is the end customer. The agency, like many tend to, has just passed the hassle with the quote etc. on to me.

ATB,

Sarah


 
Rahi Moosavi
Rahi Moosavi  Identity Verified
Canada
Local time: 02:36
Member (2004)
English to Persian (Farsi)
+ ...
Good one... Jul 13, 2004

Thanks Marko for sharing this, I was using Total Assistant and the features of Translation Office for mass word counts but this tool is much quicker.

 
Claudia Mattaliano
Claudia Mattaliano  Identity Verified
Local time: 08:36
German to Italian
+ ...
This is great! Jul 13, 2004

Rahi Moosavi wrote:

Thanks Marko for sharing this, I was using Total Assistant and the features of Translation Office for mass word counts but this tool is much quicker.



I totally agree with Mr. Moosavi: translator's abacus seems to be very useful! However, I have a question that might sound stupid... How do I save a WHOLE website? I tried to go to a homepage and "save as", but it saved only the homepage... I'm sorry if this is a very easy matter, but I would really appreciate your help!

Thank you all!
Claudia


 
Hynek Palatin
Hynek Palatin  Identity Verified
Czech Republic
Local time: 08:36
English to Czech
+ ...
Website Jul 13, 2004

OK, Sarah, good luck.

 


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Counting characters in a website - HELP!






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