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Hello!
Does anybody know a source for a script or an extension that can correctly count words? This is needed for translators who charge their service by word count.
The built-in Indesign word counter is nonsense, as it even counts a single number as word. The word counter should be configurable to skip counting numbers, physical units, URLs etc.
Thank you.
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Try this - https://forum.rudtp.ru/threads/chislo-znakov-i-probelov-v-indi.48807/post-675962
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Hi Doc Maik,
is there a strict definition what exactly a billable word is?
You could work on that definition to build a GREP find pattern and count the result.
Also read into that article by Marc Autret to understand that defining a word is not that easy:
https://www.indiscripts.com/post/2011/09/what-exactly-is-a-word
Regards,
Uwe Laubender
( ACP )
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Yes. All those you would translate.
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Google translate can do a miracles. And you are need only to download a script that attached directly to the post.
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My comment was to Laubender's question. Thanks anyway. I translated the website, but I think that script isn't intelligent enough or the configuration with a GREP too effortive to find out. I imagine something similar to these scripts: https://www.linkedin.com/business/learning/blog/productivity-tips/surprising-ways-to-do-a-word-count....
but with an input to define exclusions. This is tricky to do anyway. Example: the shortest words have one letter. Like the english "a". In Spanish this would be "uno" or "una". So it's a word to translate. In a physical value, like for current being written as "100 A", the A is not translated and must not be counted as a word. So the tool must be intelligent to also distinguish between upper and lower case, so it might filter an "A" from the count. Well, an upper case "A" can also be at the beginnging of a sentence, so it's not generally a physical unit to filter. In technical documents as the one I do many physical units are used and counting and paying them as words can become costly.
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Hi Doc Maik,
the script Anne-Marie Concepción is showing at LinkedIn is no magic tool that fits your needs.
There could be no "magic bullet", no standard script that would fit your needs.
I think you should hire a scripter to develop a tool around your needs that could be trained with exceptions.
A tool that even would use formatting of text for decissions if a word is billable, should be translated, or not.
Regards,
Uwe Laubender
( ACP )
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It doesn't have to be a script. There are also extensions for Indesign which are based on script language, but more sophisticated. Maybe someone reading this already has one that exactly does what I need and could tell the name. That's what I asked for. I could also modify the scripts myself if I see that it basically respects filters, but that costs some time. Searching Google for word count extension didn't yet bring something up. I'll continue searching.
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Have you tried just clicking in the text frame and opening the Info panel? It shows you how many Characters, Words, Lines, and Paragraphs are in the frame.
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That's the Indesign word count I mentioned above which counts a zero as a word.
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Oh you never mentioned the Info panel so I didn't know what "Built-in word counter" meant.