Counting Words in Different Languages

Word counting seems simple in English: count the groups of letters separated by spaces. Other languages complicate that rule, which matters for translators, international students and global content teams.

Languages with spaces

Most European languages, including French, Spanish, German and Russian, separate words with spaces, so a word counter works as expected. Differences still appear:

• German compounds such as "Datenschutzerklärung" (privacy policy) count as one word, so German texts often have fewer words than their English equivalents.
• French and Italian elisions such as "l'homme" may count as one or two words depending on the tool.
• Finnish and Turkish add many endings to a single word, producing long words and lower word counts.

Languages without spaces

Chinese, Japanese and Thai do not use spaces between words. A simple word counter cannot split them reliably, so these languages are usually measured in characters. A translation brief for Chinese will often state a character count rather than a word count.

Right-to-left scripts

Arabic and Hebrew use spaces, so word counts work, but prefixes and attached particles mean one written word can represent what English expresses with two or three.

Translation and expansion

Translated text often changes length. English to German or French commonly expands, while English to Chinese becomes much shorter in characters. Designers should leave room in layouts for longer translations.

Practical tips

• Use the word counter for languages with spaces; it recognizes letters from all alphabets.
• Use the character count for Chinese, Japanese and Thai.
• When quoting translation work, agree in writing whether pricing is based on source or target words, and how numbers and repeated text are counted.

Frequently asked questions

How to count words in Chinese?

Counting words in Chinese with a normal word counter does not work well, because Chinese has no spaces between words. Use the character count instead; translation and publishing briefs for Chinese are usually measured in characters.

Why does word count in different languages vary?

Languages build words differently. German joins compound words, Finnish adds long endings and Chinese uses no spaces. So word count in different languages can differ greatly for the same message.

How is translation word count calculated?

Translation word count is usually based on the source text, measured with a CAT tool or word counter. Agree in advance whether repetitions, numbers and tags are counted, and whether the price is per source word, per target word or per character.