| Страниц в теме: < [1 2] | Document lenght difference between English and other languages Автор темы: Jerónimo Fernández
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| can you tell more about Chinese and English,thank you ! | Sep 11, 2005 |
Lesley McLachlan wrote:
Length of business letters? Not sure how they would compare - a matter of convention? This has changed in English over time. 19C letters were longer and wordier I think.
Chinese text does take up much less space on the page, because of the script and because there are no gaps between words.Does this fit with your question?
Generally Chinese sentences are longer with more clauses than English ones, but there are fewer sentences per paragraph. So it cancels out.
However, in terms of word count, the difference would be that Chinese uses fewer articles, pronouns and auxiliary verbs. (Other than that, it is word for word). So the Chinese text is a bit shorter than the English one structurally, I think.
I'm a Chinese student,I learn English, please tell me more ahou that ,thank you !
| | | | Miguel Fuentes 
Мексика
Local time: 13:36
Член ProZ.com
английский => испанский
+ ...
| I have a client situation right about this subject | Mar 13, 2007 |
Hi all,
In my experience English takes 20-30% less words than Spanish.
I have currently a situation where If I just had a piece of substantial theory on comparative language word-count, I would be able to respond to a client why I chose a 20% difference (conservative I think), other than my experience.
I just completed a huge job where I was pushed every hour by a most stressing client. Believe it or not he required me to deliver piece-meal pages. After 8 days of ... See more Hi all,
In my experience English takes 20-30% less words than Spanish.
I have currently a situation where If I just had a piece of substantial theory on comparative language word-count, I would be able to respond to a client why I chose a 20% difference (conservative I think), other than my experience.
I just completed a huge job where I was pushed every hour by a most stressing client. Believe it or not he required me to deliver piece-meal pages. After 8 days of work I delivered the last chapter with just half an hour delay.
Then the pressure went to the word-count. Client required immediate word count, but most of the source documents he gave me came as scanned PDFs, and CRS applets don't work with that format.
No way to go cherry-counting 50,000 words, and I don't have the equipment &sftwre to print-scann and then convert to word, so I applied the typical rule of 20% more words in English than Spanish, but there are differences with client and I am afraid he may think I tried to play a trick on him.
Is there some serious research or academic paper to back this experience?
My best to all! ▲ Collapse
| | | | Parrot
Испания
Local time: 20:36
испанский => английский
+ ...
... rarely shrinks, often grows, and can remain the same. Even from English to English
Seriously, I've calculated Spanish and French engineering and general texts to be 10% longer. A legalese expert can keep legal texts down to the same number. However, despite your best efforts, they tend to grow.
German being more subject to character count, the English text will seem shorter (by the 55-character line... See more ... rarely shrinks, often grows, and can remain the same. Even from English to English
Seriously, I've calculated Spanish and French engineering and general texts to be 10% longer. A legalese expert can keep legal texts down to the same number. However, despite your best efforts, they tend to grow.
German being more subject to character count, the English text will seem shorter (by the 55-character line). But the word count will rise between 15% and 20% on average. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Richard Benham
Франция
Local time: 20:36
немецкий => английский
+ ...
Памяти | It varies a lot.... | Apr 14, 2007 |
I do DE>EN and FR>EN.
If it’s a technical text, the word count can increase by 25% from German to English, but the character count is likely to be slightly less in English. For non-technical German, with much fewer really long compounds, it can be more like a 10% increase in word count.
In FR>EN, which until recently I have done less of, the word (and character) count tends to go down slightly in my experience, say around 10%. Again, however, there are a lot of facto... See more I do DE>EN and FR>EN.
If it’s a technical text, the word count can increase by 25% from German to English, but the character count is likely to be slightly less in English. For non-technical German, with much fewer really long compounds, it can be more like a 10% increase in word count.
In FR>EN, which until recently I have done less of, the word (and character) count tends to go down slightly in my experience, say around 10%. Again, however, there are a lot of factors that affect this. Sometimes, with the sort of work I tend to get a lot of in French, there are huge numbers of names of organizations which, unlike say EU bodies, have no official name in English, for example, local NGOs in Africa. So I feel I need to include the French name and an explanation in English. This can, in rare instances, end up making the whole text longer in English. (Conversely, if the text does the same thing with English-language names, I can omit the explanation....) There is a tendency for translations to get longer, because of the need to explain things more, but the greater brevity of English tends to more than compensate for this. So I rarely feel any qualms about wordy explanations of culturally unfamiliar concepts; there always seems to be plenty of room for them. In fact, if you’re translating a brochure or something to fit in existing layout, it can be a good thing to find explanations to put in to keep the text around the same length.
None of this, of course, prevents the occasional English sentence being three or four times longer than the French original. The 10% reduction is an overall figure. ▲ Collapse
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lingomania
Local time: 05:36
итальянский => английский
| Italian-English 40% shorter | Apr 17, 2007 |
Any translated document from Italian into English will be +40% shorter.
Rob
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