Tracked Changes Assistant provides a detailed word count report to help you estimate the translation effort and understand the extent of changes in the new revision of a Word document.
Detailed information about Tracked Changes Assistant
- How Tracked Changes Assistant can help you in your work
- Where to find the tool
- Using Tracked Changes Assistant
- Related tools
How Tracked Changes Assistant can help you in your work
- Analyze the translation effort required to transfer tracked changes into a previous revision of a translated document: Tracked Changes Assistant displays the number of distinct changes (additions, deletions and moves) and word/character counts for these changes so you can get a rough idea how much time it will take for you to translate these changes. In addition, the report contains information about the types of changes made: how many of these changes are full paragraphs or full sentences (which can be translated in their entirety without reviewing the surrounding sentences in most cases) and how many of the changes are words or characters in the middle of existing sentences (which means that you may need to rewrite the translation of the entire sentences).
- Export the analysis report into Excel or CSV format: the word count report can be exported into Excel or CSV (tab- or semicolon-delimited) format in order to prepare accurate quotes for your customers. For example, you can use formulas inside Excel to apply special weight factors to calculate the approximate translation time.
Where to find the tool
To run Tracked Changes Assistant, click Tracked Changes Assistant button on TransTools+ ribbon:
This will open Tracked Changes Assistant pane to the right of the current document.
Using Tracked Changes Assistant
Tracked changes word count report
To generate a tracked changes word count report for the current document, open Tracked Changes Assistant panel by clicking Tracked Changes Assistant button on TransTools+ ribbon and then click Create tracked changes word count report... button. When the operation is completed, you will see a report displayed below the button:
The report provides detailed information about tracked additions (insertions), deletions and moves (when text is dragged from one place to another) in the current Word document. The information is grouped by type of change (addition, deletion or move), and you can expand or collapse individual groups if necessary. For each type of change, the report is broken down by the type of text within those changes: whole paragraphs, whole sentences, multi-word phrases, single words, characters inside words, punctuation and spaces/breaks. This information is very useful for estimation purposes because translating large changes, such as new paragraphs or sentences, is always easier than translating small changes inside existing sentences where you may need to re-translate the surrounding context as well. For each of those elements, the report provides the number of such elements, number of words, number of characters (without spaces) and number of characters with spaces, as well as the percentage of such elements among all elements. The total line provides the total word and character counts for additions, deletions and moves. Finally, for each type of change, the total number of distinct changes is provided to help you estimate the translation effort more accurately: again, translating a single 2-paragraph block inserted into the text is easier than translating the same paragraphs which are inserted into 2 different parts of the document, since it will take you extra time to insert them correctly.
Word count report details
If additional tracked changes are introduced in the document, you can always refresh the word count report by clicking Update tracked changes word count report... button.
Exporting the word count report
To export the word count report, click Export... button at the bottom of the Tracked Changes Assistant panel. This will open the Export Options dialogue:
Using the Export Options dialogue, you can specify the format of the export file:
- To export the report in CSV format which can be opened in Microsoft Excel, other spreadsheet editing programs or even a simple text editor, select CSV option. CSV files can be generated using two different separators: tab character or semicolon. By default, Tracked Changes Assistant will use tabs as a separator, but you can select semicolon if needed.
- To export the report in Microsoft Excel format, select Excel option. The export file can be saved in XLSX (default) or XLS format depending on the file extension you specify and the version of Microsoft Excel you are using.
Once you export the word count report and open it in your spreadsheet editing application like Excel or Google Sheets, you can create a weighted word count using formulas in order to estimate the translation effort more accurately. Here are some ideas for weight factors:
- The number of distinct additions, deletions and moves can be multiplied by some fixed rate or word count since it will take you time to review each change before creating or updating the translation.
- Use a custom weight factor for multi-word phrases, single words, characters inside words, punctuation and spaces/breaks inside additions in order to calculate the weighted number of words/characters. Note that the word count for characters inside words, punctuation and spaces/breaks is 0, so your weight factor should be based on the number of characters with spaces, not words.
- For deletions, the word count has little importance, and the number of distinct deletions is much more important for determining the amount of work. However, the count of words in deletions is somewhat important for small changes like multi-word phrases, single words, characters inside words, punctuation and spaces/breaks because this means that you will need to update the translation of the existing sentences.
Miscellaneous tools
TransTools
- Accept all revisions and turn 'Track Changes' off – accept all revisions in the document and deactivate Track Changes mode