What is Word Count (Localization)?

Word count is the standard unit for scoping and pricing translation work: vendors quote per source word, and project timelines are estimated from source volume. Counting the source rather than the target keeps quotes stable, since target length varies by language.

Raw counts rarely tell the whole story. Weighted word counts discount segments the translation memory already covers: exact matches and repetitions cost a fraction of new words, fuzzy matches sit in between, with the exact bands and rates set per vendor. Two projects with the same raw count can differ widely in effort once TM leverage is applied.

Word counting has edge cases worth knowing: placeholders and inline markup may or may not count, and languages without spaces between words, Chinese and Japanese among them, are counted by character with conversion conventions. For UI localization, key count and string churn per release are often more useful planning metrics than raw words, since short strings carry fixed overhead regardless of length.