Why such a big difference between volume reports, when analyzing documents with Trados 2019 and Trados 2014?

Question

Hi, 
 We recently faced a disappointing conclusion, while analyzing documents with Trados 2019 and with Trados 2014: 
 There is a big difference in the number of characters/words that Trados 2019 shows in reports for the same documents we analyze with Trados 2014. 
 For example Trados 2019 shows around 27.000 characters while Trados 2014 shows 90.000 characters. 
 The document we analyzed is translatable and it is a powerpoint file with footnote notes in every slide. 
 And this situation is valid for any document we analyze with both versions. 
 Do you also receive such a difference? 
 The problem is that the truth is provided by Trados 2014. 
 It is very unprofessional to use the latest version of Trados, provide a quote to a customer and then be asked by the translator what happenned, because the volume is much more, almost 4 times bigger... 
 looking forward to you comments and impressions. 
 Thanks, 
 Cristina

Paul Filkin · Answer

CRISTINA DAMA 
 Can you provide a sample? Maybe pseudo translate a couple of slides in Studio 2014 so you have an anonymized deck and then share the file? It's very hard to answer these kind of questions other than to ask you to make sure you have all the same options checked in the filetype settings... which I'm sure you have done.

Paul Filkin · Answer

Dear CRISTINA DAMA 
 I don't have a good answer for you. Here's what I get using 2014 with your file: 
 
 Here's what I get using 2019: 
 
 So I can't comment on your differences. There were no notes in the slides you provided so perhaps you pseudotranslated with 2019 and you didn't actually extract the notes in the originals? Maybe that's where your differences lie? 
 My guess is the same with the Doc. You probably have some setting different. Have you been through both sets of options thoroughly to make sure you are comparing apples with apples?

Paul Filkin · Answer

CRISTINA DAMA 
 The first thing I suggest you do is take a small piece of text and analyse the differences yourself. The files you sent me previously were not helpful. If you do this with small pieces of text, paying attention to words that are hyphenated, uses of obliques, phrases with different punctuation etc. then you will probably fnd the differences. 
 CRISTINA DAMA said: 1. New versions of office documents are not supported neither by 2011 nor 2014. I receive an error when analyzing them. 
 Of course. Latest versions of most file formats will not be supported in such old versions of the software that are no longer supported. 
 CRISTINA DAMA said: 3. There are several differences when analyzing the same file with Trados 2019 and then with Trados 2014 and 2011, that is for example for ppt, you get less volume in Trados 2019 than with the other 2 versions of Trados. 
 If you were to read the relese notes for all of these versions you would see that changes are made sometimes to the way wordcounts are handled. In general we try to make sure that the wordcount for Studio reflects the effort but obvioulsy if you have a diverse supply chain using multiple versions of the software then you will always see some differences between them. Which one is right? Well, do you consider sub-title to be two words or one? That was just an example but in 2015 there were new options introduced to treat words that are: 
 
 hyphenated 
 joined by dashes 
 contain formatting tags 
 
 as one. But its optional in your settings, so again understanding where your differences are coming from, and only you can do this as we can't see your text, will help you to make sure you are using the appropriate settings to help bring the wordcounts into line. 
 That's just an example, I'm pretty sure that between Studio 2011 and Studio 2019 there have been many changes. In reality you are comparing tools that can count the words in the way you think they should be counted with tools that were out of support a long time ago and don't have these capabilities. Which one is right? That would be up to you. If you want to match your traslators tools when they use such old versions that play with the settings to try and get closer or just rely on their counts. If this is ultimately what you are trying to achieve it might simply be less effort to accept the counts from their tools given this is what you seem to trying to achieve. 
 CRISTINA DAMA said: The only issue at this moment is that we don't know which Trados version to rely for the correct evaluation of a document. We would like to avoid the situation when our translators, who don't usually have the last version of Trados, to return to us and say that they have a different result. We don't know what to believe. 
 You need to make sure you prepare the analysis with the right settings to get as close as possible to the count your translators are seeing. Or perhaps use an independent tool such as practicount? This will inevitably give you a different word count again but at least it'll be one all your supply chain can agree on if they use the same tool. Or maybe convince your ranslators to upgrade Studio so they are on the same version you are using. 
 No easy answer I'm afraid! It's going to take an understanding of the content you are translating, with the settings you are using... and even then you probably won't come out with exactly the same result.

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Why such a big difference between volume reports, when analyzing documents with Trados 2019 and Trados 2014?