What Are Weighted Words?

Weighted Words

In the translation industry, effective project management and transparent pricing are crucial. This is where the concept of “weighted words” comes into play. This article and explanations are mostly aimed towards career professionals working in the translation industry and language departments managing frequent handoffs to translation vendors. Work as a translator for VEQTA.

Weighted words help streamline the process by providing a more accurate and understandable way to estimate costs when using translation memory tools (TM) and computer-assisted translation (CAT) tools.

Let’s explore more what weighted words are, how they are calculated, and why they are essential for localization professionals! Words in a translation project vary in translation effort and cost depending on their similarity to existing translations in the TM. These are categorized as new words, fuzzy matches, 100% matches, and repetitions. To simplify pricing, the concept of weighted words is used, where different match types are weighted according to their translation effort and cost, resulting in a more accurate overall word count.

How Weighted Word Counts Are Calculated

Translation memory and CAT tools typically categorize word matches as follows:

• New Words: Words with no previous matches in the TM, typically charged at the full rate.
• Fuzzy Matches: Partial matches with existing translations, often broken into ranges like 50-74% or 75-99%, and discounted based on the similarity.
• 100% Matches: Exact matches with existing TM segments, usually heavily discounted.
• Repetitions: Identical words or phrases repeated within the same document, also discounted.

The weighted word count converts these categories into a normalized word count using predefined cost multipliers.

Weighted Words Calculation

Consider a project with the following breakdown:

• 100 new words at $0.10 per word.
• 50 fuzzy matches (75-99%) at 50% of the new word rate ($0.05 per word).
• 100 repetitions at 25% of the new word rate ($0.025 per word).

The weighted word count is calculated as follows:

• 100 new words × 1 = 100 weighted words
• 50 fuzzy matches × 0.5 = 25 weighted words
• 100 repetitions × 0.25 = 25 weighted words

Total weighted word count = 150 words This weighted word count helps clients and vendors see an equivalent cost in terms of new words, making the pricing structure clearer.

Why Weighted Words Matter

Weighted words ensure clients pay only for the actual translation work needed, while simplifying the pricing and estimation process since different CAT Tools can produce different percentages depending on settings and software. This transparency benefits both clients and translation providers, aligning costs more closely with the effort involved.

Weighted words are fundamental to efficient project management and accurate pricing in localization.

By converting various match categories into a single weighted word count, translation providers can present a clearer, more accurate cost estimate while still including the leveraged words. Understanding this concept is essential for all parties involved in localization projects.