How does SDL Language Cloud MT calculate the number of characters?

One of my colleagues used this MT last month but her account was quickly blocked as she reached the limit. However, she knows she hasn't actually translated that much using the MT.

So I did a simple test: I ran a file, one segment at a time through the MT while checking my account open. To my surprise, my account shows I translated 6416 characters, while a count in Word of the same gives me 1644 characters (no spaces) and 1926 characters (with spaces)...

So... I do wonder. How does the algorithm calculate the number of characters? No wonder why my colleague reached so easily the limit!

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  • I really don't understand how characters are counted: I create a new project and add the cloud MT service, selecting to populate the empty segments with the translated text.
    The first thing is that, after completing the process, the SDL interface says I used far more character than those inside the word document.
    The second thing is that, when I select an already translated segment to edit it, the characters count increases too! Every time I move to a segment, even if it is the same segment, the character count increases (this time it increases by the right amount of characters, but still it increases even if it's already translated).
    Is that the intended behavior?
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