Aurélie Machut 

Studio does not show the character count for source segment but you can just see the number of characters (including spaces) in the target segment.
You see this in the Editor view bottom right. But from some countries and for some project agreements in place, you need a bit more granular detail. 
As you mentioned the divide by 55. 

There is an app that may help called Target Word Count. 
It offers a report based on word count, character count, and an analysis by lines which supports countries like Switzerland and Germany.
You can also define how many characters per line.

Other resources relevant to understanding counts are:

• Using autoHot keys in Trados Studio by selecting source or target. Then getting a popup which confirms the counts for you.
  See here: Counting characters in a segment  
• Interesting reads: 
  https://multifarious.filkin.com/2012/11/13/wordcount/ 
   https://multifarious.filkin.com/2022/07/30/character-counts/

I hope this helps

Lyds

Dear Lydia,

That's really interesting, thanks! I'm looking for the count in the source - I'll get a look at this...

Merci,

Aurélie

Aurélie Machut 

Sorry for the oversight but Target Word Count does offer support for the source side (despite the app name)
See screen print below

That's great, thanks!

Hello Lydia,

I've just installed Target Word Count. It's there under Add-ins > Plugins but I don't have the option Target Word Count under batch tasks:

Do you know what's wrong?

Thanks, Aurélie

Aurélie Machut your selected Batch task is Analysis from your screen print,
When accessing the Batch Task drop down list you need Target Word Count

Dear Lydia

I could test that, thanks! But there is still a big difference with caracters including spaces between Trados (1790) and Word (1621). I didn't get the TM analysis matches neigther.

Any idea why?

Thanks,

Aurélie

Aurélie Machut 

Aurélie Machut said:

Any idea why?

Difficult to know without having the Word document.

Any hidden text? Any custom properties in the Word document? Both will be added to the Trados count, but they won't show in the word/character from Word.

Also, not tested, but I bet that the plugin doesn’t count leading/trailing spaces:

Thanks for your reply, Jesus. It's a very common Word file (no hidden text, no custom properties).

When comparing Microsoft Word statistics (caracters including spaces) with alternative methods like Trados Report (caracters without spaces) and Target Word Count (words), there is no static variable to convert and always get the same result like in Word. Even the word count is different between MS Word, Trados Report and Target Word Count.

Target Word Count is quite a handy plugin but it doesn't work properly. Who's able to correct it?