Word counts are the bread and butter of any translation service provider. That number is what they need to know to secure budget allocation from their clients. With the word count at hand, a language service provider can easily put together a quote or RFP. And the faster they’re able to furnish their customer with a proposal, the better their chances are to win it, and start the job.

For enterprises sending their content to a translation vendor, the word count and target language(s) is the critical knowledge the translation vendor needs in order to be able to supply you with a quote. The sad truth is that without your numbers (word count), they won’t be able to tell you their numbers (cost).

In many instances, ascertaining that word count is easy. Documents created in Microsoft Word, for example, have a word counter built in, so finding that number to furnish it to your supplier is quite easy – for both you, doing it yourself, as well as them if that’s something you ask them to do.

But when it comes to estimating the word counts for websites, e-commerce and support sites, that’s sometimes a lot more difficult. Or at least it was, before the Beebox.

When Wordbee released Beebox – our translation middleware solution – we didn’t realize that the word count feature would be another reason why LSPs and enterprises alike would embrace our tool. Beebox inventories all the source documents sent through it, and determines exactly what content needs to be translated and returns a word count.

That word count takes into consideration all the instances of duplicated content within your files – so any content repeats will not be considered as part of the word count. And, if Beebox has been used to translate content in the past, no matter if its machine translation or human translation, that memory is used for a comparison against the new documents, so only genuinely new content is considered for the word count.

The Beebox can also deliver automatic quotes back to the requestor, making the RFQ process even more streamlined. If your organization uses the Beebox to deliver content to an LSP’s Translation Management System, if their price information is loaded into the TMS, the cost of that job will be calculated as soon as the two systems make a handshake. That makes job costing not just obvious for the organization, but lets the LSP automatically generate a quote. Armed with the cost details the customer can determine if the LSP should commence with the job (accept the quote) or if it should be delayed or cancelled. It’s a great solution for organizations that need to outsource a wide variety of content types to many different vendors, as is often the case.

Having the budget earmarked for a job is always key to the start of a translation project. Determining those costs quickly, especially on large jobs, which may include a wide variety of file types, is easy when you throw everything into the Beebox.

Want to know more? We’re happy to show you the Beebox in action (and we take pride in our fast response!) Contact us today for more details. info@wordbee.com.

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