Chinese Character Counter

• Chinese characters — every Han character (汉字/漢字), simplified or traditional. This is the 字数 figure most limits refer to.
• Punctuation — full-width marks such as ，。、；：？！「」《》 and the ideographic space.
• Other words — English words and numbers mixed into the text. “用iPhone拍” is two Chinese characters and one other word.
• All characters — everything, including punctuation, spaces and line breaks, and the same without whitespace.

Whether punctuation counts depends on who set the limit. Chinese exam essays and most publishers count every square on the grid paper, punctuation included, so add the two figures together. Translation agencies usually quote on characters without punctuation, and some state “不含标点” to make that explicit. When the brief does not say, count both and mention which you used.

As a rough guide for translation, 1,000 English words usually becomes around 1,500 to 1,800 Chinese characters, depending on the subject.

Your text is counted in your browser and is never uploaded, so it is safe to paste a confidential contract, an unpublished manuscript or an exam answer.