Microsoft Translator charges me 1000 characters for a 20 character translation

Question

Can someone explain why this is happening? I'm using their TranslationContainer sample they've provided.

This strikes me as wrong; if I'm translating lots of small pieces of text I'm going to be changed per translation rather than against my quota of characters.

Can someone explain what's happening here

Answer 1

As of today, this is how the Translator service usage is measured. The default transaction length is 1,000 characters.

EDIT 3/18/2012: I reached out to the team and heard back: You are getting the proper number of characters per month, per subscription details, but the counter display isn't reliable at the moment. A fix is coming. I don't have an exact date for the fix.

EDIT 5/17/2012: Looks like this has been fixed. There's also a blog post about real-time updates to remaining characters per month, as well as low-balance notifications: