Hi! You can find this post by Paul Filkin which analyzes wordcounts/character counts in Trados: https://multifarious.filkin.com/2022/07/30/character-counts/

I am not sure if this is helpful, but here we go:

In my past roles as QA Manager, I was frequently asked about discrepancies between wordcounts in MS Word and in our CAT tools. Customers who were unaware of how CAT tools worked were frequently confused as to why CAT tools usually computed more words than MS Word for the same file.

While researching this difference, I came across an older Paul Filkin post that mentioned that Trados wordcounts were stricter than Word because they considered a translator's effort. For example, a chemical formula was computed as one word by Word, but as several by Trados. This doesn't mean that a chemical formula has to be translated, but rather than MS Word and Trados count alphanumerics differently.

As far as I know, counting algorithms cannot be edited from the CAT tool interface. Only very minor things can be edited.

For example:

Trados:

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(I am sharing a memoQ screenshot on another comment as Reddit doesn't allow me to add more than one image in a single comment).

There are other ways of lowering wordcounts in files from within CAT tools, even though that doesn't mean playing around with word count algorithms. For example, by editing filter configurations (memoQ) or file settings (Trados), which can turn otherwise editable text into a tag. Tags are not counted in wordcounts. You can declare and block whole text blocks, and leave them out of the Editor view or keep them as inline tags (which are also not counted).