We have a large .pdf file (which happens to be in French) and would
like a reasonably accurate word count, including the numerical data. 
Is there someplace we can go, and perhaps pay a fee, and obtain this
count?  We need this count as quickly as possible as we are trying to
extablish project deadlines.

Hello, Frank.

Since you need to perform your word count quickly, I am posting this
answer without frills.

Translator's Abacus will produce a word count from a .pdf file. And it's free!

Global Rendering: Translator's Abacus
http://www.globalrendering.com/download.html

Here are two commercial utilities which perform word counts and offer
many other features:

PDFstore: IntelliPDF STAT 
http://www.pdfstore.com/details.asp?ProdID=608

PDFcount for Acrobat
http://www.pdfcount.com/

Note that PDFcount offers a 15-day free trial:

PDFcount for Acrobat: 15 Day Free Trial
http://www.pdfcount.com/trial.html

I hope one of these options will do the trick for you. If not, or if I
have misunderstood your needs, please request clarification; I'll
gladly offer further assistance before you rate my answer.

Best regards,
pinkfreud

I needed to do this a couple of months ago, and after ages of
searching the web (and I mean literally hours and hours) I found
"Translator's Abacus" (as posted in the answer). Its simple, its free,
and it works. Can't get any better than that :)