[O] table formula help...

[Eric Abrahamsen]

I never seem to use the spreadsheet unless it's some horribly
complicated thing I don't know how to calculate... Can someone lend me a
hand?

I'm calculating payment rates for contributors (actually translators) to
a magazine.

I've got two tables: The first is essentially a table of contents,
listing pieces with their character count (prose), or line count
(poetry), plus who translated it.

The second is a list of translators, with their total character/line
count, and how much they're owed.

I'm having a hell of a time getting the column formulas right:
specifically referencing one table from another. The first table looks
like this:

#+NAME: counts
| Piece          |  Chars | Lines | Translator       |
+----------------+--------+-------+------------------+
| 凤凰           |        |    84 | Austin Woerner   |
| 王血           |   6633 |       | Eric Abrahamsen  |
| 赵氏孤儿       |  16984 |       | Canaan Morse     |
| 山鬼故家       |        |    24 | Lucas Klein      |
| 寂静何其深沉   |        |    10 | Lucas Klein      |

And the second:

#+NAME: payments
#+CONSTANTS: prose=0.7 poetry=10
| Translator       | Total Chars | Total Lines | Payment |
|------------------+-------------+-------------+---------|
| Austin Woerner   |             |             |         |
| Eric Abrahamsen  |             |             |         |
| Canaan Morse     |             |             |         |
| Lucas Klein      |             |             |         |

In this second table, the formula I want for the "Total Chars" column
is:

"Set each row of $2 in table payments to the sum of all numbers in $2 of
remote(counts), if $2 is not empty, and if $4 of remote(counts) is equal
to $1 of table payments."

The formula for "Total Lines" would be exactly the same, but with the
$2s all switched to $3. I can handle adding up the amounts!

Is it possible to iterate over all the rows in another table like this?
Is there a better way I could be arranging my tables?

Thanks for any tips!

Eric