Studio 2015: Ensuring two spaces are inserted after segments
Thread poster: Hendrik Michaelson
Hendrik Michaelson
Hendrik Michaelson
Japan
Japanese to English
Apr 15, 2017

Hello colleagues,

I am experiencing a problem in my Japanese>English translation workflow and I would appreciate your help.

As some of you may know Japanese source texts do not have any spaces after the end-of-sentence punctuation. However many of my clients require that two spaces be inserted after the English full stop. Hence I have a problem where when I select "save target as" in Studio 2015, the output English file contains no spaces after the full stops. I have
... See more
Hello colleagues,

I am experiencing a problem in my Japanese>English translation workflow and I would appreciate your help.

As some of you may know Japanese source texts do not have any spaces after the end-of-sentence punctuation. However many of my clients require that two spaces be inserted after the English full stop. Hence I have a problem where when I select "save target as" in Studio 2015, the output English file contains no spaces after the full stops. I have been doing a find & replace in Word, but this is extremely cumbersome as it also inserts needless spaces after abbreviations, and also after decimals, which can be a tremendous problem that requires files sometimes hundreds of pages long to be checked very carefully for "rogue" spaces.

There must be a way to instruct Studio to insert two spaces after each segment when outputting the translated English file. Can anyone please instruct me on how to achieve this effect?

Many thanks for your time.
Collapse


 
Heinrich Pesch
Heinrich Pesch  Identity Verified
Finland
Local time: 10:50
Member (2003)
Finnish to German
+ ...
Can't you put the space yourself after each segment? Apr 16, 2017

Normally the problem is double space where there should be one. You could write two full stops at the end of segment and would get ".. " in the output. Then you can change ".." into ". " and get two spaces. But why two spaces in English text?

[Bearbeitet am 2017-04-16 14:55 GMT]


 
Hendrik Michaelson
Hendrik Michaelson
Japan
Japanese to English
TOPIC STARTER
The problem is no spaces are being inserted Apr 16, 2017

Thank you for the response. I suppose I could work with one space as well. If there was one space after all full stops I could easily find and replace that without damaging decimal numbers and other things like that. The problem is that Trados is not inserting anything after the full stops in English. Is this something that can be altered in segmenting rules or something like that?

 
Roy Oestensen
Roy Oestensen  Identity Verified
Denmark
Local time: 09:50
Member (2010)
English to Norwegian (Bokmal)
+ ...
Try explaining to the PM that double space is wrong in English Apr 17, 2017

Hendrik Michaelson wrote:
However many of my clients require that two spaces be inserted after the English full stop.


This is a remnant from the time of typewriters with monospaced fonts. I would suggest you refer the PMs to "The PC is not a TYPEWRITER" by Robin Williams (1992). As he writes, "Use only one space after periods, colons, exclamation points, question marks, quotation marks--any punctuation that separates two sentences." (page 13).

His explanation is as follows:
"On a typewriter, all the characters are monospaced ... you [therefore] need to type two spaces after periods to separate one sentence from the next. But . . .

"On a computer, most typefaces use proportional characters ... So with proportionally-designed typefaces you no longer need extra spaces to separate the sentences."

In short: Whenever you use proportional characters, i.e. where the letter i takes 1/5 the space of m, using double space after a period is plain wrong today, also in English.

Roy

[Edited at 2017-04-17 10:09 GMT]


 
Roy Oestensen
Roy Oestensen  Identity Verified
Denmark
Local time: 09:50
Member (2010)
English to Norwegian (Bokmal)
+ ...
Are you referring to how the text appears in Studio, or the exported text? Apr 17, 2017

Hendrik Michaelson wrote:
Thank you for the response. I suppose I could work with one space as well. If there was one space after all full stops I could easily find and replace that without damaging decimal numbers and other things like that. The problem is that Trados is not inserting anything after the full stops in English. Is this something that can be altered in segmenting rules or something like that?


Studio skips all periods at the end of a segment, but put them back in the exported document. This is standard behaviour. So if you add a space at the end, I believe the exported document with get two spaces where the segment ends.
Roy


 


To report site rules violations or get help, contact a site moderator:


You can also contact site staff by submitting a support request »

Studio 2015: Ensuring two spaces are inserted after segments







CafeTran Espresso
You've never met a CAT tool this clever!

Translate faster & easier, using a sophisticated CAT tool built by a translator / developer. Accept jobs from clients who use Trados, MemoQ, Wordfast & major CAT tools. Download and start using CafeTran Espresso -- for free

Buy now! »
Protemos translation business management system
Create your account in minutes, and start working! 3-month trial for agencies, and free for freelancers!

The system lets you keep client/vendor database, with contacts and rates, manage projects and assign jobs to vendors, issue invoices, track payments, store and manage project files, generate business reports on turnover profit per client/manager etc.

More info »