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Wrestling with those pesky quotation marks?
Thread poster: Jan Kapoun
Jan Kapoun
Jan Kapoun  Identity Verified
Czech Republic
Local time: 11:23
English to Czech
+ ...
Oct 17, 2020

Wrestling with those pesky quotation marks? Writing your correct national quotation marks on your standard PC keyboard can be a pain. Especially if your opening and closing marks are different. (e.g. „ “). This is how I do it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsC8eIxQryM

I use this software to take care of quotation marks for me. Do you have a better solution? Plea
... See more
Wrestling with those pesky quotation marks? Writing your correct national quotation marks on your standard PC keyboard can be a pain. Especially if your opening and closing marks are different. (e.g. „ “). This is how I do it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsC8eIxQryM

I use this software to take care of quotation marks for me. Do you have a better solution? Please share your ideas!
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Thayenga
Thayenga  Identity Verified
Germany
Local time: 11:23
Member (2009)
English to German
+ ...
A Word document Oct 18, 2020

I type the quotation marks on a Word document, then just copy paste them. It works every time, especially when translating subtitles.

Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida
Nurettin Ceylan
Christopher Schröder
 
Riccardo Schiaffino
Riccardo Schiaffino  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 04:23
Member (2003)
English to Italian
+ ...
I wrote a program in AutoHotkey Oct 18, 2020

I was unsatisfied with the “smart quotes” options offered by SDL Trados Studio, memoQ and MS Word, so I developed a short program in AutoHotkey that allows me to write several different styles of smart quotes: “double curly quotes”, ‘single curly quotes’, «French quotes», and even apostrophes (like in “you’ll”), n-dashes –, and m-dashes —, while at the same time leaving me free to also use "straight double quotes" and 'straight single quotes' (which are necessary for suc... See more
I was unsatisfied with the “smart quotes” options offered by SDL Trados Studio, memoQ and MS Word, so I developed a short program in AutoHotkey that allows me to write several different styles of smart quotes: “double curly quotes”, ‘single curly quotes’, «French quotes», and even apostrophes (like in “you’ll”), n-dashes –, and m-dashes —, while at the same time leaving me free to also use "straight double quotes" and 'straight single quotes' (which are necessary for such things as indicating lengths in feet and inches, as in 5'11").

The program remains unobtrusively in the background, and I have versions that work only with memoQ and Studio, or with all programs.


[Edited at 2020-10-18 05:24 GMT]

[Edited at 2020-10-18 06:57 GMT]
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Elena Feriani
 
Jan Kapoun
Jan Kapoun  Identity Verified
Czech Republic
Local time: 11:23
English to Czech
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
Yes, it does dashes and hyphens, too! Oct 18, 2020

Riccardo Schiaffino wrote:

I was unsatisfied with the “smart quotes” options offered by SDL Trados Studio, memoQ and MS Word, so I developed a short program in AutoHotkey that allows me to write several different styles of smart quotes: “double curly quotes”, ‘single curly quotes’, «French quotes», and even apostrophes (like in “you’ll”), n-dashes –, and m-dashes —, while at the same time leaving me free to also use "straight double quotes" and 'straight single quotes' (which are necessary for such things as indicating lengths in feet and inches, as in 5'11").

The program remains unobtrusively in the background, and I have versions that work only with memoQ and Studio, or with all programs.


[Edited at 2020-10-18 05:24 GMT]

[Edited at 2020-10-18 06:57 GMT]




Yes, same here: press Shift + the red circled key to write your predefined quotes( e.g. „ “ ):
... press Ctrl + the red circled key to write standard straight quotes ( " " ):
... press Ctrl + the green circled key to write single straight quotes ( ' ' ):
keyb

And it does dashes and hyphens, too! Among many other things....

See this video on text editing features:
https://youtu.be/de3FtqP-lwA


 
Matthias Brombach
Matthias Brombach  Identity Verified
Germany
Local time: 11:23
Member (2007)
Dutch to German
+ ...
Carlinga.exe Oct 18, 2020

I still use carlinga, a small (freeware) tool recommended by a colleague a couple of years ago. But you still need to type three characters to produce opening (,",) and closing (,"^) quotation marks, therefore I would give „Bohemicus“ a try.

 
Stepan Konev
Stepan Konev  Identity Verified
Russian Federation
Local time: 13:23
English to Russian
Share the script please Oct 18, 2020

Riccardo Schiaffino wrote:
I developed a short program in AutoHotkey.

Would you be so kind as to share your script here? Thank you.


Kaspars Melkis
 
Jan Kapoun
Jan Kapoun  Identity Verified
Czech Republic
Local time: 11:23
English to Czech
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
Thank you Thayenga, Matthias, Riccardo and Stepan for your info and feedback! Oct 19, 2020

Thank you Thayenga, Matthias, Riccardo and Stepan for your info and feedback!

 
Dan Lucas
Dan Lucas  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 10:23
Member (2014)
Japanese to English
Changing quotation marks automagically Oct 19, 2020

Jan Kapoun wrote:
I use this software to take care of quotation marks for me. Do you have a better solution? Please share your ideas!

I don't know if it's better, but Phrase Express works very well for this kind of thing. I have three opening parentheses ((( set up to produce “ and three closing parentheses ))) set up to produce ”. In most software such as Word and Studio, the auto-generated quotation marks work fine for me, but I don't have to deal with European languages.

In Dragon Naturally Speaking I use "open curly" to generate “ and "close curly" to generate ”. This too works without problems.

Regards,
Dan


 
esperantisto
esperantisto  Identity Verified
Local time: 13:23
Member (2006)
English to Russian
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SITE LOCALIZER
Solutions Oct 19, 2020

1. Linux. This is the best option as you don’t have to do anything special. Just use compose sequences such as Compose > > to get ». Or modify your layout(s) as you wish, here is a good reading (in Russian): https://unixforum.org/viewtopic.php?t=49203 .
2. Android. There are quite a lot of choices, my favori
... See more
1. Linux. This is the best option as you don’t have to do anything special. Just use compose sequences such as Compose > > to get ». Or modify your layout(s) as you wish, here is a good reading (in Russian): https://unixforum.org/viewtopic.php?t=49203 .
2. Android. There are quite a lot of choices, my favorite is Multiling O Keyboard.
3. Windows. Ilya Birman’s layout.
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Stepan Konev
Stepan Konev  Identity Verified
Russian Federation
Local time: 13:23
English to Russian
Autocorrect ((( for “ Oct 19, 2020

Dan Lucas wrote:
I have three opening parentheses ((( set up to produce “ and three closing parentheses ))) set up to produce ”.

Actually, you don't even need an app for that. Any CAT tool that supports the autocorrect functionality can do this.
For example: Ctrl+Shift+O for memoQ => create a 'New list' and add whatever you like.
The same autocorrect list is available in SDL Trados Studio, however, as many things with Trados, you cannot just invoke the list with a shortcut. You have to employ all your deductive reasoning to find it (File>Options>Editor>Autocorrect) and then browse to that place again and again whenever you need to add another pair of symbols. Add ((( on the left and “ on the right. And don't forget to press Add to save this pair in the list. Then Add ))) on the left and ” on the right and press Add again.

[Edited at 2020-10-19 09:42 GMT]


Dan Lucas
 
Dan Lucas
Dan Lucas  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 10:23
Member (2014)
Japanese to English
Ease of management Oct 19, 2020

Stepan Konev wrote:
Actually, you don't even need an app for that. Any CAT tool that supports the autocorrect functionality can do this.

You're right about Studio - and Word has similar functionality - but I prefer to have as many of my shortcuts and macros defined in one place as possible, rather than relying on app-specific logic.

Dan


Stepan Konev
 
James Plastow
James Plastow  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 10:23
Member (2020)
Japanese to English
Autohotkey and Unicodes Oct 19, 2020

You can type any quotation mark (or other symbol) directly from its unicode very easily in Autohotkey.
eg

^+2::sendinput, {U+201C} ;meaning: press ctrl shift 2 for “
^+3::sendinput, {U+201D} ;meaning: press ctrl shift 3 for ”

The full list of unicode characters is here
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unicode_characters
... See more
You can type any quotation mark (or other symbol) directly from its unicode very easily in Autohotkey.
eg

^+2::sendinput, {U+201C} ;meaning: press ctrl shift 2 for “
^+3::sendinput, {U+201D} ;meaning: press ctrl shift 3 for ”

The full list of unicode characters is here
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unicode_characters

[Edited at 2020-10-19 11:53 GMT]
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Dan Lucas
Stepan Konev
 
Samuel Murray
Samuel Murray  Identity Verified
Netherlands
Local time: 11:23
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
I use an AutoIt script Oct 19, 2020

Jan Kapoun wrote:
Writing your correct national quotation marks on your standard PC keyboard can be a pain.


I use an AutoIt script for this. The shortcuts are:

Shift+Ctrl+Space = non-breaking space
Alt+Ctrl+fullstop = ellips
Ctrl+NumMinus = en-dash
Shift+Ctrl+NumMinus = em-dash
Ctrl+( = single opening quote
Ctrl+) = single closing quote (or curly apostrophe)
Ctrl+Shift+( = double opening quote
Ctrl+Shift+) = double closing quote
Shift+Ctrl+Alt+Q = exit the script

Some programs e.g. MS Word have existing shortcuts for these (or you can set up autocorrect shortcuts for them), but the nice thing about an AutoIt script (or AutoHotKey script, too, I suppose) is that the shortcuts that you get used to are always the same, regardless of what program you're working in (or even in a web browser or e.g. online CAT tool).

The latest version of this script is here:
http://www.leuce.com/autoit/idiomhotkeysv6.zip
Obviously the script can be adapted easily for any language's type of quotation marks.

James Plastow wrote:
^+2::sendinput, {U+201C} ;meaning: press ctrl shift 2 for “
^+3::sendinput, {U+201D} ;meaning: press ctrl shift 3 for ”


Long ago, when AutoIt scripts could not be in Unicode, I had to specify these characters by their Unicode codes. But the current version of AutoIt can handle direct Unicode input, so as long as the script is edited in a program that doesn't break the characters, I no longer need to figure out what each character's code is. The latest version of AutoHotKey also supports this, so you can simply put this in your AHK script:

^+2::“
^+3::”


[Edited at 2020-10-19 12:47 GMT]


 
Samuel Murray
Samuel Murray  Identity Verified
Netherlands
Local time: 11:23
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
Carlinga's URL Oct 19, 2020

Matthias Brombach wrote:
I still use Carlinga, a small (freeware) tool recommended by a colleague a couple of years ago.


It can be downloaded here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20160924224636/http://catology.boisset.eu/Carlinga
It comes with an extensive help file listing all of the available shortcuts.

Carlinga is an AHK script, so you can edit the AHK file in a text editor (to remove all the shortcuts that you don't want to use) and then run it using the latest version of AutoHotKey, if you want.


 
Jan Kapoun
Jan Kapoun  Identity Verified
Czech Republic
Local time: 11:23
English to Czech
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
Thank you all! Oct 19, 2020

Thank you everyone for your feedback!
Unfortunately, this program has obviously stirred lots of bad blood on this portal, so I will not be able to post any more videos.
Yes, this is my software, I spent hundreds if not thousands of hours developing it... it's worth trying.


 
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