Under Community Review

French quotation mark segmentation exception by default (to prevent closing guillemets from being treated as the start of a new segment)

By default, closing punctuation (period/full stop, exclamation point, question mark) plus a space triggers a new segment.

In French, punctuation can occur inside of the quotation marks, which are separated from the quote by a space (or non breaking space), like so:

« C'est important. », affirme-t-il.

In this instance, », affirme-t-il." would be a new, separate segment.

Sometimes, when nothing else follows, the new segment can be just the closing quotation mark (»), which is also a problem, as either way it creates an extra space in the target document between the last word of the quoted text and the quotation mark itself.

Of course, it's possible to merge the segments manually (which I do), but it would be much more logical for Trados to see that the quotation mark is part of the same segment by default.

This is why, after discussion with Paul Filkin on Twitter (see https://twitter.com/ceddytrad/status/1027478113096282112), I propose that:

  • full stop + space (or nbsp) + »
  • question mark + space (or nbsp) + »
  • and exclamation point + space (or nbsp) + »

be treated as default segmentation exceptions to the "full stop" and "other terminating punctuation" rules by Trados for TMs in which the source language is French.

Thank you in advance for your consideration!