Trados / Star Transit: Adding a space at the end of every sentence

Question

Dear Community, 
 I recently started working for a client who uses Star CLM/Transit as CAT-Tool, whereas I use Trados Studio. 
 Using the Star Transit Package Handler plugin, I am able to import the Transit packages my client sends me, translate it in Trados, et send back a Transit return package. 
 My client has now told me that everytime they import my return package, they need to manually add an empty space at the end of every sentence, as Star CLM/Transit doesn't automatically add an empty space between each sentence/segment (which is standard for other CAT Tools like Trados). 
 
 I was hoping someone could help me find a solution, since my client is asking me to fix this as they don't want to perform this manual action each time I deliver a translation? 
 Adding an empty space when I'm translating in Trados also isn't a suitable solution for me, as it will populate my TM with "faulty" segments (and I also believe that it wouldn't work). 
 
 Thanks in advance for any help.

Oana Nagy · Answer

Matthieu Waldburger this is the first that I have heard of this! Sebastien Desautel as I believe you both with Star Transit Packages have you any idea? In the meantime what you can do is the following: 
 
 Translate as you have been (correctly) 
 Ensure your TM is up to date (correctly) 
 Perform a batch find "." and replace with ". " <- ignoring the " 
 
 This could be done in Studio via using Ctrl+F or my preference would be using the SDLXLIFF toolkit as its allows you to do multiple changes under specific conditions. It also allows you to trace your commands safely before you select "apply" because understandably you dont want to make a mess of your translations. 
 
 Once you have accommodated for their request (odd??) then you create your return packages. 
 
 In the meantime I hope the wider community can help clarify a few points 
 Lyds

Sebastien Desautel · Answer

Hello Lydia Simplicio and Matthieu Waldburger , this is correct: one of the most "important" QA rules in Transit is to check the (leading and) trailing spaces!!! 
 If there's a trailing space in the source segment, put one in the target segment. If not, take care that there is no space in the target. Same for leading space (not so common in comparison). 
 The Transit QA rule will point any discrepancy. 
 Here a webpage from star about this: https://star-spain.com/en/blog/transittermstar-nxt-tooltips/do-not-miss-any-final-punctuation-or-trailing-spaces-when 
 
 I think your assumption Lydia that trailing spaces are mostly relevant in segments ending with full stops is correct, and your proposal points in the good direction. It would help to make a first "cleanup". You can use this enhanced regex to check only punctuation at the end of a segment and all kind of punctuation marks: search "([\.\?!:;])$", replace with "$1 " (ignoring ") For the remaining discrepancies, a QA check enhancement would be to crosscheck source and target, for example with these 2 rules

The first rule checks if a trailing space exists in the source but not in the target. 
 The second rule checks if a trailing space is in the target but not in the source. 
 
 I've tried to save segments with leading and trailing spaces in a TM, and the spaces have not been saved. So it looks like it's not relevant whether you are adding the spaces before or after confirming the segments. 
 Kind regards 
 S&eacute;bastien

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Trados / Star Transit: Adding a space at the end of every sentence