It looks to me like the real root cause is that the file was somehow incorrectly prepared. If it would be prepared correctly, quotation marks important for the XML structure would NOT appear as translatable, i.e. there would not be any chance to change them to something else.

Moreover, I can't think of any typographical rule which would cause a quotation mark (") to be changed to left opening bracket (()... are you sure you got the codes right?
If the Wikipedia page is correct, the Catalan rules are different: en.wikipedia.org/.../Quotation_mark

It looks to me like the real root cause is that the file was somehow incorrectly prepared. If it would be prepared correctly, quotation marks important for the XML structure would NOT appear as translatable, i.e. there would not be any chance to change them to something else.

Moreover, I can't think of any typographical rule which would cause a quotation mark (") to be changed to left opening bracket (()... are you sure you got the codes right?
If the Wikipedia page is correct, the Catalan rules are different: en.wikipedia.org/.../Quotation_mark