Every year, I translate an annual report with lots of tables with figures and percentages from English into German. The Word document I receive looks pretty straightforward, i.e. if I type my translation right into the Word doc (without using Studio), everything seems fine, meaning I can change the English decimal point to the German decimal comma, and vice versa. And the percentage sign comes after the figure (to the right of the figure), so everything seems fine.

But I translate the Word doc using SDL Trados Studio 2017, of course. When I am finished and use “Save target as,” however, some of the figures in some of the cells of some of the tables get messed up, e.g. English:

2.34%

is translated by Studio as

%2,34

when it should actually be:

2,34 %.

So Studio places the percentage symbol in front of the figure!

I am sure this is due to the fact that the Word doc was originally created in Hebrew (writing from right to left), then translated into English, and then I translate the English translation into German.

So I am sure the problem is due to the original Hebrew formatting of Excel spreadsheet cells as percentages, and these Excel spreadsheets were then probably inserted in the Word doc, but still somehow with their original Hebrew formatting hidden somewhere.

And Studio seems to change these cells back to their original Hebrew formatting. Although my Studio settings are English into German, of course.

How can I change this back in the final Word document that Studio produces? How do I get Word to change my final translation from %2,34 to 2,34 %? (Overwriting all those cells manually works for some of the cells, but not for all of them! The percentage symbol will always “jump” to the left, no matter what I do …)

Or even better, how do I get Studio to ignore any Hebrew formatting?

By the way, this also applies to the asterisk symbol. If, in a table cell, there is an asterisk or a footnote (with an explanation following below), like for example, in English,

123.456*

then Studio gives me back this German translation:

*123,456

when it should actually be:

123,456*

Any help would be much appreciated …

Thanks and best regards,

Stef