Working with special characters

It’s common to come across special characters like math signs (±, <, >..) or other special symbols (μ, ®, ™… ) when working on a project. While you don't need to be an expert in coding, it's important to handle these elements properly to ensure that the translated text is accurate and formatted correctly. 

In this article, we will provide you with some tips on what to do when you encounter special characters.

In some tasks, you will see special characters against a gray background. While you can’t edit or remove those characters, you can move them around: 

If you encounter any extra whitespaces around these characters, please make sure you remove them in translation if that’s the convention in your target language:

A special case is the non-breaking space

Non-breaking spaces prevent line breaks between certain words or characters. They are currently represented by an empty gray box:    .

In the above examples, the non-breaking space ensures we don’t end up with the month in one line and the day in the next one. But sometimes, the source text comes with seemingly random non-breaking spaces, and these may not be placed correctly in the target. For example: 

       The classic Kunqu Opera the Butterfly dream    produced by… 

❌ Die klassische Kunqu-Oper Der Schmetterlingstraum   , produziert von

In the German translation above, the non-breaking space has to be moved after the comma, so there are no extra whitespaces:

 ✅ Die klassische Kunqu-Oper Der Schmetterlingstraum,    produziert von

As a side note, if you encounter a non-breaking space or other special character that doesn’t need to be in the translation, please translate as you normally would, and move it to the end of the text. 

      Terms & Conditions 

✅ Términos  y Condiciones  & 

     The Company ‘ s headquarters

✅ La sede de la empresa ‘