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Text direction marks

Text direction marks

Owned by Damian Rozmiarkowski
Last updated: Feb 19, 2025
2 min read

Introduction

Text direction marks are indicators of text direction. In an XTM Cloud project in which the text is translated from a left-to-right source language to a right-to-left target language (e.g. Arabic, Hebrew), these markers are added to specify which part is written in the original left-to-right manner and which part is in right-to-left format.

List of Right to Left languages

  • Arabic.

  • Azxerbaijani (South).

  • Balochi.

  • Dari.

  • Divehi.

  • Fula (Adlam).

  • Fula (Arabic).

  • Gilaki.

  • Hassaniyya.

  • Hausa.

  • Hausa (Ajami).

  • Hebrew.

  • Hindko.

  • Mazanderani.

  • Modern Standard Arabic.

  • Pahari-Potwari.

  • Pashto.

  • Persian.

  • Pulaar.

  • Punjabi.

  • Punjabi Eastern.

  • Punjabi Western.

  • Rohingya (Myanmar).

  • Saraiki.

  • Sylheti.

  • Syriac.

  • Tajik.

  • Urdu.

  • Uyghur.

  • Yiddish.

  • Yiddish (Israel).

  • Yiddish (USA)

IMPORTANT!

Windows operating system: install the required language before changing the keyboard!

How do they work?

These text direction marks are not displayed as inline tags because they are not really inline tags but special characters.

Example:

In this example, {LRM} and {LRE} are text direction marks. They can be inserted in XTM Workbench manually. To do so, in XTM Workbench, display the Insert inline tag or special character table by selecting Alt + 0 key. You see this screen:

Untitled11.png

If a text direction mark is not added in XTM Workbench, it is not visible there. It will be visible in a target file if you use the diff tool (a data comparison tool) once you generate and download the target file from XTM Cloud.

Example:

image (17).png

Text direction marks are automatically added to the target file to distinguish between the left-to-right and right-to-left parts of the text.

If you wish to disable the addition of text direction marks to target files, do not hesitate to contact the XTM International Support team. They will assist you in making the necessary adjustments. To raise a ticket with the XTM International Support team, visit our Support Portal.

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