question: public static String trimWord ( final String word ) { String tempword = word . toLowerCase ( ) ; while ( tempword . length ( ) > 0 ) { final char c = tempword . charAt ( 0 ) ; if ( c == '\'' ) { tempword = tempword . substring ( 1 ) ; } else { break ; } } while ( tempword . length ( ) > 0 ) { final char c = tempword . charAt ( tempword . length ( ) - 1 ) ; if ( c == '\'' ) { tempword = tempword . substring ( 0 , tempword . length ( ) - 1 ) ; } else { break ; } } return tempword ; }
target:  Transform the given word to lower case and trim special characters at beginning and end to use this normalized form as key in the word list.