lconvert do not keep beginning or ending spaces on plural form

This is a edge case but I haven't found any workaround so I'm raising an issue.
In my use case, we have the following sentence to translate: "Place %n boy(s) and %n girl(s) in the center. Then split %n pieces of candy equally between them."
To handle correctly the plural forms, I have three separate strings:

//~ singular Place %n boy 
//~ plural Place %n boys 
qsTr("Place %n boy(s) ", "First part of Place %n boy(s) and %n girl(s) in the center. Then split %n pieces of candy equally between them.", items.totalBoys)
//~ singular and %n girl in the center. 
//~ plural and %n girls in the center. 
qsTr("and %n girl(s) in the center. ", "Second part of Place %n boy(s) and %n girl(s) in the center. Then split %n pieces of candy equally between them.", items.totalGirls)

Note that there are spaces at the end of each sentence and in the singular/plural forms too.
If I generate a ts file using lupdate -silent file.js -ts test.ts (test.js just being the lines above), the spaces are not written in the extra-plural and extra-singular values.

Is there a way to fix it to allow an extra space at the end? I tried quoting the line but the quotes are also reported to the extra-plural and extra-singular values. The issue is the same if I try to put one more space at the beginning.