Stray space and comma in Search page meta title

The default meta title for the Search page for, say, a search for keyword ‘hotel’ NEAR San Francisco appears as:

Place search results for hotel, Near , Near San Francisco – Site Title

I can see how this is created in the Titles & Meta Settings for the Search page:

%%pt_plural%% search results for %%search_term%%, Near %%search_near%% %%sep%% %%sitename%%

Obviously I can get rid of the duplicated Near wording by editing the text, but I’m still left with a stray space and comma which I assume is created by the %%search_near%% tag?

So the title then appears as follows:

Place search results for hotel , Near San Francisco – Site Title

How can I get rid of the ” ,” (comma and preceding space)? I thought it might be possible through the translation file but it doesn’t appear to be the case.

Many thanks