Is there any solution to the colon translation bug?

Mac OS X has reserved characters that cannot be used in file or folder names. One of them is the colon: It is used by the operating system in paths to designated separate directories and files, exactly as Microsoft uses the backslash character for the same purposed.
However, Mac OS X is 'supposed' to translate colons to another character when saving files from within an application or the Mac OS X Save dialog. The typical translation is to forward slash or dash. For example, "Bug: Colon Translation" becomes "Bug- Colon Translation". Of if I am saving a web page to a PDF, the source name of an article with this title would change to "Bug/ Colon Translation".
The bug: The above colon translation process does NOT work reliably in the Mac OS X Save Dialog with reliability. I guestimate that 95% of the time the translation of colons in source titles does NOT work. Using the example of translating a web article title to a PDF saved file, the results are typically the following: "Untitled.pdf". This forces the user to copy then paste in the actual title of the article. THEN, 100% of the time, the colon translation actually works. For example, if I have a web article titled "Bug: Colon Translation", it is extremely rare for that title to be anything but BLOCKED, resulting in 'Untitled.PDF' as the resulting title in the dialog box. When I then copy and paste the source title into the title area, replacing 'Untitled', I get: "Bug- Colon Translation".
What will happen perhaps 5% of the time: The colon translation of the source title will actually work. When this occurs, using my example above, the OS provides the following translation: "Bug/ Colon Translation". Note that when it works in this situation I get a forward slash, not a dash.
I research, read and save web articles all day long. A lot of articles use colons. I have to contend with this bug all day long every day. This bug is many years old. I can't recall when it started. But it certainly has been consistent in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, 10.6 Snow Leopard and now 10.7 Lion. Three versions of Lion are enough for me to realize that Apple is either oblivious to this bug or they don't care.
Clearly, the colon translation CAN work. It is MEANT to work. No one can dispute that. The user is NOT supposed to be messed over with 'Untitled.PDF' files. They are MEANT to have actual PDF file titles, as seen in our example above.
Therefore the question:
Is there any solution to the colon translation bug?
It is incredibly annoying.

My guess is they don't care. Most likely they're illiterate and don't know what a colon is for. They probably think it's a little-used character. Remember: these are the people who don't know the difference between "deprecate" and "depreciate".
I have the same colon problem as you do. But it's not the biggest problem I have encountered in Lion. If it was only that I'd be Mr. Delighted with Lion. There's worse than having a colon - uh -  that won't cooperate. A lot worse, in Lion.

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