When you echo a list, tcl will print out the whole list giving the impression that the WHOLE list is a single element of the list.
tcl>set tmp [list blah blah blah]
tcl>echo $tmp
blah blah blah
tcl>echo [lindex $tmp 1]
blah
tcl>
When you return values, you have to make sure that you return a string as a single element.
Try something like this:
set newString [string range $input 0 28]
set xlateOutVals [list “$newString”]