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Why can't I merge two neighbouring segments in SDL Trados Studio 2009?
Thread poster: Fredrik Pettersson
Fredrik Pettersson
Fredrik Pettersson  Identity Verified
Hong Kong
Local time: 11:12
Member (2009)
English to Swedish
+ ...
Nov 15, 2010

Why can't I merge two neighbouring segments in SDL Trados Studio 2009?

In the number column for the segments furthest to the left, I press down the CTRL-key, left-click and hold mouse-button pressed while selecting row 1 and 2 (TU 1 and TU 2), release the mouse-button and CTRL-key to right-click so that I can view the menu for merging segments.

The second segment is now in a greyish pink colour whereas the first segment is in light blue colour.

But in the
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Why can't I merge two neighbouring segments in SDL Trados Studio 2009?

In the number column for the segments furthest to the left, I press down the CTRL-key, left-click and hold mouse-button pressed while selecting row 1 and 2 (TU 1 and TU 2), release the mouse-button and CTRL-key to right-click so that I can view the menu for merging segments.

The second segment is now in a greyish pink colour whereas the first segment is in light blue colour.

But in the popup-menu, the option "Merge segments" is shaded and non-selectable.

How should I be able to merge the two segments into one? It should be possible to do this even though the target segments already have been populated. I tried erasing the populated target segment though, with the same result: the option "Merge segments" is non-selectable.
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Walter Blaser
Walter Blaser  Identity Verified
Switzerland
Local time: 11:12
French to German
+ ...
Merging is not possible across paragraph boundaries Nov 15, 2010

If the Merge function is grayed out, this means that the segments are separated by a paragraph break. Studio does not allow to merge segments across a paragraph break.

This topic has already been widely discussed here. You are also invited to go to the website ideas.sdl.com and vote for the idea submitted to SDL to change this behavior and allow merging across paragraphs breaks.

Walter


 
Tapsa
Tapsa
Local time: 12:12
English to Finnish
Merging across paragraph boundaries would be a welcome option Nov 15, 2010

But as it is not yet possible, there is a cumbersome way to avoid the translation memory from getting filled with incomplete TU:s.

1. Translate the whole sentence in the first segment and confirm it.

2. Copy the remaining part of the source sentence to clipboard.

3. Select the first segment, right mouse-click the TU in the search window and select edit.

4. Paste the remaining part to the end of the source (add space between them if necessary) a
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But as it is not yet possible, there is a cumbersome way to avoid the translation memory from getting filled with incomplete TU:s.

1. Translate the whole sentence in the first segment and confirm it.

2. Copy the remaining part of the source sentence to clipboard.

3. Select the first segment, right mouse-click the TU in the search window and select edit.

4. Paste the remaining part to the end of the source (add space between them if necessary) and click OK. Now the translation memory is OK.

5. Select the second segment, clear possible translation in it, and mark it as translated (change segment status function).

This is very tiresome if there are many such cases, but if there are just a few of them, it is manageable.

When there are empty segments (as a result from step 5), sometimes Studio has refused to create target. I don't know the logic here, and maybe it doesn't happen anymore (I hope) after the latest SP3 patch.

This may of course affect the layout, but at least in my cases (books) the layout changes anyway as the length of translation is almost certainly different than the length of the source, and practically in every case the paragraph breaks or whatever they are would be removed by the layout designer after translation.





[Edited at 2010-11-15 10:38 GMT]
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Alexandre Oberlin
Alexandre Oberlin  Identity Verified
France
Local time: 11:12
English to French
+ ...
How to translate presentations ? Feb 10, 2011

Hi all,

Ain't the world full of flowcharts, figures, tables, etc. ? Didn't any CAT tool developer notice that phrases in such context are typically split on two or more lines to cope with box/callout/column width? You cannot meaningfully translate those bits of text from e.g. English or German to a Latin language like French or Spanish because the order of the words is reversed. It is also true in the other direction of course.

It amazes me how such basic things are st
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Hi all,

Ain't the world full of flowcharts, figures, tables, etc. ? Didn't any CAT tool developer notice that phrases in such context are typically split on two or more lines to cope with box/callout/column width? You cannot meaningfully translate those bits of text from e.g. English or German to a Latin language like French or Spanish because the order of the words is reversed. It is also true in the other direction of course.

It amazes me how such basic things are still not solved after more than 20 years of translation software, while our computers are crawling under FFF (Fancy Fat and Features) routinely found in those applications.

Cheers,

Alexandre
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Alexandre Melo
Alexandre Melo  Identity Verified
Brazil
Local time: 07:12
English to Portuguese
+ ...
Why can't I merge two neighboring segments in SDL Trados Studio 2009? Jul 7, 2011

Yes, this thread is old and there is no solution. From English into Latin languages, this problem appears quite often. For instance, I'm struggling right now with "Caustic Soda". I need to translate this as "Soda Cáustica" (PT-BR). However, I have segment 1 - Caustic; segment 2 - Soda, on the source side. I just can't translate, otherwise I'll get "Cáustica Soda", unless I damage my TM using wrong translations.
It's a shame that SDL hasn't solved this. Someone here said: "It's more than
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Yes, this thread is old and there is no solution. From English into Latin languages, this problem appears quite often. For instance, I'm struggling right now with "Caustic Soda". I need to translate this as "Soda Cáustica" (PT-BR). However, I have segment 1 - Caustic; segment 2 - Soda, on the source side. I just can't translate, otherwise I'll get "Cáustica Soda", unless I damage my TM using wrong translations.
It's a shame that SDL hasn't solved this. Someone here said: "It's more than 20 years of CAT tools..." Yes, that's a shame, a neglect and a disregard to customers.
Regards,
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Aude Sylvain
Aude Sylvain  Identity Verified
France
Local time: 11:12
English to French
+ ...
"sign-off rejected" status Jul 7, 2011

Alexandre Melo wrote:
I just can't translate, otherwise I'll get "Cáustica Soda", unless I damage my TM using wrong translations.


Hello,

I share your frustration since I often meet that problem, translating from EN into a Latin language.

The TM update issue can be solved however: if you manually mark the segments concerned (in your case "Caustic>Soda" and "soda>cáustica") with the status "sign-off rejected" (right-click on the segment>Change segment status), the translation will appear, with the right word order, in your bilingual and target files but won't be saved in your main TM during the update TM process.


 
Evonymus (Ewa Kazmierczak)
Evonymus (Ewa Kazmierczak)  Identity Verified
Poland
Local time: 11:12
Member (2010)
English to Polish
+ ...
merging Jul 7, 2011

Alexandre Oberlin wrote:

Hi all,

Ain't the world full of flowcharts, figures, tables, etc. ? Didn't any CAT tool developer notice that phrases in such context are typically split on two or more lines to cope with box/callout/column width?
Alexandre



You can merge and split lines easily in DVX.
Ewa


 
ahmadwadan.com
ahmadwadan.com  Identity Verified
Kuwait
Local time: 13:12
English to Arabic
+ ...
This sucks! Feb 5, 2012

I have the same issue here with SDL Studio 2011 and there is no solution till date!

 
Natalie
Natalie  Identity Verified
Poland
Local time: 11:12
Member (2002)
English to Russian
+ ...

Moderator of this forum
SITE LOCALIZER
Where is the problem, actually? Feb 5, 2012

Check the source before opening in Studio - and you will have no problems with merging.

 
Gyula Erdesz
Gyula Erdesz
Hungary
Local time: 11:12
Member (2009)
English to Hungarian
+ ...
One question. How? Feb 5, 2012

Natalie wrote:

Check the source before opening in Studio - and you will have no problems with merging.



What do you exactly mean "check source"?

If you receive a ttx/sdlxliff file from your client, how can you find and eliminate these erroneous paragraph breaks before you import the file in Studio?

I am afraid that your suggestion is only valid for simple office files.


 
Dominique Pivard
Dominique Pivard  Identity Verified
Local time: 12:12
Finnish to French
memoQ can do it Feb 6, 2012

Alexandre Oberlin wrote:
Didn't any CAT tool developer notice that phrases in such context are typically split on two or more lines to cope with box/callout/column width?

Some did: Kilgray, for instance. In memoQ, there's no problem joining such segments. I use it quite a lot with PowerPoint presentations, in the cases you mention (extraneous paragraph marks are hard to detect in PowerPoint beforehand, since they are not visible).


 
Jerzy Czopik
Jerzy Czopik  Identity Verified
Germany
Local time: 11:12
Member (2003)
Polish to German
+ ...
Only when it will not harm the file structure Feb 6, 2012

Dominique Pivard wrote:

Alexandre Oberlin wrote:
Didn't any CAT tool developer notice that phrases in such context are typically split on two or more lines to cope with box/callout/column width?

Some did: Kilgray, for instance. In memoQ, there's no problem joining such segments. I use it quite a lot with PowerPoint presentations, in the cases you mention (extraneous paragraph marks are hard to detect in PowerPoint beforehand, since they are not visible).


So in practical terms it means never. I have translated several projects in MemoQ, prepared by an external project manager and this option was never available.


 
Dominique Pivard
Dominique Pivard  Identity Verified
Local time: 12:12
Finnish to French
Online project with online documents? Feb 6, 2012

Jerzy Czopik wrote:
So in practical terms it means never. I have translated several projects in MemoQ, prepared by an external project manager and this option was never available.

Maybe you were working on an online project with online documents? In such a situation, segmentation cannot be changed. However, in an online project with desktop documents, you can change segmentation (eg. join and split segments). And you can do it of course on a local project created by you on your computer. If you always work in online memoQ projects with online documents, then indeed you will never be able to joing segments. However, not all memoQ users work exclusively in such projects. For instance, I have never worked once in such a project. But then, I have never had to translate a single TTX so far in my career either.


 
Jerzy Czopik
Jerzy Czopik  Identity Verified
Germany
Local time: 11:12
Member (2003)
Polish to German
+ ...
Projects were downloaded from the server and stored locally Feb 6, 2012

And the help from MemoQ somewhere told me, that it is not always possible to merge, for example not in Open Office documents.
But leaving that alone, the missing ability to edit source or (better and) merge over paragraph boundaries is indeed one of the weaker sides of Studio.
Nevertheless, there are so many advantages, that I still prefer to use it instead of anything else.


 
Pia Sander
Pia Sander  Identity Verified
Denmark
Local time: 11:12
Member (2011)
English to Danish
+ ...
What about PDFs? Nov 6, 2012

Natalie wrote:

Check the source before opening in Studio - and you will have no problems with merging.


It is a problem when the source document is a PDF and not so easily editable. However, it makes the target document look awful.


 
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