Regardless the source, such error is caused by merging segments across paragraph breaks. One of the paragraphs has contained an image before merging. After the merging the image/illustration is moved to another paragraph. Usually you could see that due to new tags appearing in such merged paragraph.

When merging segments across paragraph breaks you always should try to generate a target file immediately after merging to make sure this works. And you should also try to open such target file in Word immediately - because even if target will be created it is also possible, that Word will not open it anymore.

Hi Jerzy – thanks for the correct diagnosis, found your comment useful when searching for this. Just to check – is there no way, as far as you know, of undoing the incriminating merge? For example by dividing the segments again?

Undo does not work then—because Studio was heavily crashing after such operations, SDL decided to limit Undo and make it unavailable after segments have been merged over paragraph breaks. So you cannot undo the action.

Splitting segments does not restore the original file structure. When merging over paragraphs, two different XML nodes are brought together, so the resulting xml has a different structure. When splitting, the remaining node is split into two—resulting in even more changes in the xml. This is not an exact description, but a very simplified one. Nonetheless, splitting will not help.

Undo does not work then—because Studio was heavily crashing after such operations, SDL decided to limit Undo and make it unavailable after segments have been merged over paragraph breaks. So you cannot undo the action.

Splitting segments does not restore the original file structure. When merging over paragraphs, two different XML nodes are brought together, so the resulting xml has a different structure. When splitting, the remaining node is split into two—resulting in even more changes in the xml. This is not an exact description, but a very simplified one. Nonetheless, splitting will not help.

Ah, you are right, I remember the crashing, and of course I’ve tried undoing now, in vain. I was hoping you might have a trick up your sleeve. A bit of a bummer that you don’t, as I am half way through a 5000-segment book.

I am torn between cursing Trados for all these little faults that add hours of work, and pondering in awe bout XML-node-level magic they must figure out.

Thanks for going out of your way to reply, Jerzy.

Well, there is a way out - as always. "Simply" start anew, possibly asking someone to pretranslate your file using perfect match or pretranslate from TM. Then, when merging segments, use this method: save file, merge segments, save target - when that is ok, continue. If not, close file WITHOUT saving, reopen, then use "Edit source" to bring the content of problematic paragraphs into the first one, translate this. In segments where wrong segmented text were add a space, change segment status to "Signo-off rejected" and lock.
Even if that reads complicated, it is not - it goes faster than you think. And this way you have a guarantee, that it will work.
The difference between edit source and merge is, that no segments are left empty.

Hey thanks! I am aware of most of these techniques, although I forgot about editing source. Thankfully this has not happened to me for a while. But this time I used another trick, and did a little regular expression find-and-replace of the source file in Word (search for [a-z] just after a paragraph mark), thereby getting rid of the need for merging.

I guess it’s the fact that I must take off my wordsmith hat and put on my “geeky programmer guy” hat that throws me off.

I am noting your tips, thank you.

Glad you've find your way around this reef.

In fact, a nowadays translator has to be not only a wordsmith, but—provided he/she is already one—needs to add a lot of extra skills on top of this. "Geeky programmer" guy is one of such

and I tried to add the file to the project again under a different name and now none of the files in my project are opening in trados. So, the regular trados shortcut: create the entire thing again...

Thank you!

I am not moaning, be careful with your language...

There is nothing intuitively indicating that I should do this. So, please be respectful a bit or dont write to my questions. 

I am quite respectful. And the fact you have to switch to the target language is known since adding files to a project is possible. It is not my fault, that you do not know the basic, but still post things like "So, the regular trados shortcut: create the entire thing again"–this is what I call moaning.