Most probably you have received the translation as package and your PM has deactivated this option.

Even if it would be possible to change that, you should not really do that. Merging segments over paragraph breaks can be really dangerous. The structure of the target file can be seriously damaged, depending on the file format.

Before I tell you how to circumvent this, please tell me the file format you are translating. Are there tags in the segments you want to merge?

Hello Jerzy and thank you

Yes, changing this might be dangerous... But not doing so is polluting my TM with mixed translations for some specific and important terms :/

I'm working with PPT files. The specific segments I need to merge have no tags and contain just 1 word each (they work together, but have to be translated the other way round from German to French).

I would love to learn how to force a merge in this case!

Ingrid

For PPT it should work and I know your problem very well. If the segments are subsequent, you can indeed merge these—provided the words in question are not located in a table.

The easiest way to circumvent this issue is the following:

• Start creating your own project with proper resources (TM/TB)
• Instead of the source PPT take the sdlxliff file(s) from the target folder of your received package and use these as source files
• Complete the project creation
• Make sure merging segments is activated
• Translate as usual
• After merging segments try to save target and to open the target file
• If that works, continue
• Should this not work, do not save your sdlxliff file, close without saving
• Reopen the file for translation, however do NOT merge segments now, as this caused problems—translate these instead "as is", but do NOT confirm these segments, just change the status of those to "Sign-off rejected" and lock them; this way they won't update and mess up your TM
• When finished, simply copy the sdlxliff file(s) from the target folder of your project and paste these into the target folder of the customer package
• This will overwrite the files in the target folder of the package—this is indeed desired
• Run the "Translation count" batch task in the customer project
• Create the return package

Or simply ask the PM to activate the settings and send a new package

Thank you so much Jerzy!

I'll try this with a project that is already finished and delivered - should avoid any desaster ;)

There will be no disaster, if you follow these steps

I use this method since Studio exists, not only because of merging segments, but mainly because I use my own project templates with many individualized settings. It is faster than to adapt all these settings within a customer package.

Hi Ingrid and Jerzy

In these cases you can also use this procedure

1) close Trados

2) open the .sdlproj file related to the project with notepad++

3) go to the lines

          <Setting Id="AllowSourceEditing">False</Setting>
          <Setting Id="AllowMergeAcrossParagraphs">False</Setting>

4) change False to True ans save the .sdlproj file

5) reopen Trados

Now you can marge segments

Stefano

I wanted to avoid to disclose this information This is indeed manipulating customer settings and there might be reasons, why the settings are as they are. Please also note, that in case of Studio 2021 you will NOT find this section within the project file, if these options have not been activated by your PM. So changing the sdlproj file requires a bit more knowledge than this and is NOT to be recommended to anyone without xml knowledge.

In my case I asked the translation agency several times to create projects allowing merging, every time they sent me the source files and told me to create a new project.

I found this workaround quicker and everybody was happy.

Good to know that this will no longer be possible in projects created with Trados 2021.

Oh, it is still possible. Only not so easy...

Hi Jerzy, I tried you method and it worked just fine :) It's a bit of effort just to merge segments, but it helped keep my TM consistent

Thank you very much!

Hi Stefano and thanks for this suggestion, that seemed very easy to do. Unfortunately, I can't find the lines you mentionned in the text file... Not sure why :/

Hi Stefano and thanks for this suggestion, that seemed very easy to do. Unfortunately, I can't find the lines you mentionned in the text file... Not sure why :/

Ingrid Fischer said:

Unfortunately, I can't find the lines you mentionned in the text file...

The structure of the sdlproj file has been changed between some versions of Studio. The lines mentioned were there certainly in S2017, I am not sure, if 2019 did have these. In 2021 the sdlproj does not contain such lines, so you would need to add them. To do so, open a sdlproj file from a project you created and where the options in question are activated. This way you will see, where the lines are. Then copy these and paste into a sdlproj file from customer package.

Caution: manipulating this file that way may cause the project to be unusable. IMO the better way is to circumvent this problem via new own project.

Hi Jerzy,

You write that "In 2021 the sdlproj does not contain such lines" but I have just created a project with Trados 2021, opened the .sdlproj file with Notedpad++ and found these lines

          <Setting Id="AllowSourceEditing">True</Setting>
          <Setting Id="AllowMergeAcrossParagraphs">True</Setting>

just by using the find function and entering AllowSourceEditing

then I've changed the settings in Trados, reopened the file in Notepad++ and found

          <Setting Id="AllowSourceEditing">False</Setting>
          <Setting Id="AllowMergeAcrossParagraphs">False</Setting>

I don't know if these settings are hidden when creating a package because currently I'm working at home with Trados Freelance and I cannot create a package and test this.