LTR Run and RTL run in Trados

Question

Hi Paul, 
 I would like to know how I can set up "LTR run" and "RTL run" in Trados. I have seen the video explaining how to do it in Word ( www.youtube.com/watch , but I cannot get the same result in Trados. 
 Thank you

Paul · Answer

Far P 
 To set it up is easy as it's already on the toolbar. But it will depend on the filetype you are translating as not all filetypes will support these controls and therefore they won't be available to you on the toolbar, or they may simply not work: 
 
 If you hover over them you'll also see there's a keyboard shortcut available that you can also customise:

Shai Nave · Answer

Far P 
 Word's rtl run and Studio handles bidirectionality in a similar but different way. 
 While rtl run may seem more convenient at first, if one is working with BiDi texts on at least a semi-regular basis, I strongly encourage learning to use the directionality control characters. This gives a more complete control over the directionality of any text. 
 I also suggest using a text expansion/replacement tool (such as PhraseExpress, Text Expander, Espenso, Lintalist, BeefText, or a simple AHL script ) to replace a specific string with a control character. For example: typing ;rtl will be replaced with the RTL control character. Better yet, associate the control character (in most cases, you only need two: rtl and ltr) to a keyboard shortcut. This has the benefit of working globally, i.e. in unsupported Studio file types, as well as outside of Studio. 
 
 In the example you've asked about, you should type the text in Arabic in the following order: 
 10 -> [Space/non-breaking space] -> [RTL control character] -> X - > [RTL control character] -> [Space/non-breaking space] -> 7 -> [Space/non-breaking space] -> [RTL control character] -> X -> [RTL control character] -> [Space/non-breaking space] -> 91 -> [Space/non-breaking space] -> cm. 
 
 Very briefly: Latin characters have an intrinsic LTR directionality. Hebrew/Arabic/some other characters have an intrinsic RTL directionality. Numbers and punctuation marks have neutral directionality, which means they don't affect directionality. 
 The problem in your case is that the text field has an RTL directionality but X is a Latin character with a LTR directionality. Because number have neutral directionality, they simply inherent the directionality of anything that came before them (this could be more tricky in some cases where they inherit the directionality from the overarching paragraph, but when working in Studio and most other text fields you will likely run into you can safely treat numbers as inheriting the directionality of the printed character than came immediately before them), in this case X which has a left-to-right directionality, and this breaks the correct flow the sentence from that point forward. To rectify this, one has to place an RTL control character after the X character (and I recommend adding one before the X as well because there are some quirks in how some programs might interpret the control characters, so this more of a safety measure) to restore the correct directionality.

Paul · Answer

Far P 
 There are several ways to tackle this, but before I explain something I'm almost certain you already know how to do please make sure you are using this version of Trados Studio: 
 Trados Studio 2022 - 17.0.3.11695 MultiTerm 2022 - 17.0.0.1685 
 This is because we have done some work improving the ability to work effectively with BiDi languages in the last few CUs for Trados Studio 2022 because some changes around improving the display of fonts in this version actually had a negative effect on their use. 
 In this version, 17.0.3.11695 you need to do two things in order to get auto propagation and number recognition working correctly for this example: 
 
 turn off measurements in the TM Language Resources: 
 add a space between the LRM and the first number because this seems to interfere with number recognition (we need to fix this) This causes a perfect result for me (ignoring the additional space): 
 
 All I did was type the arabic for cm as you did, a space, then added the LRM and then added the numbers. This works ok... but it is probably because I'm using CU3. So please try it with this version first.

Paul · Answer

Far P 
 I can recommend this very old, but still the best article I've ever read, on BiDi in Trados by Shai Nave : 
 https://translationtherapy.com/understanding-how-to-work-with-bi-directionality-bidi-text/

Paul · Answer

Far P 
 Let's take a look! 
 Here's my sdlxliff. What does it look like to you? 
 en-ar_measurement.docx_en-GB_ar-EG.zip 
 In word it looks like this:

Trados Studio > 1. Trados Studio

LTR Run and RTL run in Trados

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