How to create a segmentation rule for soft return in a Language Resource Template in Trados Studio

Add a segmentation rule for an existing translation memory, in Language Resources:

1. Open Trados Studio.
2. Go to Translation Memory View.
3. Click on File > Open > Open Translation Memory to add the translation memory you wish to change to the list of translation memories.
4. Right-click on the listed translation memory and select Settings from the menu>; this opens the Translation Memory Settings dialog box.
5. Click on Language Resources.
6. On the right-hand side highlight Segmentation Rules and press Edit.
7. In the Segmentation Rules dialog box, click Add to open the Add Segmentation Rule dialog box.
8. Enter for example Soft Return in the Description field.
9. Click Advanced View.
10. In the field Before break replace the existing regular expression with the following:

    [\w\p{P}]\s?[\n]+

11. In the field After break replace the existing regular expression with the following:
    \s?
12. Click OK several times to confirm the changes until you are back in the Translation Memory View.

The segmentation rule for soft returns will now be used when using this translation memory in translation.

 

Add segmentation rule to an existing Language Resource Template:

1. Open Trados Studio.
2. Go to the Translation Memory View.
3. Click File > Open > Language Resource Template to add the language resource template you wish to change to the list.
4. Right-click on the language resource template and select Settings from the menu to open the Language Resource Template Settings dialog box.
5. Select Segmentation Rules and press Edit.
6. In the Segmentation Rules dialog box, click the button Add to open the Add Segmentation Rule dialog box.
7. Enter for example Soft Return in the Description field.
8. Click Advanced View.
9. In the field Before break replace the existing regular expression with the following:

   [\w\p{P}]\s?[\n]+

10. In the field After break replace the existing regular expression with the following:
    \s?
11. Click OK several times to confirm the changes until you are back in the Translation Memory View.

The segmentation rule for soft returns will be used when basing a new translation memory on the modified language resource template.

You can also download three example language resource templates that you can open in Trados Studio or use for your translation. They are available in the following languages:

• English (United Kingdom)
• English (United States)
• German (Germany)

Download the file Language Resource Template_Soft.zip from the attachments area of this article and extract it to a location of your choice.

NOTES:

1. When working with XML files, you also need to select the option to  "Always preserve" whitespaces, under File > Options > File Types > [Your File Type] > Whitespaces, otherwise whitespaces are normalized and the rule does not "catch".
2. In case you do not want to modify the segmentation rules of your translation memory, for certain types of files you can also add the segmentation rule in the file type settings. Please see the following article for further details: How to add a custom segmentation rule for soft returns in the file type settings for MS Office file types in Trados Studio.

A rule for segmenting text at a soft return is not available by default in Trados Studio.

Common documents can contain such soft returns within a sentence, for example to apply a particular layout. If Trados Studio always segmented sentences with a soft return, this would lead to split sentences even if this is not wanted. In other, more rare cases, a soft return constitutes a segment boundary, and in this case it can be useful to create a segmentation rule.

More information about creating/editing translation memories, language resource templates and segmentation rules is available from our online help:

• Create a Translation Memory
• How to Create a Segmentation Rule
• How to Edit a Segmentation Rule
• Segmentation Rules
• How to Create a Language Resource Template
• How to create a segmentation rule for hard return (carriage return followed by new line) in a Language Resource Template in SDL Trados Studio