Merging/unmerging segments in XTM Workbench

Owned by Damian Rozmiarkowski (Unlicensed)
Last updated: Dec 05, 2024 by Damian Rozmiarkowski
4 min read

Paragraph vs. sentence

  1. It is only possible to merge or split segments between sentences that are in the same paragraph in a source file. In XTM Workbench, such segments are separated by the intermittent line:

  1. The solid line indicates a boundary between two paragraphs Neighboring segments in different paragraphs cannot be merged.

IMPORTANT!

You also cannot merge segments in the Review step. For more information see: What you can and cannot do in the Review step.

How to merge/unmerge segments?

Merging

Right-click on the second segment you want to merge, go to Segment options and click Merge with preceding segments.

In place of the second segment, you will see a message that it has been merged with the preceding segment.

Unmerging

Only segments that have previously been merged in XTM Workbench can be unmerged. Right-click on the second segment you want to unmerge, go to Segment options and click Unmerge with preceding segments.

TM matches in merged segments vs. Metrics

In Metrics, merged segments are still stored as two separate “counts". The tendency is that, when segments that have some TM matches, such as ICE or Leveraged matches, are merged, those TM matches become Fuzzy matches in the process. However, a new TM match is not reflected in the Metrics since the original TM match in the preceding segment always takes priority. In other words, the existence of new matches that result from merging segments do not affect the current project Metrics at all.

Consider the following scenario:

  1. We have a project that contains one ICE match in the first segment.

  1. Now we decide to merge first two segments. The existing match is transformed into a Fuzzy Match. However, there is still an ICE match in Metrics.

  1. If we now unmerge those segments, the TM match will revert to the original one.

IMPORTANT!

After you select the Show character counter option in XTM Workbench settings (Settings → General → XTM Workbench window → Show character counter), you might see what you could consider an "incorrect" character count in the bottom panel:

The actual value might be misleading. The number that is displayed at the bottom once a particular segment is active does not represent the total character count for the segment itself but shows the total length of the segments that can be merged with one another (note that there is an intermittent line between segments of this kind). In other words, the character count number is the total character count for the paragraph that a particular segment is part of. This is expected behavior.

The value on the left indicates the number of characters in the source paragraph and the value on the right indicates the number of characters in the target.

Repetitions

One of the restrictions imposed by this functionality is that it is not possible merge repeated segments.