MemoQ

The usefulness of translation memories is heavily affected by segmentation: if a translation memory is segmented differently than the document to be translated, there might be less leverage. Therefore it is important to keep segmentation consistent between documents and the translation memory. SRX is a standard for exchanging segmentation rules between different users and different translation environments. An SRX file saved in memoQ can be read in other translation tools, and, through SRX, memoQ can also load segmentation rules coming from foreign programs. memoQ supports version 1.0 of SRX.

The SRX standard

SRX files are XML (eXtensible Markup Language) files, and they are not normally meant to be edited manually, although the human eye can read them. The format was defined by the Localization Industry Standards Association (LISA: http://www.lisa.org), and the details on the standard can be read here: http://www.lisa.org/srx. For more information on the XML (eXtensible Markup Language) standard as such, turn to the World Wide Web Consortium: http://www.w3c.org/xml. SRX – just like memoQ’s segmentation rules – is based on the notion of regular expressions.

The two SRX modes of memoQ

The logic of SRX segmentation rules is slightly different from the logic of memoQ segmentation rules, therefore memoQ makes it possible to export into two formats: the detailed SRX format and the optimized SRX format. The detailed format is a better choice if the SRX file will be used in another copy of memoQ, while the optimized format is recommended if the SRX file will be used in other tools.

Both the SRX standard and memoQ handle rules and exceptions. A rule defines that a segment should end if certain conditions exist. The exception defines that a segment should not end if certain conditions exist. The difference lies in the fact that in memoQ you can define that an exception should be an exception only to a certain rule, whereas in SRX exceptions are global.