Segment

A sequence of characters

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A segment is a unit in a document or other files processed by a computer-aided translation (CAT) tool.

Segment content depends on the type of translated content:

• In a document, a segment is usually a sentence or an equivalent to a sentence.
• In a spreadsheet, a segment is a cell.
• In user interface resource files, a segment can be a menu option, a text on a button, a field label, an error message text, etc.

Segment is equivalent to a string. However, a segment can either be plain text or can also include tags or placeholders.

Segments coupled into source-target pairs are called translation units. Translation units are building blocks of a translation memory. Splitting text into segments allows to apply matches from translation memory and to identify repetitions in an input text.