Fixing "50050: Source segment is empty!" error in SDL Trados 2007

Imagine you have a large translation memory in Translator's Workbench (Trados 2007) format with thousands of units and one day, when you try to open the TM, you get this error: "50050: Source segment is empty!" You cannot use the TM nor export it and re-import into a new one. There might be a hope...

You may try to use the emergency export feature, which is (unfortunately) not a part of the standard UI of the Workbench. Follow this procedure. You will need a binary text editor, such as PSPad.

Open the TMW in binary editor. Move to address about 0500h. You should find a binary pattern like this:

01 00 00 00 00 15 00 00 02 00 00 00 40 20 00 00

Change 13th a 14th position to "00", i.e. the resulting pattern looks like this:

01 00 00 00 00 15 00 00 02 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

Save the file. When you open the TM in Workbench, an emergency export will be initialized which will export the segments into import file to be imported into an empty translation memory.