You can avoid this when you put everything in a single table. You should also avoid to use brackets as delimiters for text, use normal braced arguments why can be grouped without problems.
\startsetups[arde] \setupTABLE[c][1][rightframe=on] \stopsetups
\def\startarde {\bTABLE[frame=off,width=.5\textwidth,setups=arde,split=yes]}
\def\stoparde {\eTABLE}
\define[2]\arde {\bTR \bTD#1\eTD \bTD#2\eTD \eTR}
\setuptolerance[tolerant,stretch]
\starttext \startarde \arde{\input knuth }{\input knuth } \arde{\input knuth }{\input knuth } \stoparde \stoptext
Wolfgang
That does not work in my case, where in the right column a r2l-text (arabic) is set. See this example: \startsetups[arde] \setupTABLE[c][1][rightframe=on] \stopsetups \def\startarde {\bTABLE[frame=off,width=.5\textwidth,setups=arde,split=yes]} \def\stoparde {\eTABLE} \define[2]\arde {\bTR \bTD#1\eTD \bTD#2\eTD \eTR} \setuptolerance[tolerant,stretch] \starttext \arde{\input knuth }{\setupalign[r2l] Eigentlich steht hier etwas Arabisches.} \stoptext The two texts are just written one after another, no table, no columns. Huseyin