Regex

Regex is a powerful tool for linguists, project managers and engineers. It allows them to perform complex "find and replace" operations or quality checks that would be impossible manually. For example, a regex pattern could find every instance where a date is formatted as "MM/DD/YYYY" and flag it for conversion to "DD/MM/YYYY" for European markets. It can identify segments that contain numbers but no currency symbols, or find sentences that end with a double space.

In Trados and other CAT tools (Computer-assisted translation), regex is used to create custom Quality assurance rules, segment content correctly and filter specific types of text for translation (or exclusion). Mastering regex allows localization teams to handle complex file formats and ensure data consistency at scale.