The Find and Replace feature sits on the right of the Home tab in the Editing group, and allows you to search for text in the source and target segments, and to replace text in the target segments only.
Tip
The use of Find and Replace is limited to files open in the Editor. To find and replace text in several SDXLIFFs at a time, use the SDL Batch Find and Replace tool or the QuickMerge feature, both of which we will discuss in Chapter 7, Working with Projects.
The main find and replace actions are as follows:
- To find text: Choose Home | Find (Ctrl + F). In the Find what field, type the text, select whether you want to search in the source or the target, and click Find Next.
- To replace text: Choose Home | Replace (Ctrl + H). In the Find what and Replace with fields, type the relevant text and click Find Next, followed by Replace to replace each instance one by one or Replace all to replace all instances in one go. Any changed segments are unconfirmed.
- Find variations of text: Wildcards are useful for finding text in different variations to help evaluate the translation of certain text in different contexts. To use wildcards, in the Find and Replace dialog box, select Use and choose Wildcards from the options list. Here are some examples that you can try out in the sample file:
- The
?character matches a single character at the specified position (including spaces). Thus,charity?workerfinds charity worker and charity-worker (but not charity and other such workers). - The
*character matches zero or more characters at the specified position. Thus,earn * dollarsfinds earn 80,000 dollars and earn either 50,000 or 80,000 dollars.
- The
- Use regular expressions: Regular expressions are a powerful means to find and replace text that matches certain patterns. As an example, the sample file contains several digits with measurement units (such as 2 cm). Some have a space between the digit and the unit, while others do not. To correct this inconsistency, we can use regular expressions to find instances with no intervening space and insert the space in all such instances in one operation. This is not possible with a standard find and replace operation, because the digits and numbers are different in each instance.
In the Find and Replace dialog box, select Use and choose Regular Expressions from the options list. In the sample file, searching for (d+)(cm|m) will find one or more digits followed immediately by the letters cm or m (with no space). To replace each instance found with the digit followed by a space and then the unit, in the Replace with field, type $1 $2. To learn more about regular expressions, try The 30 Minute Regex Tutorial at http://tinyurl.com/30min-regex. If you explore this topic further, be aware that SDL Trados Studio uses the .NET flavor of regular expressions.