Substituting text in TM with placeholder tag

Question

Dear all, 
 
 I have a large TM, where the customer uses a character as separator between description to be translated. The files for translation are always in Excel format. I prefer working with the separator character transformed into a placeholder tag (embedded content --> placeholder), because then I can use the QA feature to tell me if one is missing, and also visually it is much clearer to have a tag than a symbol in such long segments. So I was wondering if there is a way to transform all separator characters in the TM into placeholders tags, in order to get better matches out of the TM. Maybe using a regex rule? 
 
 TIA 
 Sabina

Paul · Answer

Hi Sabina, I guess the easiest way is to export to TMX and then search replace the separators. So for example I ran a quick test with this: This is a test - splitting with a placeholder And replaced it with this: This is a test splitting with a placeholder But I'd be sure to back up the orignal TM safely and also be very careful with your search and replace operation so you don't replace things that should not be changed just because the same separator is in use. But this technique worked in my simple test. I exported to TMX, made the changes, and then upgraded the new TMX. I also ran a quick test by creating a new TM with two TUs. One with a placeholder and one without. This way I could be sure I used the correct placeholder tags for the things I wanted to replace. I'd have to test more to know if this makes a diference but better to play safe. Regards

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Substituting text in TM with placeholder tag