Search & replace multiple words/terms in pre-translated segments?

Question

I often find myself doing multiple search & replace of the same words again and again in pre-translated segments and I'm thinking there's got to be a way to automate that somewhow, perhaps using a script. Any ideas?

Paul · Answer

Rene Morin Michael Schroeder 
 Yes... I think this is a good example of the TradosAI hallucinating a little! 
 I reckon the best way to tackle this wold be with an AutoHotkey Script as you could then easily edit the list whenever you needed and trigger the search & replace to either work with a shortcut against a segment, or even via the standard replace all dialogue... although this would be asynchronous and possibly a little slow. But still better than a manual chore. 
 Otherwise it would make a neat plugin. That would be the fastest and most reliable way to handle it. There did used o be something like this on the appstore but the developer charged for it, and also stopped supporting it quite some years ago. I actually don't think it would be that difficult to do either... if a developer has time and motivation to do it :-)

Paul · Answer

Rene Morin Michael Schroeder 
 I spent a little time last night to create such a script... maybe it'll be useful for you? I put it into the AI Enabled forum because I only managed to do this using ChatGPT to help! If you need it changed you know what to do :-) 
 Search & Replace for multiple terms/phrases

Paul · Answer

Rene Morin 
 Maybe a more basic problem... do you have anything else different in your search & replace window to the settings I used?

Paul · Answer

Rene Morin

ok - I was testing a bit and I happened to do it on my laptop screen instead of the external monitor I used before and it failed... as yours does.

The positioning of the dropdown menu and the final message box in the script is dependent on the position of the active window (Trados Studio) when the hotkey is pressed. The coordinates are retrieved using WinGetPos, PosX, PosY,,, A, which gets the position of the active window in screen coordinates, and these are then used to position the GUIs.

When moving between screens with different resolutions or scaling settings, the relative position of the window can change, and it might end up being displayed partially or fully off-screen and throw off the way the script works. To mitigate this issue I used SysGet to get the size and position of the monitor where the active window is located, and then ensure that the GUIs are positioned within these bounds.

So try this... and fingers crossed you have the same issue!

^!h:: ; The hotkey for Ctrl+Alt+H to start the process
global filePaths := {} ; Create an associative array to store full file paths
global fileNames := "" ; Create a variable to store the file names
global PosX, PosY ; Create global variables to store the dropdown menu's position

Gui, Add, DropDownList, w450 vFilePath ; Add a dropdown list to the GUI with width of 400
Gui, Font, s12 ; Set the font size to 12

Loop, Read, c:\AHK scripts\settings.txt ; Read the hardcoded settings file line by line
{
    SplitPath, A_LoopReadLine, name, dir, ext, name_no_ext, drive ; Split the file path into parts
    fileNames .= name_no_ext . "|" ; Add the file name (without extension) to the string, separated by "|"
    filePaths[name_no_ext] := A_LoopReadLine ; Store the full file path in the associative array
}

fileNames := SubStr(fileNames, 1, StrLen(fileNames) - 1) ; Remove the last "|"
GuiControl,, FilePath, %fileNames% ; Set the items of the dropdown list

WinGetPos, PosX, PosY, Width, Height, A ; Get the position and size of the active window
SysGet, Monitor, MonitorWorkArea, % "Monitor" . ((PosX + Width / 2) // (A_ScreenWidth / A_ScreenCount) + 1) ; Get the work area of the monitor where the window's center is located
if (PosX < MonitorLeft)
    PosX := MonitorLeft
else if (PosX > MonitorRight - 500) ; 500 is the width of the GUIs
    PosX := MonitorRight - 500
if (PosY < MonitorTop)
    PosY := MonitorTop
else if (PosY > MonitorBottom - 100) ; 100 is the height of the GUIs
    PosY := MonitorBottom - 100
PosY := PosY - 150 ; Subtract 150 from PosY
Gui, Show, x%PosX% y%PosY% w500 h100, Select a file ; Show the GUI at the position of the active window with a larger window
WinSet, AlwaysOnTop, On, A ; Make the GUI always stay on top of other windows
return

GuiClose: ; When the GUI is closed
Gui, Submit, NoHide ; Store the dropdown list's current selection in the variable filePath
filePath := filePaths[filePath] ; Retrieve the full file path from the associative array
Gui, Destroy ; Destroy the GUI
GoSub, StartReplace ; Continue with the search and replace operation
return

StartReplace:
WinActivate, ahk_exe SDLTradosStudio.exe ; Activate SDL Trados Studio

Loop, Read, %filePath% ; Read the selected file line by line
{
    StringSplit, line, A_LoopReadLine, `t ; Split the line into "line1" (search term) and "line2" (target term)
    searchTerm := line1 ; Assign the search term
    targetTerm := line2 ; Assign the target term

    ; Click in the "Find what" field
    ControlClick, Edit2, ahk_exe SDLTradosStudio.exe
    Sleep, 100
    ; Select all text and delete it
    Send, {Home}+{End}{Del}
    Sleep, 100
    ; Send the search term keystrokes
    Send, {Text}%searchTerm%
    Sleep, 100

    ; Click in the "Replace with" field
    ControlClick, Edit1, ahk_exe SDLTradosStudio.exe
    Sleep, 100
    ; Select all text and delete it
    Send, {Home}+{End}{Del}
    Sleep, 100
    ; Send the target term keystrokes
    Send, {Text}%targetTerm%
    Sleep, 100

    ; Click the "Replace All" button
    ControlClick, WindowsForms10.BUTTON.app.0.ea119_r8_ad19, ahk_exe SDLTradosStudio.exe
    Sleep, 100
}

; PosY := PosY - 150 ; Subtract 150 from PosY
Gui, 2:New, +AlwaysOnTop ; Create a new GUI for our custom message box
Gui, 2:Font, s12 ; Set the font size to 12
Gui, 2:Add, Text, w500 h50, The search and replace operation is complete. ; Add a text element to the GUI
Gui, 2:Show, x%PosX% y%PosY% w500 h100, Operation Complete ; Show the GUI at the position of the dropdown menu with the title "Operation Complete"

Sleep, 500 ; Wait for 500 milliseconds (half a second)
WinActivate, Operation Complete ; Activate the GUI window using its unique title

return

2GuiClose: ; When the custom message box is closed
Gui, 2:Destroy ; Destroy the GUI
return

Paul Filkin | RWS Group

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Jesús Prieto · Answer

Rene Morin 
 Paul said: WindowsForms10.BUTTON.app.0.ea119_r8_ad19 
 This control name can be the reason of the Replace All button never getting clicked. In my Trados Studio is: 
 WindowsForms10.BUTTON.app.0. 2eed1ca_r7 _ad19 
 Rene: You need to look here in the Spy tool while hoovering the mouse over the Replace All button: 
 
 Then copy the control name & paste it to the script.

Trados Studio > 1. Trados Studio

Search & replace multiple words/terms in pre-translated segments?