Advanced Search

WebTranslateIt’s search box is located on the top right of the translation and lets you search for segments and translations. A set of options lets you affine your search.

Where to search: All, Key, Source, Target

To the right of the search box, you will find 4 options to affine your search.

  • All searches for some text into the segment’s key names, in the source text and in the target text. The results can be a bit fuzzy but this is generally a good option to quickly search for something.
  • Key lets you target specifically the segment’s key. The search engine won’t look at all in the translation’s text.
  • Source lets you specifically query for the source text. It will look for a standalone word in the source text.
  • Target lets you specifically query for the target text. It will look for a standalone word in the target text.

Regex Search

The regex search option is for advanced users only. This option lets you search for anything using a POSIX regular expression.

Regular expressions are difficult to master, and the goal of this documentation is certainly not to teach regexes. There are plenty of websites to learn regular expressions. I recommend regular-expressions.info.

Read our post about how regex search works.

Case-Sensitive Search

The case sensitive option lets you choose whether your regular expression is case-sensitive or not. Searching for Air with case sensitivity on won’t match words such as repair or commanditaire but will match sentences containing Air Drop or Air quality. With “Case Sensitive turned off it will match all of these segments.

Read our post about how case-sensitive search works.

Tricks

Finding plural strings only

Because plural strings often contain the words “one” and “other”, try prepending your search by one other. For instance, to search for a plural string containing the word user:

one other user

Invalid regular expression: quantifier operand invalid?

It means the regular expression entered isn’t correct. A quantifier (*, + or ?) cannot follow another quantifier (** is invalid). A quantifier cannot begin an expression or subexpression or follow ^ or |.

For instance, *my_segment* is an invalid regex search. You probably want to use: (.*)my_segment(.*).

Next Up: Validations. WebTranslateIt includes a validation system to make sure the translations are correct… »