Google Translate Documents php text

Question

I'd like to run thousands of php language keys through Google Translate Documents on https://translate.google.com. The text looks like this:

$lang['activate_deactivate'] = "Activate / Deactivate";
$lang['invalid_username'] = "Invalid username";
$lang['you_must_enter_username'] = "You must enter username";
$lang['invalid_user_name'] = "Invalid username";
$lang['user_deactivated'] = "User has been deactivated";
$lang['user_not_deactivated'] = "User could not be deactivated";

However I don't want to translate anything between [ and ]. So far I've tried wrapping it in span notranslate tags, capitalizing every word but neither of those worked.

An idea I do have is somehow adding an uncommon character such as █ after every letter between [ and ] then just removing all after the translation, I'm not sure how to perform that with regex. "(?<=[).*?(?=])" will find the text I need but I'm not sure how to replace it to insert the character after each letter.

Or if anyone has any better ideas, I'd love to hear them. Thanks.

Answer 1

Using Notepad++ you might use:

(?:\[|\G(?!^))\K[^][](?=[^][]*])

The pattern matches:

• (?: Non capture group
  • \[ Match [
  • | Or
  • \G(?!^) Assert the current position at the end of the previous match, but not at the start of the string to get consecutive separate matches
• ) Close non capture group
• \K Forget what is matched until now
• [^][] Match a single char other than [ and ]
• (?=[^][]*]) Assert a closing ] to the right

Replace with the full match followed by the character that you want $0█

See a regex demo.