Tool to script simple find & replace for a fixed set of text strings

Question

On a Mac:

Every month I collect lists of around 300-500 company names in Japanese that I need to translate into English. I tried scripting this with Applescript in Textwrangler, but this is hard to do because of the number of different terms and my own inexperience. I tried to create lines of Applescript in spreadsheets (as most of the code is the same), but there's a lot and I keep making mistakes.

I've struggled to get the same results after upgrading to BBEdit. The results need to be pasted into a Google Sheet after converting to English. The order of terms varies with each list.

This is a simple global search & replace process. I've got some knowledge of GREP.

Is there a better way and/or tool to do this with? Would this be hard to achieve in Google Apps Script (given that I currently know nothing about Apps Scripts)?

Thanks for any tips.

Answer 1

Would this be hard to achieve in Google Apps Script (given that I currently know nothing about Apps Scripts)?

If something like this is hard or not to achieve is "primarily opinion" considering only that you tried to do this using AppScript (I know nothing about it) and that you know nothing about Apps Script, but...

This could be done in Google Apps Script. It's a service that include many features:

• Programming language JavaScript (but it' doesn't include arrow functions and other language features introduced in ECMAScript 6 and beyond, but you could use CLASP to use TypeScript and Babel, etc.)
• Services to "easily" ready/write from Google services including Google Drive and Google Sheets
• The Spreadsheet Service includes Class TextFinder

  Find or replace text within a range, sheet or spreadsheet. Can also specify search options.

• The Language Service

  allows scripts to automatically translate text.