# build a regex to match just your keys
my $removers = "^(?:" . join ("|", map { quotemeta $_ } @text_remove) . ") ";
# print $removers out if you're not getting what you expect

# strip the patterns from the beginning of each line.
@xlate_data = map { s/$remove//; $_; } @xlate_data;

##</code><code>##

# use whatever delimiter makes sense here.  I'm assuming
# you don't have newlines at the ends of the elements already.

my $full_string = join "\n", @xlate_data;

# since you know all the [ are gone from
# the elements that matched, and that they will be present
# in the ones that didn't match, a newline followed by
# something other than a [ is a line you want to join.
# so strip \n's not followed by a [

$full_string =~ s/\n([^[])/$1/g;

# back to an array
@xlate_data = split/\n/, $full_string;