Ahhh, never mind. I have it now.

$text =~ s/\x90[^\w]*<\/bugbreak[^>]*>.*?\x9D.*?\x9D(.*?)\x90/translat
+eString($1)/esig

sub translateString {
my $text = shift;
$text =~ s/<[^>]*>//g;
}
[download]

This way, even if the match does slurp up too much, the formatting tags are removed and the "clean" string is returned for the substitution. Schweet.

Just typing the problem out made me think about it again and come up with a solution. Thanks.