Legacy Codebases Are Geographic Prisons: Modernizing for RTL Markets

Legacy codebases are geographic prisons. When your core enterprise systems were built twenty years ago, "globalization" usually meant adding a currency toggle or a UTF-8 character set. But as organizations scale into the Middle East, North Africa, and Israel, they hit a hard wall: Right-to-Left (RTL) support. In these regions, modernization global markets adapting isn't just about translation; it is about a fundamental architectural inversion of the user interface.

If your legacy UI relies on absolute positioning,

, or hardcoded margins, you are looking at a manual rewrite that could take years. According to Replay’s analysis, 67% of legacy systems lack any meaningful documentation, making it nearly impossible for modern developers to understand the original layout logic before attempting to flip it.

TL;DR: Adapting legacy UIs for RTL markets (Arabic, Hebrew, Persian) traditionally requires a complete manual rewrite, taking 40+ hours per screen. By using Replay for visual reverse engineering, enterprises can automate the extraction of legacy workflows into modern React components with CSS Logical Properties, reducing the modernization timeline from 18 months to a few weeks.

The Architectural Debt of LTR-Centric Design#

Most legacy systems—whether they are Java Swing wrappers, WinForms, or early 2000s ASP.NET—were built with a "Left-to-Right" (LTR) bias baked into the source code. This creates a massive hurdle for modernization global markets adapting strategies. When you attempt to move into 50+ new regions, you aren't just translating strings; you are mirroring the entire mental model of the user.

Video-to-code is the process of recording a live user session of a legacy application and using AI-driven visual analysis to generate structured, documented React components and design systems.

Industry experts recommend moving away from physical properties (

) toward logical properties (). However, in a legacy system with $3.6 trillion in global technical debt, finding where those physical properties are defined is the primary bottleneck.

The Cost of Manual Modernization#

Manual modernization is where budgets go to die. Industry data shows that 70% of legacy rewrites fail or significantly exceed their timelines. When you factor in the complexity of RTL—where icons must be mirrored, scrollbars move to the left, and text alignment flips—the "manual" approach becomes untenable.

Modernization Global Markets Adapting: The RTL Challenge#

To succeed in modernization global markets adapting, you must address three technical layers: the Layout Layer, the Directional Layer, and the Asset Layer.

1. The Layout Layer: From Physical to Logical#

Legacy CSS (or inline styles in older frameworks) uses physical directions. To support 50+ regions, your new React-based architecture must use CSS Logical Properties. This allows a single codebase to serve both LTR and RTL markets without duplicating stylesheets.

2. The Directional Layer (BiDi)#

Bidirectional text (BiDi) is the most complex part of RTL. When a sentence contains both Arabic and English (like a product name or a URL), the browser must handle the "nesting" of these directions. Legacy systems often mangle this, leading to unreadable data in critical fields like banking or healthcare records.

3. The Asset Layer#

Not every icon should be mirrored. A "Back" arrow must flip, but a "Checkmark" or a "Clock" usually stays the same. Modernizing for global markets requires a granular Design System that understands which components are "directional" and which are "static."

Learn more about building Design Systems from legacy UIs

Implementing RTL Modernization with Replay#

Instead of digging through 500,000 lines of undocumented COBOL or Delphi code, Replay allows you to simply record the application in use. The platform’s AI Automation Suite identifies the UI patterns and exports them as clean, themeable React components.

Here is how a legacy hardcoded layout is transformed into a modern, RTL-ready React component using Replay’s output.

Legacy Code Snippet (The Problem)#

In this legacy example, the layout is fixed. To make this RTL-compliant, a developer would have to manually find every instance of

and and write overrides.

typescript
// Legacy-style hardcoded positioning
const LegacyHeader = () => {
  return (
    <div style={{ 
      width: '100%', 
      height: '60px', 
      position: 'relative',
      borderBottom: '1px solid #ccc' 
    }}>
      <div style={{ 
        position: 'absolute', 
        left: '20px', // Hardcoded left
        top: '15px' 
      }}>
        <img src="/logo.png" alt="Logo" />
      </div>
      <div style={{ 
        position: 'absolute', 
        right: '20px', // Hardcoded right
        top: '20px' 
      }}>
        <button>Logout</button>
      </div>
    </div>
  );
};

Modern Replay-Generated Component (The Solution)#

When Replay processes a recording, it identifies these spatial relationships and generates code using modern best practices like Flexbox and Logical Properties. This makes modernization global markets adapting a matter of changing a single

attribute on the HTML tag.

typescript
import React from 'react';
import styled from 'styled-components';

// Replay-generated component using CSS Logical Properties
const HeaderContainer = styled.header`
  display: flex;
  align-items: center;
  justify-content: space-between;
  padding-inline: 1.25rem; // Automatically handles LTR/RTL
  padding-block: 0.9375rem;
  border-block-end: 1px solid var(--color-border);
  width: 100%;
`;

const LogoWrapper = styled.div`
  /* No hardcoded 'left' needed */
`;

const ActionsWrapper = styled.div`
  /* No hardcoded 'right' needed */
`;

export const ModernHeader: React.FC = () => {
  return (
    <HeaderContainer>
      <LogoWrapper>
        <img src="/logo.svg" alt="Company Logo" />
      </LogoWrapper>
      <ActionsWrapper>
        <button className="btn-primary">Logout</button>
      </ActionsWrapper>
    </HeaderContainer>
  );
};

Why Enterprises are Choosing Visual Reverse Engineering#

According to Replay’s analysis, the average enterprise spends $1.2M annually just maintaining legacy UIs that cannot be localized. By shifting to a visual reverse engineering workflow, companies in Financial Services and Healthcare can bypass the "documentation gap."

Visual Reverse Engineering is the methodology of capturing the visual state and functional flows of an application to reconstruct its underlying architecture without needing access to the original source code.

The Replay Workflow for Global Expansion:#

1. •Library (Design System): Replay extracts every button, input, and modal from your legacy recording, creating a unified Design System.
2. •Flows (Architecture): The platform maps how users move through the app, documenting the business logic that must be preserved during the RTL transition.
3. •Blueprints (Editor): Developers use the Blueprints to refine the React code, ensuring that logical properties are used consistently.
4. •AI Automation Suite: The AI identifies "directional" icons and UI elements that require mirroring, flagging them for the design team.

Explore how Replay automates UI documentation

Scaling to 50+ Regions: The Localization Stack#

When modernization global markets adapting is the goal, your tech stack needs to be robust. Beyond the UI, you need to handle date formatting, numeral systems (Western vs. Eastern Arabic numerals), and pluralization rules.

Implementing i18next with Replay Components#

Once Replay has generated your React component library, integrating a localization framework like

becomes straightforward.

typescript
import { useTranslation } from 'react-i18next';

export const GlobalDashboardCard = ({ titleKey, value }: { titleKey: string, value: number }) => {
  const { t, i18n } = useTranslation();
  const isRtl = i18n.dir() === 'rtl';

  return (
    <div className={`card ${isRtl ? 'font-arabic' : 'font-sans'}`}>
      <h3>{t(titleKey)}</h3>
      <p>
        {new Intl.NumberFormat(i18n.language).format(value)}
      </p>
      {/* Icon mirroring logic */}
      <ArrowIcon style={{ transform: isRtl ? 'scaleX(-1)' : 'none' }} />
    </div>
  );
};

Overcoming the "18-Month" Rewrite Trap#

The standard enterprise response to a global expansion mandate is to spin up a new "Greenfield" project. History shows this is a mistake. With an 18-month average enterprise rewrite timeline, by the time you launch your RTL-ready platform, the market opportunity may have shifted.

Furthermore, 70% of legacy rewrites fail because they lose critical "edge-case" business logic that was never documented. By using Replay to record those edge cases in the live legacy environment, you ensure that the new React components reflect the actual reality of the business, not just a developer's best guess.

For industries like Insurance or Government, where compliance is non-negotiable, Replay offers On-Premise deployment and is SOC2/HIPAA-ready. This allows you to modernize sensitive workflows without your data ever leaving your secure perimeter.

Modernizing Regulated Industries

Frequently Asked Questions#

How does Replay handle complex legacy tables for RTL?#

Replay’s AI Automation Suite recognizes grid structures and tabular data. When exporting to React, it converts these into responsive, accessible components that use

or modern CSS Grid layouts. This ensures that column order correctly flips in RTL mode without breaking the data binding.

Can we use Replay if we don't have the original source code?#

Yes. That is the core value of Replay. Because Replay uses visual reverse engineering, it only requires a video recording of the application's UI. It analyzes the DOM (for web apps) or visual pixels (for desktop apps via OCR and computer vision) to reconstruct the React components.

Does modernization global markets adapting require changing the backend?#

Usually, no. Most RTL modernization focuses on the presentation layer. As long as your backend supports UTF-8 encoding for data storage, Replay can help you rebuild the frontend to display that data correctly in any regional context.

What is the average time savings for a 100-screen application?#

Manual modernization would typically take 4,000 hours (100 screens x 40 hours). With Replay, the same project is reduced to approximately 400 hours. This represents a 90% reduction in manual labor and allows teams to hit global markets in weeks rather than years.

Conclusion: Don't Let Legacy Code Limit Your Reach#

Global expansion is a race. If your competitors can launch in the Middle East or North Africa while you are still stuck in a two-year rewrite cycle, you’ve already lost. Modernization global markets adapting should be a strategic advantage, not a technical bottleneck.

By leveraging Replay, you can turn your undocumented legacy systems into a clean, modern, RTL-ready React library in a fraction of the time. Stop rewriting. Start recording.

Ready to modernize without rewriting? Book a pilot with Replay