Is there a way for InDesign to set paragraph styles by marked text?

Hi,

I typeset for multi-lingual instruction manuals and normally, i typeset the english first, set all the paragraph styles then copy and paste the english. From here I can then manually paste in the other languages into each paragraph style to keep the correct setting.

Is there a way for me to mark text for example:

$ - Body copy style

* - Warning style

^ - Caution style

And add those text markers to the start of each paragraph or line to the other languages (within word doc) so that it automatically detects and sets the paragraph style for me?

There is probably a better way of doing this - maybe using InCopy? Im not too sure

Any help is much appreciated - thanks.