Software complexity has become a significant social problem, which MDE endeavours to alleviate, however MDE approaches and tools often introduce additional complexity which prevents general software practitioners from benefiting from MDE solutions. In this paper we present an alternative approach for MDE in the domain of language processing, using lightweight tools (Antlr and CGTL) suitable for general industrial use. We evaluate the approach on tasks of DSL definition, software abstraction, and program translation, based on our experience with industrial applications of MDE.