cs_translate

cs_translate is a small, cross-platform CLI tool that watches your Counter-Strike 2 console.log in real time and automatically translates in-game chat messages to a target language (default: English), printing the results in your terminal.

It is read-only:

• It does not send messages back into the game.
• It does not touch your CS2 config files.
• It simply reads console.log, detects chat lines, translates them, and prints them.

This makes it ideal if you just want to understand what people are saying in chat without spamming in-game messages or messing with binds.

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Features

• 🧠 Automatic chat translation

  • Watches console.log for chat lines like:
    • [CT] PlayerName: message
    • [T] PlayerName: message
    • [ALL] PlayerName: message
  • Translates each chat message to a target language (default: en).
  • Prints readable logs, for example:

    💬 [T] Player123: Привет, как дела?
    🌍 [T] Player123 (Russian → EN): Hello, how are you?
    

• 🌍 Language detection + Cyrillic heuristic

  • Uses Google’s language detection via google-translate-api-x.
  • If the message contains Cyrillic characters but detection is not ru, it can optionally retry assuming Russian to improve accuracy.

• 📦 Cross-platform

  • Works on Linux and Windows (Node.js-based).
  • No platform-specific dependencies beyond Node itself.

• ⚙️ Simple config

  • Only one setting: the path to console.log.
  • Config stored in a small config.json file.

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How It Works

1. CS2 must be started with the launch option -condebug.
   That makes the game write console output to console.log.
2. cs_translate tails that file (using fs.watchFile) and parses new lines.
3. For each line matching the chat pattern "[TEAM] Player: message":
   • It logs the original message to the terminal.
   • It auto-translates the message to the configured target language (default en).
   • If the source language is different from the target, it prints the translation.
4. Non-chat lines are ignored.

The tool never writes back to CS2 or the file system (beyond its own config file).

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Requirements

• OS

  • Linux
  • Windows

• Runtime

  • Node.js 18+ (or newer)
  • Internet access (for Google Translate)

• Node dependencies (handled via npm install)

  • google-translate-api-x (translation)
  • chalk (colored terminal output)

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IMPORTANT: Enable Console Logging in CS2 (-condebug)

cs_translate depends on CS2 writing its console output to a file.
You must enable -condebug:

1. Open Steam.
2. Go to Library → Right-click on Counter-Strike 2 → Properties….
3. Under Launch Options, add:

   -condebug
   
   

4. Start CS2 once so that the console.log file is created.

Typical default locations for console.log are:

• Linux (Steam / Proton)

  ~/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/Counter-Strike Global Offensive/game/csgo/console.log
  

• Windows (default Steam path, may differ on your system)

  C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Counter-Strike Global Offensive\game\csgo\console.log
  

You can (and should) override this path in the cs_translate config if your setup differs.

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Configuration

cs_translate stores its settings in a simple JSON file containing only the logPath.

Config file location

• Linux

  • If $XDG_CONFIG_HOME is set:

    $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/cs_translate/config.json
    

  • Otherwise:

    ~/.config/cs_translate/config.json
    

• Windows

  • Uses %APPDATA%:

    %APPDATA%\cs_translate\config.json
    

  • Example:

    C:\Users\YourName\AppData\Roaming\cs_translate\config.json
    

Example config.json

{
  "logPath": "/full/path/to/your/cs2/console.log"
}

On Windows it will look like:

{
  "logPath": "C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Steam\\steamapps\\common\\Counter-Strike Global Offensive\\game\\csgo\\console.log"
}

(Backslashes are automatically escaped in JSON.)

CLI helpers

You rarely need to edit config.json by hand. The CLI provides helpers:

• Initialize or refresh the config file:

  cs_translate --init-config

• Set the path to console.log:

  cs_translate --set-log-path /full/path/to/console.log

  On Windows PowerShell / CMD:

  cs_translate --set-log-path "C:\full\path\to\console.log"

• Show help:

  cs_translate --help

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Installation

Arch Linux / AUR

If you are on Arch or an Arch-based distro (EndeavourOS, Artix, etc.), you can install cs_translate from the AUR:

yay -S cs_translate
# or
paru -S cs_translate

This will:

• install the Node app under /usr/lib/cs_translate
• create a launcher script at /usr/bin/cs_translate

After installation:

cs_translate --init-config
cs_translate

Manual installation (generic Node.js)

If you want to run it directly from source:

1. Clone the repo:

   git clone https://github.com/MeckeDev/cs_translate.git
   cd cs_translate

2. Install dependencies:

   npm install

3. Make sure the CLI script is executable (on Linux/macOS):

   chmod +x bin/cs_translate.js

4. Run directly:

   node bin/cs_translate.js --help
   node bin/cs_translate.js --init-config
   node bin/cs_translate.js

Or globally link it as cs_translate:

npm link
cs_translate --help

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Usage

1. First-time setup

1. Ensure CS2 is started with -condebug (see above).

2. Initialize the config:

   cs_translate --init-config

   This will create a config.json with a best-guess logPath.

3. If necessary, fix the logPath:

   cs_translate --set-log-path /full/path/to/console.log

2. Run the translator

Start the tool in a terminal:

cs_translate

You should see a banner similar to:

🚀 CS2 Chat Auto Translator (watching console.log)

Configuration:
  logPath: /full/path/to/console.log

Behavior:
  • All detected chat messages are translated to 'EN' and printed here.
  • This tool never sends anything back to the game. It is read-only.

Leave this terminal open while you play CS2.

When players chat in game, you’ll see output like:

💬 [T] Ivan: Привет, как дела?
🌍 [T] Ivan (Russian → EN): Hello, how are you?

💬 [ALL] Juan: buenos dias amigos
🌍 [ALL] Juan (Spanish → EN): good morning friends

If the source language is already English (or your configured target), the tool may skip printing a translation to keep noise low.

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Troubleshooting

❌ console.log not found: ...

If you see:

❌ console.log not found: /some/path/console.log
Make sure CS2 is running with '-condebug' and that the path is correct.

Check:

1. CS2 launch options include -condebug.
2. console.log actually exists at the specified path.
3. The path in your config is correct.

You can fix the path with:

cs_translate --set-log-path /correct/path/to/console.log

No translations appear

• Make sure there is actual chat activity in your CS2 match.
• Ensure AUTO_TRANSLATE is enabled in the code (by default it is).
• Verify that your system has internet access for the translation API.
• If only English appears in chat, the tool might skip translations because source = target.

High latency or rate limits

The tool relies on google-translate-api-x, which scrapes the public Translate API. In rare cases:

• It may be slow or temporarily rate-limited.
• You may see warnings like Translation failed: ... in the terminal.

In those cases, the tool will fall back to printing the original text.

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Development

To hack on cs_translate:

git clone https://github.com/MeckeDev/cs_translate.git
cd cs_translate
npm install

# Run with debug logs
node bin/cs_translate.js --init-config
node bin/cs_translate.js

You can:

• Change the target language.
• Adjust the heuristics (e.g. for Cyrillic).
• Add additional filtering, logging, or custom output formats.

If you publish a modified version, please respect the project’s license.

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License

cs_translate is open source software. See the LICENSE file in the repository for full license details.