Gorgon Chat Translator

An always-on-top, draggable, resizable dark overlay for Project Gorgon that live-translates foreign-language chat into your language — and helps you reply back in theirs.

It tails the newest chat log, ignores messages already in your language (so it barely touches any translation API), and shows translations of the rest. Press a hotkey and it translates your last message into the last foreign language someone used and copies it to the clipboard.

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Features

• Live overlay — tails …/Project Gorgon/ChatLogs/Chat-*.log, auto-switches at the daily file rollover, never locks the file.
• Channel blacklist — watches every channel except the ones you list (default: Combat, Status, NPC Chatter, Error).
• Only translates foreign text — English (or whatever your language is) is detected and skipped, which is what keeps API usage tiny.
• Two-way replies — a hotkey (default Ctrl+Alt+T) or the ⇄ button translates your most recent outgoing message into the last foreign language seen on the channel you last spoke in, and copies it to the clipboard to paste into game chat. The reply target is scoped per channel, so a different language used in Global won't hijack a reply you're composing in Party — the ⇄ button shows the current target like ⇄ es·Party.
• Tell-aware — [Tell] Bob->You and [Tell] You->Bob are parsed as a conversation with Bob: incoming tells are translated and shown as [Tell] Bob: …, your outgoing tells are recognized as your own messages, and the reply language is scoped per person (Tell:Bob), so replying to a Chinese-speaking tell won't pick up the language of a different tell conversation.
• Robust CJK handling — Google's auto detection sometimes fails to translate short Chinese/Japanese/Korean text; when it returns the line unchanged, the tool retries with a source language derived from the Unicode script, and never silently drops a clearly-foreign message.
• My-language dropdown — the my:en ▾ button in the title bar changes, live, what incoming chat is translated into (and the source language for your replies). No config edit or restart needed.
• Set character name from the UI — the name: button in the footer opens a small dialog to set your player_name on the fly (it's what identifies your own lines for the reply feature).
• Reply-language dropdown — the reply→ auto ▾ button in the title bar sets the language your own messages are translated into when you hit the reverse hotkey:
  • Auto (match the channel) — default; replies use the last foreign language seen on the channel you last spoke in.
  • A specific language — force it (persists), so you can preset a reply language before anyone speaks — e.g. set Spanish, then greet a guildmate in Spanish immediately.
  • Seen this session submenu — quick-pick any language that has appeared in chat (with who used it, where, and how many times).
• Per-line language tag — each translated line shows the detected source language in its bracket, e.g. [Tell·zh-CN] Bob: … or [Global·es] Diego: … (English lines just show [Global]).
• Live spinner — the moment a foreign message is captured it appears with an animated spinner and the original text, which is replaced in place by the translation once it returns — so you always see that something was caught, even during a throttled burst.
• Overlay niceties — resize grip, move by dragging the title bar, lock to prevent accidental moves, clear, adjustable opacity, its own taskbar icon, and a PG-only toggle in the footer to turn the "only show while Project Gorgon is focused" behaviour on/off without editing the config.
• Size / position / lock state persist to chat_translator_config.json.

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Install & run

pip install -r requirements.txt
python chat_translator.py

langdetect is technically optional, but install it — without it the reverse-reply feature can't know which language to reply in, and only non-Latin scripts (Russian, Chinese, …) are detected as foreign.

Rate limits

The free GoogleTranslator backend has no published limit, but sustained bursts of hundreds of calls earn a temporary IP block. This tool stays well clear by (1) never translating your own language, (2) caching original→translation, (3) throttling to min_api_interval seconds per call, and (4) backing off on errors. On an English server that's a handful of calls per minute at most.

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First-run setup

On first launch it writes chat_translator_config.json. The two things worth setting can both be done from the UI:

• player_name — your character name, so it can find your messages for the reverse-reply feature. Click the name: button in the footer.
• my_lang — the language you read/speak (en, es, fr, …). Foreign chat is translated into it; your replies are translated from it. Use the my:… ▾ dropdown in the title bar.

Configuration (chat_translator_config.json)

Key	Default	Meaning
player_name	"Kaeus"	Your character; identifies your outgoing lines.
my_lang	"en"	Your language (incoming chat translates into it / replies translate from it).
reply_lang	null	Language replies translate into. null = auto (match the channel); a code (e.g. "es") forces it. Set from the dropdown.
blacklist_channels	["Combat","Status","NPC Chatter","Error"]	Channels to ignore. Everything else is shown.
reverse_hotkey	"ctrl+alt+t"	Global hotkey to translate + copy your reply.
min_api_interval	0.40	Min seconds between translation API calls.
min_len	4	Ignore messages shorter than this (unreliable to detect).
show_english	false	Also show messages already in your language.
show_own	false	Echo your own outgoing messages (dimmed).
max_lines	400	Trim overlay history to this many lines.
opacity	0.92	Window opacity, 0–1.
font_size	10	Base font size.
hide_when_pg_inactive	false	Only show while Project Gorgon is focused (toggle in the footer).
github_repo	""	"owner/repo" to enable the in-app "update available" notice. Empty = off.
check_updates	true	Whether to check GitHub for a newer release on start.
locked	false	Remembered lock state.
geometry	null	Remembered size + position.

reverse_hotkey accepts combos like ctrl+alt+t, shift+f9, ctrl+win+r.

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Reply workflow

1. A Spanish speaker writes in Party → the overlay shows the English translation and remembers es for the Party channel (the ⇄ button shows ⇄ es·Party). Chatter in other channels/languages is tracked separately and won't change this.
2. Type your reply in game chat (in Party) as normal and send it.
3. Press Ctrl+Alt+T (or click the ⇄ button) → your message is translated to Spanish (the language seen on Party, the channel you last spoke in) and copied to the clipboard.
4. Paste it into game chat and send.

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Building a standalone .exe

No Python needed on the target machine:

build_exe.bat

Produces dist\GorgonChatTranslator.exe. The build is self-contained — it uses the vendored appicon.py, generates app.ico via gen_icon.py, and builds with GorgonChatTranslator.spec, which bundles langdetect's language-profile data via collect_all (a bare --onefile command would omit those and crash at runtime) and embeds version.txt so the app knows its own version.

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Notes / limitations

• On very short lines (2–3 words) langdetect can mislabel the language (e.g. Spanish as Catalan). Translation still works; the reply target may be a close neighbour language.
• English game jargon (LFM, WTS, …) and common function words are treated as English via a built-in word list, so they're never sent to the API.
• Global-hotkey support is Windows-only (RegisterHotKey). The overlay itself is Tkinter/stdlib and runs elsewhere, just without the global hotkey.