引用自 同福-吕轻侯：

Steam Meta: Missing Translation in the Steam Client

Hello everyone,

I often read game reviews and guides directly in the Steam client (I don't like using a browser), but I usually have to rely on external translation tools. That's why I developed a small tool that enables inline word translation within the Steam client itself, so I can view translations without leaving the client or using other software.

If you're like me and prefer staying inside the Steam client, feel free to try out this tool!

Currently, the software is still in a very early stage and doesn't have a dedicated landing page yet. You can download and install it directly using the link below:

https://dl.g.deckz.fun/meta/0.0.5/meta-amd64-installer.exe

During installation, you may see a warning saying "the publisher can not verified" — this is normal. From what I understand, I would need to pay for a code-signing certificate to remove this message.

Before installing, please make sure you already have the Steam client installed. After the first installation, follow the instructions to restart the Steam client. Then, when browsing the Steam store or community pages, simply select the text you want to translate and click the translation button that appears to get the translated result.

If you run into any issues or have suggestions, please leave a comment or add me as a Steam friend. Thank you for reading!

Translations for companies is not free and can be extremely expensive on a large scale like the Steam forums.

引用自 cSg|mc-Hotsauce：

Translations for companies is not free and can be extremely expensive on a large scale like the Steam forums.

While true, Valve established a volunteer group to handle all of their translations years ago. Participants were essentially paid with Valve games.

引用自 Chika Ogiue：

引用自 cSg|mc-Hotsauce：

Translations for companies is not free and can be extremely expensive on a large scale like the Steam forums.

While true, Valve established a volunteer group to handle all of their translations years ago. Participants were essentially paid with Valve games.

They discontinued the translation server ages ago and it wasn't for the forums.

引用自 cSg|mc-Hotsauce：

They discontinued the translation server ages ago and it wasn't for the forums.

I know. I was a part of it. My point was companies tend to find ways to not have to pay professional translators money, particularly when they'd have to hire multiple people for multiple languages. If Valve had hired professionals and paid accordingly they'd have been looking at bill in double-digit million dollar bill.

As it is, the forum interface has been translated; there's also an option to report issues with the translation. Naturally, the only user-generated content that is translated is that which has been translated by the user who made it and then only in the language(s) that user provided.

Besides that, I wouldn't exactly trust the OP's tool to do a useful enough job anyway. If you want to know why, simply use Google Translate's on-the-fly translation. You'll be getting the same (poor) quality results.

引用自 Chika Ogiue：

引用自 cSg|mc-Hotsauce：

They discontinued the translation server ages ago and it wasn't for the forums.

I know. I was a part of it. My point was companies tend to find ways to not have to pay professional translators money, particularly when they'd have to hire multiple people for multiple languages. If Valve had hired professionals and paid accordingly they'd have been looking at bill in double-digit million dollar bill.

As it is, the forum interface has been translated; there's also an option to report issues with the translation. Naturally, the only user-generated content that is translated is that which has been translated by the user who made it and then only in the language(s) that user provided.

Besides that, I wouldn't exactly trust the OP's tool to do a useful enough job anyway. If you want to know why, simply use Google Translate's on-the-fly translation. You'll be getting the same (poor) quality results.

I think I understand what you mean. However, the main purpose of the software I’m developing isn’t to translate the Steam interface itself, but rather to help non-native English speakers read English-written reviews and guides more easily — something that doesn’t require highly accurate translations. It’s similar to the translation feature found on Reddit.

For example, I'm currently using this tool to select and translate your reply directly, so I can understand what you're saying (as I'm not a native English speaker either).

I’m not sure how to post images directly on Steam, but I’ve created a link that demonstrates how the feature works:

https://dl.g.deckz.fun/meta/marketing/steam-meta-translation.png

Feel free to check it out and let me know what you think!

So we're just downloading random exe files that read data from the Steam client? If that doesn't sound like a recipe for disaster, I don't know what does.

引用自 Ben Lubar：

So we're just downloading random exe files that read data from the Steam client? If that doesn't sound like a recipe for disaster, I don't know what does.

This is how people get their accounts hijacked

引用自 同福-吕轻侯：

I think I understand what you mean. However, the main purpose of the software I’m developing isn’t to translate the Steam interface itself, but rather to help non-native English speakers read English-written reviews and guides more easily — something that doesn’t require highly accurate translations. It’s similar to the translation feature found on Reddit.

I understand the sentiment, but I don't agree. Reviews, etc., still require a degree of understanding that machine translation cannot provide in many cases. My favourite example for example, which is something you can expect to see variations of in reviews:

いつもさば落ちる草　

Google Translate, DeepL, and most freely available LLMs (and even a few human translators I've met in my time) cannot understand the meaning of that sentence. They will tell you something along the lines of "grass that always falls from the bucket".

Gemini, if you give it the correct prompting, will work out that internet slang is at play here. But only if you prompt it to look past the words actually used.

And I'm sure if I took the time, I could find examples of English slang that you'll find in reviews, etc., that can be equally misunderstood by machine translation depending on the paired language. In short, while your idea is a good one in theory, it's not as useful as you might think.

Plus, the points others are making about downloading unknown code that is being used to hook into the Steam client. What's to stop someone from downloading your code and engineering it to become something malicious?

引用自 Chika Ogiue：

引用自 同福-吕轻侯：

I think I understand what you mean. However, the main purpose of the software I’m developing isn’t to translate the Steam interface itself, but rather to help non-native English speakers read English-written reviews and guides more easily — something that doesn’t require highly accurate translations. It’s similar to the translation feature found on Reddit.

I understand the sentiment, but I don't agree. Reviews, etc., still require a degree of understanding that machine translation cannot provide in many cases. My favourite example for example, which is something you can expect to see variations of in reviews:

いつもさば落ちる草　

Google Translate, DeepL, and most freely available LLMs (and even a few human translators I've met in my time) cannot understand the meaning of that sentence. They will tell you something along the lines of "grass that always falls from the bucket".

Gemini, if you give it the correct prompting, will work out that internet slang is at play here. But only if you prompt it to look past the words actually used.

And I'm sure if I took the time, I could find examples of English slang that you'll find in reviews, etc., that can be equally misunderstood by machine translation depending on the paired language. In short, while your idea is a good one in theory, it's not as useful as you might think.

Plus, the points others are making about downloading unknown code that is being used to hook into the Steam client. What's to stop someone from downloading your code and engineering it to become something malicious?

Thank you for seriously considering my idea — I really appreciate it.

1. Regarding the issue of understanding slang and similar expressions, I admit that current machine translation is not yet suitable for serious or professional scenarios. However, it is more than sufficient for everyday communication. I have some examples: for instance, our current conversation is likely taking place thanks to machine translation. Platforms like Reddit and X.com (formerly Twitter) also offer comment translation features that many people use regularly for daily communication.

2. Yes, although in my opinion the security of this software is on par with Chrome extensions, I do need to prove this to others and provide a way for users to verify the software's safety themselves. Currently, I'm considering open-sourcing the code on GitHub so that anyone can review it. At the same time, I will provide a build pipeline so that everyone can directly use the open source code to build the application on GitHub. For users who are not familiar with building software, I will offer MD5 checksum verification, which is a common practice among open-source projects.

In fact, there's a plugin loader called **Decky Loader** on Steam Deck that operates under exactly this model. The technical implementation of Steam Meta also referenced that of Decky Loader.

However, at the moment, the software relies on quite a few API keys that I personally pay for, so I cannot simply open-source it right away. Leaking those keys could result in costs that I would be unable to afford.

I'm currently evaluating whether there is enough demand for this feature. If there is significant interest, I will invest the time to prepare it for open-sourcing. If not, I'll just continue using it myself.

If you're serious enough, you might want to consider a different approach since no one should just trust a random exe file based on some random persons say that it's okay.

A md5 checksum would just prove that the checksum matches, not that there isn't anything malicious within the exe file. And md5 has been deprecated for some time anyway in favor of sha256. It still wouldn't solve the issue if what's exactly in the exe.

Full transparency is required and if you can't provide that, no one should trust it.

引用自 同福-吕轻侯：

However, at the moment, the software relies on quite a few API keys that I personally pay for, so I cannot simply open-source it right away. Leaking those keys could result in costs that I would be unable to afford.

If there's a password embedded into an exe file and you give someone else the exe file, they have the password. That's not a secure way to do it.

I hope your legit and you develop things far enough for a trustworthy install, or just find a way to work with steam so it can be built in from the gitgo.

This thread was quite old before the recent post, so we're locking it to prevent confusion.