Real-Time HUD Translation
Shows live translations over video players and game windows, ideal for untranslated games and foreign media.
Universal Screen Translator Application
Explore your games and videos with live translation
USTA continuously watches the region you choose with “sniping”, extracts text with OCR, and instantly shows the translation as an overlay on games, videos, manga, or your desktop.
Games in-game translation
Videos subtitle translation
Manga screen OCR
Desktop instant overlay
Open-source screen translation
Built for real-time screen translation
🐧 Linux
⚙️ KDE Plasma
🦶 GNOME
🖥️ Other Desktops
⌗ OCR Powered
⚡ Live Overlay
📡 Socket API
🌍 Cross-platform
Platform goal
Linux desktops and other operating systems
🚀 Key Features
A modular, lightweight architecture for live screen translation
USTA is an open-source tool designed to make games, videos, and on-screen content instantly understandable across Linux desktops first, with broader operating-system support as a goal.
Desktop & OS Support
Developed with GNOME, KDE Plasma, and other Linux desktops in focus, while aiming to support other operating systems.
Sniper Mode Overlay
A modular region-selection system for targeting specific areas such as subtitles or speech bubbles.
Modular OCR Engine
An extensible OCR layer for accurate text extraction with back ends such as Tesseract and EasyOCR.
Dual-Engine Translation
Context-aware translation flow with Google Translate and DeepL architecture. DeepL is currently untested.
Auto
English
Turkish
German
French
Japanese
Korean
Chinese
Russian
Arabic
Hebrew
Vietnamese
Thai
Spanish
Unix Socket IPC
Publishes each translation as a JSON line to a local Unix socket, providing real-time data for external tools.
Global Shortcuts & IPC Integration
A lightweight single-instance architecture enables fast control through background processes and CLI-based shortcuts.
📡 External Integration
Do more than show translations on screen: stream, save, and customize them
USTA broadcasts every translation in real time through its built-in Unix Domain Socket server. This stream connects easily to OBS, TTS, transcript, and custom overlay scenarios.
Socket Path
/tmp/usta.sock
Listen command
nc -U /tmp/usta.sockJSON output
{
"original": "Hello world",
"translated": "Bonjour le monde",
"source": "en",
"target": "fr",
"engine": "Google",
"timestamp": 1717181234.56
}
🛠️ System Requirements
A flexible runtime environment for GNOME, KDE Plasma, and other desktops
The required packages vary by operating system for OCR, screen capture, and desktop integration.
Platform Approach
Aims to support GNOME, KDE Plasma, and other desktops on Linux, while expanding to different operating systems.
CachyOS / Arch
python-gobject, gst-plugin-pipewire, GStreamer base/good, PipeWire, xdg-desktop-portal, Tesseract, and language data packages.
Fedora
python3-gobject, gstreamer1-plugin-pipewire, GStreamer base/good, PipeWire, xdg-desktop-portal, and Tesseract language packs.
🗺️ Roadmap
From Linux desktops to other operating systems
Support goals for GNOME, KDE Plasma, other Linux desktops, and different operating systems.
Linux Packaging
Easy distribution with .deb, AUR, AppImage, and Flatpak.
Linux Desktop Environments
Broader support across GNOME, KDE Plasma, and other Linux desktops.
Windows Support
Windows-native capture and OCR API integration.
macOS Support
macOS-native APIs and screen capture systems.
Try USTA and connect screen translation to your own workflow
Open-source code, installation notes, releases, and development details are available in the GitHub repository.
Open on GitHub