ratex

Translate arXiv papers from English to Chinese, end to end. Downloads the source archive, sends each .tex chunk through an LLM, and recompiles the document to PDF with CJK support.

Install

The repository is private, so install from a local clone:

git clone git@github.com:SunskyXH/ratex.git
cd ratex
cargo install --path .

This puts the ratex binary in ~/.cargo/bin/ (make sure that's on your PATH). To upgrade later, git pull and rerun cargo install --path ..

You also need a TeX engine on PATH. Either is fine:

• tectonic (recommended; auto-downloads missing packages)
• A full TeX Live / MacTeX install that provides xelatex

Usage

ratex https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.06608
ratex 2406.06608                       # bare ID also works
ratex 2406.06608 --no-compile          # skip PDF, just write translated .tex
ratex 2406.06608 -o paper_zh.pdf       # custom output path
ratex 2406.06608 --concurrency 8       # parallel translation requests

The output PDF defaults to <paper_id>_zh.pdf in the current directory. If compilation fails, the translated .tex source tree is preserved at <paper_id>_zh_tex/ so you can fix it manually without re-paying for translation.

Configuration

By default ratex reads ~/.config/ratex/config.toml. Minimal example:

default_profile = "gemini"
concurrency = 4

[profiles.gemini]
protocol = "gemini"
api_key_env = "GEMINI_API_KEY"

[profiles.openai]
protocol = "openai"
model = "gpt-4o"
api_key_env = "OPENAI_API_KEY"

[profiles.openrouter]
protocol = "openai"
endpoint = "https://openrouter.ai/api/v1"
model = "anthropic/claude-sonnet-4-5"
api_key_env = "OPENROUTER_API_KEY"

[profiles.claude]
protocol = "claude"
# Optional: pin a model. Omit to let the Claude CLI pick.
# model = "sonnet"
# Optional: path to the binary. Defaults to "claude" on PATH.
# endpoint = "/Users/me/.local/bin/claude"

protocol is the wire format. openai and gemini are HTTP APIs (any OpenAI-compatible endpoint works under protocol = "openai"). claude shells out to the local Claude Code CLI (claude -p) — no API key needed, auth comes from your existing claude install.

Pick a profile per run with --profile <name>; CLI flags (--model, --base-url, --api-key, --concurrency) override profile fields. The API key is read from the environment variable named by api_key_env; a .env file in the working directory is loaded automatically.

Pass --config <path> to use a config file at a non-default location.

Concurrency

concurrency bounds how many translation requests are in flight at once, across both chunk-level and file-level parallelism. Default is 4. Increase if your provider's rate limits allow it; decrease if you hit 429s. A single shared semaphore caps total in-flight calls regardless of how the work is split.