So... Left 4 Dead 2 has pretty good subtitles. But what if you wanted to change it? Either to edit the names of the characters, to completely change sentences spoken, or just to add in memes or anything else? Well, no worries. This guide will cover everything you need to know to make this possible.

First up, you have to install the Left 4 Dead 2 Authoring Tools that came with the game. You can find this in the Steam Library under the section Tools as shown down below:

After it finished installing, just run the program once. This will be important for later.

Alright, now that we've done our preparations, it's time to obtain the subtitles!
You can find these in the directory of Left 4 Dead 2, which you can find by right-clicking your Steam icon on the desktop and then click 'open directory'.



From there, you need to find the folder named 'steamapps' and open it, then open 'common', and you should find the Left 4 Dead 2 directory there.
(To make the process of reaching the L4D2 directory easier in the future, i'd suggest to make a shortcut to this location on your desktop or wherever it suits the best)


When you're finally in, you find so many files and other folders. But don't worry, there are only four folders that are important to us and store all the subtitles.
'left4dead2', 'left4dead2_dlc1', 'left4dead2_dlc2' and 'update'.
These four maps each contain another folder named 'resource'.


And when you open them, you find all of the closecaption.dat and subtitles.dat files of all the languages in each one. Great! Now let's just open those and start to edit one of-

Ah dammit.

So... the .dat subtitles are all encrypted and can't be edited. Now what? Well, don't worry. We just need to make a little detour for this problem.

So go back one folder of whatever left4dead2 map (or update) you're in, and scroll down until you reach a file named 'pak01_dir.vpk'. You need to open this file. I'd recommend GCFScape for this.[gamebanana.com]



So... after you open the pak01_dir file, you'd be surprised to find it's similar to the folder you're currently in, although with much different files.



Either way, go to the 'resource' folder in pak01_dir, and this time you actually find a whole bunch of .txt files of the closecaptions and subtitles instead of .dat files! So copy those (depending on the languages you want) on over to your desktop that you need of them all.

After having copied the files from the pak01_dir, you can open them up with whatever notepad program you find comfortable to use. And FINALLY it looks like something that's actually readable!

Either way, here you can find all the dialogue of characters stored in the subtitles, and subtitled sounds and special infected noises in the captions. So edit the dialogue and/or captions you want to edit, and save the files.

Finally, your subtitles are finished and ready to be displayed in the game. But... how do we turn them into .dat files like the original files so that it will read them?

Remember we had to open up the Authoring Tools in Step 1? Well, this is because when you do this, it generates a new file in the 'bin' folder of Left 4 Dead 2's directory. This file is called 'captioncompiler.exe', which is used to replace the subtitles of the folder it needs to.



So... what you have to do now is rename the custom .txt subtitles, and change it into a .bat file simply by renaming it. Then drag the file on over to the 'resource' folder where the file originates from, and just put it in there.





Now open up the 'bin' folder in a second window, and drag your .bat file in the resource folder over the captioncompiler.exe to 'open it with the .bat file'...



And this should've replaced the original .dat file of that folder. You can check by seeing if the .dat file's 'date edited' time is the same as the current time.



Now, to boot up the game...

So just let the game load, turn your subtitles on in the settings (if you haven't already) and open up a match either in single player or online co-op.


Bada-bing, bada-boom! There you have your very own subtitles!
I really want to thank you for taking the time and following through with this guide i wrote. If you have any more questions about it, feel free to ask. I had to spend a lot of hours figuring out how this would work myself.