Can i ask what you have against using the extensions? You seem to be making more work for yourself then necessary. Some tasks in construct are just hard to do (like this), which is the whole reasons for the extensions.
Yup, you are right, a plugins/extensions will add extra functionality and at the same time will ease your work-flow. Why am I being skeptic here? Well the reason would be, a bad experience, one of my friends gave me some couple of templates made with construct, but most of them he created using some plugins, Later I tried to find those plugins but the plugins were abandoned by its developer, So literally I can not able to open the project.
And for this translation thing, I even dunno It was possible without using addons, It because I found some of the old posts including yours which suggests Yes it is possible without using any third-party addons.
I will definitely follow the addons thing but first I will try Whether it can be achieved without addons. :)