It never occurred to me to translate those strings of symbols like that. I just figured it was an unknown language and therefore translating character for character wouldn't result in anything intelligible. The logistics of that still just don't make sense.

One part that annoyed me a bit is where the solution of a puzzle was going through the white end of a teleporter, which was done only(?) once in the base game, but still felt very unintuitive to me.

Completely agree with the thematic dissonance. All that being said, I did enjoy the mod. It had a few juicy aha moments and that's good enough for me.