Yeah, Creator/Notator was wicked, back in the day. There is 'MIDIPipe' for old Macs - I'll download it and see if I can figure it out, if there's not an easier way. Your MIDI translator idea seems ok though. I'm not on a PC though, so perhaps it doesn't matter.
I might be wrong, but I don't think this will work on an old Mac anyway. I do write code, but not in C/C++, and I'm not that keen to learn it, tbh. As far as I can figure out, it's a programmer's tool for adding control surface integration using C code, via a Microsoft C++ compiler. I googled it and found this old forum post. I've never heard of csurf (like I said, I'm new around here).