1. What is a typical lawyer fee to file some papers to the court?
$300 or so per hour. And it's not just for filing papers. The lawyer has to spend time with the client, review the case, review the law, prepare the case, travel back and forth to the court, pay the court fees and process service fees, appear in court, have additional visits with the client, enforce the judgment.

Is $1k reasonable?
That's about 3 hours of the lawyer's time. Yeah, it's reasonable.

No court has been gone so far.
You mean that you haven't been served with a lawsuit just threatened with a lawsuit?

2. How likely is it for the Judge will award the plaintiff lawyer and court fees?
Depends. What was the service about? Was there a written contract or agreement? What did it say about attorney fees?

My primary argument against that is (a) the plaintiff should have filed the charge with the Small Claims court instead, where court fee and lawyer fees would have been much lower, and (b) for the court to deter people from filing lawsuits of worthless amounts like $500.
Both those points are BS. You know what BS means, don't you?

You defaulted on the debt, breached the agreement to repay, you're the bad guy, your arguments about how somebody should sue you are irrelevant.

3. How should I convince the plaintiff to accept my offer? My main communication with them is through their lawyer, and the lawyer's best interest is going to court to make more money, so I am not sure how to best phrase my argument.
You don't have an "argument." You have a "debt." How you phrase it might go something like this: "Sir, I don't want to pay you $2000. I offer to pay you $________ to settle the debt and you give me a written agreement that the amount is a full and final settlement when I bring you the money. You cannot garnish my wages in Texas so I suggest you accept my offer and get this over with."

4. Despite my writing English, I speak broken English. Is it possible to get a translator at the court, or inexpensively hire someone on-site?
If you get sued you can ask for a translator. If you don't get sued you are free to hire one. I don't know how much they cost.