Video Game Localization // Should you Translate your Game?

[@EuphoricBrothers]

Thanks for this man! Very helpful.

[@AuroDev]

Happy to hear that! :)

[@manuelacortina186]

Thank you very much for this! I am an audiovisual translator and I am currently trying to enter the world of game localization, and your videos are really helping me understand a lot better how it works :D

[@AuroDev]

Awesome! That's cool to hear :)

[@SomnusLucisCaelum]

I am an interpreter for immigration and I'd love to enter the world of audio visual translation and video game localization 😭

[@mario_actually]

Very helpful! Thanks. Just binged through your whole catalogue. Definitely worth the time.

[@AuroDev]

Awesome! :)

[@Freelanceverse]

Interesting approach, well done 🙌

[@AuroDev]

Thanks! :)

[@omondi_wa_butere]

loved the video Auro Cheers

[@AuroDev]

Great to hear that! :)

[@AndrisGameDev]

Thanks for sharing!

[@Ant0n009]

Thanks for the info

[@heda2501]

Very interesting topic!

[@AuroDev]

Thanks, happy to hear it was interesting!

[@branidev]

Definitely interesting topic I am also considering if it's worth of my time, but I need to look up somewhere how the most efficient way to translate the game.

[@AuroDev]

Definitely worth considering! I used I2 Localization asset for Unity, but I think the localization tools are all probably pretty similar.

[@litgamesdev]

Thinking ahead about localization is definitely a good idea, even if you have few words. My game has few words but I am making sure to separate labels from the values and other little things that will make translations a lot easier. Where I have hardcoded string in code I am putting a //TODO: Localize for later.

[@AuroDev]

That's smart! Now that I have localized a game once, from now on I'm definitely going to make preparations for localization even if I'm still undecided whether or not I will localize the game.

[@HalcyonVoid]

@@AuroDev Could you consider making a video about the general process to do this? I am new to game dev, but if it is a good practice, I want to get used to it sooner rather than later. Your videos thus far have been more about high level topics, so if this doesn't fit your desired scope, that is cool too.

[@AuroDev]

@@HalcyonVoid I am thinking of doing a short video on how the localization process goes in practice. In that video I could also talk about how you can prepare for localization, even if you're not going to do it just yet. Definitely a good idea!

[@BlueJayGaming]

hey AuroDev, loving the helpful vids! what are your thoughts on making a video about getting into QA as a stepping stone to becoming a game designer?

[@AuroDev]

That sounds like a good video idea that would probably interest many. But... It's not really a video I can make as I have never worked in the gaming industry aside from my own company. It does sound like a viable career path to me though!

[@BlueJayGaming]

@@AuroDev awesome, that's understandable, thank you!

[@LordHerek]

Good video. Definitely do video about localization process in practice. Also, do you consider China "a must-have" region to make your game "successful"? I don't really like their approval policy and the country as a whole...

[@AuroDev]

Thanks! I don't think Chinese is a must-have and you can definitely be successful without supporting Chinese in your game. But if you are localizing your game, I think support Chinese is the language that makes the most sense financially. In my next video I will go through the different languages in a bit more detail to show how much they account for in sales.

[@tobiasrieper7328]

Thanks for these insights and tips that no one else is gonna sharing with you.

[@paypercutts]

Another great vid mate. You're gonna go far on YT if you keep at it! nearly 1K. You said in an earlier vid that your game did well in China. Did you localise to Mandarin? Or will that be a future project?

[@AuroDev]

Thanks! :) When I pushed out the localization update, Chinese (simplified) was also included as one language. Quite soon after that my game started doing well in China. I will go into more details in next video how the localization affected the sales in China and other countries.

[@paypercutts]

@@AuroDev awesome! I'll eagerly await for the nxt vid. Guess that's another thing I'll have to add to the list of to do's for my game 😬

[@ahmadali-mw3ov]

@@AuroDev what about localization Arabic ? is it worth it

[@AuroDev]

@@ahmadali-mw3ov You can see the most common languages used on Steam here: store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam. Arabic doesn't even make the list so based on that I would say in general it's not worth it. Maybe it's worth it if you except your game to have a large audience with that language.

[@ahmadali-mw3ov]

@@AuroDev Arabic is the fourth most popular language in the world and the number of its speakers is more than the number of Spanish speakers.. And the Middle East market is starting to grow little by little. It is good to invest in an emerging market to attract new audiences

[@ravjot6917]

Hey auro thx for such great videos. I have, a qns how about only localization of interface manu only

[@AuroDev]

Thanks! Localization of the UI works in the same way as localizing other things in the game. I actually made a short tutorial to show the whole process works in practice. Maybe that would be helpful: kzbin.info/www/bejne/bGWTioCpiduYoq8

[@escapeundergroundgame]

Hello and happy new year! I have a question. My game has just a few words in English: in the main menu and a few in the actual game. If I modify all of them to be mobile-like (icons) would that mean that my game now supports all 30 languages? Thanks!

[@AuroDev]

I guess it depends on the perspective! If the game is easily understandable by all languages, I could see myself checking the boxes that all languages are supported.

[@roadtomillion9499]

Hey my question is How can we ensure all translations are perfect or modify it to better Without knowing those languages

[@HalcyonVoid]

I usually see indie devs asking for community assistance, is people who know the language they want to translate to, so they can work out proper translations. I imagine big companies pay for translation services.

[@AuroDev]

Getting someone who knows the language to take a second look is a good way to verify the quality. You can also yourself check for obvious mistakes with term consistency, missing translations etc. Google Translate can also help you make sure that the sentence is not completely wrong. In the end it can still be very hard to make sure they are perfect though so try to fix the issues you can. Your players will notify you if there are any obvious mistakes so you can then fix those too if you missed something.

[@crabsmack_]

Hello Auro, thanks for your videos, I've been watching since you started. Why do you opt for manual translation rather than ML-based, like Google Translate? Their pricing is quite reasonable, and free for small monthly amounts cloud.google.com/translate/pricing. And I believe ML translation at this point competes with the quality of human translation. If nothing else it seems worthwhile to fill out languages that you cannot afford to manually translate.

[@AuroDev]

I hadn't actually considered that ML-based translation would be a viable choice at this point in time. The pricing does look really tempting and only a fraction of what the manual translation costs. I think I will need to do a test run on this before my next localization. If the quality is good, it could be a big improvement! Thanks for the idea!

[@m72860]

I know this is from 10 months ago, but for anyone who's considering using machine translation, I don't recommend it. As a French speaker it's really easy to tell when someone is using a machine translator, because it often isn't able to pick up things like formality and context. You could end up with a child character using a formal pronoun and talking in a fancy way, because that's what machine translators default to. It also directly translates English phrases and sayings instead of using ones that native speakers actually use. Maybe it'd work for a simple mobile game or something, but for anything more than that it's definitely worth getting a real person to handle it.

[@Amelia_PC]

Given the opportunity and money, I want to localize my game to Spanish, Russian, French, German, and Italian. Right now, it's only a wish. I'll leave it to the community. They will decide on the localized languages, then I'll run a crowdfunding campaign to pay the translators. I've built a monster workstation with a mini mocap studio and now... I run out of money for anything else XDDD haha Don't know if it was something smart to do, but I had to change my equipment anyway, so...

[@AuroDev]

Hah, it happens! But sounds like you got a good plan :)

[@pyttpytts2690]

3:26 haha, dog translation

[@Fahad-Qahtany]

وكأن اللغة العربية لم تخلق من الوجود 😂

[@manuelacortina186]

Thank you very much for this! I am an audiovisual translator and I am currently trying to enter the world of game localization, and your videos are really helping me understand a lot better how it works :D