Localization- How Do You Personally Do It?

News & General Discussion
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So, there’s the competitive market between different translation services. Add that to the fact that usually it’s good to hire someone who actually knows the language so they can phonetically read out loud Chinese and/or Japanese etc. On top of that there’s the issue with paying even more money for each qualified voice actor that speaks those individual languages.

If you’re an indie do you just let it go and take pride in the fact that you created a game that at least English-speakers could enjoy for what it’s worth? (Or German-speakers, Taiwanese-speakers, whatever native language the game’s being developed for…)

I know there’s the opportunity to use subtitles and no audio dialogue in cut-scenes and so on, but that can take so many players outside of the immersive quality of the game.

What would/did you all do to localize your games? Do you believe that in some circumstances localization can be a waste of time and money?

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Only English speaking players, because almost everyone else is used to reading subtitles.

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Hmm, I suppose I can understand how that makes sense. Thank you. :slight_smile:

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There are countries that have low literacy rates, so there localizing the voice acting is probably still quite useful. But that’s generally more for older media (movies etc).

Personally, bad voice acting in my native language (which, with the exception of like localized Disney movies, is almost always the case), takes me out of anything much, much more than subtitles ever could.

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Good point. With subtitles, readers can hear the lines in their head the way they want, without bad voice acting jarring them out of immersion. Subtitles are cheaper to implement, too. And you’ll need the subtitle text anyway to create a voiceover script if you do record voice actors.

Here are some things I do, in no particular order:

Don’t implement localization data entry inside Unity. Translators don’t use Unity; they use spreadsheets like MS Excel and Google Sheets. I import and export to Chat Mapper, which can then import and export to MS Excel in a nice format. (But I also support customers who import and export directly to CSV format.)

Include stage directions while you’re in the zone and writing your dialogue. A few suggestions here or there (e.g., “spoken sarcastically but with good humor”) will help guide voice actors and animators.

Use a tool that makes it easy for voice actors to know what lines to record, what format to save them in, and exactly what filenames to use. They’re artists, not IT staff; make it clear and easy.

You can crowdsource localization! The Last Door did this really well. Players volunteered to translate the game into their native languages. It’s cost-effective, and you get translations from native speakers who are already fans of the game so they understand it and have an investment in doing the job right.

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Kudos for recognizing the role voice actors play in a game and what their role is.

Crowdsourcing localization sounds brilliant! Thanks for the tip.

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This 100% Voice Acting needs good direction and wjat might seem obvious to those in the studio may not to those outside of it

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Different localizations bring different return on the investments. According to an article I’ve once read for some languages it mostly drives piracy up, for others it actually increases sales. I’m not worrying about localization right now. Until a game has proven that it sells well enough in one language I consider it a waste of time to worry about localizing. I imagine people who really want to play it but only will do so in their native language, won’t be like “pfft, now I don’t want it anymore” when you release localized versions 6 months after initial release.

Here is a recap of the article, the original article seems to be offline now:

Looks like German and French are some of the best languages to localize for in terms of how many people will then buy instead of pirate the localized version. I’m from Germany, but still, if I had a released game I’d need to feel like it’ll earn me at least a couple thousand $ to consider localizing it to German, because that seems like such a boring and tedious task to do and I wouldn’t trust anyone with outsourcing it commercially.

I have had an experience where I was working on a project for a client, they considered localizing it for Germany but I didn’t want to do it myself, they comissioned two “professional translations by native speakers”, sent me the results and asked for my opinion. And seriously, I could not believe this wasn’t just put through google translate. It were some of the worst and most cringeworthy translations I’ve ever read, both of them. I recommended people who would have done a better job, but ultimately the client didn’t want to work with them for whatever reason.

Imho @TonyLi 's suggestion to crowdsource the translations is pretty much the best way to go about it, because you’ll get highly motivated people who know typical words used in the context of that kind of game, which is something that professional translators very rarely will know about unless they are super specialized on localizing games.

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I agree. At the same time, I think it’s wise to build in the ability to localize from the beginning. For example, instead of hard-coding text into your UI, grab it from a lookup table, even if that lookup table only has one language.

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