Localization???

I don’t see Localization for the new Unity UI mentioned anywhere.

Any ideas?

Why not build your own script that handles that for you?
make one manager script that hold the Localization data and one for each text / Localization object that handles gettingt and setting the text to the content.

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I know I could build it myself I’m just surprised that this isn’t in the new UI, with you know, Localisation being such an important feature nowadays in games.

Oh well, I guess that’s what the Asset Store is for…

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Oh no the new UI fully supports unicode, no worries there. It’s a cinch to make a text label display text in any language. Just copy from google translate, and paste straight into unity. I just finished localizing my app to English, Spanish, German, French, Japanese, and Russian.

I’m guessing @Meltdown is talking about automatically adjusting text according to the player’s current language selection, not just pasting in a hard-coded translation. As @fffMalzbier writes, it’s fairly simple to implement in a short script, but it would be nice if this were built in. It would require some kind of lookup table. The Dialogue System does this with its own LocalizedTextTable scriptable object, using the Text component’s initial value as the lookup value in the table. But for a built-in solution, Unity would have to add a new type of asset.

If you’re serious about releasing a quality product, I wouldn’t recommend using Google Translate for your localisation.

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Absolutely. Google Translate is passable when you can forgive translation quality. (It’s a lifesaver when answering support questions from languages I don’t know.) But, for players, it’s deeply in “all your base are belong to us” territory and knocks players out of the game experience.

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Well for that you’d need a real translator. I don’t see any way around it.

No it doesn’t, it doesn’t support arabic, kurdish, persian…, you have to build your own solution for these…

Thanks for the clarification.

This is getting off topic, but I’ve seen an interesting hybrid used: Run the text through Google Translate to get the general idea, then send it to a native speaker to clean it up. The native speaker doesn’t have to know the original language in this case, so it’s easier to enlist help.

That’s a good idea. Plus often simple games don’t even have much text at all. Just a few menu buttons.

Actually, “All your base are belong to us” MADE my gaming experience.

I’ve been researching on Localization standards, and have come across XLIFF as a (the?) standard format for it. When I searched the Unity Forums for XLIFF as a term, I got one hit only. Does everyone just create their own custom solutions for it then? If there is a standard, I would like to follow it.

Which brings me to: what tools are people using to manage the associated resource files? I have watched a tutorial at CodeMag (Cross-Platform Localization for Mobile Apps) that looked promising, but I have VS2010, and in general, I haven’t been working in Windows much anyways, so I don’t like this solution. There are some opensource solutions like this one: https://bitbucket.org/fredrik_corneliusson/transolution/#rst-header-xliff-editor

But… I haven’t really seen a compelling solution discussed, despite everyone agreeing that it’s essential. And, I’m looking for a workflow solution really… I want tools that play nice with Unity to help manage this for me.

What tools are people using to generate the files, and maintain them? Also, what translators are good for me to try out? What is the recommendation?

Sorry for the shameless advertising, but really: One good solution to localize your games is to use I2 Localization.

It fully supports the New UI and you can localize Text, Images, Sounds, Prefabs. You can store all your localization in google spreadsheets and the game can download any change to those spreadsheets even after released.

For translating the texts, it can use Google Translator for a quick translation, but here is a good news:

I’m working on a new feature named “Crowd Translation” that will allow you accessing real translations for free. Most games use the same texts (Play, Pause, Buy Coins, etc) So the plugin have a huge repository of terms translated by real translators and cross verified.
When the plugin finds a text in your game that is similar to one of the terms in the repository, it allows you to use that translation. That way, most of the time 90% of your game will be automatically translated by real translators and all for free (well, once you purchase the plugin as that will help me continue expanding it and supporting it :slight_smile: )
Currently, I have a repository of 5000+ terms and phrases all translated to 15 languages.

Also, when developers translate their own terms, they have the option to share those translations. The plugin will add those to the repository and that way, it will grow and everyone will benefit!

The Crowd Translation is currently in development and is scheduled to be added to the I2 Localization in the next few versions.

Hope that helps!
Frank

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I have your plugin and i have to say it’s awsome. Especially being able to update the locatization data through google spreadsheets, without forcing the end user to update the app.

If you need localization, get it!

@Inter-Illusion I just bought it, and it seems to work really well. Just curious, but did you guys do your sales copy yourself?

Hi Guys!

Last Friday my ex company did a HUGE lay off! And I decided to go full time into developing for the AssetStore. Which means that I2 Localization will have even faster updates and some of the features I had scheduled are going to be released way sooner!

And finally! finally! I will have the time to add all the new topics into the documentationI2 Localization has grown a lot and it has tons of features that are a bit hidden. Now its the time to bring them to the light :slight_smile:

If you are using the plugin and has a feature request or suggestion, please let me know at the Inter Illusion forum.

Also: Version 2.4.3f1 is now available at the AssetStore. Unity 5 support and better sprite localization!

Hope you find it useful!
Frank