In recent years, gaming has become a global marketplace with audiences from all over the world. This massive growth in the number of gamers came mainly as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic when people had different forms of communication. As a result of the pandemic, around 84% of the gaming companies said that they had experienced their IT infrastructure during the first three months of the pandemic, according to a survey by Gcore. This growth is a benefit for game developers since it allows them to reach more players than ever.
However, with this growth in the gaming industry comes a new challenge for the developers, and this is localization.
Localizing your game will make it accessible to audiences from different regions, however, it is a challenging and difficult thing to do.
This article focuses on the main obstacles faced by game developers and companies when it comes to localizing their games and how they can overcome these obstacles.
Challenges you may face when localizing your game
Slang
Slang is one of the most common challenges when it comes to game localization.
Every language has its own slang, which rarely has a direct translation in the target language.
With the fast-evolving style of the slang language, one word may mean something when a game is first put out, and in ten years it means something else. Moreover, slang also has cultural and legal weight. For instance, some words may be illegal or offensive in a certain region but not in the other, like terms related to politics, and religion.
Formatting Issues
This is common in video game localization due to the difference in language length, also known as Text expansion.
This can be seen when translating from English to another language that relies on longer terms or wordiness, such as German which is famous for its large compound words.
In this case, the translator should focus on the meaning the text wants to deliver rather than what it says word for word.
The direction languages are written in, also makes a difference.
For example, languages like Arabic or Urdu are written from right to left, unlike Latin and Germanic languages. Such an issue may lead to an entire makeover of the game’s user interface (UI).
Maintaining Tone and style
Each game has its own unique tone and style that might be challenging to translate. When localizing your game, it is very important to make sure that it sounds and feels like your game but in a different language.
This is a very common obstacle for English-Japanese game localization, it’s a translation of colors, UI, cultural aspects, character design, dialogue, and even character names that could be changed to suit Japanese people and make the overall experience more at home…more palatable.
How can gaming companies overcome the odds and go global?
In this process, you must follow a strategy or a set of rules. These may include brevity, automation, and transcreation.
Brevity
Brevity simply means to use concise and direct language. In localization, it is highly important to keep it as simple as possible. Keep in mind that you need to shorten the content’s size, to keep it understandable. Complicated text may be hard to translate and fit in a text box, which may affect the user’s experience and make them lose interest. If the language used is too complicated, gamers will find it hard to follow up with what is happening in the game, rendering it difficult to digest. Using short linguistic utterances will definitely help the users understand the events and stay motivated to keep going.
You’re creating an entertainment product, after all, not a course curriculum!
Automation
Using Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Computer-assisted translation (CAT) tools will definitely help in localizing your game.
These tools can simplify the process since they mainly rely on translation memory technology. This technology allows them to memorize the terms used in previous projects to describe a certain situation. When localizing a similar situation, the TM will recall the previously used term, to help the translator instead of starting the translation from scratch.
Transcreation
Transcreation is a linguistic process that works on adapting a text from one language to another while maintaining its tone, intent, and style. In gaming, it is very challenging to find the exact direct translation for specific words. For instance, this can be seen when it comes to characters’ names. If a character has a name in English that has the connotation of strength or power, you can try to find the same meaning in the target language, either in its folklore or its modern-day culture.
In this case, the localizer not only delivers the same intended meaning but also forms a cultural bond with the target audience that helps keep them more engaged.
Be a gamer yourself 🙂
One last important thing you can do to overcome the obstacle of localization in video games is to simply be a gamer yourself.
By becoming a gamer, you will make sure you understand your audience. You will be able to relate to their frustration when the meaning is not delivered, and you will relate to their struggles. This way you can help make your game more immersive and engaging when it is developed and localized by gamers.
Putting yourself in your customer’s shoes can never go wrong.
Did you know that Games are considered a SaaS product? What does SaaS mean?, find your answer in this Ultimate SaaS Localization Guide
