Getting Started with Mobile Game Localisation Why would you want to go through the hassle of re-writing your game to work in another market? Well, its an almost sure-fire way to acquire many more loyal gamers, particularly if your home market has been tapped out, and it normally brings a good return on investment for the work you put in. Look at QuizzUp, the trivia game that very nearly bankrupted the AppInTop office in lost work hours. The developers, Plain Vanilla Games, realised their product had the potential to run and run, and so localised it into four languages: French, German, Portuguese and Spanish. In next to no time they had over 20 million users. So, with that firmly in mind, here is a breakdown of the essentials involved in localising your game. Languages The first part to altering your game for a new market is clearly going to be what language it displays. What language you change it to will effectively determine your budget, target audience and ultimately your ROI. Its largely up to you, but you want ask yourself a few things before deciding: Will the language you choose reach a large enough audience? Hungarian, for instance, limits your audience to the population of Hungary, as there are very few places where anything remotely similar is spoken, and while Mandarin also only reaches one population, it happens to be over one billion people strong. How much profit can you expect from localisation? Using AppAnnie, Sensor Tower, and other analytics tools to gather country data and determine which market is likely to bring the best ROI. Also consider which language you can get the most mileage from. Spanish, for example, reaches not only the people of Spain but, with a little tweaking, most of Central and South America, and a significant part of the US. Thats a lot of potential marketplaces for minimal work. What are your competitors up to, and where? Run competition analyses and form a plan to beat them. Translation Choosing the optimal translation method is vital. Running your games text through Google translate will come up with unintelligible, albeit amusing, rubbish. Publishers used to outsource to translation agencies or have their own in-house department. These days crowdsourcing technology could allow your gamers to do your translating. It worked for Facebook and Whatsapp, but this method needs to be approached with caution. When Minecraft was translated into Afrikaans by a crowdsourced translator, he added a racial insult into the game that went unnoticed until after release. It therefore makes sense to have any crowdsourced work checked by a professional. It would still be cheaper than having the work done completely by a specialist and you would be able to use the crowdsourcing as a marketing campaign, giving your gamers a sense of ownership. Timetable Do not rush things. Translation rushed will always turn out badly, so set a reasonable time table. Its reasonable to expect around 2000 words translated per day, so that should give you an idea of how much time you need to allow. Dont forget time for QA and review. And if you thought translating involved simply handing over your text and it all coming back neatly bound and in a different language, think again. Translating is not only about using the right words, but also the right context. First they have to understand what and how you need a word to mean, and then find the best way to convey that in another language. You should have, then, someone from your team on hand to help the translators fully grasp your original scripting. Isolate source code To assist in the translation, isolate and extract all your games displayed text strings from your executable code into resource files. These resource files, kept separate by language, should consist of your games key-value pairs, along with some comments for you to keep you place, so they can be integrated into your app later. Avoid hard coding text into your source code. Correctly extracted strings can preserve the meaning of source strings, which will be of endless help to your translators when they have to contend with the intricacies of foreign language grammar in all its glory. Style guide A style guide and a glossary will be essential to your translators. The clearer your translators instructions, the better they understand your intentions and the better translations they produce. Your style guide should be an outline for how your games content is presented. Your glossary is your list of the standard terms used in your game. The most common elements detailed in your style guide will be: Punctuation Branding elements, which will be unique to the country or language Formatting Tone Local adaptations, such as how to deal with currencies, phone numbers, etc. Context Possibly the most important aspect of translation. Without the correct contexts your translation may end up meaningless. And just providing random phrases to your translator will leave them unsure about how to include them, so they need to be given detailed instructions. How the text is being said is open to endless possibilities. For instance, when translating the word kill, which comes up in games more than you would think, is that meant as a verb (to kill) or a noun (a kill)? Translating to Japanese is different again, and involves using different tones depending on where the person being addressed is, socially speaking, compared to you. There are so many dimensions to consider when it comes to context, so be sure your translator is on the same page as you. Finally Here, the task of localisation has been confined to just the language part of the operation. And you can see the effort involved in this alone, without considering all the little nuances that need to be taken into account when adapting for a different market. However, get the details right in the language, which most translators should have a grip on anyway, and a large part of your battle is won. Its not a simple step, publishing your game in another market, but considering the kind of revenue that can be gained from introducing a whole new country to your game, it is almost always worth the effort and investment. Source: Gamasutra
Posted on: Wed, 12 Nov 2014 17:13:01 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015