SEP 04, 2024

Gamedev, Game design

<aside> 📒 Localizing is hard. Here are some potential pitfalls.

</aside>

“Tension points”

• Using explicit names for variables cut down on explaining. Examples are welcomed

  Obfuscated: {0}{1} of {2}
  Explicit: {Quality}{WeaponType} of {Element} -> Large Sword of Fire
  

• Word order

  [Eng]
  	"{Modifier}{WeaponType} of {Element}": "Large Sword of Fire"
  [Spanish]
  	"{WeaponType}{Modifier} de {Element}": "Espada Grande de Fuego"
  

• Gender-, plurality-, and grammatical cases-aware conditionals help the localization team

  • Gender

    {GenderSwitch:
    	{Male:He is a swordsman.}
    	{Female:She is a swordstress.}
    	{Nonbinary:They are a sword master.}
    }
    

  • Pulling correct forms of the word depending on passed argument

    [Eng]
    "{CharName} received {RewardType:nom}": "Bartholomew received a Spear"
    "{CharName} hit you with a {Weapon:nom}": "Goblin struck you with a Spear"
    
    [Ukr]
    "{CharName} отримав {RewardType:acc}": "Остап отримав Списа"
    "{CharName} вдарив вас {RewardType:inst}": "Гоблін вдарив вас Списом"
    

  • Plurality: English has two forms of plurality, some languages have more

    [Eng]
    "You see {num} {weapon(num)}": "You see 1 sword"
                                   "You see 2 swords"
                                   "You see 5 swords"
    
    [Ukr]
    "Ви бачите {num} {weapon(num)}": "Ви бачите 1 меч"
    																 "Ви бачите 2 мечі"
    																 "Ви бачите 5 мечів"
    

• For right-to-left languages you can flip the text canvas – but if you use names in Latin, they need not be flipped

• Localize units, dates, time

• Account for lengthier lines (in english, always add 30% extra stuff)

  • make UIs adjustable to accommodate that

• Fonts: UTF, covers all the diacritics and umlauts

  • Firewatch created two “pseudo-languages” to test localization: one with all the umlauts and diacritics, a second with 10% longer (padded) lines – to test utf and UI spacing on ui

• Avoid backing text into visuals (graffiti, name plaques)

• Blog post with a bunch of links: https://medium.com/indie-localizers-meet-web-app-bot-game-developers/game-dev-loc-starter-4fa54e8be054

Translating “Unliving”

• Translation expandability: leave translation files in plain text, so if anyone wants to do the translation, they just copy and edit new file. Of course, the system needs to pull up automatically the new localization files (and parse for errors)

• Have Glossary, character dossiers, UI screenshots, cutscenes videos

• Validation is great: it's like unit testing for your localization.

  • Japanese (or Chinese) colon symbol in dialogues, after the name tag
  • Broken and unclosed html tags
  • Missing/missspelled IDs
  • Structure validation

• Separation of logic and content. In this example, nothing needs to be translated even though it occupies the text fields (because it pulls descriptions from those IDs). Translators do not need to work with such structures and make (although, it might be useful as a reference)