SEP 04, 2024

Gamedev, Game design

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

</aside>

Translating Dynamic Text

• Use explicit names for variables to cut down the time spent explaining. Adding examples makes it easier for the translator :

  [Obfuscated variable names]
     "{0}{1} of {2}"
  [Explicit variable names]
     "{Quality}{WeaponType} of {Element}": "Large Sword of Fire"
  

• Provide the ability to change the 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

  • 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 the passed argument

    [Eng]
    "{CharName} received {RewardType:nom}": "Bartholomew received a Spear"
    "{CharName} hit you with a {Weapon:nom}": "Goblin hit 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 may have more. Being able to change the form programmatically alleviates the need for workarounds or lengthy if-else statements

    [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"
    

• Separate logic and content. In the following example, text fields are marked as changed – but nothing actually needs to be translated. That’s because the text fields contain technical data (string IDs) that is used to pull descriptions. Translators do not need to see such technicalities

  

General notes

• Community-sourced translation: leave translation files in plain text, so if anyone wants to do the translation, they can add a new file. The game needs to scan for new localization files and present them in the menus (probably marked as “community translated”).
• Validate the localization files. It's like unit testing for your localization.
  • A game I worked on, “The Unliving”, had dialogue lines starting with character tag followed by a colon. Japanese and Chinese translators mistyped a few times and put their colon symbols instead, breaking the dialogues.
  • Broken and unclosed html tags
  • Missing/misspelled IDs
  • General dialogue structure validation
• Provide context for the localization team: have Glossary, character dossiers, UI screenshots, cutscene videos

Technical

• With right-to-left languages you can flip the text canvas – but be aware that if you have injections of Latin in the text (names, for example), they’d also be flipped
• Localize units, dates, time
• Some lines will be lengthier when translated. Make UIs adjustable to accommodate that – and provide width guidance for the localization team
• Fonts: UTF, covers all the diacritics and umlauts
  • “Firewatch” team 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