🏻 💖 ☝🏾 5 most idiotic computer game localization errors Ⓜ️ 🕙 👨🏼‍💼

The computer and console games industry is booming today. Thousands of projects come out every year, including at least several dozen AAA games.

But despite the scale of the industry, idiotic mistakes are still made in the localization of games, which not only greatly spoil the impression of the game, but sometimes do not allow a normal translation.

The localization curve or the inability to do it normally is a huge loss for the project. Therefore, today we will analyze 5 errors that lead to localization jambs.

Mistake 1. Embed text directly in game code or in textures

The jamb that most often happens with indie games and projects in which a small number of developers take part.

Using such a simple way, it turns out to save a little time and effort, but to localize such projects is simply terribly difficult and inconvenient.

Take, for example, the visual short story Endless Summer. It is written on the Ren'Py engine. This is quite enough for the gameplay, but the dialogs are implemented exactly in the game code.

They cannot be distinguished separately from the code. And, accordingly, it is impossible to export and translate separately. (If this is not the case, please write to us. We are not Ren'Py specialists).

Embedding dialogs in text is not a big deal for games like Endless Summer. But here are some games that go further and embed text directly into textures. So that for localization it was necessary to change not a line of text or code, but the texture completely.

In some cases, this is how signboards are made in games. Instead of playing with style and programming, it’s much easier to immediately make a texture with the inscription “Shop”.

For example, in Atari's Test Drive Unlimited, all road signs were drawn in textures. In localizations, they decided not to bother with their replacement at all - it required too much effort. They were left as is.

True, and this is not the limit. The creators of the game "Night in the woods" completely shoved the text of the dialogs into the textures. The trick is that the font in the game is animated and each letter in the game has three styles. But instead of animating the text, they used letter boards. The official translation of the game did not work out - the publishers, in principle, were not going to translate it into other languages. The fan translation, however, required just a lot of time - including due to the fact that it was necessary to get texts from textures.

See for yourself: in a second, the animation of one letter changes several times. And taking into account the connection of the text to the textures, localization turns into that quest.

Error 2. Translation of the game without the game itself

You can’t just outsource a bunch of tables with texts and expect that you will get perfect localization.

Ideally, of course, the translation of any game requires a detailed analysis of all game moments and the creation of a common glossary. And if the terms, names and locations already have an established translation in other games or setting sources, then you need to use them.

Even slight discrepancies can adversely affect gameplay.

For example, the game Baldur's Gate (1998) is based on the setting of the board game D&D. However, throughout the setting there are no single translations of the name of the city Baldur's Gate. In various localizations of game books and games in the series, it is translated as the Gate of Baldur, the Gate of Baldur or Baldurs Gate. And this is the main nomination. As for the rest, then everything is generally horrible.

But it is clear that there is always no time for a detailed and complete analysis of the ENT and all the nuances of the game. In this case, it is necessary that the localizers at least see the game and can check the dialogs in the context itself.

Indeed, sometimes in the tables of texts the gender of the character is not even indicated - everything has to be thought out independently. That's why fails like the legendary voice acting TES IV: Oblivion happen.

Although, to be honest, this particular example is a jamb of programmers who pulled out dialogue texts without a minimum context and attachment to characters, so the actors had to voice them blindly.

Error 3. Lack of budget for localization

It is clear that in a limited development budget, localization is the last thing the company will plan to spend money on.

But if the game will be released to foreign markets, then the first impression of the game will be from the translation, and only then from the plot and gameplay.

Hire a freelancer-translator who in a couple of nights will start translating a project from English into any French or Russian? For indie games, this is an extremely common pattern. That's just in the vast majority of cases, it does not work.

Take, for example, the little-known indie toy A room beyond. The original game was in German, but localization into English was done at a professional studio. True, with other languages it turned out to be complete crap. Here are the reviews the game received:

Errors were in almost every line of dialogue. French, Spanish, Italian - everywhere there were problems. Most likely, the studio gave the text to some student or freelancer, considering that no one would buy the French version anyway. And only after the localization was devastatingly criticized, did they make a normal translation with the help of professionals.

By the way, we do not consider pirated translations of games here. Because stubborn transfers without a budget with the help of fans or reprints are just a bunch.

This meme does not even need to be introduced - it is already a legend.

Mistake 4. Localize only the text, but do not pay attention to the cultural characteristics of other countries.

Localization of the game is not only the translation of texts and dialogs. Although whom we are fooling, many publishers think so.

When localizing games, special attention should be paid to its adaptation to the cultural characteristics of the country for which the market is being produced. After all, the mentality of, for example, China or Saudi Arabia is very different from the mentality of France or the United States.

So much so that even a single phrase or joke can lead to a complete ban on sales of the game in the territory of individual countries.

For example, in the Kakuto Chojin fighter, one of the characters is named Assad. The fight with him is conducted in the ring, decorated in the Arabic style, and in the musical theme you can hear the mullah, where the phrase "Allah Akbar" skips. The localizers left the sample unchanged, and the Islamic community considered this an insult. In all Islamic countries, the game was banned. So, because of one phrase, the company has lost a rather large and promising sales market.

Sometimes teams of localizers generally try to remove controversial issues that can even approximately cause discontent in a particular market. So in the game Fallout 3, a piece of the quest was completely removed, during the passage of which in the city of Megaton it was possible to detonate an atomic bomb. Localizers left only the options "Defuse the bomb" and "Leave alone."

Error 5. Leave localization to the very end

It seemed that every high-budget project should take into account the possibility of translating the game into other languages. After all, games, in fact, are translated for that, in order to expand markets and bring the project to other countries.

But even developers of AAA-class games are sometimes seriously pierced with the principles of localization.

Take, for example, the cult game Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. As for the artistic part and voice acting, translation into Russian is extremely good. In our opinion, in literary terms, this is one of the best translations of games for all the years the industry has existed.

But the joint was still there. And he spoiled the gaming experience for many. This is the acceleration or deceleration of voice acting in Russian dialogs.

The bottom line is that the developers in The Witcher set tight timings for dialogs that are tied to code. As for the English version, there are no problems, because it was precisely on it that timings were set. But with the translation into other languages it turned out a jamb. After all, translations of dialogues did not always coincide in duration with the original. But the timings are tough, you can’t change them. So the stackers had to slow down or speed up the dialogs. If at x1.1 this is not yet noticeable, then at x1.3 everything is already very bad.

As the developers themselves said, they decided not to redo the code and allow a similar crutch in localizations. At the very beginning, they did not take this into account, and intervention in the game code to set flexible timings after testing was complete would be too expensive in terms of resource costs - in fact, testing would have to be started anew.

Localizing games is more than just translating. It’s not enough just to know English well to make a high-quality product. But we assume that knowledge of the language is already at a high level - this is the basis without which no tricks will help. So learn English. And EnglishDom specialists will help you!

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