Game Localization: For Gamers by Gamers?

While revising our approach to games localization, we decided to ask for an opinion of people, who were not once observed spending their free evenings in virtual worlds loudly shouting at each other totally in oblivion of the existence of someone else finishing their job. Well, what we received back was the overview of nuances the gamers care about with the culminating quote: “For gamers by gamers”, meaning the gamers know better how and what to localize. (I subconsciously thought of doctors and their reaction to patient’s saying “I know better which medicine to take in my case”). But the guy might be right to some extent. This won’t be a translator who will consume the final product. To tell you the truth, when working as a translator I never came back to the work already done long time ago to reevaluate my performance. Life was always too short. Job's done, no feedback to implement, money paid – adieu! I did not care anymore.

But would it mean that the guy living more in his virtual life than in reality would do the localization better than me? I did spend 5 and half years in the university studying  languages. I did spend nights in my student years doing freelance translation.

The truth is in the middle, as always. At least I tend to think so. In the ideal world I would combine the guy’s passion for meaningful game dialogs and my passion to do this a right way. Thanks God, we live in the 21^st century. Obviously I am speaking about crowdsourcing, precisely about controlled crowdsourcing. Controlled in a sense that there is a dedicated person observing the deadlines, the progress and quality. The person who can step in choosing more proper option, who will ensure there are no grammar/style mistakes and finally who take the responsibility for the target translation quality.  This still allows the game developers to engage the community into the creation of their local product version. This still makes the localization cheaper. On the other hand, the process is being watched and in case of unpleasant or pleasant surprises, the producer is aware and is advised on the actions to take. I would feel safer if I were a game developer.

The traditional approach of engaging professional translators into games localization is still in place. And of course there are translators specialized precisely in the area of games, who are native in the target languages (we have been cooperating with many such guys, very proficient). This approach guarantees the quality and consistency but is more expensive. I would advise traditional approach for game developers willing to do localization, but who do not have their community yet or the establishment of such community is at inception stage.

by Katia Kosovan, Department Manager

Localization and QA unit