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 21st 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
