Localization Kits for Everyone!!

Hello everyone! Things have been a little crazy for me around the office in the past two weeks and for once, my busyness had nothing to do with gameplay ideas or tracking build changes. Right now I am working on the localization for Pet Pals Animal Rescue. Now, I am sure some of you know about localization, but for those of you that don’t, read up!

To put it in a nutshell, localization is sort of the translation of a multimedia product so that it can be sold in other countries. I say it is sort of the translation of a product because there is more that goes into localization than simple translation. When you localize a product, you are effectively getting it ready for sale in other countries, which can mean that more than the language must change because different countries have different ratings boards and censorship laws. Luckily, Legacy Interactive does not make violent games, so this is a whole other level of localization pain that we don’t have to worry about too much.

When localizing, companies must first decide what level of localization they want to do for their products. Companies can choose to localize their product partially or fully where a partial localization is when all game assets have not been translated.  Companies make the decision on which kind of localization to do base on a cost/proposed income analysis. Basically, if they believe that their projected game sales are not high enough to justify a full localization for a region or country, then a partial one is done.  A partial localization is a game with translated text and non-translated voiceovers. When this is done, subtitles are added for all voiceovers so that foreign consumers can read what the characters are saying. Partial localizations aren’t horrible; it’s just that when you buy a game that has a partial localization, you know that it was not made for you. You can’t understand the characters as they speak and that may disrupt the immersion factor. Since most mainstream games are made and bought in the US (last time I checked), Americans should not see many partial game localizations unless they purposely buy obscure imports.

Now that we have the basics of what localization is, I can begin to talk about what a producer does with regards to localization. Well, as you know, a producer is part manager, part middleman and part bulldog (in my case). We are charged with making sure that everything is running on schedule and we ABSOLUTELY LOVE TO WRITE UP DOCUMENTATION! Producers document everything and I think this is why we always get stuck with preparing the localization kit. The localization kit is a collection of documents, assets and files that contain every piece of text, art or sound that needs to be localized. Can you imagine having to track down every little tiny scrap of anything English within a game? Believe me, it is NOT easy. Along with the text that you normally see in the game, there is the text that maybe you don’t see, like error messages and hidden or secret text. Also, you can’t forget about art! Notice how in some games you can see stuff in the background of the gameworld like posters or street signs? Well those have to change too! Oh and what about the readme, installer and menu text, can’t forget those. When we have all the text and art, there is also the sound. Oh sound!

The reason why so many companies do partial localization is because localizing voiceovers is expensive and time costly. First a sound studio must be rented out, a sound designer must be hired and believe me, these guys do NOT come cheap. Then the sound designer has to cast, then hire actors to record the lines in the localization languages; actor’s time is also expensive. Once the lines are all recorded, the sound designer has to edit them (for lots of money). The last part is tricky. If the voiceovers are part of a video, then the video is dubbed. If the game publisher wants a higher level of localization, they can even sync the new localized voiceovers to the characters facial movements. Mostly people use dubbing. Have you ever seen one of those old Kung Fu movies from the 1970’s that look so funny because the actor’s mouth keeps moving long after the line finishes playing? That is an example of bad dubbing, it really is a tricky thing to get right because the actual length of text increases when translated from English to other languages. Because of this, the sound designer may have to reword or shorten translations lines so that they mean pretty much the same thing as the original version but are closer to the same length.

Length is a big issue when it comes to localization. A good producer will keep her mind on localization needs long before the kit is due. During the game design process, the producer should flag any unnecessary text embedded in art, any buttons that barely holds its text and the game development folder structure.

Embedded art is bad because just like sound designers, artists are skilled, specialized workers and generally charge a lot for their time. To localize art assets, the artist must remake that digital art asset once for every language. Now imagine if you had 1,000 art assets that needed localization and you are localizing for French, Italian, German and Spanish (commonly called FIGS), that’s a lot of art assets and a lot of money!

Buttons packed with text should be flagged because localization generally increases the length of text by 20%, so you need at least 20% more space to be able to get text to fit without abbreviating.

Lastly, the development environment folder/file structure is very important for integration which happens when you get your translated localization kit back. If the folder structure is set up to accommodate making multiple language builds, then you are ready for localization. If it is not, then integration could slow you down and mixed files can lead to bad builds and everyone’s time wasted.

Speaking of time wasted…I need to get back to this localization kit, it's due too soon for comfort!

More inside producer information on the way!

Cheers,
Natascha
(Legacy Producer)