What You Need To Handle Before Launching Your Game Translation Projects?

Because a growing number of gamers around the world are becoming savvier, having a high-quality game translation is necessary. Therefore, to ensure that the overall process runs as smoothly as possible, here are some pre-production duties that should be accomplished first.

#1. Collaborate With Game Translation Specialists

Your language service providers (LSP) who are in charge of your game translation will consult with you, advise you, and provide direction on the specific research. You need to prepare the game files, documentation, and related details about your game development.

To maximize the translation accuracy and quality of your game and its related materials, pre-production is the time to detect any linguistic and/or cultural challenges ahead of the translation process.

It is ideal if your game’s development team can include notes in their text strings to serve as context references for translators and project managers. Those notes can give you a lot of insights into the game’s logic, and they can be a great resource for your translation team.

Even if you intend to have thorough linguistic testing done after the translation work, supplying translators and translation project leaders with this information can improve the project’s overall efficiency and accuracy, as well as the quality of the translation work.

#2. Select Appropriate Languages For Your Game Translation

Many concerns with enlarging, modifying character limitations, syntax and other grammar issues, interpretation challenges, and unlocalized text parts have been widely discussed throughout the gaming world.

Such severe errors are the too-often result of miscommunication between parties with unclear expectations when developing or localizing games. In projects involving a higher number of games, the danger of such unfavourable results is amplified.

As a result, it’s critical to seek advice from translation professionals and marketing analysts before deciding which languages a game should be translated into. A vital first stage in the pre-production process is ensuring the availability of qualified translation teams capable of producing a high-quality translation for the target language and local market(s).

Games are sometimes published by a business other than the developer. A product management or promotion team may have the final power over marketing and distribution decisions. Even in such situations, these individuals must seek advice from seasoned translation experts to prevent sacrificing valuable resources such as time and money.

#3. Prepare Necessary Documentation

Assembling the key documents for commencing the project’s production phase is one of the most important aspects. The following documents are required:

• • Checklists of several kinds;
  • Agreements with LSPs;
  • Budgeting for the project;
  • Workflow Test plans;
  • Templates;
  • Style manuals;
  • Glossary of important terms;
  • Onboarding instructions;
  • Other crucial documents.

#4. Design A Translation Process Workflow

The translation is never done in isolation when speaking about game translation, especially since each game’s specific terminologies must be followed to guarantee that the language used is consistent.

As a result, a translation pipeline usually has five phases, as seen here:

• • Before the content is translated,
  • submitting content to be translated
  • During the translating process
  • What happens when content is translated?
  • Following the content’s return from translation

Improving your translation workflow entails lowering the number of manual activities in each of the five stages. Otherwise, your managers, translators, and reviewers may find it difficult to communicate crucial project information and put them into action swiftly, resulting in a long time to market.

#5. Conduct Various Linguistic Game Tests

Linguistic game testing looks for grammatical errors in the game translation scripts and voice-overs. The most common errors include misspellings, grammatical errors, and mistranslations. Finally, the linguistic QA testers make recommendations for how to improve them or propose alternate translations.

The following are common language-related issues in localized games:

• • Grammar, spelling, and punctuation;
  • Numeric formats, financial symbols, calendars, and dates;
  • Conversions of metric and monetary units, measurement units;
  • Errors relating to the country (incorrect zip codes, phone numbers, addresses, and names);
  • Language-specific characters that are broken (e.g., incorrectly displayed diacritics in Polish, Hebrew, and Arabic);
  • Contextual inaccuracy occurs when words or sentences aren’t translated accurately or idioms aren’t translated literally;
  • The language’s natural flow;
  • Voice-over difficulties (the voice-over files are mistakenly translated, or subtitles and audio are shown at different times); partial or inconsistent translations;
  • Controversial cultural references (cultural taboos, phrases or language that is considered offensive, etc.)

#6. Create A Budget For Your Game Translation Project

Budgets that are well defined can help you avoid a lot of trouble. Losing control of the overall process without a sufficient budget can derail even the best-laid intentions. Pre-production timelines may be impacted, misunderstandings may occur, and confusion may result in issues that compromise professionalism and translation quality.

Before you start your project, go to your game translation business to figure out how much it will cost to localize your game. Remember to set aside some extra cash in case of unexpected expenses.

When interacting with merchants in other countries, look for and follow any legislative restrictions that may apply to payment methods.

#7. Have Legal Agreements For Game Translation

Work with your legal department as early as possible in the pre-production process to develop vendor contracts or alter existing agreements so that obligations are spelt out and your translation project is streamlined for both you and your LSP. Also, aim to give the project a level of simplicity that promotes overall efficiency and high-quality results.

Detail all agreements reached between you and the games translation business, including the types and amounts of resources to be used, pricing, and all other contract terms. To avoid misunderstandings, unexpected delays, quality concerns, unexpected charges, cost overages, and other unforeseen issues, execute the agreement before scheduling production.

#8. Gather Critical Feedback

During the development and localization of games, data on client satisfaction levels are quite useful. Gather feedback on your game to see what people think should be changed and if any factors are affecting overall accuracy and translation quality. You might also want to gather information from gamers regarding games comparable to yours that are made by other firms, such as game ratings, user comments, and other feedback.

You can start getting feedback even before you have your text ready for localization. You might even ask your design and development teams to provide a way for gamers to provide input.

Let’s Optimize Your Game Translation With GTE Localize!

After making sure your game project is truly ready, you need to find a perfect partner to build up the video game’s reputation. And GTE Localize can handle it by delivering a wide range of game translation solutions with experienced, native linguists and game localizers.

Talk to our experts to get a 1:1 consultancy for your game translation projects now!