Features of localization of games in foreign markets

    Under the cut you will find a longride on the theme of localization of games, prepared on the basis of an open lecture by Alexei Medov, the lead editor of Inlingo Game Localization Studio . The lecture was held as part of our educational program “ Management of Gaming Internet Projects ” at the Higher School of Economics. What will we talk about in the article?

    - about types of localization and how to choose the most suitable one for you;
    - about how to choose a target market and in which countries your game will be most in demand;
    - about the features of different countries and what you definitely need to know before you start localizing your game;
    - as well as how to organize the localization process itself.




    Localization is translation and adaptation


    In our country, localization is presented, first of all, as a translation, but, of course, it is much more than a translation. In addition to translating into another language, the game must be adapted culturally and technically, and even, perhaps, in the legal field.


    Localization levels


    The most superficial is “box localization.”
    If a game comes out on a physical medium and is sold offline, what is written on the package is localized. If it is not sold on physical media, but on any platform, then its page in the store is translated: description and screenshots. This box localization is limited.

    Localization of the interface
    It implies that in the game not only the description and box will be translated, but also the interface, help page, button names - that’s all. A little strange kind of localization, which implies that you will click the "Play" button in Russian, but the plot will be completely in a different language. But, nevertheless, it is quite common.

    Text localization
    All texts in the game are translated. An example is GTA V. The game is translated up to subtitles, so on the one hand, you can listen and try to understand the slang of African Americans in the game, but you can see subtitles in Russian.

    Localization with voice acting
    Translated speech and dialogs, which are voiced by Russian actors. If the localization with voice acting is done at a good level, it is not perceived as something alien.

    Graphic localization
    Any game is a kind of engine, design, graphic objects, textures - all that is not text. Let's say the inscription on the fence in the shooter. Graphic localization implies that all labels inside must be translated. It can be newspapers, signs of shops, some notes and so on.

    What to do with games whose setting is in a certain location? For example, if the action takes place in Hong Kong, Russian signs there will look strange. In this case, it all depends on the wishes of the customer and common sense. For example, if periodicals have any meaning, they must be translated, otherwise an important point will be lost. If you play a detective story and some newspaper notes help in the plot, they certainly need to be translated. But at the same time, if you go to some real setting, for example, in Berlin during the Second World War, the graffiti in German does not need to be translated into Russian.

    Deep localization - cultural adaptation
    This is an adaptation to the culture when the game is completely redone. All that remains is hardcode and mechanics. You can redo textures, plot, dialogs, character models, and on the skeleton of some engine make a completely different game. This is rarely done, but still this method of localization is found, including in the portfolio of Inlingo Game Localization Studio, too, there is such a project. This is done in cases where a game without such an adaptation is not able to be perceived by the audience and sold in any market. In particular, our project was a game about Chinese history of the Three Kingdoms era, which is incomprehensible to Russians (and not only Russians). The game was completely redone: there was ancient China - it became sci-fi.

    Where is localization needed? How to choose a target market?


    Creating games is a business, business is a profit. To get a profit, you need to sell your games. Where to sell them?


    We see a breakdown by region for 2016. The huge eastern part, almost half, mainly due to China. North America, Europe are traditional consumers of games. And a small but very ambitious market in Latin America.

    Define:

    • Where a lot of players. To select a target market, you need to determine where there are many players. A large number of people do not necessarily entail a large number of players. There are a lot of people in Bangladesh, but they are all very poor and they do not have devices to play games on them.
    • Where a lot of money. In Bangladesh, a little money, but in Japan, Korea, China - quite a lot.
    • Where English is poorly known. One of the key factors, because when entering the international market, people first of all translate their games into English. English is the language of international communication, and without it it is simply impossible to translate into some languages. It’s almost impossible to find translators from Russian into some rare language in the gaming field.
    • Where there are few competitors. This is a very important factor that people often forget about.



    We look at the breakdown by region. In Asia, ignorance of the tongue increases from dark blue to red. We see that English is poorly understood in China. This is a well-known fact, but we also see that in Japan, English is spoken quite poorly.



    In South America, the color is also quite obvious. Brazil has a lot of people, and they also have pretty bad English. So Portuguese Brazilian is also a good option.



    In the Arab countries there is oil, money, but, apparently, there are no English teachers. So if you want to translate games into Arabic, this might not be such a bad idea.

    What languages ​​to translate into?


    Naturally, it depends on your budget and on your ambitions: whether you want to capture the whole world immediately or gradually, piece by piece, making the money you need for them.

    • Gentleman's set - EFIGS - English, French, Italian, German, Spanish (European languages). Why was there no Europe in the previous paragraphs about the regions? Because there they traditionally know English well enough. But due to the high competition, games translated into the local language sell much better.
    • Asian languages are the three most popular: Korean, Chinese, and Japanese.
    • Turkish language. Turkey is a progressive country, there are a lot of people playing and paying.
    • Arabic language.
    • Other languages. Take, say, Vietnamese. The Vietnam market is very interesting: there are many users, the market is growing, they like to play there, users are very loyal and do not know English. There is also its own specifics, therefore, entering the Vietnamese market, you must remember two things. Vietnamese are very fond of beautiful interfaces. A game in terms of content may not be very interesting, but from a visual point of view, every pixel should have been verified in it. Also, the Vietnamese are very fond of Chinese history and at the same time do not know Chinese. Therefore, if you do something in the Chinese theme with a cool interface and translate everything into Vietnamese, your game has very good chances to take off in Vietnam.

    Interfaces and approach to design in different regions are quite different. For example, the Chinese and Japanese approach to design, due to its typography, has a very dense and rich interface and very small pictures. If you go to some Japanese site, you will see a dense brick of text, because the characters are written without spaces. The interface itself looks like web 2.0 - without any frills.

    The Arabic interface is a completely different story. Everything is written from right to left, respectively, everything is located in the same way. We are not used to this. The interface itself is similar to the western one, but it makes a very strange impression.

    The Vietnamese, on the other hand, write in normal letters, and the interface itself there, in fact, is Western.

    And what to translate?


    There are games in which there are practically no words, it is intuitively clear what needs to be done. And if it is not clear, then there is an icon that explains everything without words. In order for the user, when entering the store, to understand that everything is clear in this game without words, it is necessary that he first read about it. Therefore, it is necessary to translate the description. In such cases, box localization will suffice.



    In this graph, the x-axis is the average number of words, and the y-axis is the importance of the text in the gameplay. Some small, box-based localization is suitable for casual games: puzzles, match-3 , the situation is more complicated with tower defense and strategies without a special sophisticated plot, then action, adventures, shooters go . A rather popular genre was set up there too -hidden object . Everything is clear here: if you do not translate the word denoting the item that the player needs to find, he will never find it. Well, there are a lot of words in MMORPG , and they are always important for the plot, so they must be translated.

    What do they like in different countries?


    Everywhere they love MMORPG, shooters, MOBA. But there are exceptions.

    Japan


    For us, Japan is still a black box, because the games that the Japanese play are something with something. For example, in addition to the wild graphic style, they love Date sims - dating simulators . Necessarily anime and with 18+ content.


    This is a typical screenshot from a Japanese game. The Japanese also love big robots. I have an example when a Russian developer made a game about them, and it really went into Japan.

    China


    In China, they love the same thing as in the whole world, but so that it is Chinese. This is the result of a planned policy of the Chinese government to popularize its own culture. If the game has Chinese mythology, literature, history - you are guaranteed success.



    Germany


    In Germany, they love simulators, and simulators of everything. Come up with the most boring profession in the world, make a simulator, send it to Germany - and there they will buy it. And if you decide to make a simulator, translate it into German.



    Here is a subway driver simulator. If in Need for Speed you drive along different tracks, then here you press the buttons back and forth and open the doors.

    What needs to be done before release?


    Need to plan localization. The game has a lot of points in which you can make a mistake at the very beginning. You need to select the languages ​​into which you will translate the game. When developing an interface, it is desirable to take into account the features of these languages. One word in German can be longer than the whole sentence in other languages. The Russian language, with the number of characters less than in English, will be longer in length.

    To simplify the stage of graphical localization, do not sew anything into the graphics. Because if you make a picture with an inscription, you will then have to get it out, decode, translate, redraw and paste it back so that nothing breaks.

    Formatting tags and function tags.Make more tags to help you embed all kinds of variables. For example, variables that will be responsible for the design, for the insertion of objects (placeholder), which will help you insert numbers, change the gender of the talking character, and so on.

    Lockite


    What does preparation for localization consist of? Lockit is a tracing-paper from English localization kit .

    • Formats in which localizers are used to receiving material for translation: xls, txt, xml, html, csv, java, json . The set of these formats is connected with the fact that special programs for translation work with them.
    • Segmentation. No need to split the offer into several segments. Korean example: Korean sentence always ends with a verb. If you split the Russian sentence into several parts, it will be very difficult to translate.
    • Context / Illustrations. It is very important to give context to translators. When you say "pipe" - it is not clear what you mean: trombone or plumbing.
    • Character limits. Make them bigger. They are never enough.
    • Filters and sorts. Localizers are people with experience, and you should not try to help them somehow by filtering and sorting text or deleting duplicates. Just give it to them in a logical sequence.
    • Dialogues with speakers and a biography of characters.
      For example, Korea has a very rigid social hierarchy. And if your game involves the communication of the characters, it is very important who they are to each other, as well as their gender, age, social status, family ties. Suppose you took some simple game where two characters are talking. Not a single Korean will be able to translate it for you without data on who these characters belong to each other.

    What does lockit include? In the standard version, this is a table with different columns:
    ID - helps to understand what kind of context; characters, pictures, original. If necessary, you add a comment.

    Terms of Reference


    Everyone knows that without a technical task it is very difficult. What needs to be specified in the terms of reference for localizers? Style (formal / informal, censored / obscene language), formal appeal to the player (you, you), audience (if we do not know that this game is for children, we will translate it as a game for adults, and it will be awkward), prohibited symbols and other technical restrictions (for example, it happens that you cannot put direct quotes or a long dash, and vice versa) - you should talk about this in advance so that everything works for you.

    Glossary


    A glossary is a list of game terms, game realities, which should be called uniformly. The glossary most often includes items, character names, quest names, spells, and all that should have only one name. This will help to avoid such situations when they say “Find the Sword of Truth” in the task, and the item is actually called the “Blade of Truth”. One mismatch of the term can lead to your game becoming impassable.

    Censorship


    When we decided on everything else, we need to remember that when entering other markets there is always a specificity (cultural and legal). Censorship is such a terrible thing, which does not depend on anyone and is established by the government.

    It is customary to distinguish 4 criteria by which a game can be banned or delayed until a patch is released. These are generally unpleasant situations that entail financial and reputational risks.

    History. Each country has its own alternative story. This is an understanding of history in general and some controversial points.

    Example: Age of Empires, the well-known game of 1997. She was banned in Korea because of an episode in which the Japanese army invades Korea and easily captures the entire Korean peninsula. Historians confirm the historical authenticity of this episode, and in the game everything is reflected as plausibly as possible. The Koreans decided that it was shameful and shameful, and offered to make it so that they did not just give up, but waged bloody battles. I had to make a patch in which they showed a strong Korean army, bravely fighting the Japanese.

    The second example is Six Days in Fallujah. The action takes place in Iraq in 2004. There was a very controversial moment in terms of history related to the participation of local residents and the losses in this war. They decided that this should not be done, and banned this game.

    Religion- This is always a pretty slippery topic.

    An example is the Kakuto Chojin game . Somehow, a fragment from the Koran was included in the voice acting. All Islamic countries naturally banned this game, and because of one moment, all the work went down the drain.

    Game Resistance: Fall of Man , 2006 shooter. It turned out that in this game in the smallest details recreated the interior of Manchester Cathedral. The game is pretty cruel, it has a lot of violence. Representatives of the Church of England were indignant and published a package of recommendations on how to change the game. Sony had to apologize in response to this , although they left the cathedral in the game, insisting that the events in the game were fictitious.

    Political correctness- a difficult question, now there is a lot of debate about this. What precedents were on this basis?

    Resident Evil 5 is a well-known franchise. It would seem that the Japanese never had problems with political correctness, but in the video on E3 they showed a protagonist located in Africa, fighting with zombies. There was a village with locals who were all black. And it so happened that in this short video, a white man shoots black men. The developers had to apologize, but the sediment remained.

    An example from a mobile game. Pocket god- God simulator in which you can control a small island. There are some things typical of Aboriginal people, such as we imagine them: with totemic figures and palm leaves. And in this game, you can mock Aborigines in different ways: fry them in a volcano, drown, crush ... Public organizations in Australia and Oceania have stated that the game exploits stereotypes about Aborigines and is generally racist.

    Geopolitics.This is most often committed by China, because this country has unresolved territorial disputes with Tibet and Taiwan. And this leads to the fact that all kinds of games are forbidden. We are not talking about strategies where, for example, Taiwan and China are different countries, although until 1949 they really were different countries. It can be a variety of games. For example, a football manager, in which there were national teams of China and Taiwan under their national flags.

    It is very difficult not to step on the rake, entering a specific market, because you really need to consider many factors.


    Culture



    The fact that at the legislative level you will not be banned, but people may misunderstand you. What happens to the game in different countries is shown in this old picture. A good Hollywood action movie of the 90s is a stereotypical American game.

    In general, everything in America is fine with censorship, except for some hysterical attorneys and societies of worried conservative mothers who object to violence in games.
    Germany suffers greatly from censors, and many of their games are banned, or are not on open sale. All Nazi symbols and symbols that are even remotely reminiscent of the Third Reich are banned there.

    Korea is a stereotypical eSports leader, with its Starcraft champions.

    And we have already talked about Japan.

    In general, this picture fully reflects reality.



    Cultural traits can even manifest themselves in genres such as match-3 . At the top you see the western version, and below - the eastern one. The Chinese do not really perceive diamonds, sweets, fruits, and so on. If someone tried Chinese sweets, they know that they are not sweet. How spicy food is usual for them, but not for us, our sweets are simply tasteless for the Chinese. Therefore, due to the fact that the Chinese do not eat sweets, they do not cause them any emotions. Oddly enough, this feature is reflected in match-3 . They have all sorts of cute animals there instead of sweets.

    China- A very specific country, both in preferences and in culture. As mentioned above, they love their story very much and do not really like the western one. There was a case with a fantasy strategy, in which I had to add a whole team of heroes based on Chinese mythology.

    The Chinese are not like in the West: there is no Christmas, New Year's Eve at another time, and all the holidays do not coincide with ours, both in attributes and in time. The Chinese are very offended by the West when we celebrate the Chinese New Year on their New Year. When we place somewhere the symbols of their horoscope (for example, a rooster), we drive their sacred animal of the previous year away before it needs to be done.

    Good example: in OverwatchWe made two different events: for European Christmas with a European setting, dressing even a Chinese character. And then, with the advent of the Chinese New Year, they changed the surroundings to Chinese. This is a great example of how to do it.

    Attitude to fireworks: we often have fireworks in holiday events. In Russia, they are associated with the New Year. If we translate the game into English and launch such an action with fireworks, the Americans most likely will not understand it. They have the main reason for fireworks - July 4, Independence Day.

    A case from our practice: in one of the texts for the event there were tangerines as such a symbol of the New Year for Russians. Our American translator was very surprised, and tangerines had to be replaced with cinnamon.



    Colors in China and other features


    Most flowers in China are associated with the elements.
    • RED : The most favorite color in China is red. Color is very popular, but it is festive. The red color in China is associated with fire, but not with destructive power, as in Europe, but with creative. Many people think that if everything is done in red, then the Chinese will immediately like it. Yes, but too much red of the Chinese is perceived as too much. It’s the same as playing a game where all year round everything will be connected with Christmas.
    • GREEN : There are many nuances that can take a lot of time to learn. For example, a green hat. It would seem that it could be bad. But in China, a green hat is a practically forbidden item of clothing. Because in the Middle Ages husbands of prostitutes wore green hats. A green hat on a man means that his wife is cheating on him. Lovers of celebrating St. Patrick's Day in a green hat in China will not understand. For the same reason, it is not customary for men to give away any green items of clothing that are worn close to the head, such as scarves.
    • WHITE : The funeral color in China is white. No need to wrap gifts in white packaging if this happens in the Chinese game, because they are associated with mourning. And brides for the Chinese game need to wear red.
    • YELLOW : Yellow in China means pornography. The yellow press is pornographic, the yellow videos are pornographic, the yellow web is porn sites. This color must be treated very carefully. But yellow is not only pornographic, but also an imperial color. It symbolizes the power of the usurper emperor and tyranny.
    • Qing : There is a special color that we have no name. It's called ching, it's the color of jade. If you know that in Chinese culture this color is very loved and respected, you can unobtrusively insert it into your game, and it will be a success. This color is associated with nobility and wealth.

    The symbol of LGBT is a six-color rainbow. If we are suspicious of her, then in China the rainbow does not cause any such associations. The most interesting thing is that they basically do not associate a rainbow with anything at all, so the rainbow in the game will not work in any sense. There is no public censure of homosexuality in Chinese culture, but no one really advertises this. If our topic of homosexuality is causing a stormy response and public outcry, then in China this is not.

    When I translated the Chinese game into Russian, I personally met with a description of the fact that you have a slave in the game, with whom you go to the common shower room and specially drop the soap. It was very unexpected to see in a Chinese game, but nonetheless, such things are found. In the Russian version, of course, we had to soften this story.

    Also in China, they normally treat the topics of flatulence, bowel movements and other things, and all the jokes on this subject are considered quite childish.

    A separate and very interesting topic is left-side interfaces .

    In Arab countries, everyone writes from right to left.This puts forward certain technical requirements for how the interface should look, and everything changes quite dramatically. Simple mirroring is not enough. Due to the direction of writing, the undo button is mirrored, that is, redo and undo change functions. Also, the flow of time, processes and lines of accumulation, for example, of money or experience go in the opposite direction. But at the same time, the clock hands spin in the usual way. The strips of the audio and video player go from left to right, as they symbolize the movement of the film, the same applies to the buttons of the previous and next track, as well as play - everything is like in Europe. Icons with a magnifying glass or a pencil also do not mirror, because, despite the writing, the Arabs are mostly right-handed.
    Curiously, in the same China or Japan, where traditional writing goes from right to left and even from top to bottom, spelling from top to bottom is practically not used in game interfaces.



    Remember, even the best localization will not make a good game out of a bad one, but poor localization will surely ruin any game.

    We remind you that in November and May, new streams of the educational program “ Management of Gaming Internet Projects ” are launched at the Higher School of Economics .

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