In my country, people claim for localized games, because we haven't got a good English level, neither listened  nor written (I think my posts are a good example, hehe). So, I'm sure people will be grateful with you if you provide them a localized version of your game. I supose our case is not unique in the world, so my question is: are you facing the localization problem? How? For example, where do you find other languages speaking people? Are you taking into account the differences among same speaking language countries (for example, Spanish of Spain is not the same as Spanish of America)? Are you designing your interfaces to be text size independent? There are many questions related to localization. These are only some of them.

No it's not, but i think it is a damn good idea so i'll look in to it. 

I'm also going to try and build it as 'disability' friendly as possible so we are talking about re-mappable controls, alternative input methods, visual as well as audio cues, colourblindness (think thats a made up word) issues and a hundred other issues - i figure it's a good way to make a game stand out and something the xbox is woefully inadequate at (ao i'm told)


hmm, I may be taking on a litle too much here...

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See what I'm up to here

It's difficult enough for indies to even get a game completed, let alone worry about things like localization. I'd be willing to bet most don't even think about it, let alone attempt to design their games with such things in mind.

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Jim Perry
Here's what I'm up to.

JuxtaDeus:

i figure it's a good way to make a game stand out and something the xbox is woefully inadequate at

Sorry, I don't understand you. Are you saying the 360 hasn't got translated games enough? If it is, I don't agree with you.

Machaira:

It's difficult enough for indies to even get a game completed, let alone worry about things like localization. I'd be willing to bet most don't even think about it, let alone attempt to design their games with such things in mind.

I don't agree. If an indie can face to things such as graphics design or AI, he can prepare his game to be localized. I think localizing a game is one of the most easiest things he can do in game development. It has some problems, but nothing to do with other game-related tasks.

Abel García Plaza:

I don't agree. If an indie can face to things such as graphics design or AI, he can prepare his game to be localized. I think localizing a game is one of the most easiest things he can do in game development. It has some problems, but nothing to do with other game-related tasks.

You forget the ignorance of native English speakers towards other languages there :)

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We are boki. The rest is known.
The not so known part of the rest: It is Björn or Bjoern, but never Bjorn.

Björn Graf:

You forget the ignorance of native English speakers towards other languages there :)

But English speakers can look for volunteers to translate their texts. I don't understand German, but I can look for a German guy who can translate my game ;-) There are many contributors all arround the world who want a software to be located to their language and they do that dirty work.

Being able to do something and having the time and want/need to do it are two different things. I'm sure many people here can develop huge, high-end games if you give them enough time. But who wants to spend weeks adding localization support when only a handful of people will even be using it? Then you also have to deal with advertising to people in those different languages and, unless you want to just ignore them, be able to translate back to English to do support.

Might as well drop using XNA, too, so we can support the non-Windows users. And what about people without computers? Should we make a board game version for them? Unless you expect to be able to market in an unknown territory (another language) or that your game will even be good enough to, your concentration should be in one language until you get that one down. I'd rather see a game be smooth and fluent in just English than have a not-so-great support or advertisement for 30 languages.

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vbGORE - open-source VB6 multiplayer ORPG engine

It's not difficult per se, it's just a huge pain in the ass.

You have to program in a very generic fashion for anything that has text in it. Fixed positions have to become relative, the game has to have resizable menu's/tables to account for varying word length, your fonts have to be able to handle various accented characters, you have to put all your text in an external source (versus using "magic strings" in your code), the offline source will need additional documentation to record contexts for strings, some languages like to mutate words depending on genders that may not be obvious from the string itself.. And then you have to find and manage the people that do the actual translation work.

Just wanted to chime in...

Whilst I don't think many XNA developers should really *need* to worry about localization in it's entirety (It's hard enough to build a full game to completion, even the simplest one, let alone throwing something like localized assets into the mix) I do feel like anyone who has goals & is serious about building something they want to take all the way (i.e. XBLA) would de well to consider localization from the onset..

Currently I'm still fleshing out the core of my game engine but I do intend to setup my game with localization in mind so that, come further on down the road if I manage to secure a publishing contract, I won't have to rip apart & rebuild most of the game to support multiple SKUs (because a commercial game WILL have to support multiple language SKUs)..
I plan taking a strict approach to localizable assets & making sure all text is organised & read from an excel sheet (probably put a VBA macro button in their to write out the data to language specific text files before running a buildprocessor on the files to create the final localized string banks..) This should keep the process relatively clean & it also means that all text translation can be done remotely (by even multiple sources) without any requirement of the engine's source assets..
Other things to remember (for the sake of anyone reading who may want to consider localization support) are:

- Localize only what's necessary (no need to localize internal strings which won't be rendered)
- Try & keep the UI simple & avoid gfx clutter (will help you cope better with text scaling for variable length localized strings)
- Make sure no localizable strings are hard coded (no-brainer but you'd be suprised how often misshaps can occur..)
- Avoid using speech (this will be the biggest pain to localize IMO) & if you absolutely have to then make sure you design for it
- Avoid incorperating written text in textures unless it's revelant to the design (e.g. japanese symbol on a soldier's shoulderpad..)

I really want to release my build process into the community once i'm done with it (.xls sheet with built in macros + buildprocessor executable + source code + xna string bank importer source code) which should hopefully help out alot of people.. Might not be of use for everyone but at least if only one person benefits from it then it's a win in my book..

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My Game Blog: http://houseofsmash.blogspot.com
My Blog: http://watchhogstories.wordpress.com

Abel García Plaza:

Björn Graf:

You forget the ignorance of native English speakers towards other languages there :)

But English speakers can look for volunteers to translate their texts. I don't understand German, but I can look for a German guy who can translate my game ;-) There are many contributors all arround the world who want a software to be located to their language and they do that dirty work.

So how would an indie developer go about finding these many contributors? Do they do the testing as well?

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Jim Perry
Here's what I'm up to.

Abel García Plaza:

Machaira:

It's difficult enough for indies to even get a game completed, let alone worry about things like localization. I'd be willing to bet most don't even think about it, let alone attempt to design their games with such things in mind.

I don't agree. If an indie can face to things such as graphics design or AI, he can prepare his game to be localized. I think localizing a game is one of the most easiest things he can do in game development. It has some problems, but nothing to do with other game-related tasks.

"can" is different than "takes the time to plan for and makes the effort to do". An indie can make his game multiplayer and an indie can put in AI, but this things add another layer of complexity to a project that's probably already taxing and significantly increases the development time. It's the same with localization. Anything that's going to increase the time and effort for a project is probably not going to be high on the priority list.

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Jim Perry
Here's what I'm up to.

Spodi:

Then you also have to deal with advertising to people in those different languages and, unless you want to just ignore them, be able to translate back to English to do support.

Might as well drop using XNA, too, so we can support the non-Windows users. And what about people without computers? Should we make a board game version for them?

I think you're exaggerating a bit. I was talking about the localization of a game, not its support, if any. And, of course, I didn't refer to game ports or board games...

Spodi:

Unless you expect to be able to market in an unknown territory (another language) or that your game will even be good enough to, your concentration should be in one language until you get that one down.

I thought that Xbox Live! was a global market. If I publish my game on it, people from many countries will download it.

Spodi:

I'd rather see a game be smooth and fluent in just English than have a not-so-great support or advertisement for 30 languages.

That's because you speak English. Try to ask people who don't understand it as well as you.

Harald Maassen:

You have to program in a very generic fashion for anything that has text in it. Fixed positions have to become relative, the game has to have resizable menu's/tables to account for varying word length

There are many commercial games with fixed sized menus and text-based components. Translators adapt the text to the size. If they do that, why we not?

Harald Maassen:

your fonts have to be able to handle various accented characters

Accented characters are supported by changing a single number in the .spritefont file.

Harald Maassen:

you have to put all your text in an external source (versus using "magic strings" in your code),

Magic strings aren't a good practice, are you using them? ;-)

Harald Maassen:

the offline source will need additional documentation to record contexts for strings, some languages like to mutate words depending on genders that may not be obvious from the string itself...

I agree with you (Spanish mutate words depending on gender) but .resx files have an XML tag for doing that and, sure, you don't need to contextualize all, only some confusing texts.

Harald Maassen:

And then you have to find and manage the people that do the actual translation work.

Yes, but people find other people that do the coding, the graphics, the sound... Wy not the translation?

Machaira:

So how would an indie developer go about finding these many contributors?

In the same manner they find coders and artists. There's no difference.

Machaira:

Do they do the testing as well?

Yes, why not? A programmer tests his code. Again, what's the difference?

Machaira:

"can" is different than "takes the time to plan for and makes the effort to do".

Agreed.

Machaira:

An indie can make his game multiplayer and an indie can put in AI, but this things add another layer of complexity to a project that's probably already taxing and significantly increases the development time. It's the same with localization. Anything that's going to increase the time and effort for a project is probably not going to be high on the priority list.

Agreed, again. I'm neither talking about the priority nor the need of game to be translated. Those are thing to be choosen by the authors. I only asked you if you are translating your games, because I think is a good thing. I didn't say it's a necessary one.

Abel García Plaza:

There are many commercial games with fixed sized menus and text-based components. Translators adapt the text to the size. If they do that, why we not?

At least for the commercial games I worked on, translation wasn't a cheap process.

For instance MotoGP was localized into English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Japanese. The translation process took maybe a month and a half of developer time. And this was for a game that had pretty flexible text rendering with relative positioning and automatic resizing!

We had all our text strings in an Excel file, which went out to the translators. Back they would come, jumbled up into a different order and with half the strings missing. Each time we got new translation data, we had to sort it back into the format our game could consume, figure out which bits had gone missing, send a complaint back to the translator to point this out to them, and then test every screen in the game to find out which strings were too long to fit. Typically about half of them would be too long, so we'd have to report those back to the translator as well. Rinse, lather, repeat. By about the tenth time around this process, everything would finally be good. And then we'd have to get translations for all the new strings we'd added during the weeks while this was taking place (because we were still working on the rest of the game in parallel with this process).

It's easy to say "but the translators should just do a good job and test their work themselves", but the fact is, they won't. Translators don't know how to put new strings into the game and then produce a build to test, and even if they did, they aren't familiar enough with the game to know what to look for (lots of obscure screens and error messages are hard to get to if you aren't intimately familiar with the game). They also often don't understand about things like "Player {0} got a score of {1}", and will take out or mis-format the placeholder markers, so you then get a runtime error when you come to format that string. Finding and fixing such problems inevitably falls back onto the main game developer.

Sure, translation is possible. Many games (including many indie ones) manage it. But it is not quick or easy.

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XNA Framework Developer
blog - homepage

There's an article on this topic at the game design blog, Lost Garden: The Translation Game

Shawn Hargreaves:

Sure, translation is possible. Many games (including many indie ones) manage it. But it is not quick or easy.

I didn't say that translation is a cheap or easy process. I said that is easier than other tasks related to game developing, such as graphics or AI, but not free, of course. So, I agree with you. What I'm trying to fight with is the thought that localization is so costly or no needed. A global market, as Xbox Live! is, need localized products. Being sincere, we all know that the common indie title is a small one, so its translation don't carry all the problems you posted. And, think, your translator could be a developer too, so he can test the translations by his own and don't do things like translating the format placeholders.

I wholeheartedly agree that Xbox LIVE is a global market. For a great example look at Walaber's Gymnast. That game (besides being the only game I play nowadays) is localized into 8 or 9 languages including Chinese and Japanese. It's a great example of localizing.

I personally have two thoughts about how I will approach this. First is to try and avoid text where not needed. I think it's a good design choice anyway (displaying images can be made clearer than requiring the user to read text), but it also makes localizing easier. The second is to use external files for all text in the game that needs localization and get people to help out. It might not be easy, but I agree that there is a great benefit for supporting more languages than just English. In my games I would ideally support English, French, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, Russian, and Italian. Maybe even UK English spellings to make The ZMan a little happier ;). Of course that's the ideal and it would all bank on finding translators that are both good and affordable.

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Nick Gravelyn -- Microsoft XNA MVP
XNA Wiki | Zune Games

Nick Gravelyn:

Walaber's Gymnast [...] is localized into 8 or 9 languages including Chinese and Japanese. It's a great example of localizing.

Agreed. I just play it.

Nick Gravelyn:

In my games I would ideally support English, French, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, Russian, and Italian. Maybe even UK English spellings to make The ZMan a little happier ;).

Wow!

Nick Gravelyn:

Of course that's the ideal and it would all bank on finding translators that are both good and affordable.

Here you have an Spanish one ;-)

Shawn Hargreaves:

We had all our text strings in an Excel file, which went out to the translators. Back they would come, jumbled up into a different order and with half the strings missing. Each time we got new translation data, we had to sort it back into the format our game could consume, figure out which bits had gone missing, send a complaint back to the translator to point this out to them, and then test every screen in the game to find out which strings were too long to fit. Typically about half of them would be too long, so we'd have to report those back to the translator as well. Rinse, lather, repeat. By about the tenth time around this process, everything would finally be good. And then we'd have to get translations for all the new strings we'd added during the weeks while this was taking place (because we were still working on the rest of the game in parallel with this process).

We've had similar problems at my studio with localisation in the past however I would suggest a bit of a structured approach.. Rather than sending the localisers the export-consumable excel sheet, send a seperate file with only the english & <whatever language they need to translate>.. They can then go ahead & translate all the text & when it comes back you'd go through cell by cell, copying & sorting each cell as required into the master spreadsheet.. It doesn't solve all your problems but it means translators are less lilkely to miss bits out (unless it's delibrate) & any mistakes can be picked up straight away & not built & imported into the game for someone to pickup later..

Sure it might be a long labourious process but hey! at least it gives your producer something to do besides sitting around playing MMOs all day..


As for an XNA project, I figure it's likely I'll invest sometime in utilising some online english to <other language> automatic translators to produce placeholder localised texts for whatever languages I hope to support.. I know there are some pretty good ones out there & although it's not ideal, I would hope as placeholder, the texts should at least make even a little bit of sense..

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My Game Blog: http://houseofsmash.blogspot.com
My Blog: http://watchhogstories.wordpress.com

Abel García Plaza:

Machaira:

So how would an indie developer go about finding these many contributors?

In the same manner they find coders and artists. There's no difference.

Well, there is a bit of difference. Game development boards (the place where most people find coders and artists) usually don't have translators.