Localization of mobile games for the Asian market
Entering the Asian market for a European developer is akin to a spacewalk, only 30 megabytes heavier. Localization in Japanese, Chinese and Korean is a titanic work. It requires consideration of specific technical requirements, rigorous market research and the mentality of the target audience. But if this is what you dream about, read on - our experience will be useful to you.
Coordinated work of the crew
We translate our games into 12 languages. The Plarium localization department works in four areas:
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1. mobile games;
2. browser games;
3. social games;
4. non-game texts (translation and adaptation of internal texts of the company).
The department consists of three mini-teams of 3-4 people, each engaged in the entire range of languages ​​for one of the areas. One person is assigned one to three languages. All proofreaders and translators are native speakers, they work with different teams.
On our own experience, we have seen that it’s still necessary to invent a bicycle - there is no universal localization algorithm. Each project is unique not only by its genre, setting, mechanics, but also by localization features for various platforms.
Debugging engines
According to the American analytical company Superdata, the mobile segment occupies 59% of the Asian gaming market, and its cost is $ 20 billion. Two mobile strategies were chosen for translation into Japanese and Chinese - Stormfall: Rise of Balur and Total Domination: Reborn.
The main stages of localization:
1. Research. Market research and intelligence in gaming communities. When working with the Asian market, the language barrier is especially clearly felt - most often, gamers do not speak English at a sufficient level. It is even more difficult with China, because the Chinese have their own version of the Internet with limited access, which residents of other countries cannot use.
2. Culture. The cornerstone of localization is attention to the cultural and historical characteristics of countries and the mentality of the players. In the Pirate Code, for example, the king of Spain is the main antagonist. We did not change the nationality of the main villain in the Spanish localization, and gamers perceived it as part of the artistic setting, no more. In the Russian-speaking segment of the market, a similar situation would hardly have a positive effect on user involvement.
Another example is the careful handling of slogans and calls for action in the German language. We advertise our strategies, without mentioning the words “fight”, “attack”, “build an Empire,” although these actions are an integral part of Plarium games. For several years of working with translators, we have developed specific ways to mitigate these harsh statements.
3. Feedback on the localization of a specific language is collected bit by bit from various sources. It is better to ask for help to native speakers: marketers, analysts, sociologists, translators, gamers.
4. Logic & Flexibility. Each language has its own flexibility and logic. For example, if you have a good command of Russian, you can easily adjust to the program requirements. At the same time, it is not as compact and capacious as English. And in German, for example, the fixed word order in the sentence is obligatory.
5. Uniqueness. We must adapt the new localization as much as possible to the already existing interface and program code. The difficulty is to take into account the features of all supported languages. You can try to create a universal interface, but in the end you will still need to adjust it to the grammatical structure of the language.
6. Lore. In the mobile version there are no descriptions of units that did not affect the plot, but it affected the depth and elaboration of the game world. In the transition from the social and browser segment to the mobile, there is a great temptation to make the functional texts as short as possible, based on the popular belief that people come to play, not read. However, we don’t want to completely lose the developed lor and try using the quests, timelines and additional missions to introduce new characters and delve into the history of the universe. We are trying to maintain a balance between the plot, the atmosphere and the maximum functionality of the texts.
Start-up preparation: compatibility check
1. Taboos and preferences. In Japan, a different attitude to the game culture in general: more fanatical and at the same time ordinary. Games - an integral part of the life of the Japanese. They play mainly on the way to work or home, because it is often about 2-3 hours a day. The Japanese are subject to a craze for one trend. They even have a separate TV channel dedicated only to games. As proof, we present the data of Superdata: pay attention to the difference in revenue from sales of games in the first and fifth places in the ranking of the most popular games in Japan. This is where top projects rule the financial ball.
At the same time, favorite games change very quickly. For strategies that have been played for years, this is an interesting challenge.
In Korea, neon, bright red, bright pink colors in the design of the game are welcome - everything is brilliant and flashing.
Working with the Chinese market, you should not get involved in unreal, bright spectra. In addition, it is better not to use the shade of red, which is present on the Chinese flag.
2. Only truth, only hardcore. Games in English are popular in Asia, although the majority of users, even among young people, do not have a very good level of knowledge of foreign languages. Localization for the Asian market is very important, but there is one caveat: if the game looks frankly European, no need to try to jump above the rising sun and turn the application into supposedly originally Asian. You can try to remake the game beyond recognition, change everything, including the mechanic, and pretend that the application is made in China, but this is unlikely to work. No matter how hard you try to copy the style, the Asian user feels the catch. Gamers do not like being cheated - there is no need to create a discord between design and texts in the game.
You need to be as honest as possible and not try to pass off the game as an Asian product, which it is not. Localization should be professional, with a living natural language. Game culture is quite susceptible to experiments. There is nothing wrong with leaving the western game in its original format with the same terminology. Borrowing concepts from English-language games is allowed. For example, it is not necessary to look for a Japanese or Korean equivalent of the word “quest”; this term is familiar to Asian players. In addition, no one has canceled the trend towards globalization; in games it is not forbidden to focus on global pop culture. On the whole, users of Asia are interested in the peculiarities of Western culture, which is considered a progressive trend.
3. Technical requirements. Hieroglyphs are more heavy: in Latin, one character is one byte, in Cyrillic - two bytes, and one character of Japanese or Chinese can "weigh" up to four bytes. A complete set of traditional Chinese characters weighs about 30 megabytes. If you add it to the game, the application will become much harder. We use fonts with a simplified outline of Chinese characters weighing about 18 megabytes.
As part of the education reform in China in the middle of the twentieth century, it was decided to simplify the look of many hieroglyphs in order to make them easier to remember. Now China has almost completely switched to the simplified version, but in Hong Kong they still use the traditional set of hieroglyphs. In Stormfall: Rise of Balur, we prepared two options for localizing the game, which of course affected the size of the application - about 36 megabytes. Later we will test the audience response to both locales and decide whether a traditional set of hieroglyphs will be included in the game. With Korean, things are simpler: it only disguises itself as hieroglyphs, but in fact it is an alphabet.
4. How to find a proofreader and translator. The selection requirements for translators and editors for Asian markets are more stringent. For the translation into European languages, the candidate needed only to have minimal experience in localizing and passing games. In the case of the Asian market, we were looking for translators with experience in localizing Western games, preferably mobile strategies.
First, we gave reviews for review to native speakers who play our games on Facebook. From time to time we received feedback from them in the spirit: "This is a good translation, but no more." Gamers indicated that the atmosphere was inaccurate or the game term was used incorrectly. For example, in casual games, “life” is called so, and in strategies, players are accustomed to the designation “energy”.
We received feedback on the translations not only from the players, but also from journalists and writers who evaluated literacy and the quality of translation, the purity of the language and the balance between borrowed terms and concepts from the language into which they are translated. A collection of all the feedback and helped find the right translators and proofreaders.
5. Special testing. To evaluate usability, we videotaped the process of passing the game with a tester from Japan. This approach is more effective than oral or written review of the game. In the Japanese culture, politeness prevails in everything, so it is often inconvenient for them to give an objective assessment and admit that some aspects of the game were incomprehensible or not liked at all. The tester is likely to give a generalized, but absolutely useless review. In the video, everything is clear without words. By the movement of the gamer's fingers across the screen of the device, it is possible to trace how it is being trained, what reactions and emotions arise during the game and how they are dictated.
Go
Localization of the game for the Asian market is a long and laborious process that requires considerable effort. But if you approach it responsibly and make a high-quality translation, users will appreciate it.
Coordinated work of the crew
We translate our games into 12 languages. The Plarium localization department works in four areas:
')
1. mobile games;
2. browser games;
3. social games;
4. non-game texts (translation and adaptation of internal texts of the company).
The department consists of three mini-teams of 3-4 people, each engaged in the entire range of languages ​​for one of the areas. One person is assigned one to three languages. All proofreaders and translators are native speakers, they work with different teams.
On our own experience, we have seen that it’s still necessary to invent a bicycle - there is no universal localization algorithm. Each project is unique not only by its genre, setting, mechanics, but also by localization features for various platforms.
Debugging engines
According to the American analytical company Superdata, the mobile segment occupies 59% of the Asian gaming market, and its cost is $ 20 billion. Two mobile strategies were chosen for translation into Japanese and Chinese - Stormfall: Rise of Balur and Total Domination: Reborn.
The main stages of localization:
1. Research. Market research and intelligence in gaming communities. When working with the Asian market, the language barrier is especially clearly felt - most often, gamers do not speak English at a sufficient level. It is even more difficult with China, because the Chinese have their own version of the Internet with limited access, which residents of other countries cannot use.
2. Culture. The cornerstone of localization is attention to the cultural and historical characteristics of countries and the mentality of the players. In the Pirate Code, for example, the king of Spain is the main antagonist. We did not change the nationality of the main villain in the Spanish localization, and gamers perceived it as part of the artistic setting, no more. In the Russian-speaking segment of the market, a similar situation would hardly have a positive effect on user involvement.
Another example is the careful handling of slogans and calls for action in the German language. We advertise our strategies, without mentioning the words “fight”, “attack”, “build an Empire,” although these actions are an integral part of Plarium games. For several years of working with translators, we have developed specific ways to mitigate these harsh statements.
3. Feedback on the localization of a specific language is collected bit by bit from various sources. It is better to ask for help to native speakers: marketers, analysts, sociologists, translators, gamers.
4. Logic & Flexibility. Each language has its own flexibility and logic. For example, if you have a good command of Russian, you can easily adjust to the program requirements. At the same time, it is not as compact and capacious as English. And in German, for example, the fixed word order in the sentence is obligatory.
5. Uniqueness. We must adapt the new localization as much as possible to the already existing interface and program code. The difficulty is to take into account the features of all supported languages. You can try to create a universal interface, but in the end you will still need to adjust it to the grammatical structure of the language.
6. Lore. In the mobile version there are no descriptions of units that did not affect the plot, but it affected the depth and elaboration of the game world. In the transition from the social and browser segment to the mobile, there is a great temptation to make the functional texts as short as possible, based on the popular belief that people come to play, not read. However, we don’t want to completely lose the developed lor and try using the quests, timelines and additional missions to introduce new characters and delve into the history of the universe. We are trying to maintain a balance between the plot, the atmosphere and the maximum functionality of the texts.
Start-up preparation: compatibility check
1. Taboos and preferences. In Japan, a different attitude to the game culture in general: more fanatical and at the same time ordinary. Games - an integral part of the life of the Japanese. They play mainly on the way to work or home, because it is often about 2-3 hours a day. The Japanese are subject to a craze for one trend. They even have a separate TV channel dedicated only to games. As proof, we present the data of Superdata: pay attention to the difference in revenue from sales of games in the first and fifth places in the ranking of the most popular games in Japan. This is where top projects rule the financial ball.
At the same time, favorite games change very quickly. For strategies that have been played for years, this is an interesting challenge.
In Korea, neon, bright red, bright pink colors in the design of the game are welcome - everything is brilliant and flashing.
Working with the Chinese market, you should not get involved in unreal, bright spectra. In addition, it is better not to use the shade of red, which is present on the Chinese flag.
2. Only truth, only hardcore. Games in English are popular in Asia, although the majority of users, even among young people, do not have a very good level of knowledge of foreign languages. Localization for the Asian market is very important, but there is one caveat: if the game looks frankly European, no need to try to jump above the rising sun and turn the application into supposedly originally Asian. You can try to remake the game beyond recognition, change everything, including the mechanic, and pretend that the application is made in China, but this is unlikely to work. No matter how hard you try to copy the style, the Asian user feels the catch. Gamers do not like being cheated - there is no need to create a discord between design and texts in the game.
You need to be as honest as possible and not try to pass off the game as an Asian product, which it is not. Localization should be professional, with a living natural language. Game culture is quite susceptible to experiments. There is nothing wrong with leaving the western game in its original format with the same terminology. Borrowing concepts from English-language games is allowed. For example, it is not necessary to look for a Japanese or Korean equivalent of the word “quest”; this term is familiar to Asian players. In addition, no one has canceled the trend towards globalization; in games it is not forbidden to focus on global pop culture. On the whole, users of Asia are interested in the peculiarities of Western culture, which is considered a progressive trend.
3. Technical requirements. Hieroglyphs are more heavy: in Latin, one character is one byte, in Cyrillic - two bytes, and one character of Japanese or Chinese can "weigh" up to four bytes. A complete set of traditional Chinese characters weighs about 30 megabytes. If you add it to the game, the application will become much harder. We use fonts with a simplified outline of Chinese characters weighing about 18 megabytes.
As part of the education reform in China in the middle of the twentieth century, it was decided to simplify the look of many hieroglyphs in order to make them easier to remember. Now China has almost completely switched to the simplified version, but in Hong Kong they still use the traditional set of hieroglyphs. In Stormfall: Rise of Balur, we prepared two options for localizing the game, which of course affected the size of the application - about 36 megabytes. Later we will test the audience response to both locales and decide whether a traditional set of hieroglyphs will be included in the game. With Korean, things are simpler: it only disguises itself as hieroglyphs, but in fact it is an alphabet.
4. How to find a proofreader and translator. The selection requirements for translators and editors for Asian markets are more stringent. For the translation into European languages, the candidate needed only to have minimal experience in localizing and passing games. In the case of the Asian market, we were looking for translators with experience in localizing Western games, preferably mobile strategies.
First, we gave reviews for review to native speakers who play our games on Facebook. From time to time we received feedback from them in the spirit: "This is a good translation, but no more." Gamers indicated that the atmosphere was inaccurate or the game term was used incorrectly. For example, in casual games, “life” is called so, and in strategies, players are accustomed to the designation “energy”.
We received feedback on the translations not only from the players, but also from journalists and writers who evaluated literacy and the quality of translation, the purity of the language and the balance between borrowed terms and concepts from the language into which they are translated. A collection of all the feedback and helped find the right translators and proofreaders.
5. Special testing. To evaluate usability, we videotaped the process of passing the game with a tester from Japan. This approach is more effective than oral or written review of the game. In the Japanese culture, politeness prevails in everything, so it is often inconvenient for them to give an objective assessment and admit that some aspects of the game were incomprehensible or not liked at all. The tester is likely to give a generalized, but absolutely useless review. In the video, everything is clear without words. By the movement of the gamer's fingers across the screen of the device, it is possible to trace how it is being trained, what reactions and emotions arise during the game and how they are dictated.
Go
Localization of the game for the Asian market is a long and laborious process that requires considerable effort. But if you approach it responsibly and make a high-quality translation, users will appreciate it.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/279531/
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