Hi!

I was wondering if anyone knows a good indie scale localisation service?

Also, has anyone had any experience of releasing a localised indie game?

Ive done a few at work, but we always use an outside company and its handled by the producer (and probably costs more than an indie can afford).

So are there any indie localisation options Ive not come across?

.Z.

Just to let you guys know.

Our typical localisation is for at least:

English
French
German
Spanish
Italian

But we also do a lot of the scandinavian countries as well plus asian

Norwegian
Swedish
Korean

I'm sure there are others, but the top ones are the "big five".

.Z.

When you localize for a language you're not fluent in, how do you deal with Tech support? And do you localize your website, too? if not, what real advantage is there to doing a localized version of your product?

~Hanford

Good point, however, (though not from any experience) given the current sales figures for non-english speaking countries, there probably aren't many or likely to be that many tech-support queries. These could probably be dealt with individually, getting individual emails etc translated as required.

Also, say it's a family household in france, and the son, who can speak/read/write english, purchases the game, the rest of the family (who aren't that good at english) can also enjoy the game in french.

I have allowed for future localisation of my current game (additional characters in my custom fonts etc) but I probably wont be holding back on its release while I implement any localisation.

Given the current figures from the other thread, I cant help but how worthwhile it is to deal with web site translation, and extra localisation, but on the other hand, maybe through doing all that extra work, those rather low figures can be increased - making it that much more worthwhile.

One thing that is a slight concern to me, is that once you have started releasing localised version of a game, will customers expect all future games to also be localised etc. That itself could be quite a commitment to make.

-z-

Well, as Steve's articles say, anything that can help you sell your game can multiply your sales.

Lets face it, is it THAT much effort to simple load text strings in from a table/text file?

The major effort is simply getting the localisation done, and I doubt it'd be THAT difficult to find some starving student who could do the job for 100 dollars.

I guess there's no real telling unless you try it.

I'd be willing to bet that a german translation of the right game would really help sales (i.e for a game that would sell well into that country).

.Z.

I think Hanfords comments are important. I got a few spanish support questions on a full english game. I think what you would need is a translation service that could translate your e-mails on a few hours notice.

a nice free online translation service is
http://babelfish.altavista.com/

this could work for answering emails. I've done a quick test to translate a text from italian to english and was not so bad :)

About the translation service, I suggest you to look for a local translation service. Those online are really expensive: I found one that charged 0,019 euros per letter. I tried to translate the "about us" text from my soccer site (under construction: www.universalsoccermanager.com/about.htm) from english to german and ended up with 19 euros! for only a small page.

If I should translate a strategy or even worse an adventure game, I could really spend more than 1000 euros to have it translated into those five major languages you have mentioned... :(

If you want to add portuguese in there, I'll help out ;p

It would be interesting to test, but man I'd be worried about tech support. I'd hate to get a bad reputation for poor customer support because of translation problems.

By the way, writing a game to be localizable via external data files (text files) is a great idea simply for doing spell checking and grammar checking on the text in your game, even if you never plan to port the game to a different language.

~Hanford, a bad speller

I'm willing to translate from english to danish for free.

English to Danish? Nice offer, if I ever get anything done, I'll ask you if you're interested... But that won't be for a while.

Maybe the answer is that you build up a group of people you can get to actually do the translation for you (rather than using a service).

I'm pretty sure I can cover most of the languages with friends who speak those languages (barring maybe italian).

I'm sure its feasable to do, and I'd bet its worth the effort.

As for website and support, I'd have a localised FAQ which was updated every 2 weeks or so, but other than that I'd have a mention in each version that "all support must be done in english other than the FAQ".

I dont think its unreasonable, and besides, isnt it just nice to have the game in thier language of origin (even if its a slight pain to get support) rather than not have it at all?

.Z.

If translated text (say, in Danish) clearly and politely states that foreign languages are just one more bonus and do not include tech support, sorry - there shouldnt be a problem with tech support.

I`d rather say that clients would feel good that developers have thought about one more thing to please them.

(I could translate English to Latvian :P)

Originally posted by Nauris
If translated text (say, in Danish) clearly and politely states that foreign languages are just one more bonus and do not include tech support, sorry - there shouldnt be a problem with tech support.

I thought about this too, but I don't know if it's a good idea. You basically have 2 scenerios:

1. The person doesn't see the "support in english only" text in the game or on the site, then they're in for a shock if they need tech support.

2. If they do see is and actually can't read/write english, what confidence are they going to have in buying the game from someone who basically has made a claim to you that they're not going to support it? Myself, whenever I see anything like "As is" or "no returns" I get weary. I've even been hesitant when I see broken english on game/product websites.

I'm not saying it's not going to give improve sales, but I *do* think that if it's not properly thought out that it can be more of a bad thing than a good thing. To not offer tech support in a language that your game ships in seems like you're not following all the way through, IMO.

~Hanford