LOCALISATION FOCUS | BETA
LOCAL KNOWLEDGE
Key localisation experts offer advice for development studios looking to get the most they can from working with a localisation company
“Select the agency you work with carefully, check out their pedigree in games and the range of clients that work with them and the length of those relationship. Once you feel happy with your selection, engage with them, allow them to be part of your team and ensure you give them everything they need, to deliver back to you an excellent level of work.” Vickie Peggs,
MD, Universally Speaking
games out there than ever before. We need to be able to receive, localise and return the content in the most streamlined way possible.” Aside from adapting to meet the needs of
social, mobile and smaller creative outfits, localisation firms are also having to adapt their approach to localisation QA. That’s according to CD Projekt’s localisation specialist Mikolaj Szwed, who recently worked on The Witcher 2. “Reported bugs not only concern translation- specific issues but other functional stuff such as truncations, level of implementation, sound levels, etcetera,” he says. “It’s very important to test the localised versions of the game as many of the bugs are not visible during translation until the text and audio is implemented.
CULTURE CLUB Another impact on the working practices of localisation companies is the matter of what Universally Speaking’s Peggs calls ‘culturalisation’. “Think of the works that localisation agencies
do as ‘culturising or globalising content’, both in terms of text, visuals, style, audio, humour right down to very subtle cultural adaptions,” suggests Peggs, who admits she finds cultural adaptation of video games “incredibly exciting”. In the modern climate, says Peggs, without
having a depth of knowledge of target markets on a cultural level, developers can no longer expect their games to succeed. “You just need to look at the level of detail
StarCraft II as an example of a very highly polished, detailed localised project from localised facial lip synching, to full art asset localisation,” states Peggs. And the Universally Speaki ng boss isn’t alone in her enthusiasm for the potential of the culturalisation process. “Geopolitical and cultural issues are always fascinating, and becoming more prevalent in our industry. By those issues I mean understanding both the political and cultural relevancy of your multicultural audience and how a developer’s creative vision can be enhanced by this understanding,” offers Xloc’s O'Malley Deming. “It’s fascinating stuff.”
TRANSLATING THE FUTURE Looking further ahead, as the trends discussed above continue to increase the workload and diversity of responsibilities for localising agencies, there is recognition that smarter tools are an essential part of assuring companies in the highly competitive space a healthy and long- lasting future. “On the technology side, we have in our
armoury more tools than ever before, and whether that is building glossaries, or databases of hardware manufacturer’s terms, through to tools that allow clients to ‘check in’ and ‘check out’ files 24-seven, through to great tools for extracting and integrating text into the game, it is the technology that is bringing the biggest leaps forward and also savings to the client,” says Babel’s Leinfellner, And it is those tools, claims VMC Lab’s Giusti,
that through being integrated in the actual development process, can future-proof localisation services. “More people are now doing it, and this means you are making bug fixing a whole lot easier and faster,” says Giusti. “You still need to provide clean context to your translation team and you still need native language testers to conduct your localisation QA, but the pace of bug fixing and the time it will take your dev team to turn around a clean fresh localisation build is much reduced.”
THE ONLY WAY IS UP If the world’s games localisation specialists share one thing, it is optimism. The opportunities presenting themselves are manifold, and business is certainly booming. There is a lot of work to do, but that is no bad thing. “The future seems very exciting indeed,”
concludes Testronic’s Harsant. “Cloud computing and gaming will surely push the boundaries o f what we currently perceive as the three big territories. With that will come a new means for millions of people to access triple-A titles, and they will no longer be bound by the limits of the hardware.” Positivity, it appears, is something unlikely to get lost in translation.
“Give the localisation vendor as much visibility as possible as early in the development cycle as possible. Even though schedules are likely to change, advance notice of what is coming up is always valuable and provides a chance for an interchange of ideas and advice to help the localisation process run smoothly.” Andrew Day,
CEO, Keywords International
“Understand the localisation provider’s process and workflow, so that you can decide the best ways to make it fit within your own development pipeline.”
David Lakritz, President and CEO, LAI
“Communicate, communicate and communicate. The more information you provide about your game, the easier it will be for the localisation professionals to get a feel for it and achieve a product that maintains the spirit of the original.”
Silvia Ferrero, Director, MediaLoc
“Communication is without doubt the most important single factor in the relationship. The producer must be upfront with the localisation company and provide timelines and budget constraints. Likewise the localisation company needs to ask the right questions in order to meet the timelines and budget constraints.” Alastair Harsant,
Vice President of Operations for Games Services, Testronic
APRIL 2012 | 27
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