I am an ex-loc guy so it took me about a week to write all of the translator's notes for our mostly untranslatable script; the vast majority of the comments are me apologizing for jokes about umlauts, explaining Pennsylvania Dutch slang, and basically throwing my hands in the air
Absolutely, which is why we have to encourage better practices! Starting with a better treatment/recognition of localization staff across the entire industry :)
bsky.app/profile/did:... @jentranslations.bsky.social just in case :p
54% - That's the percentage of translators (out of 235 respondents) who only receive minimal or no reference material whatsoever for the games they're working on.
Remember that figure next time you read a translation that sounds off in context!
Nearly half of these 100 are from games that were translated into English, btw, and a full half of the top 10 entries were written by translators. Sadly, some of them, like Suikoden 2, Yakuza 0, and Metal Gear Solid 4, blanket credit translation companies instead of listing names of individuals.
2 panel comic Panel 1 is titled “Client Feedback (2012) Red Guy sits at his desk typing on his laptop. There is a bubble on the right hand side of the panel showing his screen. A small text panel says “and the”. There is an arrow pointing to the bottom of the words with a correction box that reads: “Text is slightly misaligned. Please fix” Panel 2 is titled “Client feedback (2026) Red Guy is slouched on chair typing into his phone. His phone screen shows a panel of text that is complete gibberish. This time the correction reads “not alphabet but who give a fuck”
client feedback in the GenAI era
👉Wie ensteht eine Videospiellokalisierung?
Spannendes, aufschlussreiches Video über den Aufwand und den Entstehungsprozess deutscher Games-Fassungen.
U.a. mit unserer 1. Vorsitzenden Johanna Czerny!
#LoveYourAVTranslator #HumansNotMachines #TranslatorsInTheCredits
www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7HW...
I used to loooove April 1st in the games industry - companies always came up with cool/creative/silly ideas to drive community interest while having some fun.
Now it's all "Teehee look at this AI garbage we spit out for the occasion, aren't we so quirky?"
A variant of "Pushing Both Buttons" meme. Left side reads: "Toby Fox: Translation is so hard, better leave it to the fans", right side reads: "Warhorse: Translation is so easy, better leave it to AI"
2026 Localization Discourse
*CZ>EN, my bad. But as stated in the thread, if you've played KCD2 in English, you've likely seen that persons' work.
One of the main EN>CZ translators of KCD2 was fired and replaced by AI. old.reddit.com/r/kingdomcom...
Like many people, FG was my outlet during the pandemic (logged 800+ hours), and it sucks to see how bad they fumbled the updates. It also took Mediatonic way too long to get rid of cheaters. Under different circumstances, I truly believe they could've made it work, but it got too big too fast.
The devs have replied to this comment. Feel free to follow or contribute here: steamcommunity.com/id/Bellandy/...
"First they came for the translators, and I did not speak out, because I was not a translator."
Translators work with a "lockit" (a file containing all the texts from the game) in a seemingly random order - so you'll have item names without their descriptions, scenes/dialogues scrambled all over the place, etc. - and without a proper ordered script, you're basically relying on pure guesswork.
That's the plan! The poll will be running for 2 weeks, and I'll share the results shortly after :)
A picture of a LinkedIn post that says: Fellow gameloc specialists, how much reference material do you usually get from the end client when starting a new project? LinkedIn doesn't allow long descriptions in polls, so read them below before casting your vote :) 1 - None: Nothing. Nada. Zilch. (Excluding standard stuff like the title... If you're lucky) 2 - Minimal: A 2-paragraph outline and a few reference screenshots, perhaps a trailer 3 - Partial: A script with dialogues in order, character reference sheets, game design documents outlining all mechanics and core concepts of the game 4 - Full: All of the above and a playable build with cheat codes I understand this can vary widely from one project/client to another, hence why I'm looking for an average. Stay tuned for the results in a couple of weeks and feel free to share this post to gather as many opinions as possible! Disclaimer: Your answers are disclosed to the poll's author (me). When publishing the results, I'll make sure they're all anonymized.
Looking for input from my fellow #gameloc peeps! Cast your vote here: www.linkedin.com/feed/update/...
Will it have crossplay?
Je ne vois pas de quoi tu parles
I understand the author meant well, but we'll be better off as an industry the day we learn to stop disparaging colleagues (unintentionally or otherwise) by dividing "technical" vs "literary" TLs, "romance languages" vs "Asian languages", etc. *All* translations need human involvement.
FTFY.
bsky.app/profile/did:...
Oops
Gameloc: Giving devs headaches since 1980
I was recently helping @locdandloaded.net who was working on localizing a project originally written in @articydraft.bsky.social
We came up with a tool that parses JSON exports, mimicking some of Articy's original features which helps with LQA/Localization.
If you'd like a demo, feel free to DM me!
I finally lost my shit about so-called AIs, LLMs, enshittification & everything fucking evil that @officialgrammarly.bsky.social is doing. I'm fucking furious, and not just about what 1 company has done. An open letter to Grammarly & the rest of the LLM hype machine www.moryan.com/an-open-lett...
I've spent the past few months reading Dune in English, and in the first two volumes alone, I probably learned about 300 new words. It's one of the most enjoyable parts of the process, why would anyone rob themselves of that :(
