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Improving Game LocalizationQuality: Internationalizationas the Holy Grail
Pablo Muñoz@pmstrad
In previous presentations,I talked about…
Thein-housetranslator
TheDark Sidetranslator(freelancer)
Thedeveloper
ThePM
And now I will talkabout…
Thelocalizationengineers
In small projects, they may be forgotten…
But if you decide to work with them…
They will fight so that you followthese 10 internationalization principles
1.You shall design
text boxesand menus
for larger texts
Poor menu design for localization…
Better menu design for localization
Good text box for localization…
But bad button design for localization!
2.You shall test ALL fontswith special characters
Where’s the ‘ñ’?
3.You shall use
variable width fontsas much as possible
Courier New is a fixed width font
Calibri is avariable width font
• This is Arial• This is Arial Narrow• This is Times New Roman• This is Garamond•This is Courier New• This is Calibri
Fixed width Font = less space
Variable width Font = more space
Some more examples
Final Fantasy VI – SNES version
Final Fantasy VI – GBA version
Chrono Trigger – SNES version
Chrono Trigger – Android version
4.You shall usetext wrapping
instead of manualline breaks
Becausemanual line breaks
are a pain
Accidents and text overflows occur…
And sometimes they aren’t necessary
Even better:Make speech bubbles
adapt to the text
A normal text bubble…
That expands itself based on the content!
And this waytranslators will use CAT tools easily
5.You shall use different
messages fornumerical variables
Why not just “1 tech point”?
punto(s) is correct… but not nice
This can be avoidedby just adding a message
for 1 and for >1
6.You shall always include
a variable in the full string
Let’s translate “ escaped!” into Spanish
Oops! Where’s the initial ‘¡’?
Do:<name> escaped!
Don’t:escaped!
7.You shall create
special tagsto avoid gender issues
English:
GUARD: Let’s see if you areas good as they say.
Spanish:
GUARDIA: Vamos a ver si erestan bueno como dicen.
But if your main character is a woman…
Should be “buena”
Solution:GUARDIA: Vamos a ver si eres
tan @Malebueno@Femalebuena@End
como dicen.
8.You shall use variables
and tagsthat humans can read
This simple message can be represented like…
This:[fnt_2]Oh! My aching head...[fnt_1] Hey, Dk! The
other kingdoms have taken all our[col_02]bananas[col_01] [icn_1] away![kp]
Or even like this:[小]Oh! My aching head...[大] Hey, Dk! The
other kingdoms have taken all our[橙]bananas[黒] [バナナ_01] away![kp]
Or this way :)[Font_size=60%]Oh! My aching
head...[Font_size=100%] Hey, Dk! Theother kingdoms have taken all our
[Font_color=orange]bananas[Font_color=black] [Banana_Icon_3] away![KeyPress]
9.You shall be organized
with files and Excel tabs
Have you ever seen a file with 50 tabs like this?
Or zillions of very small files?
Yeah… That’s how translators usually react
So…
10.You shall check
for cultural issues
To avoid things like this in Pokémon ASAP
JP version US version
And this in Super Mario RPG
JP version US version
So don’t think twice:a good internationalization
is the key for a sucessfullocalization
Hire and trust a localization engineer…
And may the Force be with you!
Thank you for your attention
@pmstrad pablomunoz.com