MINIMIZING HUMAN ERRORIN LOCALIZATION

Adolfo Gómez-Urda

Montijano

GAMES I’VE LOCALIZED

2005 - 2010

2010 - 2013

2013 -

WHAT’S LOCALIZATION’S WORST ENEMY?

COPY/PASTE

HOW CAN TOOLS AND PRACTICES POSITIVELY IMPACT THE GAME?

Drastically reduce amount of localization bugs

Reduce chances of broken localization builds

Reduce translation and LQA costs (BAK 3 times more content, only 2.3 times $ more than BAC)

Reduce wasted resources

Reduce dependency from development team

Improve quality of localized builds

Reduce chances of compliance issues and MF bugs by first party

INTERNATIONALIZATION PASS

Should be performed on pseudo-localized builds (a couple months before Loc QA)

General idea of the localizability of the game before actual localization starts

Font and encoding conversion issues

Hardcoded strings

Real estate UI issues

Number format issues

Date/Time format issues

Non-localized art

Establish punctuation guidelines for English and other languages before translation starts: Curly VS. straight apostrophes and quotation marks

Long dashes VS. short dash

1 VS. 2 spaces after periods

PSEUDO-LOCALIZATION

30-100% length increase to catch real estate UI issues

Prefix made up of language-specific characters to catch font and encoding conversion issues

Non-pseudo-localized strings indicate hardcoded strings early in development

Real Estate UI Issues

Font glyph issues Hardcoded string

FONT VALIDATION

Develop a tool to analyze all the game fonts

Small alphabet languages (European languages)

Support ALL potentially necessary characters throughout the project

Large alphabet languages (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, etc.)

Support most common + used characters only and update regularly

Always support these special characters:

Ellipsis (… or Alt + 0133)

Non-breaking space (Alt + 0160)

Copyright (©), Trademark (™), and Registered (®) symbols

AUDIO VALIDATION

Must also be performed in English assets prior to localization recordings to avoid re-recordings in other languages

Excellent task for localization testers when builds are not stable enough or to familiarize themselves with the game

Only possible way of listening and validating all audio in the game

Ensure localized audio files are properly named

CONSTANTVALIDATION

• Sony terms: "DUALSHOCK®3", "DUALSHOCK®4", "PlayStation®Network", "PlayStation™Network",

"PlayStation®Eye", "PlayStation®3", "PlayStation®4", "PlayStation®Store", "PlayStation®Move",

"PlayStation®Vita", "PlayStation®Plus", "PSN", "Sony Entertainment Network", "PS4™", "PS3™", "SIXAXIS™", "PS

Vita", "PlayStation®TV", "PS TV"

• Microsoft terms: "SmartGlass", "Smart Match", "Xbox", "Xbox One", "Xbox Live", "Kinect", "Xbox Live Gold"

• Miscellanea: "%s", "%ls", "%i", "%d", "%hs", "%%"

TRANSLATIONCONSISTENCYCHECK

4600 translation

inconsistencies

(around 460 per language in

a 11500 string database)

ACHIEVEMENT & TROPHY LOCALIZATION

Along with metadata updates, #1 source of copy/paste in video game localization

Merge all assets into one single Excel file for translation:

Sony *.trp

Microsoft *.Gameconfig/*.xml

Steam *.vdf

Ensure English texts match across all platforms (they never do)

Diff, diff, and diff again

Encourage translators to be creative when translating achievement names!

LOC-FRIENDLY STRING DATABASE SOLUTION

LOCALIZEDIRECT RUNTIME STRING UPDATE

Usual workflow to fix a localization bug:1. Notice cutoff in game.

2. Guesstimate available space and shorten translation.

3. Wait for a new build.

4. Regress fix. If still cutoff, go back to step 2.

With runtime string update:1. Notice cutoff.

2. Fix and ensure translation is no longer cutoff.

1 week

1 minute

2014 2015Nov 2015 Mar May Jul Sep Nov

VO Export for Translation and Recording1/12/2015

1st UI Export for Translation2/1/2015

Start of LocQA3/1/2015

Localized VO Integration3/2/2015

1st Party Submission11/15/2015

1/5/2015 - 1/9/2015

English Audio Validation

1/5/2015 - 1/14/2015Font Analysis

12/1/2014 - 12/30/2014

Internationalization Pass

1/5/2015 - 1/14/2015English text proofreading

2/2/2015 - 11/15/2015Constant Validation

2/2/2015 - 11/15/2015Asian Font Texture Regeneration

3/6/2015 - 3/15/2015Localized VO Validation

11/3/2014 - 12/2/2014

Localization Process & Tools Setup

SUMMARY

Font analysis

Constant validation (and translation consistency)

Audio validation

Achievement localization

Efficient and localization-friendly string database solution

PLEDGE TO 1ST PARTY

Metadata:• Represents around 1% of a AAA game’s content

• Takes up around 10% of localization team’s time, involving marketing, loc QA, translators, legal team, communications, QA, Certification, and development.

• 1st party (Sony, Microsoft, and Steam) need to initiate a conversation to streamline the format and the process

Provide pre-localized TRC string repository

•Why is this important?

It’s 2015!