Fantastic Localization Bugs and Where to Find Them
By: Allcorrect Blog
Tags: Localization, Translation, QA, Testing, Game Development

Localization testing is often viewed as an unnecessary stage, and many do it with the scraps of remaining funds. After all, the translation is already outstanding. There is no point in checking it again. But we at Allcorrect are faced daily with evidence that pitfalls may be lurking in even the best translation.

So, let’s take a look at what they are, where they might be, and most importantly, how to avoid them.

No standard Measure

Bugs often lie in window titles and button text, as these are the areas with the shortest length. Naturally, information about character limits is given at the translation stage. However, you should know that words in German, for example, are much longer than in English. If you compare that to Chinese… So, even with set limits, there’s a chance that a word might wind up with a “tail”.

2. A Whole Phrase is Not Enough for Us

It often happens that a phrase is broken up into parts during translation so that it can later be used in other phrases. In doing so, it can create a situation where each part is translated correctly, but they aren’t consistent with one another. Moreover, you should bear in mind that these parts may be used elsewhere.

3. Battle of the Sexes

Sometimes it’s pretty funny to see characters who out of the blue start talking about themselves in a wrong grammatical gender. The problem is that it’s not always clear during translation who is speaking. Even if the speaker’s name is shown… What do you think, for example, is Sam Brown a man or a woman?

Therefore, character pictures and names are needed at the translation stage.

There may also be technical reasons for this issue. For instance, when an image of one character is uploaded instead of another.

4. Font Affairs

No matter how perfect a translation is, nothing can ruin the impression more than mysterious oooooo, which can appear at the most inappropriate moment if the font refuses to work properly.

Of course, the font can be universal for all languages. Perhaps the inexplicable oooooo will never make an appearance in the game, but only someone who knows the language can check to ensure all special characters, such as the German umlauts, are in their places.

5. A Word on Poor Context

One would think it’s all quite simple: there’s a word, and it has a translation. And everybody’s happy.

But the trouble is that it’s sometimes unclear during translation how the text will look in the game. Literally, where it’ll be placed.

For example, the word “start” out of context could mean “starting point”, “origin”, “launch”, “beginning of the game” and so on.

The very same phrase, when used in a diary, a newspaper article or a character’s line, could be taken in very different ways.

So, sometimes you may find text in a game that you understand, but it clearly doesn’t fit the situation. And this can spoil your impression of the game to the point that you no longer want to play.

There we have it, various inhabitants of the diverse kingdom of localization. Here are a few things that will help you avoid some of these mistakes.

First of all, give as much information as possible about the game, characters and context for the translators.

Understand that each language is unique. For example, the issue of text creeping outside of the window boundaries could be resolved at the design stage by determining object sizes in the interface using substitutes from machine translation.

And, of course, do final checks directly in the game.

Past experience shows time and again that having native speakers test the main languages for at least the first two hours of gameplay (and certainly the menu and key words) has a positive effect on the audience’s perception of the game and, later, its attention retention.