In the contemporary modern world, gaming translation services have become an essential part of the gaming industry demonstrating that every business is focused on its customers.
If the targeted audience is among the majority of non-English speakers, localization is the tool for boosting your visibility, game rankings, and sale and market shares by reaching more audience, as approximately 52% of people purchase the products which are marketed in their native or local languages.
Game translation services have opened up new windows of opportunities all over the world. For instance, localization of your game’s app store or play store description enables the audience to completely understand the working of your game and make their purchasing decision.
If the users are allowed to enjoy the games in their local language, their gaming experience would be enhanced resulting in positive reviews. For the successful localization of your game, there are a number of resources to be equipped that will enable your translators to better understand the storyline, plotting, and characters of the game, in order to ensure the attainment of your translation objectives.
Following are the top 5 best practices to adopt for creating the most engaging and adaptive translations to attract the targeted audience.
Study the Culture of the Targeted Market Area:
Conduct research in order to study the gaming culture and market of the region in which you are aiming to launch your game. Investigate the most successful and failed game genres of the region and the reason behind their success or failure.
Access and testify the content, description, and translation of your game and make evaluations of the expected response from the culture of that region. According to the “The International Game Developers Association” (IDGA), there are certain areas of high cultural sensitivity which require a high level of consciousness and precision while being dealt with. These areas are:
- History
- Ethnicity
- Religion
- Geo-politics
Develop a Pre-Flight Stage:
Once you have conducted an in-depth study of your targeted market and its cultural traditions, the next stage is to develop a pre-flight stage. Developing a pre-flight stage is significant to ensure the effective beginning of your Gaming translation services.
The basic purpose of this step is the creation of better understanding and compatibility between you and your translator and to make sure that you both are on the same page.
At this point, it is crucial to make your translator familiar with the content of your game. This will enable him/her to fully adapt your game in a way that appropriately fits the targeted culture.
Create your Source Content Framework:
Once you and your translator are on the same page, create your source content framework for providing the backbone to your translation process which the translator can refer to.
It is basically the guideline to develop an understanding of how the content of your game is being presented. A well-structured source content will enable the translator to successfully adapt the content of your game into the culture of the targeted region while remaining consistent with the storyline and tone of the game.
While creating a source content framework, detailed information on the style, structure, formatting, and brand elements should be provided to the translator.
Select the Parts of the Content to Localize:
While translating the game, the in-game text is the essential target for translation. Besides in-game text translations, keywords, descriptions, and updates of the games should also be translated and localized if you publish your content on the Play Store, Apple App Store, or Steam, etc.,
as it helps players to have a better gaming experience. While localizing your game, do not forget your advertisement and marketing content as it is essential to increase the audience reach of your game.
Moreover, the translated content is usually shorter or longer than the original text, so one has to be careful while translating the text to make sure that the final results appear to be professional.
Provide Referential Context:
Other than source content, the additional context for example instructions, sample scenarios, and screenshots are also crucial for the successful translation and localization of your game and should be taken into account carefully.
Screenshots are the most significant as they provide a visual representation of the game’s content to the translator. This additional context contains all the necessary information about the script, characters, tools, and techniques of the game.
This will provide the basis to the translator for providing the most precise translation and to offer the best gaming experience to your players.
Bottom Line:
The universal rule for localizing your game is to ensure that along with the translation of the text, you have to localize it as well, which means making your game completely adaptive to the cultural market in which you are going to expand it. Following the above-mentioned practices and finding the right gaming translation services can help you get the best results.