Eleven years ago, a historic event happened: Doka Media for the first time signed an official agreement on the publication in Russia of a couple of games released in the West. However, the history of localizations began earlier - with the activities of pirates... Now almost all significant games except for some online ones.

However, the result does not always please us. And the player often does not even know how and why certain problems occur - and what a brilliantly executed localization costs the publisher. That's what we'll talk about today.

Contract

If our localization is official, the first thing, of course, is a contract. And already at this stage, various interesting things happen, on which the success of localization depends.

Let's start with the fact that the localization of a large-scale game (for example, a large RPG) takes quite a lot of time, and it is not always possible to get material for translation long before the world release. Therefore - at first glance - it would be good to release the original first. Falling behind is also dangerous because it gives the pirates a chance.

And some companies (for example, Paradox Interactive) give our publisher this opportunity. Some, but not all. The fact is that games in Russia even now, when the characteristic price of a jewel-package has increased from about three to 10-15 "conventional units", are still sold much cheaper than, say, in the USA. And this means that if a part of the circulation gets outside Russia, the Western publisher will suffer big losses. And even if the prices did not differ, there is a different share, and so on. There is no need for a Russian-language game there, except for the "diaspora", but the original ...

Sometimes a foreign company is very worried about the quality of localization and strives to control the process without fail. Usually, this is grief for the result, because she can control very so-so (who doubts - look at the result of the work on the localization of World of Warcraft), and she is excellent at interfering with the process. Control is usually entrusted to a “Russian employee on the spot”, and among them such instances sometimes come across ... There were even comrades who proudly took a transliteration of some kind of obscene language as a pseudonym; I think you can imagine how exquisite taste such "controllers" possessed.

On the other hand, the Western publisher does an excellent job of demanding verification of each step. This, to put it mildly, complicates the technology, prevents timely corrections and reduces the time for useful work. They usually commit atrocities especially when localizing a game based on a movie. Filmmakers who own the rights to the name are more likely to stick spokes in wheels than igrodely.

Sometimes it is stipulated that not everything can be localized; for example, sometimes it is forbidden to change the voice acting (!), the graphic part (and there is such a thing as inscriptions right on the game objects), and so on. True, many people are not eager to work with this anyway, since it is quite difficult, and the tradition of leaving such frames untranslated and dubbing the translation has already become widespread in films.

Well, of course, the contract may include some strange time requirements. This rarely happens, but it does happen. For example, somehow, in my memory, the entire localization had to be completed in ten days, which is about half as much as it was necessary ...

Localization package

The next move is up to the foreign publisher: you need to send localization package.

Most often it consists of:

a file or files in Excel (less often Word), where the pieces of text to be translated are indicated, who says it, perhaps some comments and technical data (where and how to insert the result);

audio tracks and videos to be dubbed;

• labels passed in the game through a bitmap.

Please note that the game itself is not included in this set. Sometimes the good will of the publisher is enough to send a version of the game too, but if the English release has not yet taken place, this does not always happen.

As a result, localizers often see the game when their translation has already been added to it. And then it turns out, for example, that some pieces remained untranslated, because their forgot include in the package for localization.

The most common victims at this stage are:

labels on buttons that are not printed, but drawn;

error messages;

installer menu;

"tips" given during the loading of a game or a saved file.

A typical case is when a part of the text to be translated is not taken from any resource files, but is directly embedded in the program. Such lines are almost always forgotten to be included in the package, and then patched for a long, long time. Fortunately, in recent times such incidents are less common than five years ago.

But, in general, anything can be forgotten. Or vice versa - add too much; it is not uncommon for a localization package to include, say, a piece of a previous game in the series through someone's "street magic". Such a modest piece - one and a half megabytes! Perhaps the translator is even in the know and understands perfectly well that these texts come from another game ... but, on the other hand, all this is included in the translation task, which means that it will be paid ... but the deadlines are running out ... but finding out who was arguing nonsense is also not fast ... which means that all that remains is to look at this hocus-pocus with sad eyes and repeat to yourself: "No-no-no-no ..."

In addition, since the package is not made by the publisher, but by the developer, and he is not always experienced in this part, there may be additional overhead due to work done incorrectly. For example:

ready-made sound files were sent, and not separate background sound and separate speech; in this case, “tails” of the source text can then crawl out from under the voice acting;

the graphics to be translated were sent not divided into layers, but again in finished form - which portends many, many happy hours alone with Photoshop for localizers;

comments are mixed up, in the same row there are texts that need to be translated, and tags that cannot be translated;

sound files come much later than the text part of the package.

The latter I would like to clarify in more detail. Just imagine that your text mentions an episodic character - a certain Elon (fantasy, the name is so stylized ...). Comments about him ... did not happen. In English, verbs and adjectives do not have a gender, and if this character was not accidentally designated by a pronoun somewhere, we have every chance before the arrival of sound tracks and not find out if this is a man or a woman. And then you are tormented to carry out a "sex change operation." What if there are several?

Or another common case: the hero is broadcasting something strange, but we do not know without intonation - this is pathos or irony. Can suppose, but it's better not to, because if the sound then makes adjustments ... We are looking for an option that suits both here and there. How much easier it would be to see right away ...

Dictionary

And so the work on the translation begins: the localization package arrives in Russia and ends up with a specialist.

Some translators dive straight into the text and get to work. If the game is a little more complicated than Tetris, then at this stage we can already say with confidence: the comrades are preparing to bring into the world something incredibly nasty.

Professionals act differently: first of all, they make game vocabulary. It includes all game terms, names of key characters, names of territories... In the process of this work, the localization package is carefully read, and the names are coordinated with each other. And only after this work in general you can take on the translation. And in no case do not make a dictionary as the translation is being made!

A case from one's life: once pirates translated the game Arx Fatalis and neglected this simple rule. Then they decided that in the role-playing system it would be nice to replace “mind” with “intelligence”. And they carried out, poor fellows, a global replacement. The result of their labors became proverbial: sheets of mysterious material, bintellektags, lay on the shelves. You can find another result of this practice today (although not in translation anymore) if you enter the mysterious word “encyclopedia” in a search engine: the site of a certain “Encyclopedia” tore material from Wikipedia and removed the link to “wiki” from everywhere. As Chapek's hero said: "Yes, sir, you need to steal skillfully!"

Compiling a dictionary is no easy task. It has its own rules, which, alas, are not known to all translators...

It is possible to compile a dictionary only after finding out the whole context. The first commandment of the translator: “The word does not exist no translation out of context.

The most crooked comrades are not aware that different game terms in the vast majority of cases should be read differently in translation. There are exceptions, but few. And meanwhile, there are egregious cases when two different spells were called by the unfortunate localizer the same way. Perhaps he simply skipped the stage of compiling a dictionary ...

Next is the uniformity rule. Let's take the same spells: this titles, which means they must be noun-based phrases. For example, the spell "Flight" is normal, and the spell "Fly" is a product of the life of the layman.

On a note: A translator who is not suitable for his work is most easily identified by the fact that he does not understand the difference between the target language and his native language. For example, in English, a verb is suitable as a name already because there is not much difference between a verb and a noun - from one the other is made without changes (there are no endings, cases ...). Seeing the verb is in the text, the profane without the slightest doubt translates it as “is”, making a tedious tedium out of a literary text.

Finally, the titles are tied to a particular style. For example, some naive comrades believe that you can safely translate the word ranger as "ranger" or even "fighter"; and they are right if we are talking about Texas or space rangers, but if it takes place in fantasy or the Middle Ages, they break the style by introducing modernity there. I already wrote about the "robes" of wizards (instead of robes) and other miracles...

Somehow I came across the following phrase in localization: “Dear Sir Ranger, please taste our treat!” It sounds something like: “Oh, you are a goy, VIP person!” A person who does not feel this should absolutely not become an interpreter. This can probably be worked out with long practice, but the gray hair of the editors (and the spoiled pleasure of the players to whom such pearls have slipped) is not worth it. The truth is, there are plenty of other ways to earn a living.

Another misfortune of bad translators is inappropriate Slavification. The most characteristic case is the translation of Gadgetzan as "Gadgetzan". What makes this translation disgusting is, first of all, the suffix -sk, because of which the goblin city in the desert suddenly turns into a Russian outback. If the translator had had enough sense of taste for at least another ending, it would not have been so hopeless.

Interestingly, sometimes the same translators are not able to translate a word that can and should be translated. They gleefully declare it "untranslatable" and mold "dwarves", "units" and other nonsense in their text.

Here, by the way, there is a wonderful excuse in its absurdity: they say, playing on international servers, people will not understand what this or that word means! Therefore, for example, the Nivalovites, in their own game, called the praying mantis "mantis". They didn’t call ticks “ticks”: apparently, every Russian knows how to say “tick” in English? In fact, as experience shows, the players do not have such a problem. This bogey exists only in the translator's imagination.

Some of the names contain a reference to the realities from outside the game. Recall at least the numerous "Easter eggs" from World of Warcraft, The Witcher and others. If they are not preserved in the translation - and not just one, but many - it means that the translator ate his bread for nothing.

Meanwhile, the pirates...

While the official localizers were signing the paper and getting the localization kit, the pirates were busy "breaking" the game. And the main problem for them was by no means Starforce, but the extraction of game resources: texts, speech sounds, fonts... Some also translated inscriptions on game pictures.

But in any case, at the exit, the pirate received a mountain of scattered texts, which the translator was asked to deal with. No comments - where is it used, how, when...

Try to translate, for example, the lonely word "get", which hackers picked out from game code. Maybe it will be taking an item, maybe it will be downloading something from the site, maybe it will be choosing an ability from the list ... One ingenious translator came up with an almost universal translation - "to myself"; it looks strange, but in fact it almost never violates the context.

Since there is no resource collector, it often turns out that you also need to observe ... the exact length of the text (because it needs to be placed in exactly the same place in the file). With long lines, still more or less, but when it comes to a single word? Try to translate the same “get” into three letters. Or, say, "axe": tpr? Top? Well, we don’t have a three-letter analogue of the word “ax”!

Attention is a myth: the English text is usually shorter than its Russian translation. If it's about single word, approximately so it is; but here is a coherent text of meaningful length in the Russian version almost always shorter(we don’t talk about poetry, there are their own laws). In those days, I even set a rule for the translators who worked with me: if your text is longer than the original, then you edited it poorly. This, of course, is a rough approximation, but it is not unreasonable - if a person makes a Russian text long, this means that he skips unnecessary words.

Text translation

Then comes the hour of the actual literary translation. This process has many difficulties, books have been written about it (for example, by Chukovsky and Nora Gal), and for localizers, it is hampered by several other problems.

Let's start with a problem that a localizing company often creates for itself: paradoxically, this job is often hired by anyone, but not translators.

A diploma for this profession today means little - most translators cannot boast of either a philological or literary education, but this is not the point. Often, people working with the text of a responsible project can present only general knowledge of English as a resume.

Attention is a myth: the main skill of a translator is knowledge of the source language. In fact, its main capital is a high level of knowledge native language. It is in this area that he must shine in order to make a professional literary translation. And the mastery of the original language can be much weaker than, say, a simultaneous interpreter; but the "sense of the language" must be.

Worse, publishers have heard that translators often do not know the context of the game. That is why they strive to find a specialist not in translation, but in the subject of the game. Well, or at least close: for example, if the game is based on Dungeons & Dragons, you can find a person who understands ... Magic: the Gathering.

It's about the same as if an ostrich got sick in a zoo, and the management decided not to call a veterinarian - where does he get experience in treating ostriches? Better invite a specialist in ... origami: he knows how to fold excellent cranes out of paper, and a crane, whatever one may say, is also a long-legged bird!

Of course, not every game in Russia has to experience such survival horror; sometimes there is, on the contrary, an approach so professional that it remains only to take off your hat. So, for example, among all the editors with whom your humble servant dealt as an author, the best specialist in the literary part was just the localizer of games - Vasily Podobed, who headed the corresponding department of Nival in those years.

But even if the zero stage was painless for the project and it was possible to involve a translator, and not a high-altitude assembler and not a specialist in walrus tusk carving, working with a game turns out to be in some ways much more difficult than translating a book or film.

Firstly, even in a relatively high-quality localization pack, the phrases are not in the order in which the player will see them. The game is an interactive product, and the order can be very different. And the translator has to reconstruct the chains of events based on meager comments.

Secondly, a stab in the back is constantly being prepared by the same vile grammatical category - gender. This is especially fun in role-playing games, where we are invited to create a character from scratch and it is not known in advance whether we have a hero or a heroine. Although game developers have gradually learned to make different options for a woman and a man in key lines, it is difficult for them with their native English to imagine that in an innocent phrase like “I already had breakfast today”, the Slavs for some reason demonstrate the gender of the speaker with the end of the verb.

Thirdly, English-speaking authors do not know the concept of declension. Which means they can afford something like: "%CLASSs are not allowed here!" We substitute the name of the class instead of% CLASS - and we get, say: "Paladins are not allowed here!" Simple and elegant. And in Russian? Paladins have the ending "s" in the plural, wizards - "and" ...

So translators have to cripple the phrase in order to achieve the nominative case, the singular, the present tense, contrary to reason ... Therefore, sometimes the strange construction of a phrase in translation is caused not by a lack of translation skills, but by difficult conditions.

But it happens, of course, and vice versa. So, for example, humorous games usually get the most in translation, because not everyone knows how to translate jokes (and even notice them in translation).

Attention is a myth: a play on words cannot be translated. The “untranslatable pun” remarks are a thing of the past: nowadays, 99% of such moments in the book are translated, and only exceptional cases fall into the footnote. If one manages to translate "Alice in Wonderland", then it is absolutely a shame not to cope with much simpler texts.

Perhaps the most important skill for a translator, without which it is impossible to produce a quality result, is the ability to understand that he does not understand something. This is by no means a paradox, but the harsh reality of life.

For example, if you don’t know who Paris Hilton is - really, there’s no big grief in this - then you won’t recognize the elf Haris Pilton either. But if at the same time you are a translator, and not a misunderstanding, then you will understand that there is something strange in this name and you need to figure out why it is, what it refers to. The main thing is to ask a question, it is much easier to find an answer with the help of the Internet and acquaintances.

It is not true that mistakes in translations arise because the translator does not know that tunic is not only a tunic, but also a uniform, and a merchant selling China is not an international spy, but just a porcelain merchant. Mistakes arise because, seeing such a strange situation, he did not doubt, but dressed the officer in a tunic, forced the merchant to trade (in best case!) with maps of China - after which he fell asleep calmly, and his conscience did not torment him.

By the way, both examples are absolutely real. The second gentleman is especially beautiful: he even realized that trading in China is absurd, but he did not find the spiritual strength to look into the dictionary, but corrected it for more, from his point of view, reasonable “maps of China”. I would like to recommend him to devote the rest of his life to trading in maps of China, and not to take on translations anymore. This is not his path.

However, talking about how not to spoil the translation (and how it is often spoiled) can take hours. Books have been written about this (for example, "High Art" by Korney Chukovsky or "The Word Living and Dead" by Nora Gal). Alas, they are not for everyone...

The biggest problem with translating games is still that the problem is too often solved by unsuitable means. They set an unrealistic deadline, hire a dwarf manufacturer and Chinese map dealer instead of a translator, cut editing out of the process...

Editing and proofreading

It doesn't matter if the translator is good or bad, the fruits of his labors must be edited. And do it very, very carefully. And it is necessary that the editor enter into work at the stage of making a dictionary.

The translation editor must, in fact, be a translator himself to some extent. At the very least, he should have the skill to notice oddities described above. Moreover, generally speaking, its main task is not to edit the text, but to return it for revision, marking low-quality pieces. Otherwise, his work will become more and more difficult over time: the further, the less shortcomings of his product the translator will notice.

However, this is often not enough time. A localizer cannot always afford several editing cycles (as, by the way, the editor of a periodical) ...

Then comes the corrector; in this situation, he has the least specifics, since the rules of the Russian language do not depend much on the nature of the text. Unless you need to be able to recognize scripted inserts, like the %CLASS mentioned above, but these are trifles.

And yet... it's no secret that localizers often skip this stage. Which is extremely stupid on their part: not everyone is able to identify translation defects, many will attribute dull texts to the shortcomings of the original ... but the absence of commas and other delights will certainly be noticed. Of all the problems of localization, typos are the most visible - this, by the way, applies to any typed text...

Curiously, sometimes the authorities deliberately spoils work of the corrector, forbidding it to work in accordance with the rules of the language! So, for example, I saw with my own eyes a case when the localization editor strictly ordered the proofreader to keep the spelling "Elves", "Gnomes" and so on - with a capital letter. Say, these are not just races - these are sides in the game!

The poor fellow sincerely believed that it was for this reason that they were capitalized in the game. But in fact, in English, Russians or, say, Chinese will also be capitalized - the rules of the language are like that. But we don't seem to be translating into English, do we?

Meanwhile, the pirates Pirates had edits... sometimes. As a rule, it came into action if the text received from the translator did not go through any gates. For example, "translator" worked with Promt or Stylus. The translator, of course, was hung on a yardarm, and the editor was given a task like “translating all this nonsense into human language in twenty-four hours” ... Note that the use of such programs at any stage of work for a translator is a 100% indicator of incompetence. Even the slightest traces of Stylus and any of its analogues, if they are noticed in the text, normally provide the translator with a "wolf ticket" even from official localizers, even from pirates. There are some limits to decent even for the knights of the Jolly Roger!

voice acting

But finally the translator's work was finished, he received his fee and left. Actors get involved.

Five years ago, actors for localization were often collected from the world one by one, and they had to explain a lot of things before starting work. After all, the actor does not, as a rule, have time to get acquainted with the whole history of the issue. There are simply lines in front of him, there is (hopefully) original voice acting and some description of the character's character. But what is, say, a dwarf, the actor may not know, although any player knows this very well.

Meanwhile, the pirates these and at all, as a rule, voiced their products by the forces of the translators themselves. And it's good if there was at least two vote. There was no mention of professionalism.

However, recently the situation has improved: with the advent of a constant market for orders for voice acting, studios have appeared that professionally perform this particular job. One of the most notable is Muza-Games, in which announcers work, including our video magazine.

Usually, quite a few actors work on the voice acting of the game, much less than there are characters in the game. And it’s completely normal if the artist gets a good dozen heroes. At the same time, he usually voices them one by one, and not in the order of the lines in the game, in order to better enter the role and achieve the correct voice features.

Although now excellent professionals work with dubbing games, very “poly-voiced”, sometimes it is still noticeable that there are fewer of them than we would like. From time to time, software filters are used to mask this, correcting the timbre.

People who are far from the gaming kitchen sometimes think that voice actors play entire dialogues from the game. Alas, in real life this is extremely rare. Usually, an actor is given a simple list of his lines, and it's good if between them are the words to which his character answers! Many even prefer not to see "extra" remarks, so as not to interfere. And then the sound editors put the lines in their places, and in the game they themselves are assembled by the script into dialogues.

The reasons for this state of affairs are trivial: the voice acting of the game costs a very round sum, and the actors and the studio are paid by the hour. If the actor will delve into every intermediate line of other characters, I'm not talking about it - if several artists work with the text at the same time, the price of localization will increase very, very seriously. However, there are projects with "fair" play... or at least have been.

Occasionally, in addition to replicas, one has to voice more groans, crowd noise and other similar oddities (often they are simply left from the original). For some reason, it is often believed that the most difficult thing is to voice the noise of the crowd, although in fact these methods have been known for many years and worked out to automatism: several meaningless remarks like “what to say when there is nothing to say” are superimposed on each other with an offset. Sometimes the same noise of the crowd "plays" with success in a dozen projects.

While the voice acting is going on, the artists are fiddling with the game's fonts, as well as with rendered inscriptions. Much of this work, other than the actual creation of fonts, is technical; but if the localization package is made so-so, it can be very, very time consuming. Alas, even today there are such joys as the need to enter text directly on top of the existing one (the developer was too lazy to give a picture in layers), which means long, long hours of image retouching.

Installation and debugging

And finally, all the source materials are done. What's next?

Further, again, depends on the good will of the foreign publisher. If he was so kind as to send the game and a tool for editing texts and sounds into it, then the localizer itself collects Russian version and can correct errors in real time.

But, as you know, trust in Allah, and tie your camel; and some publishers prefer to do the assembly themselves. This is another way to mess up the end result...

Why? Yes, because even with the most careful work, mistakes are inevitable, and each cycle of sending material to a publisher abroad takes at least a day, usually much more. The game is a project of such complexity that it would be ridiculous to expect success the first time. Somewhere the translator still didn’t understand the context (this happens especially often when a phrase or a name in a game is assembled from separate words)...

A case from one's life: here are some characteristic fruits of such an assembly. “Fly Lair” (Fly Lair, a den of flies), “Take Two” (for an unknown purpose, the name of the publisher of Take Two was split in half in the localization table), “Booby Trap” ...

But perhaps the most common problem, which is revealed only by the test stage: something does not fit somewhere. For example, a too long name does not fit into the spell table, or a protracted remark clashes with the next one, or the inscription does not fit on the button ...

At the same time, you need to understand well that under no circumstances does the localizer physically unable be enough time to conduct a full test of the volumetric game...

If, say, it is still possible to find all possible options and nooks and crannies of a quest, then viewing and listening to all the lines in a role-playing game is an incredibly long process. At the very least, this can be done in a long development cycle, but localizers cannot afford several months of testing!

However, if, say, on the screen, the texts of the replicas systematically crawl out of the window border (in the last issue we described such a game), or the inscription on the main screen does not fit on the button, or replicas stick together in the intro video, it will be fair and right to declare the work of the localizer hacky.

This is the life cycle that a Western game goes through before it ends up with us “in full Russian translation”.

As you can see, there are dozens of reasons why the translation may not be ideal; and not all of them are on the conscience of the localizer. Although most often, alas, poor localization is the result of too tight deadlines and not too conscientious selection of employees. But the localizer is constantly forced to race against the clock, and for those who want easy money, I would not advise going into this business.

The site is launching a series of "Rating of Specialists" materials with selections of translation companies focusing on interesting market segments. The first material is about studios that translate games. The ranking of companies is subjective and based on an assessment of their size and management team.

Studios - narrow specialists

These are translation companies with over 50% share of game localization in revenue. Specialized studios are well aware of the specifics of game translation and can usually provide good personal contact with their clients.

1C (QLOC Studio + Buka)

1C is a leader in publishing and developing not only business software, but also games. At one time, the company's share in the Russian gaming market, according to experts, was more than 50%. In 1999, the 1C group acquired Maddox Games, in 2007 the Sea Dog studio from Akella and INOCO, in 2008 the Buka and Avalon Style companies, in 2009 it merged with SoftKlab, in 2010 - with Snowball Studios.
To date, 1C resources for game localization are concentrated in two companies: the Polish studio QLOC and the Moscow-based Buke. I had a chance to have a short talk with Nikolai Baryshnikov, Chairman of the Board of Directors of QLOC. He is also President of 1C Online Games (Czech Republic).
QLOC has a large team, in which 28 specialists are engaged in the Russian language. But the matter is not limited to them: there are projects for translation into Chinese, FIGS languages, Czech, Polish. QLOC provides engineering services, works with audio and video materials, and redraws graphics.
According to the presentation, the company employs 10 game project managers. Nikolai Baryshnikov did not disclose revenue and other financial indicators. Among the notable QLOC localization projects are AAA titles with a huge amount of content: Skyrim, Shadow of Mordor, Civilization V.

Allcorrect Group started as a broad-based translation agency more than 10 years ago and has evolved into a highly specialized game localization firm in the last three or four years thanks to the interests of co-founders Demid Tishin and Denis Khamin. Games currently account for 82% of the company's $2 million order book. Of major game developers, Allcorrect works with Ubisoft and Gaijin Entertainment, but most of the volume comes from translation mobile games from English and Korean into Russian, as well as from English into world languages.

The main office of the company is located in Samara, and the legal entity and the team are scattered around the world: Dublin, Toronto (where the third co-founder Yuri Petyushin lives), Hong Kong. The company has seven project managers, there is a staff of game editors. The range of services includes localization, work with graphics and audio materials, testing, optimization in the App Store (ASO). The company is managed using deeply automated Google Docs, translations are done in memoQ. Quality is achieved through in-house editors, dedicated AutoQA specialists, and a pass/fail check system.

Moscow localization company founded in 2012. The team consists of 20 people, all with specialized experience in 1C-SoftKlab, Logrus, Snowball, Riot Games, Nival, Gaijin Entertainment, Innova, Afisha. The studio is headed by Vyacheslav Erofeev and Mikhail Bryukhanov.

Five producers and two assistants are responsible for organizing the process. The Most Games translates into Russian and other languages, voices games and accompanying materials. The company's portfolio includes many AAA games for PC and consoles, including The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, League of Legends, Fortnite, Dishonored 2 and Doom. In addition to localization, The Most Games provides engineering services, works with graphics and sound.

For automation, Redmine is used with its own developments, and the main translation memory tool is memoQ. Three programmers in the company develop author's tools for checking texts and files, for working with scripts in the studio, and so on.
The Most Games is located in a historic mansion in the north of Moscow.
According to my estimates, the company can generate about $1 million in revenue per year.

Both ABBYY LS and Treatise translated games before the merger. For both firms, it was rather an experiment, a test of the market.
In the united company, the gaming direction is new and is only gaining momentum. According to ABBYY LS localization manager Maria Fedotova, three project managers are involved in game localization in the department, and a team of tested performers with the participation of native speakers has been trained. For voice acting, a multimedia manager is connected.

There are three main language areas: EFIGS, Russian and the languages ​​of the CIS countries, Chinese and Korean. If necessary, ABBYY LS can form a team to work with more than 60 languages. Projects - mainly games for mobile devices (iOS, Android) and social networks(quests and strategies).

According to rough estimates, game localization brings the company about 10 million rubles a year.

Neotech, a giant of project and oil and gas translation in Russia, has already gained five years of experience in the field of game translation and has several large projects in its portfolio. Nevertheless, the gaming department of the company is still small, and CEO Sergey Sant has recently taken up its development in earnest. A dedicated game localization group appeared in Neotech with two project managers, an account manager, and a separate website was developed. Work is underway to create our own audio studio and expand the network of recording actors.
Currently, the department works mainly on translating games from foreign publishers into Russian and Ukrainian.

In 2016, Neotech translated more than 0.2 million words in games and provided services worth about 10 million rubles.

The localization of games in Russia is also handled by Sergey Gladkov's Logrus Global. The company recently launched its own White Hall studio (pictured). The company's specialists participated in the LocJam game localization competition as judges.

I don't yet have information on the share of Logrus Global's revenue that comes from games, or volumes in man-hours, so I'm displaying it separately from the list.

Among the clients on the site are mainly majors: Ubisoft, Blizzard, Microsoft Studios, Rockstar Games, 2K Games, Kalypso Media, ZeptoLab, my.com, Madfinger Games.

Customer Requirements

Before writing this article, I spoke with localization managers from Blizzard, Warner Brothers Games, and Electronic Arts to understand how professional consumers choose translation companies. For all three customers, the main criterion is the experience of projects, previous games, localized by a translation company. In this regard, it is difficult to compete with the world market leader - the Irish company Keywords, which aggressively buys gaming specialists around the world. However, both Electronic Arts and Blizzard have adopted a multi-vendor model, often hiring a number of smaller teams physically located in the countries into which the translations are made, instead of one large general contractor. This allows even small firms (if these firms can interest them) to work with global brands.

Here's what AAA brands are interested in:

1. A stable team of full-time game translators and editors, ready to learn the terminology of the game and the features of its setting
2. Responsiveness, level of service
3. Process for handling small orders (several lines) within a day without a minimum order fee
4. Additional services (voicing, testing)
5. Willingness to perform a huge entry test
6. Legal entity abroad for payment without currency control

In each performer, major brands are looking for a zest, something that distinguishes the chosen company from all the others. As a rule, this is the charisma of leaders and a passion for games. But it could also be higher performance than the competition or an interesting quality assurance technique.

Market segments: console vs mobile games

Today, due to the high standards of graphics, developing games for PC and Xbox is an expensive undertaking, comparable to the filming of a Hollywood blockbuster. The budget of many modern projects exceeds $100 million. This risk is taken primarily by large publishers, and there are very few of them, the market has consolidated. To get a localization project console game, the translation company needs to work with leading publishers directly or through general contractors like Keywords. Both publishers and general contractors see the Russian translation company primarily as a specialist in the region and will give such a partner not the entire project, but only part of it. Accordingly, studios working with AAA titles, with a high degree of probability, translate only into Russian and, possibly, into a couple of related ones.

Mobile games and games for social networks do not require large investments in graphics, and therefore there are hundreds of publishers of such applications, including in Russia. Many of them are small companies that develop games in Russian, and if the product is successful on the local market, they translate it and start selling it in other countries. It is much easier for translation companies to find clients among the creators and publishers of mobile games, but keep in mind that the latter do not need localization into one or two languages, but a whole package: for example, EFIGS (English, French, Italian, German and Spanish) or 10- 12 languages.

Virtual reality (VR) gaming is an emerging industry. The translation of VR games has not yet taken shape as a market, and there may be many opportunities in this niche, if, of course, such games take root.

What is the difficulty of localizing games

Although games are a fairly large and growing segment, only a few Russian translation companies have learned how to work with them.

First, games have unprecedentedly high requirements for the quality of translation. Thousands of players read texts and listen to game dialogues, clinging to flaws. Once they notice a couple of mistakes, there will be no end to the flow of criticism on the forums. The publisher, of course, monitors feedback on the forums. In other words, the players act as countless cops of the quality of the translation. The films have the same number of reviewers, but they are short and can be translated by one person. In one big game, there can be hundreds and thousands of pages of text, dozens of hours of dialogue. It is translated most often without context, while the game is not open before your eyes. It's easy to miss an error or lose consistency. Localizing a game well is much more difficult than translating a movie.

Second, to translate big games, we need teams of translators-players who understand game terminology and the realities of the fantasy world. Even if you are proficient in English and Russian, pass the Total Dictation with 100 points and have literary phraseology at the level of Leo Tolstoy, you will still be baffled by something like AOE CC, termagant brood, Orchid Malevolence and 100kkk. Need gamers.

And organize gamers in professional teams few succeed.

Localization computer games and adapting them for Russian players is a very difficult task. After all, it requires not only excellent knowledge of a foreign language, but also an understanding of the specifics of the game itself. Therefore, such specialists and companies will always be in demand.

Players, as a rule, "meet" already finished projects, translated and adapted. But what happens at the localization stage? We turned with questions to the All Correct Games company, which specializes in translating games from foreign languages ​​into Russian, and vice versa. Translation of games is a rather laborious work, because the success of the game depends to a large extent on how successfully the term is chosen. Experts from All Correct Games share their secrets on how a game is localized in Russia...

In this interview, you will learn what a specialist translator who localizes games needs to know, what tools and programs are used in the work of a translator, whether it is worth interacting with gaming communities, how interaction with game developers and publishers works, and much more. You will also be interested in interviews about independent developers.

Sequence of steps for localization. What are the main difficulties in localizing a multi-user project?

There are two main difficulties in localizing multi-user projects: scope and timing. As a rule, games in the MMORPG genre contain a large amount of text - from several tens to hundreds of thousands of words. Localization deadlines, although usually a few months, are often very tight, with more translators and editors involved, which means we need a lot of time to review before submitting the material. Another problem is limits. Sometimes, when translating from Chinese into Russian, we have to fit a 37-character text into an unfortunate 9, for example, the fragment "Improving the artillery of British ships" will have to turn into "GB armor +". This happens if the possibility of localizing the game is not taken into account when creating it. Dear developers, if you are reading this right now, please don't do this.

Who is on the translation team? Do you seek the help of outside experts, consultants, players who are already familiar with the game. Do you consult with gaming communities, guilds, clans when choosing the best translation?

We have an extensive database of freelance translators, from which we select a team for each project. The experience of the performers is very important! Our MMORPG games are translated by the people who play them, and we all - from the project manager to the editor - will be happy to get to know your game before it is translated, so builds are very welcome. In addition, sometimes they are simply vital, for example, when it is not clear how to translate a particular game term or what vocabulary is preferable to use in a dialogue. Without context, localization will not be complete, so if the developers are unable to provide us with a build, we ask that you provide us with the maximum amount of reference materials (screenshots, character descriptions, etc.) When localizing a game with a clear historical bias, for example, about World War II war, we try to resort to the help of experts specializing in a particular period. Sometimes this is absolutely necessary in order to avoid semantic errors. For example, we recently translated such an MMORPG and managed to find and eliminate several inconsistencies, which we are very proud of.

When localizing a game with a historical bias, All Correct Games turns to experts

What technological solutions simplify localization. Are you using, say, Abbyy SmartCAT or similar products.

Of course! All translations are done by us in memoQ - our favorite tool. This translation environment allows you to divide a project between several translators and editors, who can also work on it at the same time. The undoubted advantages of using memoQ are the ability to store a translation memory database, create a glossary, and also do a lot of different checks. Therefore, the probability that an error will creep into the translated texts - from different translations of the term to an extra space - tends to zero.

Are there criteria for assessing the quality of a translation. Can you bring concrete examples successful translations. Can you pick them up right away?

The criteria for evaluating the quality of a translation are quite obvious: the absence of semantic, grammatical, spelling, punctuation and other errors, as well as the observance of uniformity in the translation of terms. The last point is critical, because in the same game you may be offered to pay for purchases with diamonds, crystals, diamonds, although these are all gems. The text should be clear and short enough to comply with the aforementioned limits. Another important point is the transfer of the intentions of the original text, its specificity and style. This also includes an adequate translation of the play on words, which we always strive to preserve. It is quite obvious that style issues in game texts play a more important role than, say, in technical texts, and this must be taken into account when translating.

MemoQ is the main translation tool in All Correct Games. It allows you to share a project between several translators and editors.

Interaction with the development team at various stages of localization. How does this process take place?

Interaction with the development team is extremely important to us, but very often there is a situation where we cannot communicate directly. If there is an intermediary, for example, a localization manager from the developer company, we always hope that our questions and clarifications will arrive on time and will not slow down the localization process, but it happens that we wait for answers for several days or even weeks. In an ideal world, of course, we would like the developer to be in touch for some time during the day and not leave our questions unattended. Skype chats between developers and a team of translators and editors work very well, but it is not always possible to organize them due to various restrictions.

Does your company accept voice acting of the translation. Do you have to go through the games yourself with your own translation?

Yes, we provide voice acting for games that we translate, sometimes we also receive separate orders for voice acting of already translated material.

The question of whether to pass the games that we translate is simply not before us. We always try to do it, firstly, because we love to play, and secondly, because we can once again make sure that our work is done well. What could be nicer? Thirdly, we can also find some controversial moments in the game that can be translated in different ways, and evaluate how successful this or that translation solution was, and draw specific conclusions.

In addition, we tell all our clients about the importance of conducting localization testing after the translation of the game and offer our services in this area. After all, the game may appear different kind shortcomings: overlapping texts with graphic elements, cropped texts, sometimes the translation may simply be missing or incorrectly “pulled up” from the lockit. Localization testing allows you to see and fix these and other localization shortcomings.

Online games (unlike offline ones) are constantly evolving - the interface changes, new ones appear game modes, new tasks. You have to constantly keep the project going. Do you assign a specific group of people to a project? How are game updates localized and tested?

We have a dedicated team of translators and editors working on all projects. Even the project manager changes extremely rarely, only in the case of a person’s absence from the workplace due to vacation, illness, etc. Accordingly, when an update on the project comes to us, we involve the same people who worked on the translation of the main content. Of course, it is impossible to avoid such situations when someone from the team falls ill or leaves somewhere. In this case, we involve other trusted performers in the project, but since we are running the project in memoQ, where term bases and translation memories are stored and updated, you don’t have to worry about maintaining uniformity.

Finally, a business card for the company.

All Correct Games is a division of the All Correct Group company engaged in translation, voice acting, localization testing and localization of games.

All Correct Games works with the majority of Russian developers and publishers, as well as with the largest international game publishers. The company has been involved in the localization of over 350 games and testing of over 100 games. All Correct Games works in more than 23 language pairs, cooperates with 6 partner voiceover studios, tests on iOS, Android and PC platforms with the involvement of native speakers or Russian-speaking testers with high language competence.

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Recently game industry has become an integral part of our lives, and along with the growth of the market share of interactive entertainment in our country, the importance of such a phenomenon as localization is also growing. If, for example, with films in this regard, things are more or less acceptable, then with games it's a real disaster.

But there are people who are not indifferent to the current situation. About them and will be discussed further.

Sense of beauty

Unlike a movie, which not everyone can watch in the original, in the game you can enjoy the process itself without really delving into the details of the plot. This is what publishers use, saving on new frames and depriving the opportunity to enjoy those unfortunate people who are not indifferent to the plot component.
We see Russian versions of low-quality trash on the shelves, which are bought in batches by girls and boys indifferent to the “beautiful”, but not all world-class masterpieces are worthy of translation. That is, it is not enough for a masterpiece to simply be a masterpiece, it must be popular, and its localization should not cause too many headaches.
Many do not care about this problem, partly because their tastes coincide with the interests of publishers. And on the PC, where the bulk of the consumer audience has accumulated, the situation is an order of magnitude better than on consoles. But we will not be specific and will take into account games in general, regardless of the platform.

Army of enthusiasts

For a long time there have been people, groups, and what there - entire communities that devote their free time to amateur localization. Of course, today the threshold for entering this craft has dropped so much that this multitude of enthusiasts is almost entirely composed of half-educated schoolchildren. But even in this haystack you can find your own needles - some of these figures cannot but inspire respect, sometimes outperforming even the official localizers in all respects.
Many of us literally grew up on unofficial localizations - pirated or amateur. For example, until some time I did not see any official translation at all. And, remembering those times, I can say that individual creations cannot be called anything other than masterpieces - megabytes of the translated text could be read like a book, if they were bound. Can the same be said about official translations? I think only in exceptional cases.
So what is it that distinguishes the creation of an enthusiast from a product of production? The voice of reason tells me that the amateur is inferior to the professional in all respects, because he is ... an amateur. In general, this is what happens in most cases, but ... if we immediately discard all the stupid self-taught and leave only promising start-ups, then an interesting fact opens up: indeed, many of the fan-made localizations are superior to commercial ones in almost all criteria.

The reasons are mostly banal and obvious - if you do something with love, then the result will be appropriate. But let's put aside subjective assumptions for a while and look at things impartially.

So who's tougher?

Further in the text, I slightly combined the concepts of "amateur", "fan" and "amateur" in order to avoid excessive tautology. Consider the advantages and disadvantages of a more or less competent fan over a professional who is indifferent to the game.

So, the advantages of an amateur translator:

But let's not forget about the disadvantages:

Third side?

Surely many people thought that I forgot about another type of localization - pirated translations. But, in this situation, I would classify them as amateur, although the word “fan” is far from being applied to every pirate.

In any case, they are in every way closer to this path than to any kind of officialism. Of course, looking at the level of organization of some well-known offices, one can challenge their status as non-professionals, but this did not come right away - everyone started somewhere. In addition, there were often cases when amateurs made translations commissioned by pirate companies. As a rule, such offices did not have a staff responsible for localization.
Another argument in favor of the amateurish nature of pirates is the profit for translation activities - it is ridiculous. Undoubtedly, there are more successful, "wealthy" pirates, but these are isolated cases.

conclusions

Both the amateur and the official approach have their weaknesses. But, despite the huge number of disadvantages of amateur translation, I find its advantages much more significant. This gives me the right to believe that in many ways amateur translations are superior to official localizations (not always, but as a fact). After all, if official localizers and publishers paid attention to those nuances that amateurs are so busy with, then such a comparison would not have to be made.
But if you think about it: how great it would be to improve the qualifications of amateurs, depriving them of the shortcomings described above, and put them into production! But, no matter how much you argue, it will remain just another utopian dream.

Please note that all this is just my view of the current situation in our country, which does not claim to be a common truth or an authoritative opinion.

For sale in a new region or country. Localization includes translating from the original language into a foreign language, changing the art of the game, creating new zipped files and help guides, recording new audio files, converting hardware, changing individual pieces of the game according to the cultural characteristics of a certain region, adding additional areas to move the cut content.

Screenshot from translated Prince of Persia game on Sega Genesis

The decision to localize is made based on economic factors, such as the potential revenue that a certain region can bring. Localization is usually handled either by the developers, or third party companies with whom a contract is drawn up, or independent companies that create an alternative localization or localization of a game that has not been presented in the region. The quality of localization may vary depending on the professionalism of localizers or the difficulties associated with the attempts of development companies to avoid premature leaks of games to the market.

The purpose of localization is to create a pleasant and convenient gameplay for an end user who takes into account the cultural characteristics of his region, but adheres to the original concept of the game.

Story

The first experience of localizing computer games dates back to the 1980s, when the developers of the Japanese game Pac-Man transliterated the name into English - Puck Man, but when the game was released in the United States, they decided to return the original name due to fear that the word Pack can be distorted as an obscene word.

An important challenge in early localizations was to deal with the limited amount of space available to handle text strings that were longer than in the original games, as was often the case with the NES and SNES. Ted Woolsey, translator Final Fantasy VI, talked about the need to constantly shorten the text in English due to limited opportunities.

Often the budget and production time of localizations were small, as a result of which there was either confusion with the translations, or the translation text had to be rewritten. Advances in technology in the early 2000s led to the ability to expand text to be stored in ASCII format rather than in image format, as was the case before, allowing for more efficient processing and more economical use of disk space to accommodate text. The development of audio technology has led to the creation of foreign language scoring and dubbing.

Currently, there is a significant increase in the amount of text and dialogue in localization, especially in multiplayer games.

Localization process

The localization process is carried out in the following order:

Translation

To perform text translation of games with a large amount of text, a glossary is first created game terms, so that there is no confusion between commonly used words and words with a local meaning. Then a visual graphic is created, overlaid with the translation text made in the font used in the original game. If the game uses the original font, a similar font is created separately for the alphabet used in localization. Depending on the visual component of the game and the features in the program code, programmers (most often in amateur studios) can make changes to the software or create separate files for ease of translation. When compiling a translation, the localizer takes into account the peculiarities of the language of the region, the traditional rules of transcription and pronunciation from other languages, the official translation of the original source of the game, if any, as well as the well-established words, phrases or terms from the game among its fans. Localization and translation can be carried out both with active interaction with the developer, and independently, depending on the desire of the developer.

When translating by localizers, the following nuances are taken into account:

The unofficial translation of games differs from the official one in less limited deadlines, more rigorous translation based on the canonical history of the game, but at the same time more technically difficult to perform due to licensing problems and the lack of an open source game for a more convenient localization process, more free translation of phrases with frequently used slang and obscene language, as well as partial or complete absence of literary style.

The most difficult thing in translation is the adaptation of a play on words and established expressions, the identification of cultural references and their translation with the appropriate transmission of intonation during dubbing, the selection of dubbing actors with voices similar to the voices of the original, the transfer of an emotional color, the transfer of an accent (an unknown regional accent in the country of localization, for example, Scottish, usually not transmitted). Typical errors in translation are spelling and punctuation errors, loss or replacement of meaning in translation, cut out parts of the text, untranslated text and additional content, monotonous reading of the text, strong distortion of phrases, untranslated pieces of text, poor quality dialogues, monotony and inexpressive voices of actors, untranslated text, weak literary style or its absence.

Voice acting

Before voicing the translated material, a working group is created for specializations: project manager, dubbing director, sound engineer, sound engineer, engineers and testers. The translated text fits under the original audio files. The text materials previously sent by the developer are calculated and compared with the final material. After the final dubbing of the original and the receipt of the finished material, the actors are selected. The selection takes place in two ways: live listening or search in the base of voices. Live listening most often takes place with the participation of a representative of the developer through a remote video link. The voices are selected from a database of previous projects, the actors are invited to the studio, samples are recorded based on the original and sent to the developer for approval, after which the dubbing begins. Translation and dubbing most often occur in parallel with the production of the game, so localizers are often forced to adapt to the developer if he changes something in the production process, and rewrite lines according to the changes. After the end of dubbing, the dubbed phrases are stacked under the facial expressions of the characters and the resulting audio track is mixed with the original soundtrack. The finished material is sent for testing to identify errors and defects, after which, if necessary, they are finalized and sent to the customer.

Board game localization process

In board games, the bulk of the text is contained in the reference manual, so the translation is barely cut to convey the full meaning of the tutorials. The translation of the text of the game itself, on the contrary, may undergo reduction or selection of synonyms of words of similar length in order to fit the text into a limited visual element. First, the source text is translated, then the finished text is edited, after which the layout and re-editing takes place, after which the localization is ready.

Also, when localizing a board game, it is important to organize production and, possibly, adjust the quality of the components to the income of the potential public.

Localization of games in Russia

Localizations of computer games for home computers are known, which became widespread at the turn of the 1990s in the USSR and in the post-Soviet space.

Localization of foreign computer games in Russia was carried out by computer pirates in small studios from 1995 to 2005, which worked on an illegal basis. The most famous such studio was Fargus Multimedia. Localizations made by such studios were often of poor quality. Translation could be subjected not only to the text in the game, but also the name of the game itself. The names of Chinese hardware clones of Japanese game consoles, for example, NES (Dendy) .

The need for localization in Russia, unlike many other countries, is caused by the fact that the level of English proficiency among Russians is very low and does not allow them to fully perceive games in the original language. The most well-known professional localizer of video games in Russia is the SoftClub company, whose share in the CIS market in 2014 was 80%.

There were also localizations of board games in the 1990s. One of the first localized games was Monopoly, which was called Manager in Russia. In 1990, the Soviet game Enchanted Country was released, based on the Polish version of the American board game Dungeons & Dragons. In the late 1990s, there were many amateur translators of board games, among them Alexander Petrunin, who was the first to translate for the Igroved board game store.

Currently, a full-fledged localization of board games is being carried out, taking into account the traditional features of the Russian language and the national characteristics of the region. Separate board games translated even based on individual works in the country of localization. Localization is carried out either by full-time translators and layout designers of the developer company, or by third-party companies in the country of localization.

Notes

1. O'Hagan and Mangiron, p. 111
2. Bernal Merino 2008
3. O'Hagan and Mangiron, p. 49
4. Kohler 2005, p. 226
5. Corliss 2007
6. O'Hagan and Mangiron, page 58