Why Video Game Localization Is So Important

Tomedes is a language services provider that has offered specialist video game translation and localization services for over a decade. The company serves gaming sector clients around the world, helping them to maximize the impact of their video games through professional video game localization services.

What is the Game Localization?

What is localization? It’s the adaptation of a video game to suit a particular audience. It incorporates everything from location-specific and culture-specific imagery within the game to the use of video game language and gamer slang. Game localization is a detailed and often complex task, but it’s well worth doing. When you consider that the video games market generated $131 billion in 2018 and that that figure could rise to $300 billion as soon as 2025, the potential financial rewards of proper game localization are pretty apparent!

How Do Translation and Localization Differ?

Translation refers to the process of converting text in one language to text in another language. Translating video game content is a key part of the multilingual production process and game localization companies must ensure that their staff has superb language skills. Localization takes the translation process to the next level. It considers everything from cultural references within the game’s dialogue to the characters’ names, shaping it to fit a specific target audience. The result is a game that plays as though developed for that audience initially and that is why localization is so important. Ultimately, the better gamers connect with a game, the bigger its potential popularity – and profitability.

What Do You think the Impact of Coronavirus Will Be on the Gaming Industry?

The industry is already feeling the impact in terms of disruption to production and delivery. Game development is also being impacted.  Such disruption, however, will (hopefully!) be relatively short-term. In fact, the coronavirus may actually have a positive impact on the gaming industry in the long-run. With people around the world confined to their homes, there has rarely been a better scenario for a global surge in interest in video games.

Video games offer an immensely absorbing form of escapism and right now there is a whole load of people who need precisely that. The right game can also be a real stressbuster and that’s also something that the world needs pretty badly right now.

Which Languages Are Most In-Demand for Game Translation?

Asia is undoubtedly the global video game production epicenter. China’s 2019 gaming revenue estimate tops the table, at US$36,540 million. That’s followed by the US at $35,510 million, Japan at $18,683 million and the Republic of Korea at $6,194 million. This means that we’re often called on to provide video game translations between Mandarin, English, Japanese and Korean. However, there is a truly global appetite for video games, particularly since the rise of online games and mobile gaming, so translation demands can incorporate a huge range of languages.

Has the Gaming Industry Changed Much In the Time that You’ve Been Serving It?

Absolutely! I first established Tomedes as a video game localization agency back in 2007 (as well as a provider of various other language services). The industry was already thriving back then, but it’s boomed incredibly in the last few years particularly. As our global bandwidth and coverage increases, so can the complexity of our games. However, the format that we consume games has also changed during that time. GlobalData reports that mobile gaming revenue is outpacing the revenue from PC and console gaming, which marks a significant change in the industry’s focus and output. And it’s a change that’s set to continue, too. The mobile gaming platforms market looks set to reach a value of more than $100bn by 2022 – that’s a huge jump from $55bn in 2018. Of course, the gamer language that we translate is also changing, just as language evolves in other areas of life.

What is a Lamer language?

Gamer language is the ever-evolving set of video game terms that the gaming community uses. These gamer phrases develop pretty quickly and a surprising number of them feature in modern games, so it’s important to keep up with the latest lingo when it comes to successful game translation!

What Does the Future Hold for Video Game Localization?

We’ve already seen how quickly the video game industry is growing, so localization services will need to increase swiftly to keep pace. I think one way that they will do that is to achieve an enhanced blend of human and computer-assisted translation and localization. To be clear, I’m not talking about machine translation. That has no place in the production of professional quality video games. Rather, human translators already have a range of tools at their disposal, such as translation memory banks, that speed up their pace of work. I believe that these tools will continue to develop, allowing humans to translate and localize faster and more efficiently. Ultimately, this means faster video game localization without any drop in quality, which is a win for video game developers and gamers alike.

Ofer Tirosh, CEO of Tomedes