Translating your game to Japanese, where/how?
Monkey Archive Forums/Digital Discussion/Translating your game to Japanese, where/how?
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| Hi folks, I want to support the japanese market with a localized version of a game. So I wonder, if you do the same, where did you went to get a translation for it? Is google translator reliable? |
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| you need a professional translator (human) This is for every language... But if you have low number of downloads, you can test with google |
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| Google Translate is absolutely not reliable. You would ideally want someone who plays games, is a native speaker, and also understands English well. http://gengo.com/ Is very good for English to Japanese translation especially. |
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| nice website! |
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| by the way, how can i easy detect system language? |
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| I guess through some native calls. I will eventually look into this later. But let the player choose the language at the first play is fine too I think. Thanks for the link and suggestions. |
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| For commercial projects, best priority on mobile localization: English, Japanese, German, Korean, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Simplified Chinese, Italian You should be maxing out English first with your project. If whatever you are making doesn't make money with English version it's very probably not worth making other versions. It can't hurt to get all of the localizations if your game is not high on text though, but your focus should still be on making whatever you are making selling well in English first. If you are targeting non-mobile first then priority should be more like: English, German, French, Spanish ... reason is mobile is way more important in Asian countries while western ones still use personal computers in large enough numbers to matter. Useful: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ISO_639-1_codes iOS/Android stores allow you to upload localized descriptions This could probably be made into a small module. To get language: Android: Locale.getDefault().getISO3Language(); iOS: NSString * language = [[NSLocale preferredLanguages] objectAtIndex:0]; OSX: http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#DOCUMENTATION/MacOSX/Conceptual/BPInternational/Articles/ChoosingLocalizations.html HTML5: var lang = navigator.language || navigator.userLanguage; |
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| Thanks Soap. German and English I will cover myself. Japanese I will outsource. It will be free with Ads/IAP. |
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| Have you thought about taking out an Advert in your local paper asking for a translator ? I would be willing to bet that there are at least a few Japanese speaking people in your local town, and that number would go up if your in a city, give some local guy that you can meet in person the job. |
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| Would be an option for sure. |
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| Heard about this option too: http://ackuna.com/developers/home |
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| Isn't there a translation service on Google play/market? |
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| Just heard about it too, will check that out too. |
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| I used http://www.onehourtranslation.com/ when I translated my first Flash game into a few languages. It was cheap and quick and the results were professional. |
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| Diddy has a localisation module you can use. Store all your strings in an XML file and switch languages on the fly at runtime. It's essentially a StringMap with some helper methods and classes. https://code.google.com/p/diddy/source/browse/src/diddy/i18n.monkey Example file: https://code.google.com/p/diddy/source/browse/examples/I18N/testI18N.data/i18n.xml Usage: LoadI18N()
SetI18N("japanese")
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' wrap your string in I18N() to take it from the localised strings
Print("Hello World!") ' prints "Hello World!"
Print(I18N("Hello World!")) ' assuming you've mapped it, prints the Japanese versionMonkey forums don't like Unicode, it seems. |
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| Samah, thanks. fantomEngine has a localisation module too. |
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| I can translate into danish if you wish! |
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| Thanks for your offer. I will contact you when the time comes. |
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| The upshot is, localized sales will be a small minority compared to English sales, so unless you're getting thousands of those, I wouldn't bother. Do NOT use Google Translate for games. It's OK for giving you the gist of the subject matter, but utterly crap when you require accurate translation. Get some foreign text and translate it to your own language - that's how bad your game will look to other people. |
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| Google Translate is embarrassingly bad at times. I recommend Japanese translators from here http://www.empowerlinguatranslation.com/japanese-translation-services-and-japanese-interpreters/ |
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| You should be maxing out English first with your project. If whatever you are making doesn't make money with English version it's very probably not worth making other versions Go Turkish, Arab, Catalan, or any other not-so-usuallanguage, and you'll get a lot more of sales, as English is saturated to no end, and app store and google play market show FIRST things in your language. Going English first is a very bad idea if you want to make any money. |
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| and if we are revive this post, what I learn/observe in my little experience: - there are big casual publishers: alawar, realgamearcade, etc. who translate your game in several languages and then they sell it for you, of course. use them if you plan to make a desktop game :) |
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| Since the topic was resurrected... For commercial projects, best priority on mobile localization: English, Japanese, German, Korean, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Simplified Chinese, Italian If anyone needs brazilian portuguese, shoot me an email - I can do it for a small fee :) You should be maxing out English first with your project. If whatever you are making doesn't make money with English version it's very probably not worth making other versions. It can't hurt to get all of the localizations if your game is not high on text though, but your focus should still be on making whatever you are making selling well in English first. I don't agree with this. Some games may work in some countries and not in others. You can have games with lots of downloads in Brazil, Russia, Spain or whatever - and be a complete failure in English speaking countries - or the other way around :) I agree you should always have your game in English, but pay attention to where your downloads come from. Sometimes doing another language can give you a big boost in downloads. |
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| Well that reminds me that we once had some kind of a translation exchange here? I mean it would be worth to resurrect it? So one would post the english text resources and others would post translations. I could provide the German part. edit: Oh well that was the thread: http://www.monkey-x.com/Community/posts.php?topic=2392 |
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