1. Contextual Ambiguities

One of the primary challenges faced by AI translation systems is the interpretation of context. Languages often rely heavily on contextual cues, idioms, and cultural references that may not have direct equivalents in other languages. AI models, lacking the ability to fully grasp the nuances of context, can misinterpret phrases and produce translations that may seem accurate on the surface but fail to capture the intended meaning.

Example: In 2017, Google Translate made headlines when it translated the Ukrainian phrase “Росія – це моя батьківщина” into Russian as “Russia is my country.” However, the correct translation was “Ukraine is my motherland.” The mistake sparked controversy due to the ongoing political tensions between Russia and Ukraine, emphasizing the importance of accurate translations in sensitive contexts.

2. Cultural Sensitivity and Nuances

Cultural sensitivity is a critical aspect of language translation, and AI systems may struggle to navigate the intricate cultural nuances embedded in languages. What may be acceptable or even humorous in one culture can be offensive or confusing in another. AI models, lacking cultural awareness, may inadvertently produce translations that are inappropriate or convey unintended meanings.

Example: In 2018, Facebook’s translation algorithm faced criticism for translating a post from Burmese, a language spoken in Myanmar. The translation referred to the ethnic minority group, the Rohingya, in a way that was deemed offensive and potentially fueling ethnic tensions. The incident highlighted the need for AI systems to be more attuned to the cultural and political sensitivities of different regions.

3. Polysemy and Homonymy

Languages often contain words with multiple meanings, known as polysemy, or words that sound the same but have different meanings, known as homonymy. AI translation models may struggle to discern the intended meaning of such words, leading to errors in translation.

Example: In 2020, Microsoft’s translation service raised eyebrows when it translated the Chinese phrase “男孩在跑” into English as “The boy is running.” However, the phrase can also mean “The boy is in the bathroom,” showcasing the challenge of accurately translating ambiguous statements without additional context.

Conclusion

While AI translation has undoubtedly transformed global communication, blunders you typically would not see in human translation underscore the complexities and limitations that still exist in the field. As developers continue to refine and improve AI translation models, addressing contextual nuances, cultural sensitivities, and linguistic ambiguities will be paramount. The journey to seamless AI translation involves not only advancing technological capabilities but also fostering a deep understanding of the diverse linguistic and cultural tapestry that makes human communication rich and complex.

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Its unique atmosphere and puzzle-like narration made for a great localization challenge. Piecing the story together and then translating faithfully while not being too vague/obvious was quite the balancing act. This time, I also had the chance to translate directly from Japanese, which is immensely helpful when it comes to getting the tone and nuances right. I was also blessed with a fantastic editing/testing team, whose thorough efforts helped polish the French copy.

As a translator, it is so rare to get credited (or even allowed to mention my work) that I didn’t want to miss the chance to share the news. Thanks to all parties involved for making it possible!

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The IT industry is constantly changing, and at a pretty impressive pace. While I constantly read and learn about new things as a translator, I feel a more formal and structured learning approach is necessary to truly keep up with developments and understand what lies behind all these new terms and technologies.

The two most recent courses I’ve taken were about Cybersecurity and Machine Learning.

Cybersecurity is a fast-growing specialization, and anybody using connected devices should at least be aware of the basic security practices. Besides the professional aspect of it, studying this field encouraged me to review my own security processes, from handling project date to securing my accounts to applying security mechanisms to all of my connected devices.

Similarly, I had both a personal and professional interest in the theories behind Machine Learning. The demand for this skill is growing at an incredible pace in the IT industry. And as a translator, it is interesting to know what sort of technology underlies machine translation tools. It also helped me catch up with popular programming languages such as Python and R – always nice for someone who likes to code his own scripts.

Overall, I’m delighted I took courses in these two fields. It left me with practical information I can use daily for my work, and a deeper understanding of some of the terms and technologies referred to in the documents I translate.

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In broad strokes, here are the 7 quality assurance steps I follow for each translation project. They can vary a bit from a project to another depending on content, deadline and other factors, but that should give you a fairly clear idea:

1. Assessing the project

   A translator can only deliver satisfactory work if they are comfortable with the project at hand. If the content seems out of my league, I will let you know and refer you to a colleague when possible. Same if you are looking for someone who translates in a language pair I don’t cover, say French to English (I only translate into French). If your deadline is too tight to allow me to deliver my best work, we can discuss solutions and alternatives.

2. Working with a glossary/style guide/reference material

   Consistency is a critical aspect of translation quality. If you have existing translated materials, do share them for reference. I will also follow any industry glossaries and style guides required. In case you prefer a hands-off experience, I can of course provide my own.

3. Using a computer-aided translation (CAT) tool

   CAT tools are translation environments that offer a wealth of tools and features to help translators work better and, in certain cases, faster. They allow translators to type translations in without deleting the source, look up previous translations in an instant, bring up key terms that appear in source text and generate translated files that preserve the original format, among other things. In short, they help translators maintain consistency and deliver files properly formatted for production. I personally work with SDL Trados Studio 2019 for most projects. However, lots of alternatives exist.

   

4. Manual editing/proofreading

   An essential step, yet one cheap/inexperienced vendors tend to skip. A good translator should always edit and proofread their copy at least once before delivery.

   Ideally, it should happen with fresh eyes: a night of sleep will help the brain process the original text, making it much easier to detect mistakes and improve the existing translation. That is why I rarely accept same-day projects, however small, unless they are truly urgent. A bit of rest can do wonders and help you see your work under a new light, come up with better wording and spot issues.

5. Advanced spell checking

   I run all my translations through a fantastic tool called Antidote. It’s essentially an advanced spell/grammar check tool that picks up various types of issues besides typos. For example, it can detect awkward wording, confusion between similar words, clichés, literal translations, inconsistencies and more.

   

6. Automated QA

   There are several QA tools on the market. Xbench is my pick. It automates a number of quality checks: is everything translated? Are there any inconsistencies (i.e. a same sentence translated differently or two different sentences translated the same way)? Missing tags, numbers or punctuation? In general, all those small details that can be easy for the human eye to miss. It can be a true lifesaver for technical projects.

   

7. Final Eye

   You may have heard the saying: “I do my best proofreading after I hit send.” Obviously, a professional translator can’t afford to find themselves in such a situation. So right before delivery, just an instant before pressing that Send button, I open the translated file one final time and scan through it to see if anything stands out. Knowing this is the last chance to resolve potential issues often helps see things differently. For creative works, it’s also the perfect opportunity to put a finishing touch to the most critical parts of the text.

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Software, mobile app and game developers often make a serious mistake when they approach localization by assuming it can be handled once the coding is done in native language.

In fact, you need to consider localization from the very moment you start designing your application – that’s internationalization. It’s not a one-man process either. You will need localization experts on board early on.

Here are a few localization good practices & tips I would like to share with you. I hope they will be helpful for your next software, application or game. If you wish to go further and ensure the success of your localization project, feel free to get in touch anytime so that we can get things started. You may also want to check my post with 12 tips to reduce localization costs.

1. First of all, internationalize your software. Your source code should be written in a way that your software can be localized without touching a single portion of code. To achieve this, place all the content (text strings, images, sound files), including those in the application’s original language in separate files and folders, which can then be translated appropriately by linguists in a different software. In your code, pick up the translated depending on the language selected and a string ID (which can be the original string itself). XML works great for this, but there are plenty of options available. Also, try to keep a clear structure for your localizable resources. You can have separate folders for images and sounds that will require localization.

2. Translated strings can occupy a much larger screen space than their original counterparts. A Japanese string translated into German can easily get 2 or 3 times longer than the original. Design your applications with sufficient space to accommodate long strings, especially if you are working on small screens (smartphone, handheld game devices, etc.). Plan your software as if it was going to be localized in every language on Earth, and use the worst case scenario as a reference.

3. Be wary of local standards and cultural differences. Imperial versus metric system is an obvious one if you are manipulating units, but there are local differences you may not even suspect. For example, weeks start on Mondays in some countries, and Sunday in others. This is why you need to have local experts on board as early as possible: only them will be able to let you know about these specifics. If you realize too late that a code portion needs to act differently depending on the location, or that visual elements should be replaced altogether, it can be extremely painful to go back and make the appropriate edits. The sooner you are aware of local norms, the better.

Have your app/game tested by native users from the target markets before going any further. Never assume you know everything about each and every culture. Ask locals to test your product and report anything that could be considered inappropriate.

4. Be careful when you are trying to put localized strings together. Let’s suppose you have an error message in your software that says “The job cannot be added because there is no job with ID x”. If you have many error messages starting with “The job cannot be added because” and many ending with “there is no job with ID x”, it can be tempting to ask the localization team to translate these two strings separately only once and then put them together when needed. It would work in English and (most?) Romanic languages, but not in Japanese for example, no matter how you put the two parts together.

Having the above in mind, you have to make sure translators can put words in any order they want, and, as much as possible restrict substitution to a single word or number. While avoiding redundancies is a good practice, it can be a tricky one when it comes to localization.

5. Provide as much context as possible. To avoid confusion, comment your text strings to ensure the translators will understand where and how they will be used. Make it clear that variables are part of the string and shouldn’t be altered. Also, explain what they will be replaced with, even if it seems obvious to you. If some bits mustn’t be altered, make a note of it, especially if they otherwise look like plain text. When possible, provide your translators with screenshots, videos or, even better, the actual product.

6. Make sure you can easily track source text changes. Nowadays, most software and applications are updated on a regular basis, thus requiring extra translations. Not only will this help you save on costs by not ordering the same strings twice (or more!), but you will also avoid headaches when merging translations. If you are planning to release frequent updates, for example additional content for games, this point can be critical.

7. Pseudo-localization, a little-known step of the localization cycle, will help identify a number of internationalization issues before a single string is translated: hard-coded strings, unsupported characters, potential overflows, and more. You can save yourself a lot of trouble by identifying potential problems early on.

What if you didn’t follow the best practices and your product is already developed?

Internationalizing an existing product can be tricky but not impossible by any means. In some cases automated tools may be of help, in others you’ll have no choice but to rewrite string-related portions of your code. Overall this is more of a per-case approach, and you will probably want to hire a localization consultant to ease the process.

As you can see, getting your localization done right is a process that involves efforts from all parties, from developers to translators, which is precisely why you should start consulting the latter as early as possible. Some of the smaller tips and tricks may not be obvious at first. You can contact me anytime for all your French localization needs! I am familiar with the localization process, whether you are working on software, video games or mobile apps (iOS with Xcode, Android with Android Studio, etc.).

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An approach that can lead to cheaper localization QA is to split linguistic and functional testing. In other words, you will want your native-speaking testers to focus solely on parts where their linguistic knowledge is strictly needed.

Before I go further, let me clarify one thing. Ideally, if budget allows, you will want target language experts to check everything. A final eye never hurts even if the text was professionally translated by a professional and proofread by a second person. Even a seasoned proofreader can let the occasional typo slip through.

Why split testing tasks?

To simplify, the main goal of linguistic testing/QA is to make sure your localized software or video game works in context (mostly a linguistic task) and displays as it should (that would rather be functional testing). If you pick up some spelling and grammatical issues along the way, great, but in theory that should have happened during proofreading, and those would be rather minor issues as long as they’re few and far between.

The point here is that not everything absolutely needs to be checked in context. Strings that are self-explanatory or don’t rely on context (more on this later) should already be good to go. They still need to be tested to make sure they do display, and correctly so. But since the text doesn’t rely on context, you shouldn’t find any mistranslations/ambiguous phrasing here. So, in theory (again, that’s assuming your translator/proofreader team did their job!), functional testing is all you need here. This can be done in-house, or by essentially anybody able to follow instructions carefully, regardless of the languages that person can speak – this is where you can do things cheaper without taking major risks.

Parts that rely on context, on the other hand, must absolutely be checked by a professional tester. A mistake many developers make is to hire the cheapest native speaker they find for the task, regardless of their experience in localization testing, or in the language industry for that matter. Remember, testing is your last chance to eliminate critical issues. You do need an experienced tester with an eye for details and a perfect command of the target language. Most people don’t have a good command of their native language – spend 5 minutes on any online forum if you need to be convinced. That’s the one time you can’t allow yourself to be cheap.

So, what does need linguistic testing?

Buttons, labels, menus, essentially anything that can be interpreted differently based on the context. UI and menu items in particular are critical because they directly affect usability. A typo in an error message is embarrassing, but it doesn’t prevent users from using your product as intended. Mistranslated buttons and labels, however, can seriously hurt user experience.

What you need to ask your linguistic tester here is to check the interface, use the different features and make sure button names, labels, etc. are easy to understand and match the actions they’re linked to. Put the focus on usability. If a translated string is not completely wrong, but not clear as it is, change it. That’s the sort of improvements you should aim for.

That’s about it for software. If you are developing a video game, you may want to check other elements besides UI/menus. Dialogs are the most common type of text that is heavily context-dependent. Even if you more or less know who speaks to whom at what point on the game, seeing the scene unfold in-game may help you notice certain details. An example: a dialog occurs between 2 characters, and in the file you’re translating, it seems they’re the only 2 people present. But during testing, you realize a 3rd character is with them. In this context, in French, there may be cases where you would need to switch from singular informal “you” (“tu”) to its plural counterpart (“vous”), which would affect the rest of the sentence.

Again, planning will help you reduce costs here. Once thing I’ve seen developers do is to create scripts that allow testers to see all dialogs of a game in context and in sequence (=without playing at all). This way, you don’t get charged extra for the “idle” time spent playing between two scenes. Focus is the key.

What may only need functional testing (“self-explanatory strings”)

Descriptions, system messages, and in general any unambiguous string that would definitely translate the same wherever you use it. It can be error messages (“File not found.”) in software, or a character biography in a video game (assuming the string leaves no uncertainty about whose biography it is). If a string doesn’t need context or does provide it, and was properly translated/proofread, functional testing is all you should need. You’ll focus on overflows, garbled characters, hard-coded source strings, etc. The usual lot.

It’s also worth noting that pseudo-localization, another overlooked part of the localization process, can help prevent most of implementation issues beforehand.

Cheaper testing & QA without sacrificing quality is possible… with the right team

As you will have noticed, I stressed the importance of having a team of professionals working for you: your translators, proofreaders and linguistic testers all need to be experienced and reliable to ensure the quality of your final product. Hiring a team of experts might sound more expensive at first, but it is a prerequisite if you are to implement the process I described above. See it as a small upfront investment that will allow you to make significant savings down the road.

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One solution can be to build your own portfolio of sample translations & projects. To help you with this, I have a gathered a list of games you can freely translate right now and add to your samples. I have also put together a number of tips to help you find small translation projects and gain that all-too-important mileage in the localization industry.

I am planning to update this page regularly with new packages ready to be translated as well as links to other useful resources.

Translate Previous LocJAM Packages

LocJAM is (was?) an online contest for game translators. A short open source game in English is published on the official site and everyone has a couple of weeks to submit their translations.

The future of the contest is on standby at the moment, but you can still download and translate the games that were shared during previous editions.

If you translate from English

All translation packages for previous LocJAMs are available on the IGDA LocSIG’s GitHub repository.

LocJAM 1: https://github.com/IGDA-LocSIG/Republia-Times

Read README.md for special instructions. The translatable file is in the bin/locale/ folder

The Republia Times is an indie game created by Lucas Pope, released in April 2012. In the game, the player takes the role of the editor of a newspaper torn between personal opposition to the government and threats to the lives of the editor’s wife and children if the editor doesn’t generate loyalty among the population. Character limits, humor and puns will give translators a good run for their money. An excellent game to show your craft.

LocJAM 2: https://github.com/IGDA-LocSIG/Locjam2/tree/master/LocJAM2

Read instructions in readme.pdf

Grandpa is an interactive story about Emi and her Grandfather trying to find his hat. The game ends on a twist. Translating it while keeping all of its subtleties and hints will allow you to show your attention to details and creative writing skills. Here is my post-mortem about it.

LocJAM 3: https://github.com/IGDA-LocSIG/locjam3

Simply translate the .docx and .xlsx files.

The Hotel of Madness is a board game openly inspired by The Shining. For this edition, we tested translators’ ability to write accurate, consistent and unambiguous rules – essential qualities for this type of game. Not a video game, but a good title to add diversity to your portfolio.

LocJAM 4: https://mega.nz/#F!12hEnJgS!KrCryf7EgZSrbswVnYpP7w

Instructions in the Readme file.

Ikinari Maou is a puzzle game dressed up as an old-school RPG. With several plot twists and tons of hints hidden between the lines, the game is an excellent challenge for translators and a pleasure to play.

If you translate from Japanese

Grandpa: bit.ly/LocJAM2JP

Try you hand at one of the winning Japanese entries of LocJAM 2 and translate it to the language of your choice.

Ikinari Maou: Windows, Mac

The original Japanese game’s package, used for LocJAM Japan.

Other Ways to Gain Experience

• Offer free translation to indie devs: To gain experience, it can be a good idea to offer your help for free. Rather than helping big companies for peanuts, I suggest starting with indie developers who really need help and don’t have the finances to hire a professional translator.
• Browse the Indie Game Localization group on Facebook. Devs regularly post help requests there. Just be careful with whom you offer your help to, as some are taking advantage of the community to get free translation for their many games. Find a game that seems nice, from a dev who genuinely seems to need help. Make sure the word count is reasonable and go ahead.
• Translate mods: Translating mods is a great way to earn a little experience. Most mod devs will be happy to receive a little help, and they’re usually not creating mods for profit. They also typically have a localization budget of 0 (does currency matter here?), so you’re not stealing anyone’s job. CurseForge is an excellent place to start browsing. Help requests for mods/games also occasionally pop up on GitHub.
• Contact indie devs directly: you can use social networks to find interested devs. I particularly recommend Facebook and LinkedIn groups for indie devs (there are too many of them to list!) where people like to share information about their upcoming games. Once again, see what you like (you want good games on your CV, don’t you?) and get in touch.
• Offer to translate articles, fan sites, game guides, reviews, etc.: let your imagination do the work here, there’s so much to explore! Just make sure you have the permission of the original author.
• What about crowdsourced and amateur translations? They surely give you relevant experience, but you may not want to write about them explicitly on your CV. Rightly or not, crowdsourced translations are not associated with quality and professionalism. As for amateur translations, they’re usually on the wrong side of legality.
  My advice: write about your general experience (“I’ve been translated for xx years“, “I have translated a total of xx words of game-related texts“) and only mention titles you are allowed to. Have a small list of projects you’re proud of, with sample files if you are allowed to share them. It’s fine not to have a ton of titles to mention. I have translated well over a hundred games in my career, but I’m credited in a grand total of 4 of them. Give general information, and only informally tell about details if you are asked to.

WARNING: Whatever your translate for free, do ask to be properly credited and keep word counts reasonable – be willing to help, but don’t let people take advantage of you. Anything over 1,000 words is too much for a free translation, unless you are extremely passionate about the game in question AND the dev clearly doesn’t have the funds. When necessary, politely explain than you can only handle a few hundred words for free. An App Store description, menus? Why not. A whole set of dialogs? Probably too much.

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First things first, my apologies for sharing December’s links only now! The start of the year was pretty hectic for me, with very happy news on the personal side and more than work that I could hope for. Things are a *little* more relaxed now, so let me catch up.

We have lot of great links this time, from very formal material (thesis) to comical content (the MT experiment!), interviews, interesting facts and essays.

With LocJAM4 around the corner, you can expect a great flow of stories in the upcoming months, so watch this space!

Student Speak: Using MT for Game Localization – Giulia Mattoni, an Italian Translation Technology student from DCU talks about her experience using Machine Translation for evaluating player support content localization.

Funky Fantasy IV: a Machine-Translated Video Game Experiment – MT may be gradually improving, but it still has a long way to go, as illustrated here

The history of hit points

Story of Seasons: Trio of Towns – Localization Blog #2

Dark Conflict (EU) and Days Of Ruin (US) – An interesting video comparison of the EU and US localizations

Square Enix on why Dragon Quest hasn’t been as popular as Final Fantasy in the west

Imagined Commodities: Video Game Localization and Mythologies of Cultural Difference – If you’re in for a thesis

Interview: Localizing Yakuza with Scott Strichart

What Are These Japanese WarioWare Moves All About? – More great stuff from Clyde Mandelin

Localizing Video Games for Different Markets Is a Minefield

And to conclude, a list of links related to LocJAM Japan that you may find interesting ahead of LocJAM4: How to Localize the Package (the process will be the same for LocJAM4), the Kyoto Workshop Presentation, and a more technical article about Internationalizing LocJAM Japan’s game, if you’re curious about what goes into organizing these events.

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“Hi, I have a document for translation, can you help me?”

We freelance translators all know at least one client who keeps checking our availability that way. I had one such customer. They would send me that very sentence every single time. And every single time I would reply with the same answers before accepting or refusing their translation projects. And I’m glad I did, as some were definitely not meant for me.

Fortunately, not all clients are that vague in their communications. But that doesn’t mean we should let our guard down. As professional translators, it is very much our job to clear ambiguities. Here is a quick checklist you can use as a reference.

1. Never accept an assignment before seeing the actual file(s)

Some clients are very protective about the information they share. They will tell you a lot about the kind of text they want to send you, yet strictly refuse to show a source file. The problem is that, all too often, they will omit (knowingly or not) important details, or give a misleading description of the content. At a minimum level, try to see an extract of the source file(s), and explicitly state you will only give your final confirmation once you have access to the whole package.

2. Make sure you can handle the format

First of all, you will want to make sure you can a. open the file and b. edit it. Is it a file format you are comfortable with? If not, check if you can have a different version. Else, adjust your rates if the extra work involved is significant.

If you are using a CAT tool, try to create a project with the source files AND export pseudo-translated target documents. Sometimes, our favorite tools seem to perfectly handle what we’re feeding them with, until they need to generate the final file… Yes, my dear “Object reference not set to an instance of an object”, I’m talking about you and your little friends. And naturally, these issues tend to occur when deadlines are looming.

If you find out about such problems early on, your client may be able to send you another version that will work, or find some technical workaround. Better safe than sorry.

3. Only accept if you are 100% confident about the deadline

Don’t accept a project if you’re not certain you can comfortably make it by the deadline.

Life is full of surprises, good and nasty ones. So many things can happen during a project. You may get the flu, your hard drive could decide to suddenly give up on you, or an exciting prospect may appear out of nowhere with an urgent but highly interesting and/or lucrative project.

Say you can translate up to 3k words a day. That’s on an ordinary day, spread over the different projects you’re currently translating. But how can you be sure tomorrow is going to be just another day?

I try to only accept projects for which I would have at least twice the actual time needed to perform the translation.

People tend to focus on rate negotiations and forget about deadlines. Often rather than not, you will be able to get a bit of extra time simply by asking. It costs nothing to try. Aim at the most generous deadlines possible. You will have an extra cushion for unexpected events, and more room to accept other projects in parallel.

4. Ensure you’re comfortable with the whole content

Obvious, right? On paper yes, but this one can get a little tricky. Reading a complete manual before accepting to translate it might be a little excessive, but so would be only checking the front page. There are things that are not necessarily obvious at a glance. Occasionally, a document will look straightforward… until you realize it was written by a non-native speaker or that there are 10 pages of legal notices hidden at the middle.

As a general rule, scan through every source document, carefully read a paragraph here and there, and make sure nothing falls out of your expertise. Again, as a professional, it is your duty to make sure you are in control.

5. More on formats: is design/DTP work expected from you? Are you sure?

Clients will probably tell you clearly what file format they want for your translations in, but they can be quite ambiguous about what they want you to do with the layout.

“It doesn’t have to look perfect, as long as the layout remains roughly the same” – sounds familiar?

The problem here is that your client may mean one of two things, and you need to be absolutely sure of what is expected from you:

1. The final document will be created from scratch by a designer/DTP specialist, and they really just want to know what goes where
2. They don’t mind doing small adjustments in-house, but they’re expecting your file to be almost ready for production and easy to edit. It can be a huge issue if you are working on files processed with OCR software. You will typically have the right layout, but the resulting file will be horrendously hard to edit and polish visually. Your client might get upset when they realize they need to find and pay someone else to finish the job, so clarify this point as early as you can.

6. Expectations should be perfectly clear

Let me conclude with a general reminder and a few extra ideas. One of the keys of good communication with your clients is to spot and clear any ambiguities before the project starts. It would be difficult to give an exhaustive list here, but here are a few examples:

– Imagine someone is asking you for “translation + proofreading” services. Do they mean they want you to proofread your own translations (in my case, this is a given), or are they expecting you to also ask a 3^rd party to check your texts? Depending on the answer, the pricing and deadline will be very different.

1. Character limitations. Whenever possible, try to get a hard limit, rather than “roughly the same length as source text”. If that’s not a possibility, clearly state you will try to keep length under a certain limit. And that they will need to pay extra if they later come back to you with a million requests to shorten your translation.
2. If you’re localizing websites and are asked to produce a copy “optimized for SEO [sic]”. Are there any specific keywords they want you to target? Do they want you to take care of the keyword research? Again, adapt your rates if necessary.

7. When unsure, follow your intuition

Do you have a bad feeling about a project? It happens from time to time. There’s no deal-breaker you could single out, but a combination of small things: the deadline is a little tight, the format is not the simplest one, and the client seems to have very specific demands… If you feel somewhat uncomfortable with job description, it is properly wise to politely decline it.

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Simply put, Ikinari Maou is a puzzle-solving game disguised as an 8-bit RPG.

It was created during the Tyrano Game Fes JAPAN 2016, a jam where the goal was to create short games with TyranoBuilder (or using the TyranoScript language), a visual novel creation tool.

The game won the 2nd prize, and was praised for its originality, the quality of the challenge and its clever use of TyranoScript’s capabilities.

As a parodic RPG, the game ticked all the boxes for the LocJAM’s needs: reasonably short, diverse (lines from different characters, menus, system messages) and using a vocabulary typical of video games.

The Localization Tool

For the purposes of the contest, Shikemoku-MK, the creator of TyranoBuilder, kindly wrote a localization tool that reads scenario files and extract localizable strings, with the possibility of previewing and generating the game in the target language.

Technical Challenges

Most of the technical obstacles we met during the internationalization process were due to the nature of tool. TyranoBuilder is originally designed for novel games. You will typically have the scenario read in a windows, with the occasional selection to make through textual buttons.

Ikinari Maou, however, isn’t your typical novel game. As mentioned earlier, it could be described an RPG/puzzle-solving game, albeit a very scripted one. And to keep that old school RPG feel, the developers had to push the tool to its limits and use its features in creative ways. Long story short, we also had to find ways to accommodate the specifics of the game to make it localization-friendly.

• In terms of volume, the main task was to convert graphical buttons in text buttons to make them localizable without the need to produce new image files. Remember, the contest is aimed at translators, many of whom aren’t familiar with advanced image editing tools, so everything had to be plain text.So we went over the script files and converted image buttons (“button”) to text buttons (“glink”), switching the image attribute of the former to the text attribute of the latter. We also tweaked TyranoScript’s CSS files to render these links a little more nicely, as options were a bit limited inside TyranoBuilderThis part went fairly smoothly as text and image links essentially work the same way… for the most part.

• On the name entry screen, switching the graphical confirmation button to a text version had the game crash and it took us a while to figure out why. As it turns out, graphical buttons and text ones work a little differently in the background. The way TyranoScript was designed, clicking on a text button would actually kill the name entry field before any extra code can be applied, effectively making it impossible to save the name entered (and making the script crash by calling an element that has been deleted). The solution here was to dig a bit deeper and make a couple of edits to TyranoScript’s JavaScript files, the core of the tool that converts script (scenario) files into the HTML your browser displays.

• This time we had to prepare not only the game but also the localization tool, and so we had to debugging on both fronts. One issue that appeared is that the tool originally didn’t extract strings under the “ptext” tag, which allows you to place text anywhere on the screen (outside the space reserved to the “story”) and was used in a couple of places in the game’s scenario files.

• Another challenge was to find a good format to make strings easy to translate in a broad range of software. We decided to go for a tab-delimited .CSV file using UCS-2 Little Endian encoding – a format that can easily be opened in spreadsheet editing software and most computer-assisted translation (CAT) tools. It is flexible, universal and allows for instant implementation of translated strings.
• Finally, we had to adjust the original text at a number of places, because of the limitations of our localization tool and TyranoScript. For example, variables were not localizable, so we had to remove a number of things, such as the default character name. We also had to make sure there would not be strings concatenated on a single line. Otherwise the options were to either automatically add a space every time, which would have made punctuation non-compliant in certain cases, or ask translators to add line-breaks manually every time. Obviously the latter option would have been a little tedious, so we just opted to move the text around to avoid issues.

• As for the font, we used Atari Small, which we carried over from the very first edition of the LocJAM. It covered all of our needs and matched the game’s feel.

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