It’s essentially a day-long workshop kind of event where participants work together to translate a game from/to English/Japanese (source games will be offered for either language). Unlike the LocJAM, it’s not a competition and it is mostly meant to be enjoyed offline, but the audience is pretty much the same: enthusiastic gamers with different degrees of experience with game localization who join in to have some fun, meet colleagues and learn a thing or two along the way.

If you are nostalgic of LocJAM, are new to the game translation industry or just want to have fun with fellow game and language lovers, don’t hesitate and join the show! Although I won’t be able to join myself, this translation jam is organized by well-loved colleagues and you can expect an amazing day with lovely people.

Tokyo event page:

https://www.facebook.com/events/189330645207491/

Kyoto event page:

https://www.facebook.com/events/207542246517228/

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The Kyoto Study Group for LocJAM4 took place on April 22nd and was followed by a networking party. The goal was the same as usual: embody the spirit of the LocJAM by gathering game enthusiasts with various degrees of experience to discuss localization, learn from our collective experience and simply have fun.

The Presentation

For my third LocJAM presentation in just a little over a year, I decided to move away from the game localization process approach and instead went for something a little more concise and practical.

Here is how we approached this year’s event:

• Quick introduction of the LocJAM: Because a quick reminder of what the LocJAM is and isn’t always helps. The slide is pretty self-explanatory

 

• Introduction of Ikinari Maou and playthrough: To understand where the LocJAM4 game is coming from, we introduced and played the original version of Ikinari Maou. Most importantly, we analyzed what is going on in the game (who is who at what time) and how to beat it. Getting that part right is essential to produce a good translation – more on this later

 

• Comparison of LocJAM Japan winning translations: The reason I chose this approach for this presentation is that, although the Amateur and Pro winning translations were ultimately picked up by the same group of jurors, they came up with two radically different submissions in terms of style:The Amateur translation is a very creative one, with a well-crafted glossary and a bit of extra humor. It occasionally gets in the over-localization warning zone, but gets away with it thanks to the very solid writing and natural integration of the spiced up bits. And well, it’s a localization contest, so can’t blame people for trying to show off their talent in that area.The Pro translation, on the other hand, is a more faithful one, funny when the original is, neutral when it should be. Clean and accurate, to the point it sometimes gets close to be a little too literal – the perfect opposite of the Amateur translation.You can check the slides for a few examples opposing those two styles, or download the whole text here for Original/Amateur/Pro/LocJAM4 versions of Ikinari Maou.

 

• Takeaways: So why did the jury went for two submissions that don’t seem to have much in common? The answer is simple: because above all, those two localizations were executed with talent.People keep asking us if jurors would prefer such or such style. But the truth is that, more than a specific style, jurors will be mainly looking for entries that grasp the spirit of the original game and offer the player a solid experience.Ikinari Maou is a puzzle game. Conveying hints and explanations properly is critical here. Only a few participants really understood what was happening in the game and transcribed that in English. Some other entries had great writing but lost tips in translation, effectively making the game harder than it is supposed to be. So my first advice here for LocJAM4 participants is to really understand how to beat the game and how to ensure the player experience isn’t altered by their translation.The second point is that there are lots of valid styles between over- or under-localization. You shouldn’t focus on what style the jury may or may not like, because 1. there’s no way to know that and 2. it’s not a critical factor in determining winners. More than anything, you should find your voice and stick to it consistently throughout your work. LocJAM Japan winning entries both got that part right, and it’s what truly made them stand out. Reading through their submissions, it was obvious they enjoyed translating the game and were in absolute control of their writing. Just focus on what you do best, and translate the way YOU think is right.

 

• Introduction of LocJAM4’s version and quick playthrough: Here, we focused on how characterization and dialogs were purposely exaggerated for the main LocJAM event. We also mentioned the special set of instructions for Japanese translators, who are asked to find their own unique style for this “back-localization”.For the other languages, although we’ve got a spicier version here, the challenge is exactly the same as it was for LocJAM Japan: ensure your localized version preserves the original puzzle-solving experience, find your tone and don’t be afraid to exhibit your craft when the source text calls out for creativity.

 

• A bit of fun with the machine-translated version: To end up on a lighter note, we checked a few parts of the original game translated with Google Translate. The result was… interesting, shall we say. Silly fun, but a good way for everybody to relax at the end of the presentation and get in the mood for a chat.

Topics Raised by Participants

Before and after the presentation, the study group gave us all an opportunity to chat about various game localization-related topics:

• How to get started in the industry: a classic for aspiring translators. We quickly discussed of common job-hunting tactics: contacting localization agencies with a carefully crafted CV, networking, participation to industry events…
• How to gain experience: the LocJAM, of course! Past edition texts are freely available for translation, regardless of your language pair. Something you can show potential clients, and thus solid marketing materials. Also mentioned the Manga Translation Battle contests for those with a broader interest
• “A good localizer should also be a spontaneous consultant”: A non-translator participant noted that the game’s font was hard to read and that, if he was a dev, he would appreciate if translators mentioned that issue. It was the starting point of a fascinating discussion about the role of translators and communication with developers. How far we translators should get involved? Are we responsible for offering a similar experience in our native language by making recommendations for font/interface changes? If you’re working with direct clients, you may want to keep in mind that they may desperately need your advice on such issues. Time to polish our consulting skills?
• How to handle translations for languages heavily depending on context and for which gender/numbers can be ambiguous, like Japanese: in short, experience, careful text analysis and queries when all else fails. If you need context for a large number of strings, try to go for general queries (“can you mention who is talking for each line?”)

How Did it Go?

• We had a total of 20 people, mostly localizers (good mix of hopefuls/established ones), but also a small number of designers/devs, which encouraged constructive discussions, beyond the sole topic of translation
• What really pleased me is that everybody blended in naturally. People just started exchanging naturally, and the atmosphere was very friendly. I sort of felt sorry to interrupt the audience to start my presentation
• Getting a bit personal here: I’m a shy French guy with 0 public speaking skills. I’m not a native speaker of English nor Japanese. Of all the participants, I was probably one of the least qualified to make a presentation. And still, just because I took the initiative, we were able to have a fun event during which everybody learned something and made important connections. It doesn’t take much to organize a LocJAM event, and it doesn’t need to be perfect. Just do it and great things will happen, because we have an amazing community

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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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Known issue: Under certain circumstances, the text can overflow a bit in the main message window

The frame width is set to a slightly too small value in the .css file of the game. Depending on the text used, it might overflow a bit as on the picture below shared by Thomas Bruckert.

Since the issue is on the game side, it is absolutely fine if it happens with your translation. More generally, minor display issues won’t be taken into consideration by the jury. If you are still worried, you may use non-breakable spaces to force a line return – for example, that would be between “big” and “threat” in the example above.

Known issue (typo): “ファイラ” >  “ファイア”

There is a small typo in the list of “じゅもん”: “ファイラ” should read  “ファイア”, as spelled in other parts of the game. The jury has been informed and won’t penalize the brave translators who tried to translate this exotic name.

Known issue: unlocalizable brackets

The Japanese brackets on the screen above can’t be localized – this one is on us, sincere apologies! Technically the issue can be fixed within the .csv file, but it won’t be taken into account by the jury.

The game won’t start when I click on “Preview localized game”

This is a known issue with the first package we shared. To fix it, you can either:

• Download the latest package on locjam.org
• Open transrator.csv in Excel and save it as it is

So what is this CSV file? How do I open it?

The translatable file is using the CSV (tab-delimited) format, with UCS-2 Little Endian encoding. It needs to be strictly preserved for the translation to be correctly updated.

You can use spreadsheet software (Excel, OpenOffice Calc, etc.), text editors (I personally recommend Notepad++) or your favorite CAT tool to open and translate it. Specific instructions for Trados/MemoQ, and Excel are available here.

My text isn’t aligned properly, am I going to be penalized for it?

The goal of the tool is to give you a preview of your localized game, rather than to generate a final product. Accordingly, you will not be penalized for cosmetic issues you have no control over, such as text alignment. You should however try to avoid overflows and text encoding issues.

transrator.csv, seriously?

Yes, the translatable file is named “transrator.csv”, not “translator.csv”. This is an innocent mistake from the tool’s developer. He is not an English native speaker (nor a language professional) and unfortunately didn’t have time to fix this small typo. In no way is this meant to make fun of our profession/non-native speakers.

I want to add spaces to my translation but I can only display one at a time

If necessary, you may use HTML entities in your translation (for example, “ ” for a non-breakable space)

What should I do with lines starting with ScenarioName?

Do not edit “ScenarioName    XXXX.ks” lines, or your translation won’t be read properly. If you’re using a CAT tool, it could be a good idea to lock these segments at the beginning of the project

I translated the file, but the old strings are displayed when I run the game

– If the translated strings are not updated after you edited the file:
1. Make sure the file was saved at the right location with the original name and encoding (UCS-2 Little Endian). Also make sure you didn’t add tabulations as plain text (if necessary you can add extra spaces with “ ”)
2. Delete the following:
– “maou/trans.json” file
– “trans/IkinariMaou” folder
Restart the app. Select the project again (maoh/index.html), and the tool should read everything from zero again.

I played the original version of Ikinari Maou and the graphics/text/layout are different

Yes they are. The game was edited in different ways and for different reasons to make it more easily localizable. For LocJAM Japan, the version shared on locjam.org is the only one that matters. But you are very welcome to try the game in its original format and enjoy the better visuals.

Some text is missing from the translatable file/I can’t seem to find a string of the translatable file in the game itself

While we did our best to include only relevant strings without forgetting any, we’re not excluding the possibility  we missed or added some by mistake. Please feel free to report such issues, but don’t worry, the official file shared on the LocJAM website is the only one that counts. You do not need to fix it and we will not edit the official file during the contest.

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1) After the introduction, don’t answer “こうさんしますか？” and click on どうぐ > エーテル > ゆうしゃ instead
2) Click on じゅもん > チェンジ(MP30) > まおう（１ぴき）
3) Click on どうぐ > エーテル > まおう
4) Click on じゅもん > タイムリープ（MP100）
5) Click on じゅもん >エーテル > (White arrow) > ゆうしゃ（１り）
6) Don’t answer “こうさんしますか？” and click on どうぐ > エーテル > ゆうしゃ instead
7) Click on じゅもん > チェンジ(MP30) > まおう（１ぴき）
8) Click on じゅもん >エーテル > (White arrow) > ゆうしゃ（１り）
9) Let the magic work!

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The localizable file was successfully tested in both SDL Trados Studio and MemoQ. You can create a project as you normally would, with the following settings:

SDL Trados Studio (2014 or later)

To translate in Trados, please use the following options for the .csv file type in your project options:

MemoQ (tested on version 2015)

When importing the file in MemoQ, please use the following configuration:

In both cases, your CAT tool should be able to export the .csv file in the right format and encoding, without any further modification.

Excel

If you are working with Excel or similar spreadsheet software, you will be able to open/save the .csv file directly, but you may have trouble exporting files in the right format if you add certain characters (quotation marks, etc.). In that case, I would recommend the use of the free code and text editor Notepad++. Once installed, copy the source and target columns from Excel (or similar software), open the original (untranslated) file in Notepad++, select all the text (Ctrl + A) and replace it with the content of your spreadsheet content. Save the file, and everything should work smoothly.

Of course, you can translate directly in Notepad++, but you will most likely find Excel more comfortable to do so.

LibreOffice

A member of the IGDA LocSIG Group on Facebook, Anish Krishnamurthy, kindly shared the following settings to open the file in LibreOffice:

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Introducing the LocJAM

Welcome to the LocJAM! If you are new to the concept, the LocJAM is an online localization contest, free and open to all. The English text of a game is shared on locjam.org and translators have 2 weeks to translate it in one of the languages listed. There’s unfortunately no LocJAM contest for translators working into English yet, although we might have something down the road. Until then, remember that helping other translators is one of the many ways you can enjoy the whole event.

No pre-registration is required. All you need to do is to submit your work through the website by the deadline. You can participate alone or as a group (although a single name will be credited) and choose between two categories: Professional and Amateur.

Amateur vs. Pro

The Professional category is aimed at language professionals, not necessarily translators, but people who have knowledge and experience in the industry in general.

As a general guideline, should apply as Pros those who have:

➤  A university degree as a translator
➤ Any other degree plus two years of experience (~200.000 words translated or ~800.000 words reviewed) either professionally or as a volunteer
➤ Five years of translation experience (~500.000 words translated or ~2.000.000 words reviewed) either professionally or as a volunteer

Even if you don’t meet these criteria, feel free to apply as a Pro if you are confident you can compete in this category.

The Amateur category aimed at those who don’t have a lot of experience yet, such as students, young translators transitioning from a different career, gamers who translate as a hobby or simply curious about localization, etc.

Why participate?

After submissions, translations will be judged by reputable (= established and with reasonable payment practices) translation companies. Each of them will choose one winner per language and category. Winners will be invited to a studio tour/recording session, or receive a diploma. This prize is one of the main incentives of the LocJAM. It is a great chance to build your reputation as a translator, as your name will be displayed on the website and many localization agencies are looking at the contest results. Some previous winners have been contacted with part or full-time job offers. Of course, meeting the juror offering you the studio tour gives you a strong opportunity to build a relationship with them.

But you don’t need to win to make it a valuable experience. It is very hard, especially for young translators, to gain experience, and this is what the LocJAM is all about, providing newcomers with an entry point into the localization industry. If you are confident your translation was of good quality, this is something you can show potential employers or customers.

Besides these considerations, some people may participate just for fun, because they’re curious about what game localization is about. This can be gamers or people in the game industry but not necessarily translators themselves.

It is also a rare chance to compare your translation with those of other translators. This is something you can learn a lot from by analyzing different styles and approaches.

Finally, it is an opportunity to network and meet your pairs, both online and offline. You will be able to meet people with whom you can exchange tips and important information for your career, regardless of your level of experience.

Introducing The Game

Now that we’ve introduced the LocJAM, let’s see what content is waiting for us. The Hotel of Madness is a board game, a first in the history of the LocJAM. The game is based on horror stories of the 80’s and has a real video game feel to it.

The translation package itself comes with a set of instructions in a Word document and maps/counters in an Excel file.

Planning Ahead

Before starting to work on The Hotel of Madness, it is important to have an idea of how much time we are going to need to complete the translation. The Hotel of Madness is about 3,600 words long. The pace at which you will be translating can vary depending on skills and experience. To be on the safe side, consider about 2,000 words per working day (8 hours).

In general, as a professional translator, you will always want to have some room when it comes to deadlines – you never know what can happen during a project. For the needs of this contest, you will also need to test your translation in context, so that’s another thing you will need time for. Remember you can collaborate with other translators and submit a common entry, so don’t hesitate and work with a partner if you feel you might be a bit short on time.

The Game Localization Process

Now that we have a better idea of what to expect, let’s start the actual work. We will be following the typical game localization process here. The process can be slightly different depending on the game, and most of the time you won’t be involved in each and every step in a professional environment, but it should give you a good idea of how things work in general.

Before writing a single line of text, we need to get familiar with the game and materials in question, to get an idea of the content. Based on that first approach, we will create a glossary and a style guide to ensure we have a strong foundation from which we can start translating. Then comes translation and its challenges, which we’ll cover in detail later. When our first draft is ready, we can go ahead and edit, adjust and fix what needs to be. With our translation is ready, we can integrate it and test the game to ensure the localized text works in context. Finally, when we are confident there are no bugs or other issues remaining (or when time’s up!), it is time to submit our work.

1. Familiarization

First of all, download the localization package from http://www.locjam.org. Check the instructions carefully. They are not complex at all, but every year a lot of participants get disqualified because they failed to comply with some of the rules. Remember, in a professional context, you will also need to pay attention to such instructions.

Read through the source files once, not necessarily everything, checking a paragraph here and there can be enough as a first approach. Try to understand how the game works, taking notes when you find something important.

So what’s the game’s text telling us? The Hotel of Madness is a board game for which we need to translate instructions and cards. Clarity and consistency will be extremely important. One thing you may realize is that the game itself is strongly inspired by The Shining (the book rather than the movie, apparently), so it might be a good idea to learn more about the license if you are not familiar with it yet. There are also a number of jokes and puns in the text, for example [The game is played in turns (as opposed to being played in prison, or in a tuxedo)], so we will want to give them extra attention, as some of them won’t translate literally.

2. Glossary and Style Guide Creation

Based on our findings, the next step will be to create a glossary of the most important terms. Character, item, place names, anything important and that needs to be translated consistently. The LocJAM games are fairly short, so you may create a glossary on the go, but for larger or group projects, you should really do it as early as possible. Making glossary changes when a project is almost over implies tedious changes and possible inconsistencies if some occurrences of the changed terms are missed.

You can look for terms to add to your glossary manually, or use term extraction tools such as Okapi Rainbow to save some time. Such tools will return the most frequent terms of your text – there will be false positives that you will need to remove (stop word lists are readily available online and can help you a bit here), but it’s a good way to have an exhaustive glossary right from the start.

For large projects, you may also want to prepare a style guide where you will be listing things such as general writing instructions, the tone of the text, the language register, sentence patterns and the like.

3. Translation

With this preparatory work done, we are ready to start the translation. You can translate directly in Word and Excel, or use a translation software. Do save backups regularly or, even better, have your files synchronized with a cloud software such as Dropbox or Google Drive. If you are concerned by confidentiality issues, some software solutions allow you to duplicate and synchronize your drives automatically.

The challenge for The Hotel of Madness will be to make the instructions as clear as possible, yet pleasant to read. Avoid ambiguity whenever possible. There is no computer to tell the players when they are breaking the rules, and a lot of back-and-forth will be required during at least the first few games. Keep the players in mind when you translate: The information should be easy to find and digest.

Some translators have expressed concerned about instructions that may seem incomplete. However, they do not affect the translation itself and, for the needs of this context, you should focus on conveying what is there – rather than what isn’t.

The maps and counters should also be formatted properly and be easy to read. Consider making layout and font tweaks if you feel it helps with readability.

And of course, the translated text should be fluid and natural, avoid literal translations. Ideally, your version of the game should feel as if it was the original, rather than a translated product.

Having said that, don’t overdo it. For example, in Japanese, trying too hard to use as many Kanji as possible may make your text harder to read, and you will be more likely to make mistakes that will make your work look unprofessional. Stick to what you feel comfortable with.

Once again, the game should feel “native”, and not like a cultural caricature.

For general localization best practices, I would recommend you to check the document we created at the IGDA Localization SIG. It is available in both English and Japanese and it offers a ton of useful advice, both for translators and developers. Feel free to check it out when you have a moment.

More on localization vs. translation

Keep in mind that we need to localize these games, not just translate them. If changing fonts, spacing, paragraph structures or other elements can make your text feel more natural, go for it. Don’t hesitate and edit the layout if it makes sense to you.

Here is a quote from one of last year’s jurors that illustrates the idea well:

“We appreciated how the translator added extra line breaks, which made the text easier to read and gave a Japanese text adventure like feel to the game. It is important to pay attention to how the translated text will look in the actual product.”

Translating humor and puns can be very difficult. When you come across such parts, try to think of references most people in your audience will be able to understand, even if the sentence itself becomes completely different. Consider tweaking the surrounding sentences if it helps you introduce jokes and puns more easily.

Like I said before, formatting is an important part of localization. If you translate into Japanese, pay close attention to how the text looks on the cards. It may be hard to read if the font is too small, or if you make use of complex Kanji. Tweak font size or consider the use of Katakana if you feel it will make reading easier. If you translate from Japanese, make sure you don’t leave out any double-byte characters, as it is a very common mistake.

There are also a couple of images with uneditable text on them. Feel free to localize them the way you’d like. You can create new images or add text boxes, just make sure the result is visually consistent with the rest. It doesn’t have to be a masterpiece, but try to make it clean. There’s no hard rule here, so do what you feel most comfortable with.

4. Editing

The translation step may be the longest one, but there’s still a lot to do once you’ve got your first draft ready.

During the editing step, we will try to polish our text and eliminate spelling, grammar, syntax and consistency mistakes. Inconsistencies are critical errors, so make sure you carefully followed your glossary during the translation. Use a text editor with spell/grammar checking features to help you spot potential issues.

It may also be a good idea to print out your translation and read it on paper, as the change of media can give you a new perspective and help you find more mistakes or identify parts that feel a bit unnatural.

Asking the help of a second native speaker is always a good idea, especially if they have good writing skills. The more eyes the better. You can also compare the source and target texts with a native speaker of the native language to spot mistranslations and nuances that were lost in translation.

When you are given feedback, whether this is from friends or clients, remember that you are the one making the call. Overzealous reviewers are a common thing in the industry. They will try to rewrite your translation just for the sake of it or because they don’t have flexibility when it comes to writing styles. Stand for yourself. If you are confident your translation is good as it is, leave it this way.

5. Integration

The next step will be to integrate our translated text to the game. The integration will be quite easy for The Hotel of Madness, as all you need to do is to print the files out and play the game. If you were working in a CAT tool, save your target file and pay close attention the formatting and layout. As useful as they can be, most CAT tools will often mess up a file’s layout.

6. QA Testing

Our translation is now ready to be tested in context. Play through the whole game and make sure everything makes sense in context. Look for integration issues (overflows, missing texts, etc.). Ensure the text is easy to read and clear, visually and in substance. Once again, there shouldn’t be any ambiguity.

Just as for the editing stage, asking different people to play the game with you can help you spot more issues. Don’t just play “normally”, try everything you can think of to test the game’s limits, even (or especially?) if it sounds crazy. People like to do crazy things, keep them in mind and make your game foolproof.

After you make changes, always check whether they were implemented correctly, as we want to fix bugs, not create new ones. It is what we call Regression testing.

Checking the whole game for every change you make would take a huge amount of time (and wasted paper!), so try to do it by batches. Play the game once, make a list of changes, implement them, test again, repeat until you feel you are satisfied with your work or the deadline is getting close.

7. Submission and Post-Mortem

We can finally submit our work! Visit LocJAM.org, fill the form carefully and as per instructions, and upload your translated package with only the translated files. You will need to do it before Sunday, March 27th midnight GMT.

To make the most of the experience, don’t leave things there. After the cooling down period, take a look back at the project and think about what you did right, and what mistakes you made. It will help you improve for your future projects.

So, How Do I Win the LocJAM?

Experience is great, but since you spent a lot of time working on this game, you probably want to win the LocJAM. There is no magic trick here, although the following few tips may put you on the right track. In any case, remember that translation quality is subjective and heavily depends on personal preferences. You don’t know who will be looking at your text, so just focus on doing what YOU believe is the best thing.

Basic spelling or glossary issues can instantly get you out of the play, so be careful during the Editing and QA stages. Remember this is a localization contest, not just a translation one. Create a localized game that doesn’t feel like it was adapted from a different version.

Spend extra time on parts that allow you to express your creativity – jokes, puns, narration, dialogs… show off your writing skills. In general, try to go the extra mile to make your translation stand out. A lot of very skilled people will be entering the contest, so make it easier for jurors to pick you by doing something a little different.

While this sounds obvious, please do read the included instructions carefully. Check the .pdf file at least once before getting started and once before submitting your translation. Every year we have to exclude participants before anyone had a chance to see their work. If you think it’s tough of us, remember that you are also expected to follow such instructions in a professional environment, too.

Finally, one of the great things with the LocJAM is the gathering of enthusiastic people who love sharing tips. That’s what we could call the “Party” side of the LocJAM, and it’s one of the many ways you can enjoy the event. If you follow our Facebook page, you will most likely come across the answer to most of your questions and find out things you wouldn’t even have suspected otherwise.

Last year for example, translators did an amazing job at finding and sharing bugs, giving hints as to how to fix them. They had also noticed a number of puns/hints that were not necessarily obvious. For this reason, you may want to wait as much as possible before submitting your entry, just in case something interesting pops up.

Conclusion

And that’s it! Now that you know everything you should about the LocJAM, the rest is up to you. Show your creative side and impress the rest of the industry!

The post Introduction To Game Localization Through A Case Study: The LocJAM3 appeared first on Anthony Teixeira - Professional French Translator.

This year, game translators were offered a nice interactive story from the GameJam, Grandpa. A creepy atmosphere and a disturbing twist (although somewhat predictable?) gave us translators good material to test both our technical knowledge and literary talent.

The Process of Localizing Grandpa

Translators were in charge of the entire localization process for this game, up to final checks. The idea was to deliver a localized file that would be ready for commercialization.

Familiarization

Some games don’t necessarily need a lot of familiarization. But as Grandpa is an illustrated interactive story, it was absolutely vital to understand exactly what was going on and how things looked like in-game. With less than 20 minutes needed to complete the adventure, it was a small but crucial time investment.

First draft

Game over. Time to take a break and digest the story. Now let’s get down to the real business. The organizers recommended the use of a classic text editor, which I found to be a rather surprising choice. Instead, I used my personal computer-assisted translation tool, and anybody could have downloaded some of the free ones available out there. Considering the characteristics of the source file, it was a no-brainer for me, but I’ll justify my choice in detail.

Drafting a first version based on what I remembered from the game took me about half a day. A couple of sentence got me scratching my head to produce a fluent French text, but overall it all went smooth. The excitation of the competition seems to have had a positive effect on my creative power!

Proofreading and basic QA

Before plugging the translated text into the game, I gave it a round of proofreading and QA. I had a good read at my version, spell/grammar-checked it and used automated QA tools to detect potential critical mistakes. In a regular game translation project, I would have had a last look at my text to improve what can be (especially style), but I decided to do it while testing the localized game.

In-context QA

My plan was to go through the game just once slowly, checking out every possible situation and improving my translation while fixing any possible bugs. In the end, I gave it two good rounds and another half a day of intense testing. Source text inconsistencies and minor bugs added to my own small mistakes, and it just turned out to be too much for a single run.

I could have gone for 10 extra runs and kept changing things every single time, but would have it benefited the game? Probably not. One never feels ready to let the loved ones go, but sometimes you just have to (right Emi?). Holding my breath, I uploaded my translation, feeling both relieved and sad as a different kind of interactive story was ending.

Localizing Grandpa: A Trying Challenge

In just around 1,500 words, Grandpa offered a complete challenge for even for the most experienced game translators. You want to get started in the localization industry quickly? Localize this game and you will know 80% of what you need to understand in this industry.

Code and text tightly mixed: It’s unusual at all to see variables and other code bits in a source text. But in the case of Grandpa, it was sometimes really hard to tell what would happen to strings elements. Don’t translate tags: pretty common, I’ll take that. Now what do I do with [img[Poor Torn Hat|badhat 26]]? Knowledge of HTML helped me understand what was going on here, but I still proceeded very carefully (for the record, you needed to translate “Poor Torn Hat”, which is the tooltip that appears when you stop your mouse on the object’s image).

The dangers of copy and paste: The second part of translation was composed of game’s inventory repeated for each screen with the heavy presence of tags and HTML elements similar to the ones mentioned above. How many occurrences of this inventory? 48 times. I take my hat off to all the translators who went on with a text editor and copied and pasted this without a mistake 47 times. By the way, have you noticed that ONE of these occurrences was slightly different than the others? 🙂 My translation tool did, and it also took care of the copying and pasting tasks for me. It saved me a lot of time and helped me avoid painful mistakes.

Translators who didn’t take notice shouldn’t panic, though, that one slightly different occurrence actually works the same even if you copied one of the 47 other inventory placeholders, it will look the same to jurors. In other circumstances, it could have been a fatal mistake!

Stylistic choices: If you forget about the technical aspects of game localization, the project felt more like translating a book. Thus, style was maybe the most important element of the translation. Finding the right words and expressions to render the original tone gave me a few headaches.

Besides that, two things really bothered me: On occasions, I was never able to figure with a perfect certitude if certain actions were instructions from Grandpa or generic action buttons. “Look in oven” sounds very mechanical for example, but “Let’s go somewhere else” are definitely the words of a human living (well, not quite for this game…). My other interrogation was: “How old is Emi (the game’s main character) supposed to be?”. Sometimes she will sound very childish, but then on the next screen she would use a sewing machine with great dexterity. “supposed to be” is really important here, since the whole problem is made even more complicated by the fact that…

The game ends on a twist: While you play the game, you can tell that something is going to happen by the ending screen. Looking back at the game, there are elements I interpret as hints, but were they really? Was it the intention of the developers, or just a bit of a stretch from my imagination? How much should I give away in the French text? A lack of subtlety would spoil the game. But give too few hints, and the game loses some of its atmosphere. Here again, there were heart-breaking decisions to take.

Translation AND QA: For this contest, we were asked to wear two hats as we acted as both translators and testers. Have you ever let a typo slip despite proofreading your text three times? This is why we have independent testers in the first place: our brains generously fix mistakes in the things we write. Even the best of the best make the odd mistake.

Testing your own work requires an incredible level of concentration, and it was one of the toughest challenges of this project.

The game had its small bugs: We’re talking about really small stuff here, and you have to remember the context in which the game was developed. If I had to code for two days straight with no or so little sleep, I don’t think I could put out a functional Pong-clone. Still, as testers, it’s hard to close our eyes on the occasional bug. There a few really small inconsistencies in the punctuation, which is easy to fix when you translate.

The hard part came with transition screens, which all showed “Office” even if you were switching between two totally different places. One of these screens also had an image of the office in question. To get this one fixed, we had to look at the different screen IDs to figure out which string corresponded to which place. That was a hard one for those who already had trouble figuring out what was code and what wasn’t.

The layout was a bit messy at times as well, as line returns were occasionally used for conditional elements even if they were not display. Sometimes you would have as many as 5 line returns before the next text, which looked a bit weird. Or on occasions there would be 2 line returns before an image instead of 1. I doubt it will have any influence on the final results, but I fixed these small issues and made sure the layout was homogeneous throughout the game.

Conclusion

Localizing video games requires linguistic AND technical skills. Grandpa was very challenging from both points of view, and as such, it was a perfect game for the needs of the LocJam. It is also a very interesting projects for those who are new in the industry or interested in becoming a video game translator in the future. As a professional, it served as an excellent practice exercise. The contest is over, but you can still give it a try!

The post LocJam Post-Mortem: On Grandpa’s Localization and its Challenges appeared first on Anthony Teixeira - Professional French Translator.

This year, “Grandpa”, an interactive story of about 1,800 words created during the GameJam, was picked. The game itself is very pleasant to play and I would recommend anybody to have a look at it. You’ll have to wait until May if you want to play it in a language other than English, though 😉

For translators, it offers interesting challenges, especially when it comes to style and consistency. But more on this after the contest!

Today, I got familiarized with the game and prepared the first draft, first round of proofreading included. The hardest part comes now: double-checking all strings in context and, even harder, perfecting the style. While the source text doesn’t look difficult at the first sight, it actually requires a lot of creativity to render nicely in French. Choosing between synonyms or sentence structures can be really hard at times. For an interactive story, the quality of the style is of course critical, and this is where I will focus the most.

On the technical side, nothing really out of the ordinary. Some line escape characters, a few tags here and there, pretty much what you’d expect for a game localization project. For people joining the amateur category, it might be a bit of a challenge, though.

That’s it for today! I could start testing and refining my translation now, but I’d rather give it time. There’s still a week ahead to send submissions, and I want to be sure my brain can digest the game at its own pace.

The post The LocJam 2 Started Today! Game Localization Report for Day 1 appeared first on Anthony Teixeira - Professional French Translator.