Video Game Translation: Making Entertainment Global

As the video game industry is quickly expanding to an international market, translating video games is becoming increasingly important.Prioritising quality localisation right from the development stage is important if you want your game to reach its potential. Failing to do so means alienating a large part of the global audience, impacting the brand’s growth, and limiting your profit potential.Video game translation is a complex process and a unique specialisation that combines various fields such as software translation, audiovisual translation, theatre, and literary translation to create a dynamic final product.

Why is video Game Translation so Important?

Even if your game cover has perfect pixels, it won’t get attention from gamers if it lacks a coherent, interactive story. Gamers today want to be immersed in a virtual world and feel at home. This is where video game translation and localisation come in.A video game becomes popular when the players can relate to it. The original version of the video game undergoes a lot of changes during localisation to make it culturally appropriate. This is done to ensure that the foreign language version feels appropriate and relatable for native speakers.Other than the script, the entire interface needs to be adjusted, special characters and symbols may have to be added, and time formats may have to be changed. When done correctly, it has the potential to become a cultural phenomenon.

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How to Translate a Video Game?

Translation for video games is a lengthy, complex process that requires a lot of expertise. GoLocalise’s team has years of industry experience with audio-video translation of elements that are required to launch a video game in a foreign country.Here are some of the steps involved in the process:

Dialogue Translation 

GoLocalise has a team of experienced translators with extensive experience localising dialogues in video games. When translating dialogues, it is important to analyse the existing dialogue for artistic prose and the semantic meaning of tone and text.Our experienced linguists are gamers themselves, so they understand how important this part of the project is. The process also involves the integration of voice-overs, subtitles, and other audio elements into the game.

In-game Buttons, Tutorials, and Menus Translation 

Localising a video game are much more than the translation of dialogues. User experience is also important for developers.This is one of the reasons why GoLocalise invests a lot of time and effort into ensuring that the in-game overlays, menus, tutorials, and buttons are accurately translated to deliver the best possible gaming experience.These are all important elements that have a major impact on the experience of users, making a game more enjoyable to play.

Advertising and Marketing Material Translation 

To make a video game successful, it is also important to build brand recognition and awareness through marketing and advertising efforts. When targeting an international audience, it is important to understand and accurately incorporate all the cultural and linguistic details.This can help avoid any potentially embarrassing mistakes later. GoLocalise’s translation services can accurately deliver culturally appropriate, effective, and accurate marketing materials.

User Review Translation 

Most gamers check the reviews of a game before they invest in it. Learning more about what other games thought of the game is an important step in their purchase process.User reviews are also more trustworthy and authentic and tend to be more influential. This is one of the reasons why it is important to invest in translation services for user reviews so they will be more accessible to gamers in other parts of the world.

Video Games Translation in Over 100 Languages

GoLocalise has extensive expertise in the field of subtitling, translation, and voice-overs with a focus on specialisations such as video game translation.Our localisation experts have years of experience creating immersive gaming experiences for gamers around the world. The team combines their in-depth knowledge of gaming trends and passion for language to create full-service video game translation solutions in over 100 languages.From end credits and marketing materials to dialogues, GoLocalise interprets and localises the game, so it is more accessible to a broader market while still staying true to the original vision.Our team of in-house project managers ensures that each project is high-quality, culturally appropriate, and delivered in a timely manner.