Languages.
Hello all,
Im thinking about making our game multi-lingual and i'm wondering if it is worth it. Ive not seen any other indie games with multiple language options and i was wondering if there was a reason for this?
My reasoning is that if we translate into the most used non-english languages (chinese, arabic, russian, whaterver..) then we're broadening our potential customers. Also any big budget game i've ever worked on has had multiple language support.
Has anybody any thoughts on this?
Thanks for listening
Some stats.
Just out of interest i found this article on the worlds most used languages:
The following list is from Dr. Bernard Comrie’s article for the Encarta Encyclopedia (1998):
(number of native speakers in parentheses)
1. Mandarin Chinese (836 million)
2. Hindi (333 million)
3. Spanish (332 million)
4. English (322 million)
5. Bengali (189 million)
6. Arabic (186 million)
7. Russian (170 million)
8. Portuguese (170 million)
9. Japanese (125 million)
10. German (98 million)
11. French (72 million)
My game has been translated into French, German, Dutch, Portuguese, and Italian. They were all done by users who volunteered, except for Italian. I payed somebody to do the Italian translation because I got a request from a magazine there to put it on their cover CD.
I don't actually advertise the fact that it is available in these languages very much at all. My website is still only in English, and I will only provide support in English.
It's hard to say exactly how much this has helped my game, but it has to some extent for sure. I know that some people are using the other language versions (my game checks the locale the OS is using and uses the corresponding language translation if it is available). So this gives a much better opportunity to play for people who cannot speak english. There are many of such people out there.
If you are still in the process of making your game then I would advise you to only launch in English, but structure your code so that translation is possible later. It's a big hassle updating translations if new things get added in the game.
If your game is already finished and selling well then I think translations are good to do. If you can get users to volunteer to do it then it's a no brainer. I just have a sticky thread in my forums saying "Translators wanted", and I give people free reg codes if they volunteer. Even payed translations mean a one-time investment in order to target a whole new audience.
836 million mandarin chinese is an understatement.
I think there're over 1.5 billion at least.
On the other hand, even if there are only 322 people to whom English is their first language, the number of people that speak English as a second language must be far, far greater.
Still, I'm all for regionalising, and I'd like to get my games into as many languages as I can manage, just to be inclusive. Of course, roman-based writing is vastly preferable. I'm not really keen on having to make mandarin, russian, arabic, korean fonts etc.
Localizing your game can open up new markets, but it's also can be a big pain to do as well. If it opens up a huge market, then it might be worth the cost to do it, but there are lot of factors to consider (a lot of them cultural as well, not just demographic factors) before reaching a conclusion.
I'd be interested in seeing demographics broken out not just by language, but by computer ownership and some other factors as well. Basically I'd like a better idea of how big the market is for games in these other languages.
For example, eventhough Mandarin is most predominately spoken, PC ownership is low and piracy is rampant in China, so a Mandarin port might not be worth it. However French, German, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian ports might be worth it. Not sure on a Hindi port, as my guess is that PC ownership (overall) is low, and those that do have one use English stuff anyway. I know there are lots of techinal people in India, but they all seem to do it in English (maybe out of necessity).
My guess is that the above six languages I mentioned would be the most profitable ports to make (if you decided to localize). Let me know if I'm missing something here. Does anyone have any other data on best languages to port to?
Last edited by Greg Squire; 12-07-2004 at 09:39 PM.
of course there's 1 billion chinese ppl but will you be able to find a way 2 sell your game to them ? and will they buy your 19.95$ game ??
but if you're intend to make your game a freeware than I'll strongly urge you to do it.
btw that encarta needs to be fix
There are 1.5 billion chinese ppl in China.. can you imagine how many are there in other countries ??
There are 1 billion Indian and I believe they all speak hindi..
wait.. how come my country is listed there.. our population is almost >200 million and I bet we all speak "bahasa"
and one more thing, the number of ppl who use english as their second language is enormous by default, you just need to see the education index for each country !!!
Last edited by yanuart; 12-07-2004 at 10:36 PM.
Motorama! Riding can be tough indeed..
www.motoramagame.com
Fun Web Games for All!
www.iplayallday.com
I think translations are a good thing. I got some requests by german speaking people asking for a german version of the game. Now germany is on 2nd place in my sales statistic (1.USA 31%, 2.Germ 20%, 3.UK 15%). But probably the main reason for this is that i am using the germany based reg-processor shareit. Most germans pay via wire transfer, they got no credit cards.
I am definitely planning to translate my future games.
Well, a bunch of those Chinese people are speaking Cantonese, of course, but yes, I'm sure those numbers aren't quite right...
I've basically set things up with European-language ports in mind - all my text is stored in a seperate text file for easy replacing, and my fonts include the standard ascii extended characters, which should be enough to cover the main European languages.
I'm also hoping to do a Japanese version, more out of curiosity than anything else. Which of course will cause some font problems.
I recently spent an evening and converted all of my UI code to read strings out of INI files and to use UNICODE ... this only took a few hours, and that included reading up on some areas I wasn't familiar with. It's not hard to do and I think it's worth it.
If you're talking about writing, then you're OK as Chinese writing AFAIK is readable by all Chinese dialects, including Cantonese. Correct me if I'm wrong!
Is Unicode required for languages such as German or only Asian languages such as Korean?Originally Posted by EpicBoy
I think that's correct. I added it more for the sake of completeness than anything else.
German text can be encoded with several encodings. However, unicode can basically encode anything. It uses up to 4 bytes per character and only 1 byte per character for the "usual" stuff (like this posting or the source of this page).
While most encodings only offer a small subset, unicode can encode about any written language currently in use. It's a pretty safe bet and directly supported by most text editors.
IMO the most profitable non-English market to localize for is Korea - if your game fits the market. Gaming has become a national past time, and professional gamers have reached the same status as professional athletes in the US (among the youger crowds). There are 2 major cable channels that broadcast tournaments regularly (mostly Starcraft and Warcraft 3).
Blizzard has been wildly successful in Korea. Starcraft, Diablo 2, and Warcraft 3 are among the most popular games in Korea even now. In recognition of the size of the market, the night elf architecture in World of Warcraft is based on Korean architecture (the main gate to the night elf city is a model of Seoul's Namdaemun (Great South Gate)). The interface of Arenanet's Guild Wars has English and Korean versions in the same client (that is, you can toggle between them). This is largely due to Arenanet being owned by NCSoft, I'm sure, but the fact that most of the Arenanet developers are former Blizzard staff surely had an influence as well.
But localizing just to localize is likely not a good strategy. I know very little about the European market, but it seems that there's not a vast difference between countries as to which types of games are successful. In Asia on the otherhand, particularly Korea, fast-paced RTS games or any sort of online RPG that involves PvP have the best chance of succeeding. Counter-strike is moderately successful, but generally FPS games have a short lifespan here. Puzzle games come and go, but online games of Go Stop (a card game) or GO are popular. The biggest potential for indies in the Korean market would likely be mobile device games. Koreans are never without a cell phone and constantly play games on the bus or subway (when they aren't SMSing each other to death).
My point being that a bit of market research beforehand will go a long way to helping you determine if localizing your game is worth it. Many Koreans and Japanese do download and play English language indie games, so I think it's probably not something to worry about (for the Asian market) until you start seeing huge numbers of Asian downloads.
Last edited by Aldacron; 12-08-2004 at 05:17 PM.
I think that in order to target the Korean or Japanese market you really need somebody that can speak the language to help you. Somebody that can sell the game in the language and handle customer support. I would be interested in doing such a thing if I could find a Korean or Japanese affiliate that was interested, but I haven't actively looked for one.
Also, somebody asked me in a PM how much it cost to get a payed translation. I thought I would answer it here also since others may be wondering. The guy I went with charged 10 cents a word. This was cheaper then a couple of other quotes that I got. I found him by posting a message "Italian translator wanted" in the ASP newsgroup.
yup that's true !chinese (mandarin), cantonese and other dialect of chinese are both written in the same form.
It's funny if you imagine since there are no alphabet in chinese and their words are actually based on pictures. This is also the same with Kanji..
Motorama! Riding can be tough indeed..
www.motoramagame.com
Fun Web Games for All!
www.iplayallday.com
10 cents a word? Does that include every "a" and "the"? Or is that for every unique word?The guy I went with charged 10 cents a word. This was cheaper then a couple of other quotes that I got. I found him by posting a message "Italian translator wanted" in the ASP newsgroup.
Well I might post that in the service forums... but I am available for italian translations of course
For less than 10 cents a word...!
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If any of you ever need Korean translation PM me. I'm not fluent enough to translate anything myself, but I can find a translator to put you in touch with. There are several professionals a few blocks from my house, but I'll need to do some snooping for a) good prices and b) someone who can handle game material (most do legal and business translations, so fantasy/sf/horror or whatever may be beyond many of them). Perhaps I could get help from one of the local game oriented cable networks, or maybe someone at NCSoft (I know one of the marketing guys there). Anyway, let me know and I'll see what I can come up with.
I think 10 cents a word is standard for freelance writing, so translation service for the same amount should be a bargain. And that does include every word, not just unique words.
The Game Localization Handbook is something I found last week and kept forgetting to post here.
I haven't found any reviews though.
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