03/13/2020Case Study, Localization
Case Study #5: Stormhill Mystery: Family Shadows
Title: Stormhill Mystery: Family Shadows...
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Some of my favorite adventures and how I rolled them.
OFF THE RECORD ( undergoing ) by Eight Bit Skyline
I run the full localization of this very nice indie game by Eight Bit Skyline. It is developed with Unity engine, which is definitely fitter for my purposes.
The dialogues are very well written. You really need to fully play the game in all of its option to properly translate it, but in general in these cases it’s not a big deal as you are in touch with developer and the game is of short length.
As for Lords of Xulima, the dialogue file couldn’t be imported into any CAT tools and was only to be edited in Notepad++.
PROVIDENCE ( undergoing ) by Eight Bit Skyline
I proofread the Italian localization of this short indie video game by mutual consent with the developer. What I noticed were the sometime poor localization (such as the use of typical English expressions which are not in use in the Italian language, suggesting a literal translation rather than a pure localization), and in particular the accent display errors. Accents are always an issue not easy to solve when it comes to English or American developed engines, as in English there aren’t accents in use. As a consequence, they are usually not well displayed unless some tricky trick to use when implementing the dialogue file into the game (it’s part of the so called monolingual bias, I’ll talk about it more extensively on my blog). If the linguist is not aware of this problem, they might not think of it during the testing phase and subsequently find a way to solve this problem.
LORDS OF XULIMA by Numantian Games
I worked on about 7700 lines of the localization file, exported and provided by creadipiu.com community. The localization was subsequently used by the developers as the official Italian localization on Steam, where it’s still available.
My portion of the project was pretty smooth to translate and didn’t show any kind of difficulties. However, playing the game was fundamental to understand the context. But that’s pretty common in video game localization.
The file couldn’t be imported into any CAT tools without damaging the coding, so the main issue was with inconsistencies: I had to manually write down a little glossary to avoid them. Fortunately, Notepad++ is very easy to use, although its suggestion system is quite simple, and so somehow unfit for this kind of work.
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Character Background
A little about me so that you know what I can do.
I’m Elena and I do two things really well and with passion: gaming and translating.
I level up your video game by boosting Italian gamers’ experience and making them feel at home.
Briefly, I help you with the localization into Italian of your video game, having in mind your game’s spirit on one end and Italian gamers on the other.
How do I do that?
Soon said. I’m a gamer since I was a child. My first platform was the glorious Commodore 64, fancy that!
After 2 years in the fan translation community and helping several indie developers, I put these experiences together into LocalizationFTW in 2017, and started offering my services to the video game industry as a professional.
What I do now is to bring your game to the next level.
I localize your game in a great fashion and let the Italian gamers experience it in full.
Having a vast experience in gaming, I know how it should feel like and I know how to recreate the same atmosphere your game has when you entrust me with it.
Give your game an extra skill. Contact me and let’s have a talk.
Character Sheet
So that you know I’m the right one for your crew.
Journal
Notes worth remembering.
