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Eurospeak: Localizing Games for the European Market As the industry is slowly gearing up for the spring and cranking out those all-important E3 demos, this year's first Eurospeak delves into the issue of game localization; an issue that is becoming more and more important in the EU markets. Both the Xbox and Playstation 2 have been featured in the general media as well as the games press during the very quiet beginning months of 2001. The latter, however, has mainly been attacked for the apparently problematic first batch of European units, mirroring the problems during launch of the original PAL Playstation, which also suffered from inferior construction when compared to the original Japanese units. Problems with the PS2 DVD playback, besides the maddening green RGB output, have mainly appeared as incompatibilities, with certain movies refusing to run at all. All the while, Sega of Europe has slowly begun to drop the price of the Dreamcast to £99. The move is very welcome, but the future of Sega's European Online Dreamarena service became uncertain when key-members of SOE's team were fired in early February. Sega-owned French developer No Cliché has also been cut-loose and currently it's not known if it's highly anticipated Dreamcast titles will see the light of day. Localization…those
little differences Translation and localization of games has, up until now, been a thorny issue for publishers. Both the media and consumers have expressed their dissatisfaction with the long duration it takes to localize some much-anticipated titles. For an example, Square took around 10 months to convert Final Fantasy VII into English but rush-jobs like Resident Evil result in comical results. "Jill, you the master of lock-picking" indeed. If US gamers think they have had it bad, Europeans suffer from even more delays. Cultural differences do come into play, but most of Europe likes to think it's perhaps a bit more lenient towards risqué content than Northern America. Of course, as many developers out there will mention, Germany is a completely different matter altogether. Many developers are more than familiar with the strict laws and censorship of that country when it comes to games. Despite being one of the biggest producers of adult video entertainment on the continent, violent games such as Quake, Soldier of Fortune and Carmageddon must be heavily altered to be eligible for release in Germany. Outsourcing different aspects of game development is becoming more common, and a part of this process is without a doubt localization. British company Babelmedia is a leading company in the field, having localized games of all magnitudes for a number of different publishers. Babelmedia director Ben Wibberley has dealt with many titles that have required careful localizing. "An
example of cultural differences in translation would encompass things
like the fact that the language quality of a French product needs to
be perfect because the French value their language and do not like bastardizations
of it," says Wibberley, "One good example that I have is when
we worked on the banner campaign for Dreamcast during Euro 2000. They
had based it on national stereotypes; the problem with this is that
the English have a particular stereotypical view of the Spanish which
is completely different to that of how a German might view them. Also
there were English insults which might be in colloquial use in the UK
but do not have any meaning in other languages so rather than a straight
translation we had to use equivalent insults or make them up ourselves
in line with the campaign."
German, Spanish, Italian and French audiences see 90 percent of the latest foreign films and TV shows dubbed into their native languages, why would they expect anything less from a $50 videogame? This is reflected in the local games media where the quality of the translation forms a major part of the overall score of a review. "We know, for example, that over 50 percent of all revenues from one of the top publishers in the world come from non-English speaking markets. However, over 80 percent of all games are still developed in the US or the UK -- so localization is becoming of tantamount importance to publishers. They are all now striving for transparently localized products," explains Wibberley While a large percentage of the continent would strongly argue that an all-English release is just fine, as the majority of gamers do speak and read English well enough to understand the intricacies of the latest Final Fantasy or Resident Evil title, the fact is that localizing titles is becoming more and more important. The effect that localizing a title has on sales is not to be underestimated. Disney's titles don't completely rely on the strength of their license to sell in Europe, but on the competent localization into many languages that makes a game far easier to pick up for a major games buying force; parents. Doing some customization to a title to boost sales is certainly something developers as well as publishers need to think about in the beginning of the development process. "Until recently publishers were content to use generalist localization companies, but given the importance of the market, they are now looking to work with localization companies which specialize exclusively in the games industry. This is because gamers are possibly some of the most demanding consumers, and they will not accept poorly localized product," says Wibberley. In the past just localizing a major Japanese title into English took up to a year, as was the case with Square's Final Fantasy 7 (which, granted, has far too much dialogue anyway) but the latest addition to the series appeared in English-form only five months behind the Japanese version. Publishers are putting an effort into localizing products, but ever-escalating development costs have both publishers and developers worrying about the expense of doing multiple translations. This is all the more reason to begin planning the localization at the beginning of development. "Localization is definitely becoming part of the overall development cycle, but its still seen as an afterthought -- developers naturally concentrate on the getting out the English version first. Costs and time efficiencies are considerable if localization is an integral part of the development cycle and is planned for from the outset," says Wibberley. "It's important to point out that translation is only an element of localization. There are cultural issues that have to be taken into account as well as legal etc.," he cautions, "Publishers such as Infogrames insist on sim-shipping their products and this will eventually become the norm." Current and future consoles offer mass-storage capabilities thanks to DVD, in terms of space this makes localization into various languages easier. At the same time, the sheer volume of audio data is increasing and the need for good voice-actors as well. "We regularly audition actors and keep links with talent agencies all over Europe and Scandinavia. As titles get bigger and the convergence with film continues, big name actors are making more regular appearances," says Wibberley. Several publishers in Europe, such as Ubisoft, have started to offer their games with several different language options in DVD format, which is a more expensive option and, in the end, it's the consumer who ends up paying for it. Based on current sales, it's been worth it for the publishers. Another publisher doing its job is Konami, a company that has expanded its operations across Europe in the past 12 months. Konami will be releasing translated PAL versions of dialogue-heavy Playstation 2 titles Zone of the Enders and Shadow of Memories only weeks after the Japanese versions have shipped. Hopefully, this a sign of things to come. Thomas
Puha still very much likes his titles in their original language with
subtitles. ________________________________________________________
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