I’m a native speaker living in Russia
– I know features of Russian language: idioms, mems, expressions. I have a linguistic feeling.
If you don’t want the translation to sound odd like “Superhero Shooter Games with Spiderman to defend City and kill hostile Mafia Bandit” – hire natives!
– I know Russian culture and pay attention to our people’s feelings. I’ll warn you, if your game insults Russian people.
In one game US drones attacked terrorists in Siberia. Siberia is a part of Russia, devs didn’t know it. Tensions between USA and Russia were high at those days, so I advised to replace “US drones” with “Allied drones”. If you don’t want to offend players and make them boycott your game – hire natives!
I use CAT-tools: memoQ, SDL Trados, OmegaT and Poedit
– It means consistency in translation of terms and phrases. No missed tags, breaking the game. No logic disrupted. No mistakes.
One missed tag can breake the game. Inconsistent translation of character names, locations or items confuse players. Grammatical mistakes disappoint players. Inconsistent translation of similar phrases breaks the inner logic of the game. Using CAT-tools grants no such mistakes.
I explore games by playing them
– Many translators don’t, and players get confused.
In “Might and Magic VI” droids were translated as druids – translators didn’t play the dungeon with droids, and they thought there should be no droids in fantasy game. But it was really droids. Robots. Now imagine, how players were confused with “druids” translation.
– I find text in boxes while plaing and shorten the translation to fit the box.
If not, the text is lost. Players hate when the text is lost. Especially when it’s an important story text or tutorials. Players also hate when the text goes far from the box’s boundaries – it spoils the game.
– I play the game to feel the atmosphere.
Game atmosphere is what makes people love the game. If the translator fails to keep it, players will play the game, but they won’t love the game.
I follow standards of game translation agencies
– I’ll do preliminary work with you before the translation starts.
We’ll discuss how to address a player, what symbols to use, string limits, use of “bad” words and so on: to avoid mistakes and misunderstanding. We’ll discuss more issues during the translation in google docs to clarify the context.
– I translate locations, names, items and so on according to standards.
If you don’t want to confuse players with “Poisonous Axe” instead of “Axe of Poison” and “Guildmage Shady Veteran” instead of “Veteran Guildmage of Shadows”- use standards.
I translated 175+ games / updates and related content to Russian
Platforms: Android / iOS, PC, Web, PlayStation X, Xbox One, Nintendo, Appl Watch.
Genres: RPG, shooter, puzzle, casual games, hidden objects, sports, quest, adventure, roguelike, action-arcade, racing, MOBA, strategy, sandbox, horror.
Most famous are “Mario + Rabbids® Kingdom Battle”(Ubisoft), “Synthetik” (FlowFire Games), and “Steep” (Ubisoft). Some other games I can’t mention due to NDA restrictions.
If you don’t want to confuse players with “Poisonous Axe” instead of “Axe of Poison” and “Guildmage Shady Veteran” instead of “Veteran Guildmage of Shadows”- use standards.