Translating mobile game content into 20 languages in less than 24 hours

mobile gamers

Mobile games undergo frequent updates, bringing in new features, patches, and events to keep the game as “alive” as possible, enticing players to open it again. That’s why it’s crucial to implement these changes swiftly and simultaneously in over a dozen languages.

Read our case study and discover how the locatheart team stands out in providing localised content across 20 languages in less than 24 hours.

 

Challenges and objectives

The primary challenge for mobile game developers lies in synchronising the release of new content across all languages. This ensures that every user, irrespective of their language, can enjoy the latest updates at the same time.

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Step 1: Receiving a project order with a short deadline

When faced with a project requiring a quick turnaround, we respond promptly. The project is given top priority, and we allocate specific tasks to individual team members, ensuring that project preparation is conducted with maximum efficiency and in the shortest possible time.

We collaborate closely with the client to establish the acceptable deadline for translation delivery, while also clarifying project-specific details.

While Discord serves as our primary in-house communication platform, we adapted to our client’s preferences by creating a shared channel on Slack. Coordinated communication among teams enables us to rapidly collect vital information, greatly expediting the project implementation.

In projects with extremely tight deadlines, quick decision-making is paramount. We always consider factors such as:

different time zones of our linguists,

translator availability,

volume of content to be translated.

Ensuring swift translation is essential to prevent issues when releasing updates for our client’s games.

Therefore, for projects demanding adaptability, we always select our most reliable and trusted translators, who tackle game-related assignments nearly daily, consistently delivering high-quality content.

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Step 2: Preparing project files and sending them to translators

Once we have all the crucial details, we’re ready to kick off a new project. To save time, we simultaneously prepare reference materials and select linguists suitable for the urgent task.

All the necessary files get a high-priority label and are swiftly sent to translators. We establish a deadline that provides translators with sufficient time to translate the content – thanks to efficient time management, our project managers can start conducting quality assurance processes and preparing deliverables for our client immediately after receiving the files from the translators.

Given the tight deadline, quick action is key – we don’t want any hiccups in communication between our client, project coordinators, and translators.

Keeping an eye on our query sheet guarantees prompt responses to any questions from translators, speeds up the delivery of translated content, and helps optimise the QA process.

Step 3: QA and sending the files back to the client

We use specialised software to validate translations, ensuring consistency with past projects and glossaries that we’ve created together with our client.

After confirming alignment with the game’s terminology and addressing any errors or typos, the refined project is promptly delivered to our client.

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Conclusions

For a record-breaking project, the whole process of translating content into 20 languages took us just 2 hours – from getting the files from our client to receiving translated content from our translators and sending the verified files to the client.

The combined efforts of the Games & Entertainment team at locatheart and our trusted linguists worldwide are the key contributors to this success.