A personal blog about whatever comes to mind
Just to have some fun, I made what could be called a “zine” in Decker, a cool tool for creating interactive stuff in Hypercard-style. This time around, it’s just text and a few images explaining, very superficially, how the video game localization field works. You can check it here: LocZine by lokeloski
In the localization industry, we not only translate games’ contents, but also their changelogs, patch updates, news, and marketing copies. Usually, it’s all fine, except when there’s an upcoming event and we have to start checking clocks and doing math because it will be a global launch or event and we have to “translate” the…
If the head of a gaming company came to me and asked how to save money on localization instead of automatically going the “IA”/MT/LLM route, I would recommend to: Doing a bit of this prep work might seem expensive at the start, but it would save so much money in the long run while also…
It’s fundamental to grasp your native language at a deeper level than any other so you can effectively communicate what the original text says Video game localization isn’t an easy job, be it due to the nature of the job itself —translating something without seeing the whole picture, because it doesn’t exist yet — or…
Or: how to critically appraise any kind of creative endeavor without acting like a fool or an asshole This is an old post that’s been sitting for a while in my drafts, and I ruminate about what to write in it for some time after reading the article below. There’s actually nothing I could add…
Some people think translation can be done fast because “the text is already written”, but we must remember that localization is a creative endeavor, so it takes a lot of time and energy to make something worthwhile Usually, in Brazilian Portuguese, we consider that one translator takes closer to 8 hours to translate 3,000 words. Obviously,…
One thing to be noted when someone talks about “editing” video game translation is that it could mean: Every project always has all of the above happening at some point, that’s why it’s impossible to claim full authorship about any aspect of the job. I might sound like a broken record but it is, literally,…
The Shin Megami Tensei series just had a game released with a Brazilian Portuguese translation for the first time And I had the honor of helping lead its localization effort. Seriously, I’ve never thought I would see the day an Atlus game would be translated into Brazilian Portuguese, much less with my involvement. As a…
When you have to come up with an accent that doesn’t actually exist in your language, things can get hard and a bit weird When I was just a few years in the field, I had the chance to work on a AAA in which the story revolved around piracy, assassination, and the Caribbean. It’s…
Or, to be more specific, “translating a game while keeping the mouth movement of the original voice acting in mind” Unsurprisingly, this is a topic that’s not very well-known. Bear in mind that TV shows and movies also do something similar, but since I’ve never worked in these industries, I’ll keep the focus on video…