Lost in Translation: making the game multilingual

I have released a game made with Unity and all the text is in English. Now I'm adding new languages for the game. I started by using Google Translate, but I know it's not the best thing to do. I was wondering if it could be good idea to start a thread here where we could gather all the most needed words for games in different languages? Menus etc. We could also help each other with the short descriptions of the game in app stores etc.

I'm finnish so I can translate for finnish if needed. I'm sure there are people all around the world who could help with their native language.

Something like this:

English: Play
Finnish: Pelaa
Spanish: Jugar

English: Quit
Finnish: Sulje
Spanish: Salir

If there is anyone who speaks Spanish, I sure could use some help. For example how do you translate "Highscore"?

English: Highscore
Finnish: Ennätykset
Spanish: ?

 

Best way, use a asset from the store to get the keywords - there is many,keywords are then send to spreadsheet. You then pay a translator online add translations to the spreadsheet, then you localize game, then your done

 

Do you have some recommendation for good asset from the store?

I just found this document, I was thinking something like this:

Common words translation for games
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Al1cNCkGdEJfdF8xX0dsaHl6ZVpzMDF2OW9JaWVWMVE#gid=0

 

If you want a quality translation of your game -- or any other product -- you should get someone who is a native speaker of the destination language and also well fluent in the source language. This way you get not just the words translated, but the meanings as well. Automated systems can't handled nuance, slang, or intent.

The intent is really important. You don't want your players getting confused or seeing through your translation because you translated literally "push the button" and ended up telling them to "move it across the screen".

 

ZOMG. This, a million times this. You simply cannot get good translation without a person who speaks the language and instructions or screenshots for that person to help them translate. There are often many ways to say something, many of which can be terrible when translated directly. This quote is a great example of a correct translation producing really terrible results.

 

Yes, what I was trying to suggest was that since there are people that natively speak many different languages reading and writing here in Unity Forums we could help each other out.

Finnish is my native language, so if you have any question about finnish translations I could help. You could help with your native langauge and so on. With single words or smaller text like the descriptions of the game you have.

I'm not making aventure game with tons of dialog. In my game there are just simple menus like: PLAY, HIGHSCORES, NEXT, PREVIOUS, CONTINUE etc.

These are just simple words, but of course if you translate word "play" it can mean ten different things in different cultures and languages. So I was wondering that it would be good to have this place where you could find all the right game related words. To have a page where native speaking people could tell which are the right words to use in game context. It seems that someone else has also tought about that and this Google Document really looks good. There are Finnish translations for these common game words in here as well and I can tell you they are all right.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Al1cNCkGdEJfdF8xX0dsaHl6ZVpzMDF2OW9JaWVWMVE#gid=0

I was looking for the word "Highscore" in Spanish for example and found out that it's "Puntuación máxima". Anyone here speaking native Spain can correct with that if it's wrong.

When it comes to my project I will in the end show game screenshots to my different friends speaking different native languages, but I'm not going to start by asking them to do all the work. They can just point out if they find bigger errors by reading the menus trough.

I quess best way would be to just pay for the translation to the professionals to do the work.

But this was just an idea of gathering all the native speaking people here making games and helping each other to correct the translations. Kind of unite all the native speaking knowledge here - this is Unity after all. It would be great to have that kind of thread somewhere in the internet.

If you have text/descrition that needs to be translated to finnish just leave it here and I'll start.