Integrating Translated Assets

Integrating localized assets is time-consuming work because it involves a lot of file modification and file replacement. Basically, there are two major ways developers can handle this process. One way is for the developers to do the asset integration themselves and rely only on translators to provide the translated text. The benefits of this are that technical difficulties can easily be addressed, the integrity of the assets is maintained so they can easily be placed in the build without introducing any additional crash bugs, and the developer has more control over the time and resources. The drawbacks are that the developer has to spend additional development time and has to rely on translators to provide corrected text to fix some linguistic bugs. Furthermore, the developer often has to rely on a third party (usually international marketing) to approve the final versions. This can be very time-consuming, as the third party might go back and forth on minor bugs and hold up the release of the game.

The other way to integrate localized assets is to contract a localization house to do the translations, asset integration, and testing. The benefit to this is that the developer does not have to spend any additional time creating localized software. The developer just needs to provide a localization kit (discussed earlier in this article). The drawback is that the quality of the game can be compromised because no one is maintaining the same standards of quality for the voice-over actors, translations, and so forth. Moreover, some localization houses might not have the technical expertise to independently localize a game, resulting in the developer getting involved to fix a problem created by a translator's error. If you are going to use external vendors to completely localize your game, make sure they have experience localizing game software and the technical expertise to work with the assets.

After creating the initial set of translated assets, check them into a version control system so you can easily track them during the bug fixing phase. Version control is especially important if you have several people fixing bugs. Additionally, if you are working on multiple languages at one time, you can track each language more closely and avoid having German assets appear in a French version.