How Long Does Localization Typically Take?

Video games localization is commonly defined as a process that aims at adapting a game’s content to another culture through the translation of written content, as well as visual and graphic modifications needed to suit that target region. However, localization is better interpreted as a strategy that puts players first – after all, there’s no business success without player engagement and retention.

Understanding localization as a strategy is the first step to ensure a game’s relevance. But there’s an essential question to ask before searching for and setting up a team of different experts: how long does localization typically take?

As previously mentioned, localization goes beyond translation. It encompasses adjustments to text, audio, visuals, cultural references, jokes, and more!

In the video game world, it’s all about the gaming experience – hence the focus on offering relatable, natural, enjoyable gameplay.

Once we understand that the goal of video game localization is to offer players immersive experiences, it becomes clear that professionals from different fields are required to achieve the desired results: from translators and reviewers to graphic designers, game writers, and quality assurance testers.

In this article, we’ll focus on the linguistic and functional side of things to get an idea of the time required for the translation, review, testing, and implementation of a game’s localization process. Besides that, we’ll also understand why the planning and budgeting step is crucial to prevent bigger issues from happening after the game is launched.

a) Project Scope

There are games of every size, genre, and textual density – which, not surprisingly, have a direct impact on the scope of each project.

To properly tackle each phase in the game’s localization process, accurate planning and budgeting set the tone for the complexity professionals will have to deal with. Think of colors, music, voice over, multimedia elements, technical jargon, and any culturally relevant aspect present in not only games, but also movies and series.

The key factor here is defining the project’s level of adaptation: from the game’s main menu and short store descriptions to full in-game localization and extra related content in different languages, anything is possible.

Finally, the language pairs and distance between these languages are also challenges to keep in mind.

b) The 3 T’s: Tools, Translators, and Timeline

With the project’s scope and needs in hand, it is time to allocate resources, build your pool of talents, and set the timeline for each phase. In other words: choose the CAT tool or TMS translators and reviewers will work on, and the deadline for deliveries.

The first T is important to keep consistency, build a term base and integrate it with a glossary, and be able to share it with all the linguists. But to find the ideal tool, make sure you know what you are looking for.

Time to calculate how many translators and reviewers the game’s size and scope demand. It is important to highlight that the amount of words translators can handle per day varies depending on the system being used, the quality of the automated translations and of the source text, the content type, the deadline, and some other factors, such as whether machine translation is applied or not.

On average, human translation output is 300 words per hour or 2,500 per day (and let’s keep in mind that translators often work for more than one client simultaneously).

After translation is completed, it is time for review - which, ideally, should be performed by a different pair of eyes. The goal of the review stage is to ensure grammatical accuracy, correct spelling, target text reliability compared to the source, quality, consistency, tone, and style (to name a few).

Clear communication with the team of translators and reviewers assists project managers when planning and executing deadlines in a timely manner, thus ensuring customer satisfaction and the project’s success.

The combination of budget, deadlines, and talents is a good starting point to estimate the timeline of 75% of the project.

What are we missing?

c) Testing and QA

Before diving into the realm of quality assurance testing, let’s not forget about buffer time (just in case anything goes wrong - because something always happens and you don’t want to lose your credibility). You can read more about it here.

We still have 25% of the project to be finished – this time, by linguistic and functional testers.

There are several types of testing, but these two tend to be performed more frequently because they look for what can be improved in the overall game performance, textual inconsistencies and inaccuracies, user interface truncations, console terminology/compliance, and several other metrics.

Again, the time needed to complete QA (which includes preparing and running test cases, reporting bugs, having bugs fixed by developers, and performing regression testing) is not set in stone. All these steps must take into account the time needed from initial rounds of testing and the launch of a new patch for users.

Here, it is common to have the client decide how many hours will be allocated for testing or, at least, what will be tested.

Again, it depends on the budget, expected deadline and quality, number of professionals hired, and level of testing desired: full game, main menu, voice over and subtitles, specific sections, linguistic only, or all of the above.

By now, it is safe to assume that everything depends on several factors, but one thing is certain: you can never plan too far ahead.

Including localization in the project development stage is helpful not only to project managers and agencies but also to clients and the success of their localized games. That’s why localization is a strategy, rather than a process, that can take games to the next level.

Besides that, working with a detailed scope will shape other decisions, such as tools, deadlines, and buffer time.

The clearer these details are, the better the communication will be. Planning, executing, and having time to fix any potential problems are not that hard to accomplish, but a lot of things can happen until final delivery – and client satisfaction relies heavily on our ability to allocate our resources to ensure their game’s success.