As the global gaming community continues to grow, game developers and publishers are looking for ways to make the most of this expanding market. And of all growth strategies in the world, it is best for them to adopt translation services and make their games multilingual. This often necessitates working with a video game translation agency. But a question arises here. Is it really worthwhile to invest in professional translation services for your games?
Let’s Weigh the Pros and Cons of Gaming Translation
If you’re a game developer then you should give careful thought to whether or not you should translate your games into multiple languages. Whichever decision you make will have its set of advantages and drawbacks. So, there is no straightforward answer to this question.
In order to make the right decision, you will have to evaluate your particular business goals and strategies. What we mean by this is that you can weigh the different pros and cons that gaming translation can bring to your business. Doing so should enable you to make the right choice.
So, What are the Pros of Gaming Translation?
i) Wider market reach
Translation and localizing your game would be not easy. First of all, it will require you to find the right partner from among the top game localization companies out there. However, if you’re able to execute it nicely with the help of the right provider, you can definitely attract millions of global players to your businesses.
According to statistics, the worldwide gamer community for English games is around 42 million. However, this global community is not just confined to English games. In Russia, there are roughly 1.75 million users who prefer games in their native Russian language. Similarly, there are almost 8.4 million German players who want to play games in their German language. So, if you can translate your games into the preferred language of the users, you can definitely entice them to buy your game.
ii) Higher Potential for Sales
What happens when you translate your games? They are now accessible to a wider worldwide audience and a bigger market. All this brings huge sales potential to your thriving gaming business. Because players love to spend money if they can relate to your business and you can respect their preferences. For example, if you consider the contribution of Chinese players to the gaming industry, they spend more than $43 billion. Likewise, some other non-English countries with the highest spending include Germany, South Korea, and Japan. The players of these 3 nations collectively spend more than $30 billion.
iii) Better Online Game Rankings
Do you know that the majority of video game downloading happens in countries that don’t speak English as their native language? This is true as the recent data shows. What does this mean? This means you must rank high in results when they perform searches for games in their native languages. This is only possible when you make your games available in multiple languages. This way Google will rank you higher in those target regions and you’ll be able to tap an extended international audience.
What are the Cons of Gaming Translation?
i) Additional Costs
Every new business opportunity comes at a cost and gaming translation is no exception. For each target language, you will have to spend hundreds and even thousands of dollars. This cost depends on various factors. For instance, the complexity of the language will play a key role in this process. Similarly, you may not need to pay just for text translation, but for other things such as multimedia localization. For simple translation, the average rate is $.15 per word, but it varies from language to language. For some languages, you will have to pay an extra rate. The rate of proofreading is normally half of the general translation rate.
ii) Risk of Poor Translation
The translation industry is full of so many professional agencies and freelancers ready to take up your translation challenge. But you have to keep your game away from inexperienced or generalists. You can’t leave your gaming translation to a generalist who has been rendering everything from game translation to medical translation to website localization services. Be extremely picky and work only with specialists who know your business and have years of experience in it. Otherwise, you will run the risk of poor translations.
The Final Remarks
Consider these pros and cons and do more research to find out whether gaming translation would be the right or wrong move for your business at the moment. However, if you just consider the points mentioned above, there is definitely a huge potential for game developers if they consider translating and localizing their games. However, there could be some exceptions to it as well. Like if a video game does contain much dialogue in it, or has a premise that’s familiar to the target country.
