Discover how my expertise can be your key to establishing a strong presence in the German market.

As my portfolio showcases, I bring a wealth of experience and a profound understanding of all the aspects surrounding the localization of computer, video, and board games as well as literature and other types of text.

Let’s open the doors to the German market for your project!

Services

  • Translation

    Genuinely handcrafted translation of on-screen text, dialogue, cut scenes, user interface (UI), marketing materials, store descriptions, and all other elements requiring a German version. I believe in the importance of the human touch and never use machine translation algorithms.

    The software solutions I use most frequently are memoQ and Phrase. If you happen to outline your story, dialogues, and game mechanics in articy:draft, I’ve got you covered, too!

    Beyond the realm of gaming, I’m well-versed in translating a wide spectrum of content, both fiction and non-fiction. Whether you have a captivating novel, an engaging short story, or a book about niche aspects of military history, I’m here to provide a seamless transition to the German market.

  • Transcreation

    At times, a mere translation of text falls short, especially when it involves pop-cultural references that may not resonate with the target audience. In such cases, content adaptation becomes essential, ensuring that the original essence is preserved while making it relatable and meaningful to German consumers.

    This nuanced approach to localization goes beyond words and delves into the cultural nuances and references that create a connection with your audience, guaranteeing a more engaging and authentic experience.

  • Historical/Cultural Consulting

    Is your video game, novel, or movie set in Germany, featuring characters of German origin or highlighting aspects of German culture and history? Do you aim to ensure that German dialogues are not only accurate but authentically immersive and free from grammatical errors? Are you uncertain about the historical accuracy of World War II uniform designs you've chosen?

    With my extensive translation experience and an academic background in contemporary history, particularly focused on political movements and military history prior to 1945, I can provide the expertise you need to ensure accuracy and authenticity in every aspect of your project.

Some Basic Thoughts On Localization

Localizing a video game is not an easy feat, and taking the aspects of localization into account early on will save you a lot of trouble further down the road.

Start Early!

This point can’t be stressed often enough. Even if you don’t have plans or the budget to offer your game in more than one language at launch, consider making it localization-ready from the start. Invest some time and love and take the following aspects into consideration.

Project Documentation And Context

When I start to work on a project, it’s paramount to get a grasp of the game. I need to understand the basic plot, what the world or universe looks like, how the narrative can branch, who the characters are, and how the game mechanics work. You’ll probably sit on a pile of game design documents, story summaries, character descriptions, screenshots of items etc. It’s crucial to share these. I need to know what’s going on in order to do my work. Don’t worry about confidentiality, as we’ll sign a non-disclosure agreement anyway.

Context also extends to how you store information in your game. Please keep this in mind when naming your strings. A dialogue fragment with no additional context named “123456789” will make me cry, whereas an ID named “DialogueChapter1_01” in combination with a comments along the lines of “Speaker: Billy”, “Addressee: Cathy”, “Situation: Triggered upon entering the city after beating the first boss” will make me smile.

Technical Aspects

Plan some extra space when designing your user interface. Even if everything fits perfectly in, let’s say, English, it might turn into a clusterfuck in another language. German translations tend to turn out about 20% longer than their English equivalents. “Items” become “Gegenstände”, “Skills” turn into “Fertigkeiten”… You get the gist. While there’s always (or in most cases) a way to make things fit, forced shortenings never help to achieve great results. Thus, from a localization perspective, it’s advisable to go for adaptive UI whenever possible.

Carefully choose your fonts. Many languages use special characters, so make sure they are supported. Apart from that, translators love non-breaking spaces.

Think twice about how and where to use variables in strings. Also keep in mind

It is often better to duplicate strings instead of using one standard string for many occasions. For example, “The $weapon weighs $weight pounds.” would cause two issues in German: The article “The” would change depending on the gender of $weapon (“The sword”—“Das Schwert”, but “The axe”—“Die Axt”) and $weight would have to be recalculated to a kg value to make sense to a German audience.

And pretty-pretty please do not develop your own translation tool and believe me when I say that the established tools available on the market are better suited for the task.

If information related to the story or puzzles is contained in visual assets, it’s worth considering a “deep localization” approach to not just display a translation as an overlay but translate it directly. This can be an option viable for classic adventures to prevent potentially game-breaking issues.

It’s Teamwork!

Yes, you pay a lot of money to get your game localized. Yet, we are in the same boat. As a translator, I rely on you to help to clarify the ambiguities I will for sure stumble upon. This is usually done via a query sheet. Please take this part of our cooperation seriously as it will play an important role during the process. Communication Is Key!

If there’s a playable version, let me play it, ideally with access to debugging options. Actually seeing where a string pops up in the game often beats long descriptions.

Further Reading

The International Game Developers Association (IGDA) offers a free and awesome guide detailing best practices for game localization which goes far beyond the thoughts I compiled here. Highly recommended reading!