Is it a good idea to translate your game in Latin American
Spanish?
When it comes to localize a game into Spanish there’s some
confusion.
Confusion #1Should I localize it in more than 1 version of
Spanish?
(Potential benefit:
Improve player’s retention and increase customer experience by understanding
completely the content of the game)
Confusion #2 is it worth it to localize in more than 1
variant of Spanish?
(Will I get a
favorable ROI?)
My personal opinion is:
·
YES
it’s a good idea to localize a game in European Spanish and in Latin-American
Spanish. I do believe it’s worth it.
Show me the money!
It’s worth it from an economical perspective. According to gameindustry.biz
the Latin American region is becoming a market as important as Southeastern
Asia. There’s revenue of $4 billion in 2015 and there’s also a great
penetration of mobiles games and tablets.
Another interesting aspect of the Latin America market it’s
the rhythm of growing year after year, 18%….. Hhhmmm this is tempting, isn’t
it?
Show me the content!
In terms of number of native speakers the data are also
quite overwhelming
According to Wikipedia
Spanish is the second more spoken language (over 440 millions of native
speakers). Out of this impressive number, Spain only represents 10% of these speakers. The other 90% come from
20 different countries.
Does this mean that you need to translate in a version for
Spain and another 20 versions to cover Uruguay, Argentina, Mexico, Puerto Rico
etc etc?
No. Wait, don’t panic yet!, there are some approaches to
solve this problem.
There are differences in all these variants of Spanish and
definitely the terminology varies.
For example our famous Tapas in Spain it will be Picadita in
Argentina, Picoteo in Chile, Botana in México o Pasapalo in Venezuela.
But the positive aspect is that : grammar; syntax and
punctuation vary much less! Phew!
During my career in the localization industry I have seen
the following approaches to unify the localization needs for the South American
region.
·
Use very simple grammar structures
·
Use active verbs and avoid passive structures
·
Use adjective wisely. i.e Cool has so many
similar translations in different regions that it might end being a localism
only understood in a region. In this specific example Incredible or Fantastic
would be more accurate to find later the right adjective in Latam
·
Use dictionaries such as Real Academia de la Lengua Española to improve accuracy
·
Use Google results when you are not sure which
word to choose i.e car, might be “coche”, “carro” “camioneta”, “auto or
automóvil”. This tip might help you to find a universal term. When you Google
it you find the most popular words, and this can give you an indication of the
term to choose.
I hope these tips and reflections might help someone, and obviously I
understand that a decision of localizing into 2 “Spanishes” depends on your budget.
For a small developer or an Indie studio this approach will not work. In
that case the translation into FIGS, Korean/Japanese/Chinese etc etc it’s a
higher priority; however, for other developer or bigger Studios I can see a lot
of potential and benefits to go with a version for Spain and another for South
America.
¡Hasta luego! Thanks for reading and enjoy this video!!!
@yolocalizo