[From the editors of "Gambling XP"] (JavaScript:;)

Company Nikita.Online I suggested that we publish our own article on the localization of a recently launched role King of Kings 3. The material seemed to us interesting and informative. It so happened that the process of localization of online games is familiar to us firsthand, and on the basis of our own experience we can state – the authors of the article really adequately and indicatively describe the features of the translation of the game from Chinese into Russian. We publish it as it is, unchanged.

About King of Kings 3. This is the latest game in the line of projects published by Nikita. Now in Nongamstop Casino the stage of open beta testing. King of Kings 3 is a fantasy online role, in which the main emphasis is on a powerful guild system and large-scale PVP-parishes, and the players predictably find out which of them is worthy of the king of kings.

Open beta testing in early October King of Kings 3 became the largest project Nikita.Online From the point of view of the volume and complexity of localization work. More than 750,000 English words demanded translation into Russian, as usual, in the shortest possible time. The studio was chosen as a localization vendor Levsha Games , previously successfully translated "Fantasy". Below are memories Fedor Kulikov And Fedor Bonch-Osmolovsky , in charge of the localization of King of Kings 3 on the side of the vendor, relative to miracles and surprises that Taiwanese developers prepared from Lager Network.

We hope that this material will help someone fill less cones when translating from “Asian English” or, at least, will cheer up.

Every time our studio receives an order for the localization of a game produced by Chinese or Korean developers, we begin to prepare for a real adventure. It always has a place for unexpected plot turns and breathtaking linguistic exploits. Damnes usually lies in translation from their native Asian language into English, which developers usually do on their own before selling the game. Either in Asia other criteria for high-quality translation, or in this process they deliberately save, but as a result, the English text of such projects differs from the normal English text about the same as different from the Apple iPhone and its Chinese version with two SIM cards.

When we started working with the King of Kings 3 project, it naturally impressed us with the volume of content. The developers have created many races, classes, spells, objects, weapons and tasks. In general, they worked for glory. Unfortunately, having played the English version and swinging the character to about half of the “Levelkapa”, we realized: for a good translation into Russian, the wisdom of Confucius and the dexterity of Jackie Chan will be needed. The terms dispersed so that it became impossible to complete part of the tasks in principle, and some would not be fulfilled without assistant in tasks (a function that allows you to automatically direct the character where he needs now). The names of skills simply “moved”: the English list was integrated into the game incorrectly, so the skill a corresponded to the English name B, the skill C is the English name of the skill D, and so on.

Twice a day – at 12:30 and 19:30 – an intelligence test in King of Kings 3, in which everyone can participate in King of Kings 3. As a result, participants receive a certain amount of experience, consistent with their successes on the intellectual field.

Each territory where the game is published can add its own questions to the test, use, so to speak, official position.

Having looked at the text, we suggested that several groups were translated into English from the Chinese game, which were coordinated with each other very weakly. What is there – they were not at all coordinated. At first glance, it seemed that everything was fine. Even the terminology inside the translations of one group coincided in the interface, and in the description of the tasks, and in the rest of the text: prompts, weapons and locations. Only one annoying fact spoiled everything – there were few coincidences between translations of different groups. Very little. Therefore, the same NPC often became literally “a man with a thousand names”: Jane, Jan (jan), yang (jang) and Janis (Yanis). And because of the features of Chinese phonetics, which does not distinguish, for example, the sounds [l] and [p], as well as in certain situations-[m] and [n], Lena (Lena) could become Rem (REM). The task was especially indicative in which the girl tried to find out which of the two guards of the southern gate of the city writes her romantic letters. Unfortunately, in the English text, each guard had three names (one pair was mentioned in the girl’s speech, there was another on the map, and in the description the assignment was the third), therefore, the story turned into a real love seven -Ugon.

Another “joyful” moment is the absence in Chinese culture, and as a result, and in Chinese, a clear division of magical forces into good and evil. And if something else can still be understood about the original Chinese characters, then everything becomes much more complicated for the borrowed: there is a suspicion that in a Chinese translation and a fairy-cross from Cinderella, and a witch from a fairy tale about a gingerbread house will be determined by one concept-“ female being endowed with magical power ". You ask what all this is related to King of Kings 3? The most direct! The developers created Paradise in the game (with angels and archangels) and hell (with devils, demons and their minions). Only because of the use of the same character, the good Cupid easily turned into a demon.

Like most games, the localization set of King of Kings 3 contains ID of each phrase and its option in English and the original language. Particular caution should be shown when working with tags and variables. The name of the Excel sheet tells us, with the texts of the tasks of what level we are dealing.

But still in Chinese there is no grammatical category of number! The words “wolf” and “wolves” look exactly the same, therefore, from the story of the character, one can not always draw an unambiguous conclusion as to whether the hero should kill one gray wolf, which holds in fear the whole district, or the legion of gray wolves, from which there is no living local farmers.

If you have ever read reviews of Chinese or Korean machines in automobile magazines, you probably know a complaint about the fact that "low Asians have not provided enough space for tall Europeans". Oddly enough, about the same problem has to be faced with the localization of Asian games: the hieroglyphic letter allows you to convey the meaning of the phrase “sacred palette from the dragon bone with jade spikes” in four symbols, which is clearly not enough for English or Russian. And in Chinese there is a hieroglyph "WAN", meaning "ten thousand". And Chinese developers often use it to indicate, say, the number of fox skins in a backpack, leaving no room for Arab zeros. Compare: "2 万" and "20,000"

In general, we just start to translate this text from English to great and powerful, playing the Russian version of King of Kings 3 would be very difficult. But such an approach would definitely not like the symbol of our studio to the Tula craftsmen, so a proven technique was used – to use the text in the original Asian without the participation of translators who know it (fortunately, we had the original Chinese text). This approach is built on the use of automatic translators to verify data in the English text. Very often Google Translate and Babelfish allow you to open some facts that, when you first glance on the text, could not be thought of.

System Messages developers King of Kings 3 preferred to dump in the fraternal XML mogil. "To the joy" of the Nikita localization department.Online and employees of Levsha Games studio.

In addition, the Chinese language has an important feature that makes life easier for translators – nouns in it are not inclined. This allowed us to realize the following trick. After the formation of three -language glossary (Chinese – English – Russian), using a special script, we analyzed game texts in Chinese for the presence of terms from glossary in them. As a result, we were able to detect and eliminate a lot of discrepancies. So, for example, the script could tell us that in this task the Chinese text contains the term “emerald”, and the English text of the same task invites players to go in search of “mineral”. Remembering the inconsistency of the English translation, we focused on the Chinese source and turned the mineral into emerald.

Finally – another small joke. The game has a quiz, during which all players can answer twenty questions and get additional experience. Just twenty questions and three answer options for each. So, in this quiz was, for example, such a question.

A Group of Dolphins is Called a … (a group of dolphins is called …)

Answer options:

1. Herd (herd)
2. School (school)
3. School (school)

At the same time, the third version of the answer was correct, but the second, alas, no.

[About authors] (javaScript:;)

Fedor Bonch-Osmolovsky

The first gaming translations began to be done in 2004, studying in the second year of Moscow State University. Since the fall of 2007 – localization manager in the company " Buka ", In the spring of 2009 became one of the founders of the Levsha Games Localization Studio.

Fedor Kulikov

Games began to study in the mid-90s. Since then, I managed to work with almost all Russian publishers and localizers – from " Media-2000 »Before It territory. In the spring of 2009, he became one of the Levsha Games Localization Studio.