Game Localization

---
name: game-localization
description: "Translate and adapt video games for target locales, preserving UI length limits, voice-over timing, and gameplay context."
metadata:
  tags: "localization, video-games, game-localization, ui-text, voice-over, cultural-adaptation, linguistic-qa"
  source: "https://skilldb.dev/skills/translation-localization-skills/game-localization"
  pack: "translation-localization-skills"
  category: "Writing & Literature"
---

# Game Localization

## When to use this skill
Use when the user says things like:
- "localize a game's UI and dialogue"
- "adapt game text for a new language"
- "assist with voice-over localization and lip-sync timing"
- "prepare context docs for translators with screenshots"
- "plan localization early in development"


## Core Philosophy

Game localization adapts an interactive experience, not just text. Players make choices, read
UI elements under time pressure, hear voiced dialogue, and navigate menus — all of which
must feel native in the target language. Unlike document translation, game localization must
account for text length constraints in UI, voice-over timing, cultural sensitivity in
gameplay, and the player's ability to understand instructions and objectives during play.

## Key Techniques

- **String extraction and management**: Work with game text exported from code, maintaining variable placeholders.
- **Context documentation**: Provide translators with screenshots, character descriptions, and gameplay context.
- **UI text constraints**: Translate within character limits determined by button sizes and text fields.
- **Voice-over localization**: Adapt scripts for dubbing with attention to lip-sync and emotional performance.
- **Cultural content review**: Identify gameplay elements, visuals, or themes that need adaptation.
- **Linguistic QA**: Test the localized game in context to catch errors invisible in spreadsheets.

## Best Practices

1. Provide full context to translators — screenshots, character info, and gameplay situation for every string.
2. Design UI to accommodate text expansion (German is ~30% longer than English).
3. Use variables correctly in translated strings — word order changes across languages.
4. Handle gendered languages properly — provide variants for masculine, feminine, and neutral.
5. Localize all text — including UI, tutorials, error messages, and achievement descriptions.
6. Test the localized game by playing it, not just reading the translated text in a spreadsheet.
7. Plan for localization during development, not after the game is complete.

## Common Patterns

- **FIGS+CJK**: Prioritizing French, Italian, German, Spanish plus Chinese, Japanese, Korean.
- **Pseudo-localization testing**: Using modified source text to find UI and code issues before translation.
- **Voice-over pipeline**: Script adaptation → casting → recording → integration → QA.
- **Live service localization**: Ongoing translation for patches, events, and new content.

## Anti-Patterns

- Providing translators with decontextualized string spreadsheets without visual or gameplay context.
- Hard-coding text in images, making localization require graphic redesign.
- Concatenating translated string fragments to build sentences — this breaks in most languages.
- Shipping without linguistic QA, releasing text that is technically translated but contextually wrong.