In the previous approach, we neglected the quality of the translation.
However, I doubt that this mindset reflects the majority.
During one of our weekly meetings,Seba Gioseffimentioned an alternative approach.
Seba creditedChris Zukowskiwith this insight, although we couldn’t locate a corresponding blog post; it might have been a tweet or similar.
What we did discover was a blog post where he discusses theimpact of translating your Steam pageand acomment on Steamworks:
Tip: If you translate the content on your store page into languages that you are considering supporting, you can look at regional wishlists for your game to get a sense of where your game might be popular and which languages might warrant higher priority for translation of your game.
This presents an intriguing approach to addressing the cost of localization with limited resources:
- Translate the Steam page using LLMs.
- Analyze wishlist distribution.
- Conduct human translations for regions with significant wishlists and LLM translations for others (or omit translation entirely for those regions).
I place more trust in an LLM’s ability to translate marketing text tailored for Steam than in localizing an entire game accurately.
What I find compelling about this approach is its utility even when lacking funds to translate into languages with the most wishlists.
Rather than scrambling to find collaborators for numerous languages, you can focus your efforts on languages with the highest wishlist counts.
Based on my experience, wishlist numbers decrease rapidly, with only 2 or 3 languages having significant wishlists while others have very few.
Tomorrow, we will explore the third approach, in which we rely on “old” mindsets.
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