itch.io

Hi there. I wonder what was the biggest or most interesting challenge for your when localising Adventures from Another World into your language (or in general)?

I found the "approaches" tricky and I have seen quite some variantion when comparing the German translations.

And what about "trouble"? It can cause trouble but is also some kind of weakness, too.

How did you tackle the "time jump", when the Fate Dice™ and the Deck of Fate are mentioned, purchasable on www.evilhat.com? Did you keep the years 2013/2014 in it? And have you kept the "future" tense in "The Deck of Fate will be available from Evil Hat in 2013 or 2014"?

I am curious about your ideas.

Voting period is over. Where can we see the results of the rating?

Sun, 11 Jul 2021 05:25:10 GMT

I had expected another tab in the project overview, dipslaying the ratings/voting result. But I couldn't find any. What's the schedule in this regards? How and where can we see the results of the rating?

Building LocJAM RPG: part 1 and 2

Tue, 08 Jun 2021 23:21:55 GMT

Context

I really wanted to reboot the LocJAM.

Translators are very passionate people, but they are also constantly forced to work alone, dispersed throughout the world.

When you give them any chance to interact, they usually eye each other with suspect for about 5 minutes, before they excitedly start sharing anecdotes and war stories for hours.

We saw it in action with the old LocJAM translation contest, and it was magical, and I wanted more.

But the old formula had two major flaws.

First of all, it was extremely complex to manage. Server, mailing list, jury, prizes... Every single step involved dozens of people and skills beyond my expertise.

And it was competitive. Sure, it was deliberately designed to water down the competition as much as possible. Any team size allowed, any skill level allowed, we had up to 16 different "winners" per language... It wasn't really possible to plan a sure way to victory, but that didn't stop some from trying (and being a nuisance in the process)

Solution and moving forward

So we moved to Itch.io

And with that, the infrastructure problem shrunk from self-managing our own everything to having an account on a platform handling dozens of jams every day. For free.

And the competition vanished into a public vote. So there even isn't a prize to aim for, just the hope to appear a little higher on a page ranking.

I think it's a good change, as it removes the main obstacles that were stopping us.

Sure, a few people might not enjoy the event as a jam, and wonder why joining if there are no prizes. Not much we can do about it.

But also, we must accept we're no longer on our own, but surrounded by whole new people. Would we be welcome? And how would these systems built for game development work for game localization?

We had to give it a try, as soon as possible.

Our next door neighbor: Pompous Trash Jam

Moving forward... into new problems

I really like board-game translations. Not professionally: unfortunately we only had one paid project in this area, and they somehow managed to print Google Translated text instead of ours.

But as a learning tool, board-games are amazing. First of all, they must leave absolutely no ambiguity about rules: a videogame can carry on if you don't understand it right away, but a board-game will simply fall apart. And while you try to make all your explanations as clear and precise as possible, don't forget to be readable and entertaining or people will just stop reading.

There's a lot of skill involved, and it all comes in a compact, unassuming package.

And very importantly in this phase, a package that's technologically simple. Preparing videogames so that they are easily translatable is always a challenge. Strings have to be carved out and moved to an editable file, fonts have to be added, checks must be implemented... It all takes time.

But analog games can be translated pretty much as-is.

And we had found a lovely candidate: [NAME REDACTED] the manual for an RPG game, lovingly illustrated and formatted. And best of all: it already came under a Creative Commons license that would allow us to translate it and tweak it right away, freely.

Or so we thought.

Because the text was indeed freely available under Creative Commons. But illustrations and formatting were copyrighted and out of reach. We had to create our own, without much time or budget. And so we did.

Your first LocJAM workshop: a few tips

Fri, 04 Jun 2021 01:07:23 GMT

Over the past years, workshops at universities have been one of the most engaging aspects of LocJAM.

Students are always delighted to work hand-on on a real game, and comparing notes with friends and colleagues is always a fascinating learning moment.

Here are a few tips for a LocJAM workshop from Carme Mangiron Hevia at the University of Barcelona.

-Introduce LocJam, its history and the format for the current edition.

-Explain what game localization is, main challenges and priorities, localization process, tags and html, creativity, etc.

-Before the event, read the text thoroughly and identify the main challenges.

-Program the event at a time that leaves participants time to look at the text before the workshop, so that they can discuss their queries with the rest of participants and the facilitator.

-During the workshop, ask participants for the main challenges they foresee and also complement it with the challenges you spotted. Lead the discussion and advise them as necessary, but do not give them a definite answer or explain how you would solve that particular issue.

-Encourage them to be creative, stand out and think how their translation could be different (such as the modifiers mentioned on the website https://itch.io/jam/locjam-rpg)

-Encourage them to document the process.

-Leave time at the end for questions and answers.

-The duration of the event could be from one hour to two hours, although scheduling two hours is recommended, as there are usually many questions and a lively discussion.

Happy LocJamming! :)