Video game translation agency: what game localisation includes and how to brief one

A video game translation agency does four separable jobs: translating the in game text, adapting it so it works in the target culture and inside the user interface, recording voice over where the game has it, and running a localisation quality assurance pass inside the built game to catch everything that only breaks on screen. Buy them as named deliverables rather than as a word count, because a game is not a document: the same string appears in a button, a tooltip and a subtitle, and the translator cannot see any of those without the build.

Translation, localisation and culturalisation

• Translation converts the text. Right for menus, system messages, legal copy and item descriptions.
• Localisation adapts it so it reads as if written in that language, fits the space available, respects the platform terminology for buttons and hardware, and handles plurals, gender and number formats correctly.
• Culturalisation changes content so it is appropriate and shippable in a market: symbols, gestures, flags, religious references, blood and gore, gambling mechanics, historical claims and map borders. This is the pass that keeps a release from being pulled or refused a rating.
• Transcreation rewrites creative material, character names, jokes, songs, marketing copy, for effect rather than accuracy. Price and schedule it separately, because it moves at a fraction of the speed of translation.

The deliverables to name in the contract

Deliverable	What it covers	What to supply
UI and system text	Menus, buttons, errors, settings, platform messages	String files with character limits and context notes
Narrative and dialogue	Story text, barks, subtitles, codex entries	Script with speaker, scene and tone notes
Item, skill and quest data	Names, descriptions, stats, tooltips	Glossary of fixed terms, locked before translation starts
Voice over	Casting, direction, recording, delivery to the audio spec	Character briefs, reference audio, lip sync or timing constraints
Store and marketing assets	Store page, screenshots, trailers, age rating text	Store character limits per platform
Localisation QA	Playthrough in the build in each language, bug reports	A playable build, test accounts, cheats or save states
Legal and compliance text	EULA, privacy, age ratings, regional disclosures	Source approved by your legal team

What makes game text harder than document text

• Character limits. A button that fits in English frequently overflows in German or Russian. Send the limit with every string and the agency will write to it rather than returning text that has to be redone after QA.
• Variables and placeholders. Strings like You found {0} {1} break in languages with grammatical gender and complex plural rules. Supply the variable types and let the agency tell you which strings need restructuring in code.
• Reused strings. One string used as a verb on a button and a noun in a header cannot be translated correctly in both. Flag reuse or split the string.
• Context. A spreadsheet of strings with no screenshots produces guesses. Screenshots, scene references and a short gameplay video reduce query volume dramatically.
• Terminology consistency. Lock a glossary of proper nouns, abilities, currencies and hardware terms before word one. Changing it mid project means a full retranslation pass.
• Platform style guides. Console manufacturers publish required terminology for controller buttons and system features. An agency that knows these saves you a submission failure.

How to brief an agency so you get a usable quote

• Word count by category. UI, narrative, items, legal, store. The rate and the effort differ for each.
• Target languages and variants. Name the variant: Latin American Spanish or European Spanish, Brazilian or European Portuguese, Simplified or Traditional Chinese. Guessing here is expensive.
• Genre and tone. A tactics game and a horror narrative need different translators, and the good agencies assign by genre experience.
• File formats and the handoff. Name your format: XLIFF, JSON, CSV, PO, or a connector to your localisation management platform. Continuous delivery through an API beats emailing spreadsheets on any game that updates.
• Whether voice over is in scope, and if so, your audio spec, whether you need lip sync, and the recording territory.
• Build access for QA. How many hours per language, on which platforms, and how bugs get reported into your tracker.
• Age rating targets. The boards you are submitting to and any content you already know is sensitive.
• Release schedule and update cadence. A live service game needs a standing capacity commitment, not a project quote.

The localisation QA pass

This is the step most often cut and the one that produces the visible problems players screenshot. A proper pass runs in the built game, in each language, and reports:

• Text overflow, truncation and clipping in every resolution and aspect ratio you ship.
• Missing or wrong font glyphs, especially for Cyrillic, Greek, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Arabic and Thai.
• Right to left layout problems where Arabic or Hebrew is in scope.
• Strings left in the source language, placeholder text and untranslated images with baked in text.
• Context errors a translator could not have caught from a spreadsheet.
• Audio and subtitle mismatches, and timing that runs past the scene.

Budget it as a number of hours per language per platform, and schedule it after content lock and before submission. Baked in text inside image and texture assets is the single most common avoidable cost, so keep text out of art wherever you can.

How to judge a candidate agency

• Ask for shipped titles in your genre and your target languages, and whether they can say publicly which they worked on.
• Ask whether translators are native speakers of the target language who also play games in that genre. Both halves matter.
• Ask who does the QA pass and whether it is the same people who translated. A fresh reviewer finds more.
• Run a paid sample: a few hundred words of your real UI and a scene of real dialogue, with your real constraints, and have a trusted native speaker review the output.
• Ask how they handle queries mid project. A structured query log with turnaround beats ad hoc email every time.
• Confirm confidentiality and asset handling in writing, which matters for unannounced titles.

This page covers games. For translation buying in general, service levels and briefing, see professional translation agency. For the Spanish variant and transcreation decision in marketing copy, see Spanish marketing translation. For making a multilingual store or site findable, see multilingual SEO.

What gets asked about video game translation agency

Which languages should a small studio localise first?

Look at your own wishlist and store traffic by country before anything else. For most PC and console titles the common first set is French, Italian, German, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Simplified Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Russian, but your own data should decide the order.

Can machine translation be used for game text?

It works as a first pass on high volume, low risk, highly repetitive content such as item stat lines, with a professional editing pass afterwards. Keep narrative, UI with tight character limits and anything a player will quote in a review under human translation.

How is game translation priced?

Usually per source word by language pair and category, with voice over priced per recorded hour or per line and QA priced per hour. Ask for the rate card broken out that way so you can compare two quotes properly.

When should localisation start?

Plan it at the start and execute it after your text is content locked. Building with localisation in mind, external string files, no text in textures, flexible UI, generous string buffers, costs almost nothing early and saves a great deal later.

Who owns the translated text?

You should, on payment, along with the glossary and translation memory. Put the transfer and the delivery of the memory files in the contract, because the memory is what keeps your next update cheap.

The question a player asks before any store page

A player in Brazil or Germany may ask an assistant for "a good story game in Portuguese" long before they open a store page. The reply names titles, and which ones depends on what exists in that language and how it is described. Your localisation work shows up here only if the assistant can find it.

Ask the question in each target language you shipped. AI Knows Us lets you track the same question across languages and assistants, which tells you whether the translation reached the discovery stage and not just the game.