From July 28-31 of this year, the 20th ChinaJoy Expo will take place in the Shanghai New International Expo Centre. One of the best-known annual events of its kind anywhere in the world, ChinaJoy has long been a major fixture on the calendar of the digital entertainment industry. It is a stage on which companies from China and countless other countries can display their wares to the world. The BTOB (business-to-business) comprehensive business negotiation showcase is an area of ChinaJoy open only to game industry insiders. It brings branding, product displays, technology promotion, and capital together under one roof. Attendees can explore a comprehensive range of business-to-business services and engage in negotiation with potential partners, and investors can meet entrepreneurs in need of funding. The BTOB comprehensive business negotiation showcase exemplifies ChinaJoy’s leadership in driving greater communication and cooperation in the games industry, while also demonstrating the scale, technical R&D standard, and rapid market development of the digital entertainment industry in China.
Phrase and Clearly Local have recently announced their joint participation in this event. They will be at booth W5-A573, in the BTOB hall, presenting what they have to offer the industry.
Phrase and Clearly Local are two major vendors in the language technology and language services space. At ChinaJoy 2023, the two companies will jointly present a one-stop solution for game localization. The integrated solution promises to form a highly productive ecosystem that really delivers for clients. Built on the foundation of Clearly Local’s professional knowledge regarding content innovation and translation delivery and Phrase’s leading localization technology, this solution can help game developers simplify the localization process and deliver high quality content to audiences around the world with unprecedented speed.
Phrase — A single platform for the entire localization process
Phrase is a cloud-based localization solution that uses advanced automation technology and comprehensive system integration to help game developers of all shapes and sizes reach out to the wider world. Phrase Localization Suite boasts a state-of-the-art translation management system developed specially for games, software, and digital products. It supports 500+ languages, 50+ file types, and 30+ machine translation engines. Furthermore, Phrase has integrated specialized game localization tools that make game localization easier, faster, and more economical. Users enjoy the benefits of an ecosystem of interconnected tools. A whole host of game developers, including Funplus, GameHouse, 37Games, Levsha, and BigFish rely on Phrase to provide a platform on which they can efficiently create games that will be well received in markets around the world.
An enterprise-level translation and localization system
Phrase TMS is an enterprise-level translation and localization management system. Through cost-control and quality assurance measures, it automates the translation workflow, taking some of the hassle out of managing localization projects, thereby saving time and resources. It uses the latest machine translation and AI functions to expedite the translation workflow.
Automating your translation workflow
Advanced workflow automation shortens turnaround times, so you can operate and expand your team without losing sleep over the demands of localization.
Using machine translation and artificial intelligence to bring down costs
According to data from CSA Research, using machine translation and post-editing is 55% cheaper than using human translators alone. Our translation software assigns each translation task to an appropriate translation engine, and an AI solution is used to filter out any content that doesn’t need to be translated.
Delivering a complete translation workflow
As you update your game’s content, we can push updates and implement player feedback. Our string-based solution is specially designed for the continual localization work required by iterative development. It supports agile workflows, shortens delivery times, and allows you to release content faster.
Support for every file format
Phrase is not limited to any particular file format. You can upload content that comes from different platforms or uses different programming languages in any of the 50+ file formats we support.
Game translation — It’s all about context
During the translation process, Phrase can help your team check the context of a string, so they can make more informed translation choices. In addition to translation memory and a termbase, a translation project on Phrase can also contain screenshots, descriptions, style guides, and other resources that help translators better understand the context in which the strings will appear.
Quality assurance
High-quality localization is critical to growing your userbase in foreign markets. Our built-in automated QA tools check for the whole gamut of possible flaws in a translation, helping individual translators do better quality work and helping teams maintain consistency.
Taking the hassle out of managing translation vendors
With Phrase, multiple translation vendors can work together on the same platform. Work can even be assigned on a first-come, first-served basis, with jobs going to whichever vendor accepts them first after they appear on the platform. With shared access to projects, you can work more closely than ever with translation vendors. Vendors can add digital assets (such as a termbase) and make them available to specified translators. What’s more, clients can check in real time exactly how much progress has been made on a project.
Clearly Local — A game localization resource network and service provider
Clearly Local is devoted to bringing you transparent and efficient content and language services of the highest quality. We want to help you create games that will be loved by players around the globe. Our games experts and other team members take pride in their work, and will make it their mission to translate your value to the world.
A wealth of game industry resources for all-round support
Clearly Local has the diverse range of resources it takes to deliver top-notch game localization. Whether you are updating your game’s interface, have creative content to translate, or need voiceovers done for character dialogue, we will assign professionals who are familiar with your game and its backstory and have experience in the games industry. Furthermore, with the incredible diversity of games being produced today, we believe that the best work is done when we let someone who knows and loves a particular genre apply their knowledge and creativity to localizing a game. You can rest assured that your game’s content will be complete and compelling in every language.
Before we begin localizing a game, we research the target market and identify its unique cultural traits, to ensure that our translated and localized content caters to the tastes and habits of gamers in the target region. The right localization strategy can help you faithfully communicate a game’s perspective on the world, the meaning behind its story, and the personalities of its characters. When the mood, emotional arc, and cultural elements of a game are successfully translated into the target language, players get a more immersive experience.
When we localize a game, we pay close attention to the use of vocabulary, idiomatic expressions, slang, and metaphor. The language used in the localized version will be intentional and precise, so the game gets a better reception in its target market.
We work with the gamer community, conducting playtests and collecting feedback, to find out exactly what a localized version of a game will need to win over local gamers.
Combining AI and traditional approaches to bring you both efficiency and quality
Clearly Local integrates the advanced localization management and technology of Phrase with the latest artificial intelligence, to increase efficiency and deliver more accurate work to our clients. Generative AI can not only provide creative suggestions for how content could be translated and adapted for particular cultures, it can also be used to customize QA tools that quickly identify and fix errors, and to take a bird’s eye view of an entire project to spot risks that individual translators may miss.
AI can also implement more conventional QA measures, such as checking for strings that exceed character limits or may be truncated when they appear in an interface, as well as flagging inconsistent terminology, to ensure your game’s interface is flawless. Our TMS (translation management system) can allow translators to consult screenshots and other reference materials as they work, so they are aware of the context in which a string will appear, as well as its position in the interface and its relationship to other elements. This awareness makes for a more efficient process and more contextually appropriate translations, and it also allows translators to exercise more creativity.
A deep understanding of cultural differences for more precise localization
We know how important it is to capture a game’s emotions, humor, and sense of style, and we are devoted to elevating the quality and entertainment value of the games we work on. When it comes to dialogue, we take into account the circumstances in which a character is speaking, the sort of voice the speaker should have, and the game’s overall style and the approach the script takes to language, to ensure diversity and suitability. We also consider time and space constraints and bring an awareness of these limitations to the translation process itself.
Beyond simply advising on what content might be risky in a foreign market from a legal standpoint, we also strive to help our clients bridge the culture gap. We view culture as a dynamic thing, so in addition to knowing the history of a particular country or region, we do all we can to keep up with the latest controversies, social trends, and cultural developments, as these factors can all subtly inform the decisions of a skilled translator.
Carefully crafted voiceovers for a better gaming experience
Clearly Local has established a global network of accomplished voice actors and recording studios. We carefully choose the actors for a project based on the culture of the target region and the expectations of local gamers. For clients that require it, we can suggest which accent and register in a target language would best suit a certain character given their backstory and role in the game, in order to ensure that all the linguistic subtleties that contribute to atmosphere and characterization in the original game are faithfully carried over into the localized version.
We provide our clients with the full spectrum of services, covering casting, script work and style guides, recording, check and acceptance of recordings, and post-production, during which we implement client feedback, deal with length issues, and so on. We use script development, version control, and project management tools to ensure that projects progress smoothly, make the best use of work that has already been completed, bring down costs, and increase efficiency.
Ensuring localization quality with game LQA
Game LQA (Localization Quality Assurance) is the last line of defense against substandard localization work. Clearly Local’s LQA team will play through your game, checking translations and interfaces and noting any truncation, voiceover, or cultural issues they encounter along the way and compiling it all into a report. Our LQA personnel have experience working with games, are sensitive to the various risks that need to be identified, and have the skills to clearly communicate any issues they find. LQA is crucial for ensuring consistency and playability across languages, and for mitigating any potential risks.
Transparent communication and honest work
The approach Clearly Local takes to working with clients is based on transparency and efficiency. We prioritize communicating with customers and understanding their needs and expectations, and on this basis, we formulate a transparent plan of action for each project. Through scheduled communication and feedback mechanisms, we ensure that the client is always kept in the loop and that we can respond quickly if issues arise or if the client’s requirements change. Our highly efficient workflow and flexible approach to project management enable swift responses to clients’ needs and ensure outstanding results. ChinaJoy 2023 is fast approaching, and we are looking forward to discussing meeting people from every corner of the digital entertainment industry and discussing opportunities for future collaboration, and providing you with support and expert insights that will help your localization efforts pay off. Don’t be a stranger. Come visit us for a chat in the BTOB hall at booth W5-A573.