Linguistic Quality Assurance (LQA)

Services

At «Estyx Translations», we provide English to Spanish Localisation services for a variety of fields and applications. Currently, our main services are centered around the following:

VIDEOGAMES AND APPS:

WHAT EXACTLY ARE THOSE SERVICES?

This is indeed a good question that many developers might not be well aware of. Why would all those services be of some good use? Why would they need to get a specialist to do such tasks? What is the difference between working with Estyx Translations and getting some help from fans or crowdsourced localisation projects? We will try to answer them in the best way we can, also providing a study case.

1) Full Game Localisation

The full localisation of a game includes the translation of all strings associated with the gameplay of that game. A string is a textline or lines, grouped so that they are displayed together ingame, or are linked in some way to be shown after a certain group of commands are used. A string can be either a single word (menus, actions…) or various sentences (an event triggered by a certain action). Localising a game implies to translate every single string available within a game, including menus, dialogues, storylines, object descriptions and many more. But what’s the difference between translating and localising? Is «localisation» just a more technical word for it? The answer is: NO. Localising implies translating, but it does not happen the same the other way around. Why?

When you translate a string, you simply translate word by word the concepts provided by the original string (or source string). When you localise a string, you do that and you also adapt the translation to the public in your globe area. Not clear enough? Let’s use an example of one of our translated games:

This is one of the weapons available in the game «Deep Rock Galactic» (Ghost Ship Games). This object is called L.U.R.E. (Laser Utility Refraction Emitter), which is an acronym of what the weapon is intended to do: to lure enemies to attack it and leave other players. The name could be left as it is, although the use of English will disperse the interest of players in knowing more about the lore of this weapon. For this reason, we decided to localise it. The translation to Spanish could somehow be easy when done literal, resulting in E.L.U.R. (Emisor Láser de Utilidad Refractiva). However, localising the name of this weapon was more challenging. Fortunately, the word «Cebo» (which literally means «lure») has four characters, fitting perfectly into the typical space for the weapon’s name. However, the acronym as literally impossible to reproduce with these 4 characters, so we decided to transcreate the term. The final result was C.E.B.O. (Carnada de Estimulación Básica de la Agresividad, or «Primal Agressivity Stimulation Lure»). This is transcreating a word, and this is what Localisation will do in addition to just translating.

2) Linguistic Quality Assurance (LQA)

LQA is a very important part of the Localisation process. This type of service is not always provided by the same Localisation Specialist, as it involved getting inside the game, test it with the localised strings and see if they are all a good match in the game. The main questions would be «Why shouldn’t they be a good match if you are a good translator and you know they are correctly translated according to the provided source string?»

To answer this question, we will again use an example of one of our localised games:

BEFORE LQA

AFTER LQA

In our latest localised game, «Fantasy League» (Divmob), we had some issues with truncated strings due to complex textboxes. This is a clear case of it. If you look at the text right next to the dragon image (see top image), you’ll see how our accurately translated string «Encontrado por:» (Found by: in the original language of the game) could not fit correctly into its assigned space. We discovered this bug ourselves when playing the game to run our LQA and be sure before release, and then reported it to the game developers. They said they could not reduce the textbox, as this will disfavor the size of the textbox right next to it, creating the same issue with long player’s names, which we agreed with. We also suggested increasing the background box size grouping all the dragon details a bit to the right, which in the end resulted in a negative response since it would require repositioning all boxes for a symmetrical layout. In the end, we opted for transcreating the content of the string and create a shorter line with a similar meaning. Our final decision was to use «Dragón de» (Dragon of), which suggests «ownership» of the dragon, that is, being its discoverer (since you cannot own a dragon yourself in the game). As it can be seen in the final layout (bottom image), the string fits perfectly, with no truncation of the line at all. Together with some minor UI improvements from the developers, this screen is now perfectly localised and meets both usage and linguistic quality standards for a game. Without any actual ingame check, this linguistic assessment could not have been done, and would have been most likely reported by players as an ingame bug. We are therefore proud of running this type of checks ourselves to get the best quality out of a product.