4 Reasons Mobile Game Localization Needs a Translation Glossary

When you plan to expand your game's customer base towards the global market, something gains prominence apart from the translation content - a mobile game translation glossary.

"Translation glossary" – A quick definition

A translation glossary is a brilliant strategic step followed during mobile game localization in order to keep the translation consistent throughout. It is a glossary of key terms in the source language of a game. These terms might be required to be left as such in the translated document or there might be permission given to replace them with a number of approved translations. In that case, there will be different terms for each target language.

Here are the four reasons why mobile game localization needs a translation glossary.

1. Maintaining consistency: People wonder what could be so important in keeping a translation consistent. The thing is consistency should be maintained in the translation style, voice, and vocabulary, so as to avoid any confusion. For e.g., there is a difference in style between the language of prose and poetry and between the active and passive voice. Mixing their usage can create vagueness and misinterpretation. This will ruin the user experience.

2. Brand protection: Brand names, motto etc. needs to stay unique for a brand. If a brand's identifying terms are translated into more than a single target language word, people will have trouble recognizing your specific brand, especially if the market has too many similar product names. Making use of a translation glossary while localization can save your brand from a lot of trouble while trying to get recognized.

3. Maintaining the pace of translation: When there are ambiguities or confusion with respect to the exact meaning of terms, translators would naturally consult with the source providers in order to clear their doubts. When too much of this practice takes place, a considerable amount of time loss would have to be borne by the mobile game development company. Such issues shouldn't be left unattended as this will shoot the cost of localization and drive towards project delay. So, translation glossaries needs to be provided before starting with any localization measures.

4. Minimizing translation costs: As mentioned in the earlier section, absence of a good translation glossary can lead to higher localization costs. With a good glossary, translators can standardize parts of the translation text and this reduces the cost to a great extent.