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Is a Spanish Reclaimer a Recuperador or a Reclamero? Making a video game involves a lot of made-up terminology. And that’s all good fun, until those words run into the contextual and grammatical complexities of all the world’s languages. It takes a lot to make sure a game makes sense beyond its mother tongue. And we want Rogue Core to speak your language. Localizing Rogue Core is largely driven by volunteer translators from the community. On some occasions, we’ll get some help from a professional translation agency for certain languages. But a professional crew never really knows the full context of the game: You can translate “health” as a word, but you’re missing how Health works as a game mechanic. The polish and detail, the nuance that really brings each language to life, comes from the community. That’s where you come in. After all, it’s the players that know the game best. You know the world, the lore, all the in-jokes. You’re able to spot little contextual inconsistencies and game mechanics that a professional translator might gloss over. With Deep Rock Galactic, community translators are helping bring the game into 39 different languages, even including the constructed language Esperanto. Rogue Core is next up, and there’s lots to do as we push toward Early Access. Right now, there are a few dozen translators working to bring Rogue Core into 32 different languages and counting. We want you as the next one to join the team.
Community translators do it for the love of the game. Discord user Drakoniid is one of the community’s translator managers. Over the past six years, they’ve helped translate Deep Rock Galactic and Rogue Core into French, and are now part of coordinating the overall translation project across all languages. As they tell it, translating lets them make their mark on a game that means a lot to them, and share that interest with others. “Since I got involved, I ended up meeting most of the French translation team and have become real-life friends with them now. Playing Deep Rock Galactic and the connections I made there did a lot for me to socialize and overcome anxiety. I just really love the game and all the work put into it, and translating is my way to help improve it and spread it further.” Part of it is also the satisfaction of a good translation. Take DRG’s Caretaker, for example. The most direct French translation for “caretaker” is gardien, but that doesn’t quite have the same razzle-dazzle. Plus, the Glyphid Warden is already called the gardien in French. So the French translators came up with an original name: le cerbère-nétique. It combines Cerberus, the mythical three-headed hellhound, with “cybernetic”. It’s this level of granular familiarity that only fans of the game have, and what puts community translators a cut above any professional service. Games get a level of depth and detail that more native speakers can appreciate.
If you’re interested in Rogue Core and your native language is something other than English, we could use your help. You can become part of the game’s development, and make it shine in your own language. Joining the translation team is easy and you don’t need any prior experience. If you were to start right after reading this, you could be translating text in Rogue Core just fifteen minutes from now. Here’s all you need to do to get started:
Head over to CrowdIn, our translation portal.
Make an account there (just requires an email address).
Open up the Rogue Core project, select your desired language, and either open the AllGameText file, or click TranslateAll.
Select a string of text for the game and submit your translation.
That’s it! That’s the whole process of translating text. If you’d like to do it as a regular thing and connect with other volunteer translators for your language, head to the official Deep Rock Galactic Discord and go to the #babelfish-lounge channel and check out the channel description and pinned posts. Hope to see you there! Kærlig hilsen,
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