They’re making decisions that they, the native speaker, are most equipped to judge, for example fitting names to their own language – do they translate literally? Do they keep nouns phonetically similar or perhaps create punchier words? Cohesion Translators are essentially writers of the game in their own language. The most important lessons we learned during Kenshi 1’s localisation were context and cohesion. We’ve been able to keep a tab on everything that didn’t go so well for Kenshi 1 and use that newfound knowledge and understanding to set the foundation for Kenshi 2. Lots of new technical features have been added to help solidify the workflow and reduce issues like this one. We’ve recently incorporated a ‘results generator’ in the FCS (an in-house development tool) which displays all possible permutations of written sentences. Note the above grammar mistake caused by incorrect use of wordswaps.
So I’m really glad to have Meg with us for Kenshi 2, she has more dedicated time and is actually working alongside the other translators ‘on the front line’ herself to communicate these issues and work more closely with them.” It’s hard that I can’t check these things myself and properly train our translators to the same level.
Kenshi writing is a whole other level of thought process – only half of it involves actual creativity, the other half is Kenshi-specific brain aneurysm level of technical weirdness. “There are also so many complications with writing for Kenshi I have to train new writers for so many months to get into good ‘Kenshi habits’, to understand how wordswaps fit together grammatically, to check sentences flow together nicely (procedural dialogue can fit together extremely clunky due to the many alternative combinations), even just drilling in Kenshi’s themes and consistencies. And it was hard to fully monitor this on top of my other work,” says Natalie, who had a particularly difficult time trying to manage the localisation of Kenshi in 8 different languages whilst writing the game. You’re completely at the mercy of trusting other people to know what they’re doing or that they’re actually putting care into it. “The most frustrating challenge in managing localisation is not being able to speak the languages yourself to verify the quality and how it’s going. In this month’s community update, the two share insight behind the much-improved technique behind Kenshi 2’s translation and our future development plans for non-English players. The pair are now using their experience with Kenshi 1 to improve and perfect the Kenshi 2 localisation process so that non-English speakers can enjoy the game as it was intended. Kenshi 1’s translation was managed by Lo-Fi’s Lead Writer – Nat, and our Japanese Localisation, PR and Community Manager – Meg (now also Localisation Lead).
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