Challenges for Game Translation and Localization for the Chinese Market

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The Chinese game market is one of the most lucrative markets in the world. If you understand the Chinese market, a sound game translation strategy can do wonders for your gaming business. The game revenue of the China market is one-fourth of the total gaming market. 

 

Therefore, game developers should not ignore this flourishing market. People play games for entertainment and sometimes to kill time. What if the video game is not in the language that avid gamer understands? The gamer will not download the game. Therefore, you must go for Chinese translation services to tap into the China market. In this way, Chinese people will download more games resulting in a high return on Investment. 

 

The Chinese Gaming Market 

The Chinese gaming market is the largest gaming industry in the world. This industry is making progress by leaps and bounds, and its worth is expected to reach $72 billion by 2023. The smartphone proliferation in China is massive. Chinese people spend half an hour on average playing games during the day. 

 

The solid cloud infrastructure of China gives excellent leverage to avid gamers to play games on smartphones. It also includes the mini-games that are played on WeChat. These games are user-friendly. Therefore, its popularity is growing. According to a rough estimate, 900 million Chinese people are using smartphones. Thus, you must go for video game translation services if you want 900 people to download and play the games. 

 

Challenges for Chinese Game Translation and Localization 

If the foreign gaming company wants to tap into the Chinese gaming market, then only translation services are not enough. They must also go for localization services. The translation is the changing of content from one language to another.

 

However, localization makes the game resonate with the target market by considering regional and cultural intricacies. There is no use of video game translation if it is not localized. 

 

Different Chinese Dialects 

Companies' major challenge in video game translation and localization is various Chinese dialects. You must know that dialects spoken in China are different from West. For instance, English has many different dialects. 

 

However, English speakers can understand different English dialects easily. But this is not the case in the Chinese language. The person speaking one dialect cannot understand the other one. Mandarin is China's most prominent spoken dialect, and Cantonese comes in second with minor differences. 

 

There are different variants of the Chinese language, which are written with another variant. People speak simplified Chinese in mainland China. Therefore, you must hire a professional translation services company to launch your game in mainland China. These companies have a team of native translators who understand the different Chinese dialects and provide complete game services accordingly.  

 

Chinese Culture 

Resonating the content with the local market is the key to success in a foreign country. Here comes the need for game localization. Game localization for the Chinese market considers cultural sensitivity.

 

 For this reason, the game localization team should work with Chinese copywriting service providers because they know the game roles, storylines, and game elements according to Chinese culture. One important thing to note is games with blood are forbidden in China.  

 

Government Regulations 

To introduce your game in China, you must abide by government regulations. Storylines and themes related to the military and politics are banned. In addition, designers must avoid games of drugs and gambling. If games with such compositions are launched, China's government takes strict action against them. 

 

Payment Methods 

If you want viewers to download your games, then you must make payment methods easier. Payment modes such as WeChat Pay, Union Pay, and Ali Pay are commonly used in China. 

 

Chinese gamers also pay through scanning and with a fingerprint instead of credit card numbers. If you include a QR code in the games, then people of China will opt for your matches more than others. 

 

Fonts and Typesetting 

The biggest challenge of Chinese localization is dealing with the font. Chinese is a compact language. 

Therefore, when the game is translated into Chinese, the space is left in the game. The translation team uses large font sizes to fill the area and to deal with this challenge. This way, the content takes more vertical space and entices the game's interface. 

 

Wrapping Up 

Gaming companies put a lot of effort into the development of the game. Therefore, to make their games successful in the enormous Chinese market, they must take services of professional translation services. 

 

With the help of these services, you can successfully launch your game in China. Moreover, you can overcome the challenges faced in the translation and localization process.