Best Languages for Game Translation

Video games have one of the rapidly growing markets worldwide. The rate of change in the gaming industry has seen an unprecedented increase in recent years. With such a fast-changing market, it is best to bet on “dynamic capabilities”. This means looking for new opportunities over and over again.

It is inevitable, therefore, that mobile and video game companies focus not only on the production of the project but also look into the gaming audience in different countries and, consequently, game localizers and testers. As game success requires high content and technical quality, the latter ensures that all the different elements of production (design, code, content, language, etc.) all work together in harmony.

According to research, the global video game market size was valued at USD 151.06 billion in 2019. From 2020 to 2027 it is expected to grow at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 12.9% and reach a value of USD 256.97 billion by 2025.

Before publishing your game via the Apple App Store, Google Play, Steam, or any other platform, make sure you choose the most target languages for internationalization. It is difficult to estimate where your app or game is going to be the most successful. This, thus, is where multilingual game translation becomes useful.

Gamers want perfect translation. Professional translation and localization services are certainly important for expanding to new countries. They enhance the chance of making your game project popular in different countries. Furthermore, investing in good translation and localization offers a clearer picture of an investment’s value.

Start this journey by asking these questions to your team: What strategies should you use to efficiently and effectively reach our target customers? Which countries are you looking to target? Which languages do you need?

The integral part of the adaptation of the game project for a specific market is its localization. Note that before you commission a team to do your game’s localization, you must prepare and compile all text content of the game; give the localization team access to the game; share your timeline, non-disclosure policies, and any other relevant files.

Find more about “The difference between translation and localization”

Below are the languages for game translation which are the highest in demand.

1. English – USA, UK
2. Chinese – Taiwan, China
3. Japanese – Japan
4. Korean – South Korea
5. German – Germany
6. Spanish – Argentina, Mexico
7. Portuguese – Brazil
8. French – France, Canada
9. Italian – Italy
10. Russian – Russia

Vietnamese and Indonesian follow closely after Russian.

It is a well-known fact that English has become the leading language of several countries, including Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom. In the same way, one of the most asked-to-translate languages in the gaming industry are Japanese to English. This is understandable because Japan is one of the world’s top video game markets and a major game exporter to the west.

According to a forecast, the Japanese gaming market is expected to reach approximately 1.59 trillion yen in the year 2025. Moreover, Japan might be a great target for western game makers because it has a great game-playing audience.

The world’s one of the most popular and easiest languages is Spanish. Accordingly, translating your game project into Spanish will provide huge opportunities.

After English and Spanish, French is another widely spoken language in the world. French game translation will open your doors to many European as well as most African countries.

As Chinese is one of the most commonly spoken languages in the globe, China is inevitably one of the biggest gaming markets. Along with China, Korea has the highest number of skilled gamers; hence, Korean is among the most targeted languages for video game translation.

Other most target languages for internationalization are Italian, German, Portuguese, and Russian.

Video game translation and localization services are commonplace nowadays. Nonetheless, it is important that a gaming services provider has deep knowledge and proven working experience. We offer premium quality game translation and localization with our experienced translators who are also enthusiastic gamers themselves.

Check also – Australian Video Game Localization, NFT in video games: what is an NFT and how does it work, and Game Testing Services: Localization Quality Assurance.