How to translate a mobile game Thread

Hello, we are an indie mobile game developer based of 6 persons. We developed Under Heroes, a tapping game with inspired pixel art, and Spaceship V, a game in which you can build your modular spaceship.

Recently, with mobile gaming being international & easy to expand into other countries, we have been looking to translate our game Under Heroes in Chinese. However, we couldn't find an easy way to do this other than Google Translate, which we don't trust much.

For anyone in experience in game development, I ask you : what would be the easiest way to handle this, other than paying a professional service? Any tips and tricks to translate short sentences, words etc.? Any help is appreciated!

Edited by: nsoulsgames

When it comes to Chinese/Japanese/Similar you can trust google translate (or similar) even less than you would with any other language.
There is simply no way other than letting someone with Chinese knowledge translate the game.

-Edit-
However, if you (or anyone else in your team) is willing to study Chinese *at least a little bit*, you can help yourself by using something like:
Yellowbridge.com
Because, unlike google translate, if you try to translate "Hello", it tells you many ways to say it, depending on the situation... However, when it comes to full sentences, you must have at least a little bit of knowledge about Chinese language to connect all the words you plan to use in the correct way.

Edited by: Draakhex

Check out the Indie Game Localization group on facebook.

hello nsoulgames,

You can always check communities like KristerCederlund mentioned and forum threads like this one on TA.

Should you opt for using professional services after all, one thing you can do to contain costs is working with individual translators. Of course you can have a translation agency handle your entire project with all target languages involved, but they’ll charge you 50% extra just for their project management (consisting of finding translators and assigning jobs as well as forwarding translators’ questions). Using individual translators cuts these costs if you are able to handle all the management yourself, which includes discussing questions with your translators (and there'll be a lot when you have a game translated).

A good idea would be to let players in your community help you out, then pass what they give you onto a translator. It is much less expensive for a translator to correct things, than it is for them to translate it all.

Thank you all you guys, all of you have been very helpful!

Bumping for more ideas if anyone has them.

I would suggest finding a freelance translator via www.freelancer.com