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Developer PSA: Check Out This Spreadsheet For Translating Common Words and Phrases Used in iOS Games

TouchArcade Rating:

auto-translate-survey-questionsThe App Store is a global market, and one of the first tips I hear developers give each other is to make sure your game is localized in all major markets. It makes sense, as how much would it suck if your game could have been a massive hit in China but people just had no idea going on because it’s only in English? The problem a lot of the time, particularly in the indie world, games are built with razor thin budgets, or often no budget at all beyond the initial $99 a year iOS developer fee. Paying for translation services is expensive, and just running your text through Google translate produces terrible results.

So what’s the solution? Well, if you’re keeping your game simple, you can use this shared spreadsheet which was originally posted to our forums by TouchArcade forum member bladko who is the developer of Blitz Match 3 ($0.99) (Yes, he posted it in 2013, but I just linked someone to it and thought it was worth mentioning for other developers.) It’s got German, Spanish, Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, French, Russian, Italian, and other translations for… Just about everything you’d ever need in your game provided you’re not doing some intense story driven thing, in which case you should hire native translators.

Anyway, it’s just another very useful link worth bookmarking I figured people around here would appreciate!

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