A Step-by-Step Guide to Game Localization

Game localization is the process of adapting a video game for players in a specific region, converting not just the language, but the cultural context, interface, audio and marketing materials so the game feels native rather than translated.

The two terms are often used interchangeably, but they aren’t the same thing.

Translation is a component of localization. Localization is the broader discipline that asks: does this game feel like it was made for this audience?

In practice, a full localization project typically covers:

• UI and menus: adapting interface text, button labels and navigation for each region
• In-game dialogue and narrative: translating character dialogue, subtitles, quest text and tutorials
• Audio: subtitles, dubbing, or full voice-over recording depending on the level of localization required
• Cultural elements: adapting references, symbols, humour, historical events and imagery so nothing causes offence or confusion in the target market
• Marketing assets: trailers, store listings, promotional materials and social content for each region
• Game title: not always translated directly, but often adapted, particularly for East Asian markets
• Out-of-game content: instruction manuals, physical packaging, web comics, promotional videos and companion materials, covered under Multimedia Localization
• Transmedia content: product descriptions, instruction manuals, voices, video/promo content, packaging for toys and consumer products based on a game IP

The numbers make the case quickly. According to CSA Research’s 2020 “Can’t Read, Won’t Buy” study, 76% of consumers prefer to buy products with information in their native language. In key Asian markets, that figure reaches 90% or above: Taiwan (94%), Korea (92%), China (92%), Japan (90%). Releasing a game in English only doesn’t just limit your audience: for a significant proportion of potential players, it removes you from consideration entirely.

Some markets that deserve specific attention:

China is the world's biggest gaming market. With an estimated 1.31 billion speakers across its variants, Chinese is the most spoken language in the world, roughly equal to Spanish, English and Arabic combined. The Chinese video game market ranks first globally by revenue. But Chinese localization is genuinely complex: Simplified Chinese (used in mainland China, Malaysia and Singapore) and Traditional Chinese (used in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau) are distinct scripts with different character sets and cultural conventions and treating them as interchangeable is one of the most persistent mistakes in the industry.

Southeast Asia is growing faster than most developers realise. Indonesia accounts for 45.8% of all gamers in the Southeast Asian region and is growing faster than most developers realise. According to Keywords Studios’ own localization data, translation volume into Bahasa Indonesian grew 1.5 times between 2020 and 2023, reaching 3 million words translated in 2023 alone. For studios thinking about which emerging markets to prioritise, Indonesia warrants serious attention.

Live-service games depend on continuous localization. As Aya Shimizu, Localization Project Manager at Keywords Studios in Tokyo, explains: 

You can be involved in a mobile game project for three to five years, or even more, because they keep adding content continuously and localization happens while the game is out there.

For games-as-a-service titles, localization isn’t a one-time project, It's an ongoing operational requirement that needs to be built into the production pipeline from day one.

Before walking through the process, it's worth addressing the three mistakes that most consistently cause game localization projects to run over budget, miss deadlines, or produce poor-quality output.

Mistake 1: Starting localization too late in the pipeline. Localization that isn't planned from the start of development requires significant rework. UI elements built without text expansion in mind will break when German or French text runs 20-35% longer than English. Strings hardcoded directly into game assets can’t be extracted for translation without engineering work. Art that embeds untranslated text needs to be recreated from scratch. Starting during design and development, rather than a couple of months before the game ships, prevents all of this.

Mistake 2: Skipping the internationalisation stage. Internationalisation (i18n) is the technical preparation work that makes a game ready for localization. Without it, localization becomes an engineering problem on top of a translation one. More on that further down below. 

Mistake 3: Underestimating LQA. Localization quality assurance isn't the same as standard game QA. It requires reviewers who are native speakers of the target language and are also gamers: people who can judge whether the tone, register and cultural framing actually feel right to a player in that market. Leaving insufficient time or budget for LQA is the single most common reason otherwise well-executed localization projects produce poor results.

Step 1: Define Your Target Markets and Launch Strategy

Market selection comes first - before any other localization decisions can be made sensibly. The question isn't which languages you can localize into, but which markets offer the strongest return on investment given your game's genre, visual style, content type and competitive position.

Useful signals include Steam regional data, app store rankings in target countries, genre performance by region and direct competitor analysis. Markets where your genre performs strongly and where a language barrier currently excludes you are the clearest candidates.

Once markets are confirmed, the second decision at this stage is whether to pursue a simultaneous shipment or post-launch release strategy, a choice which has consequences that run through every part of the production plan.

• Simultaneous shipment (Simship) means all language versions launch together with the original. It requires building the localization pipeline in parallel with development, which demands better planning upfront but eliminates the competitive disadvantage of a delayed international release and can significantly strengthen launch-week performance in target markets. With the right partner involved from the start, this method can even result in a reduction of resource required overall.
• Post-launch means localizing after the original language version is complete. Translation itself can be easier when all content is locked, but QA, bug fixing and implementation work that could have been addressed during production often surfaces late, which can drive up costs. This approach also means international players receive their version weeks or months after launch, often after reviews, word of mouth and algorithms have already shaped the game’s reception in those regions.

The right choice depends on your development timeline, budget, target market priority and any platform certification requirements that interact with localization timelines. For a first international release, post-gold is often the more practical starting point. For any market considered strategically important, simship is worth serious planning.

Step 2: Developing with localization in mind (Internationalisation) 

The technical groundwork for localization determines how smoothly everything downstream runs. At Keywords Studios, we'd describe this as "moving localization left": getting the engineering foundations in place during development rather than retrofitting them later. Done well, it's invisible. Done poorly, it surfaces as a series of expensive engineering problems mid-localization.

The core requirements:

• Externalise all strings. Every piece of player-facing text (menus, dialogue, tutorial prompts, item names, error messages) should live in resource files separate from the source code, not hardcoded. This allows translators to work directly on the text without requiring codebase access.
• Design UI for text expansion. French and German typically require 20-35% more characters than English for the same meaning. UI designed to fit English text precisely will overflow or truncate in other languages unless expansion space is built in from the start.
• Ensure font and encoding support. Non-Latin scripts (Japanese, Korean, Arabic, Thai, Chinese) require specific Unicode font support. Right-to-left languages like Arabic and Hebrew require mirrored layout logic. These are development-stage requirements, not things that can be cheaply retrofitted later.
• Avoid concatenated strings. Building sentences by combining variables ("You have " + [number] + " items") breaks in languages where word order and grammatical agreement work differently. Use named placeholders that translators can reorder.

Pseudo-localization is a testing technique recommended by the IGDA Localization SIG as part of a thorough internationalization pass. It involves running a simulated translation using extended characters and inflated string lengths to expose i18n problems before any real translation begins. A pseudo-localized build surfaces hardcoded strings (text that did not get extracted), truncation issues (UI that cannot accommodate longer strings) and encoding errors - all before you have spent anything on actual translation. Not every studio uses it, but for teams going into localization for the first time it's a low-cost way to catch expensive problems early. Keywords Studios offers pseudo-localization as part of our internationalisation support services.

Step 3: Build Your Localization Kit

Before translation begins, experienced localization teams go through a process called familiarisation: a structured period in which linguists and project managers immerse themselves in the game's world, studying the glossary, reading scripts, reviewing reference materials and building shared understanding of tone, character and context. Familiarisation is a quoted line item in professional localization projects for good reason: the investment at this stage pays dividends across every subsequent step, reducing costly back-and-forth and improving translation quality across the board.

A key component of familiarisation is the localization kit (often called a loc-kit or lockit). This is what separates translators making informed decisions from translators guessing. It provides every piece of context needed to make those decisions well: the tone and style of your game’s writing, definitions for in-game terms and proper nouns, character descriptions and relationship maps, screenshots showing strings in context and guidance on anything culturally specific to your world.

The quality of your loc-kit directly determines the quality of your translations. A translator working from raw string files with no context is being asked to make hundreds of micro-decisions without the information needed to make them well. As Aya Shimizu, localization project manager from Keywords Studios in Tokyo, notes from her own project kick-offs: "I dive into the files we are going to be working on and take some time to figure out what needs to be discussed with the client, such as glossary, length limits, the priority of each file. Then we make sure we have a kick-off meeting with the client, including Localization QA and Audio Localization teams if they are also going to be involved in the project. As text localization comes first, we usually have a tight schedule that we want to roll out as soon as we can. Ensuring every team involved is on the same page is essential to having a healthy project cycle."

Context errors are expensive and the cause is usually the same: context. A translator who receives the string “Ready?” with no screenshot has no way to know if this is a combat prompt, a loading screen, or a character asking another character a question. Each requires a different register and a wrong call here means re-translation and a full LQA pass to catch all downstream inconsistencies. Getting the loc-kit right before translation begins is one of the highest-return investments in the entire process.

A well-built loc-kit contains:

• A style guide covering tone of voice, register and writing conventions
• A glossary of all in-game proper nouns, item names, character names and world-specific terms
• Character profiles and relationship maps for narrative games
• Screenshots or video reference for every string, so translators can see exactly where and how each line appears
• Any cultural or market-specific guidance relevant to the target languages

Step 4: Extract and Organise Your Content for Translation

Before translation begins, all localizable content needs to be identified, extracted and organised. This isn't a single pass through the dialogue files, game content spans several distinct categories, each with different handling requirements:

• UI strings: menus, settings, notifications, HUD elements, achievement names
• Narrative and dialogue: story scripts, character lines, quest text, NPC barks
• Tutorial and instructional text: onboarding flows, tooltips, control prompts
• Marketing and store content: app store listings, trailers, promotional copy, key art text
• Audio scripts: dialogue prepared for voice recording, which needs additional context around delivery, pacing and lip-sync where applicable

One decision worth making at this stage is how post-launch content will be handled. If your game will receive patches, DLC, seasonal events, or live-ops updates, the extraction pipeline and file structure you set up now will determine how much additional work each future update requires. Setting up a consistent, repeatable pipeline from the outset - rather than treating each update as a new project - saves significant time and cost across the life of a live-service title.

Working with a translation management system (TMS) is standard practice across the industry, the question is who manages it. Some studios run their own TMS and share access with their localization partner; others rely entirely on their partner's infrastructure. Either way, string format standards and file structure need to align. 

Those managing multiple language pipelines and ongoing updates benefit significantly from a dedicated and well maintained content management system (CMS) (a centralised platform that handles asset versioning, naming conventions and file routing across all languages and platforms). Keywords Studios' CMS was built specifically for the gaming industry. It includes automated connectors to all major TMS platforms and gives you full visibility and total control over your text and audio assets, with automation features that reduce manual overhead and increase productivity across the production pipeline.

Step 5: Assemble Your Localization Team

The localization process involves a broader range of roles than most developers expect going in. The core team:

• Localization project manager: the coordinator who manages timelines, file flows, vendor relationships and client communication. As Yun Yue Lim, Lead Localization PM at Keywords Studios in Singapore, describes the role: "Being a PM is like being a bridge between the client and the resources… treating external collaborators and clients as partners and making their experience as smooth as possible." The PM also manages one of the central tensions in any localization project: "The goal is to find the perfect balance between the risk of introducing inconsistency when there are many resources on a project, versus the client having to wait too long for translations."
• Translators: native speakers resident in the target locale with game-specific subject matter expertise. Linguists with gaming backgrounds understand not just the language but the genre conventions and expectations of players in that market.
• Editors and proofreaders: a second linguistic pass is standard on quality-grade projects. Editing and proofreading catches errors that translation alone does not.
• LQA specialists: native-speaking reviewers who play the game and test the localized version in context. Covered in full in Step 8.
• Audio director: required if the project includes voice recording. Covers casting, script adaptation for recording and direction during sessions.
• UI/UX designers: needed to adapt interface elements that cannot simply be reflowed, particularly for right-to-left languages or components that embed language-specific visual elements.

The decision between in-house resourcing, freelancers and a specialist localization partner depends on the volume and complexity of the project. For a single language version of a limited-scope title, freelance translators with a dedicated PM may be sufficient. For a multi-language, multi-platform release with audio requirements, or for a first-time studio building a workflow from scratch, a full-service partner brings established team structures, existing language pools and the production infrastructure to scale with the project.

If you’re scoping a localization project and not sure where to start, the Keywords Studios team works with studios at every stage of this process. Learn more about the full range of game localization services on offer.

Step 6: Translate and Culturalise Your Content

Translation converts your text from the source language to the target language. Culturalization ensures that what the translated text says actually lands with players in that market: that references make sense, that humour translates, that nothing causes unintended offence and that the game feels genuinely local rather than imported.

The distinction matters more than it might initially appear. A game that is linguistically correct but culturally tone-deaf will still feel foreign. A reference to a Western cultural touchstone won't register in East Asian markets, whilst a gesture, symbol, or colour that is neutral in one culture may carry charged meaning in another. The IGDA Localization SIG’s best practices guide notes that cultural mistakes can extend beyond revenue loss to reputational damage and strained relations with local governments and in the worst cases, result in a game being refused classification entirely.

Culturalization considerations include:

Religious and cultural sensitivity. This is particularly critical in markets where religion shapes daily life and content expectations. Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country at 87% of the population, requires localization content to follow specific guidelines aligned with Islamic values. Awareness of this at the content stage, not after translation, is what makes the difference between a smooth market entry and a requirement to rework significant portions of the game.

Content ratings and regional regulations. Different markets apply different standards. Germany’s USK has historically required modifications to depictions of violence. China’s content review process for foreign games is among the most thorough in the world, covering a range of visual, narrative and thematic elements. Age rating systems (PEGI in Europe, ESRB in North America, CERO in Japan, IARC globally) each carry specific content requirements. Failing to account for these at the localization stage means discovering them at the classification stage, typically at the worst possible moment in the release timeline.

Chinese localization specifically illustrates how much specificity Culturalization requires. As detailed in Keywords Studios' guide to localizing into Chinese, the choice between Simplified and Traditional Chinese isn't simply a writing system question, it reflects distinct cultural and political contexts, with Simplified used in mainland China and Traditional retained in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau. The linguistic differences between the two extend beyond character sets into vocabulary, expression and cultural reference. A localization that treats them as interchangeable will be immediately apparent to native readers of either.

The same logic applies to Spanish translation. The choice between European Spanish and Latin American Spanish isn't purely geographic: vocabulary, idiomatic expression and cultural reference differ significantly between the two variants, and players notice when the wrong register is used for their market. Keywords Studios' guide to localizing into Spanish covers this differentiation in detail.

Step 7: Audio Localization: Subtitles, Dubbing and Voice Recording

Audio localization is the most complex and expensive component of the localization process and the one most frequently underestimated in early project planning. It operates on a different timeline and requires a different team to text localization, which means it needs to be planned as a parallel workstream rather than treated as a follow-on to translation.

There are three levels of audio localization and the right choice depends on budget, genre, the importance of character voice performance to player experience and the expectations of specific target markets:

Subtitles only: the simplest approach. Original language audio is retained; translated text appears on screen. Lower cost and faster to deliver, but may limit engagement in markets where players strongly prefer content in their own language.

Partial localization: translated subtitles and UI, with original language voice performance retained. Common for many Japanese RPGs and narrative games targeting Western markets.

Full dubbing: complete re-recording of all voice lines in the target language. The most resource-intensive approach, involving voice casting, script adaptation for spoken delivery (dialogue that reads well as subtitles often does not perform well when recorded), voice direction, audio engineering and lip-sync review for cutscenes. End-to-end audio localization of this type also requires audio artistic direction as a distinct service.

Choosing the right level of audio localization isn't purely a budgeting decision, it directly affects player experience. When characters speak in a player's own language it deepens emotional connection to the story and to the game world in a way subtitles alone can't replicate. For narrative-led titles in particular, such as story-driven RPGs, narrative adventures and character-led action titles, full dubbing can meaningfully increase player immersion and retention in target markets, and is mostly expected in major European markets. 

Audio localization decisions need to be made before budgeting, not after. Three questions narrow it down: 

• How central are character voices to the story and experience? 
• What do players in your target market expect? German and French players are accustomed to full dubbing while Japanese players may be more accustomed to subtitled content
• What does the rest of your launch budget look like? Voice recording is calculated per finished hour and is typically one of the larger localization line items for content-heavy titles.
• What will deliver the player experience you want to achieve?

Step 8: Localization Quality Assurance (LQA)

Localization quality assurance is a distinct discipline from standard game QA and the two shouldn't be treated as the same process or staffed by the same team. Standard QA tests whether the game functions. LQA tests whether the localized version works as a game experience for players in the target market.

LQA reviewers are native speakers of the target language who play the game and assess it from a player's perspective. Their role goes beyond catching grammatical errors: they evaluate whether terminology is consistent across the whole game, whether tone and register match the original, whether cultural references land correctly, whether text displays without truncation or overflow in UI elements and whether audio timing is properly synchronised in dubbed versions.

Our localization of Dead Island 2 with publisher PLAION spanned 12 languages, including Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Brazilian Portuguese, Korean, Polish, Russian and more, with a dedicated QA Analyst assigned specifically to act as quality gatekeeper across all languages simultaneously. Their role was to ensure consistency not just within each language but between them: "If a translator adds a term to the glossary, the QA Analyst makes sure that each language follows or at least keeps it in mind." That level of cross-language oversight is what separates a quality-controlled multi-language release from one where each language drifts in a slightly different direction.

Localization QA testing at this level needs to be scheduled properly, not squeezed into whatever time remains after other milestones. The most common mistake is treating LQA as the hours that get cut when a deadline moves. A game that ships with significant LQA findings in the live product generates player complaints, negative reviews in target markets and potentially a requirement to patch and re-test, all of which cost more than doing it right the first time.

Step 9: Plan for Post-Launch Updates and Live Content

For any game that will receive ongoing content, updates, patches, DLC, seasonal events, battle passes, or live-ops campaigns, the localization process does not end at launch. It continues for as long as the game does.

This is the aspect of game localization most consistently underestimated, particularly by teams on their first international release. The assumption that localization is a project with a clear endpoint is fine for a boxed title with no planned content updates, but for a live-service model it creates a recurring problem: each content drop requires a new localization cycle and without a defined pipeline, each planned from scratch.

To see what this looks like at scale, we need only look into Supercell's partnership with Keywords Studios. Supporting the live-service titles behind Clash of Clans and other franchises, our dedicated Supercell teams process content in multiple languages simultaneously, translating millions of words per year with dedicated teams structured to mirror Supercell's own organisation. As Silvio Clausen, Head of Localization at Supercell, describes it: "Their ability to understand our needs and solve them with a tailored solution has led to creating dedicated teams that work as if they were part of our own organisation. The dedicated teams have earned our trust thanks to years of valuable collaboration."

A well-structured post-launch localization workflow covers:

• Translation memory: a database of previously approved translations that can be reused when the same or similar strings reappear in updates. This reduces cost and speeds turnaround for all subsequent work and consistency across updates improves significantly as the database grows.
• Continuous localization pipeline: a defined process for extracting new strings from each update, routing them through translation and LQA and reintegrating them into the build. The goal is a workflow that can handle a patch update in days rather than weeks.
• Urgent patch handling: critical bug fixes and time-sensitive event content often need to be localized under tight deadlines. An established relationship and agreed file formats with a localization partner means these can be processed without building a workflow from scratch each time.

The clearest sign that a workflow has hit its ceiling is the same problems appearing on every release cycle: missed timelines on multi-language builds, or PMs spending more time chasing files than managing quality. Once you have identified the bottleneck, the right tool or process change becomes easier to scope. Our practical guide to automating your game localization workflow addresses this directly.

The goal is a post-launch setup where a patch update can be turned around in days rather than weeks and where a time-sensitive seasonal event does not require rebuilding a workflow from scratch. Studios that invest in this infrastructure early, including consistent file formats, established translation memory and a localization partner who understands the game’s content universe, find that the cost and time per update falls significantly over the life of a title.

There are stages where unedited or “raw” Language AI outputs have a clear practical impact like first-draft translation for high-volume or high-frequency content, terminology management across a large string set, and post-launch live-ops volume where speed can impact player experience more than style. In any case, Language AI output reviewed by a human linguist is now a well-established and cost-effective approach for all sorts of content: UI strings, patch notes, system messages, frequently updated event text and more.

Human expertise remains essential in these scenarios:

• Culturalization: the judgment calls about whether a joke will land, whether a character's voice feels authentic or whether a cultural reference will resonate or confuse your audience: these calls aren’t reliably handled by Language AI regardless of how well the underlying model is trained
• Dialogue and narrative: story-critical writing where tone, subtext and character voice need to be preserved faithfully demands skilled human translators with genuine subject matter expertise and an understanding of the game's world
• Audio scripts: text written for spoken performance requires adaptation beyond translation: rhythm, breath points, emotional delivery and matching the cadence of the original performance

The efficiency gains Language AI offers are real, but do come with a significant caveat: AI output that goes into a shipped game without proper human review carries genuine compliance, commercial and reputational risk.

In regulated markets, the consequences of relying on unvetted machine translation are concrete. A couple examples: China's content review process scrutinises localized text as part of the approval workflow and translation errors that introduce politically sensitive language, culturally inappropriate references or terminology inconsistencies can result in outright rejection by regional regulators. Germany's USK applies similarly rigorous standards around certain content categories. Platform holders including Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo each maintain their own localisation quality requirements. A submission that fails those checks doesn't just get delayed, it goes back to the start of a certification cycle that can take weeks.

Beyond compliance, there is a reputational dimension that has become harder to ignore. Player communities are more attuned than ever to localisation quality, and a high-profile translation failure travels fast. Whether it is a character name rendered offensively in a target language, cultural references that land badly, or dialogue that reads as machine-generated rather than authored, these moments surface on social media and in reviews. For a studio releasing into a new market for the first time, which is a difficult first impression to recover from.

Human-in-the-loop processes exist precisely to catch what Language AI alone will miss. Post-editors, reviewers and LQA specialists bring the cultural knowledge, market awareness and contextual judgment that no model reliably replicates at the level a shipped game requires. The goal isn't to avoid using Language AI, it's to make sure it never reaches players without a human having signed off on it first.

To meet these precise requirements, we’ve developed our own technology enhanced services, combining AI speed with the linguistic oversight needed to maintain quality, trained on game-specific content, terminology and tone rather than generic language models. The goal is faster localization procedures without compromising the player experience, not replacement of the human judgment that narrative translation and culturalization require.

AI in audio localization

Language AI is also making an impact on audio localization, and is a space that is evolving rapidly. AI voice synthesis (text-to-speech applied to localized scripts) is not only being used to support internal prototyping and playtesting and to bring background NPCs and incidental characters to voice without studio bookings, but also to open up entire new interactive genres of gaming.

Dynamic, player-responsive AI-generated dialogue is a clear example: a game built around natural conversation, where an NPC responds in real time to what a player says or does leads to a branch count which is effectively infinite and impossible to achieve with pre-recorded audio. Procedurally generated worlds where NPC populations need distinct voices at a scale no casting and direction workflow could staff, accessibility narration that reads out player-generated content, dynamic UI states or live game data that doesn’t exist until the player creates it are other such edge-cases. These aren’t cheaper alternatives to human recording, but rather new and emerging categories of experience that weren’t previously possible to have voiced at all.

Used correctly, AI within audio localization is better suited to supporting and extending traditional voice workflows than replacing them outright. Main character performances, story-critical dialogue and anything with significant lip-sync requirements still warrant human voice talent and direction. That is unlikely to change in the near future even as technology advances, with the studios getting the most from AI audio being the ones treating it as an expansion of what is possible rather than a cost-reduction exercise on what already exists.

Keywords Studios has an integrated AI audio workflow covering proof-of-concept evaluation, workflow design, and human-in-the-loop post-production and QA for any AI-assisted voice content. The regulatory and contractual landscape around AI voice is still being defined, so any responsible deployment needs to account for that. We provide clear legal guidance and contract management as part of our AI audio offering: you won't be navigating those questions alone.

There's rarely a localization project that wouldn't benefit from a specialist partner, even at a smaller scale. An indie studio localizing into four languages for the first time still needs to navigate string extraction, file formats, glossary management, LQA workflows and delivery pipelines. Managing all of that alongside active development, without established processes, takes time and carries risk. 

When we supported a first-time studio, a team with no previous localization experience that needed to launch in eight languages simultaneously, rather than asking the studio to build its own localization infrastructure from scratch we insourced an experienced Localization Manager directly into the client’s team. The result: a full eight-language localization workflow built around the studio’s existing processes, without requiring the studio to hire a localization manager or manage multiple separate vendors. The partnership performed well enough that the studio committed to it for all subsequent projects.

Many studios start with an informal setup: a small team managing localization internally, freelance translators for one or two languages, processes assembled project by project. This works adequately for a single-market release, but the point at which it starts to strain is usually recognisable.

Signs that a project has grown beyond an informal setup:

• You are targeting three or more languages simultaneously, each requiring native linguists, editors and LQA reviewers
• Your project includes audio localization, covering casting, recording and direction across multiple target markets
• You are pursuing a simship release that requires localization to run in parallel with development under production schedules
• You have a live-service title generating regular content updates, each requiring a complete localization cycle
• You have had quality incidents: player complaints about localization, review score impacts, or patches issued to correct translation errors

On Dead Island 2, that end-to-end ownership spanned pre-production through delivery across 12 language pairs, with the same dedicated teams maintaining continuity across a development process affected by the pandemic. As Alexandre Lelandais, Head of Localization at PLAION, described the relationship: “Keywords Studios has been one of our main localization partners for years and I must say it has always been a pleasure. There is great communication and trust between us and they are always very helpful and responsive, no matter what the request or the challenge is. All the projects we assigned to Keywords went smoothly, with the highest professionalism, quality output and within deadlines and budgets. I know our projects are in the best hands with Keywords.”

For studios at that point, Keywords Studios’ game localization services cover the full pipeline across more than 80 languages for text and 50 for audio. That spans translation, editing and proofreading, voice casting, end-to-end audio localization, localization QA testing and toy translation services for physical game products, packaging and companion materials. Studios are matched with teams who know the content, not a production line that starts from scratch on each project.

What is game localization?

Game localization is the process of adapting a video game for players in a specific region, going beyond text translation to cover cultural adaptation, UI adjustments, audio, visual changes and compliance with local market requirements, so the game feels native to players rather than imported.

How much does game localization cost?

Costs vary significantly based on total word count, number of target languages and whether audio localization is included and the scope of LQA required. As a general guide the three main cost drivers each work on their own unit: text localization is priced on word count, audio localization on the number of words recorded (which determines finished studio hours) and QA and LQA on hours of testing required. 

Text-only localization into a single language for a shorter-form title can start at a few thousand dollars, whilst a full AAA title localized into ten or more languages with complete voice dubbing represents a substantially larger investment. For accurate scoping, the Keywords Studios team can advise based on the specifics of your project.

What is the difference between game localization and game translation?

Translation converts text from one language to another. Localization includes translation but also covers cultural adaptation, UI and UX adjustments for each market, audio and voice recording, compliance with regional content regulations and all the other elements that determine whether the game actually works for players in a given region.

What languages should I localize my game into first?

There is no universal answer, but a useful starting point is to look at where your genre performs well and where a language barrier is currently costing you players. Steam regional data and app store rankings in your target countries give the clearest signal. The five languages that cover the broadest share of the gaming audience on Steam are Simplified Chinese, Russian, Spanish, Portuguese (Brazilian) and German. For mobile titles, Bahasa Indonesian and Korean are increasingly worth considering given both markets’ strong spending profiles relative to their localization cost. Market selection should also factor in how competitive your genre is in each region and whether the volume of existing competition makes entry realistic.

How long does game localization take?

Localization time all depends on scope. A short indie title of under 10,000 words into a single language, text only, can be turned around quickly, whilst a full AAA release with audio localization across ten or more languages, running in parallel with development, requires localization to be treated as a concurrent workstream. For any new project, you should always consult a specialist partner for an accurate estimate against your specific requirements. Post-launch update cycles can be compressed significantly once pipelines and translation memory are established.

How do I choose the right game localization partner?

Picking the right external partner starts with knowing what you actually need: the services required, the scope of work, your budget range, and where you may need flexibility. Look for a partner with relevant experience and technical know-how, but also one that offers the right service variety so they can support your project as needs evolve. Just as important is the human connection: clear communication, shared expectations, and a strong production-level point of contact can make or break the partnership. Before committing long-term, consider a smaller test period or pilot project to see how well the collaboration works in practice.