“SPANIARDS!” Old game trivia check — do you remember which game this is from?
Let’s break this number down to make it easier to understand. To translate such a huge amount of text, 5,000 words must be translated in a single work day. That’s enough to keep two translators occupied, but not overworked. Our contractors worked on this project at this pace for over a year. Even though certain projects take a long time, it’s not often that you spend an entire year working on one project exclusively.
“I'd have to say we have received the most support I have ever seen in a project. Timely responses to Q&A; questions, reasonable deadlines (some even generous) and all the reference materials one could ever ask for and more.”
GameLoc, Spanish localization team
Spending 15 months completely immersed in a game’s material has an effect on translators, transforming them into some of the best Pathfinder experts around.
“The greatest advantage we had (in addition to most of the people involved being great fans of the genre and the aforementioned support) was that thanks to the relatively slow start, we had enough time to familiarize ourselves with the game and by the time the files really started coming in en masse we already had people familiar with most of the places, events and characters that came up.”
GameLoc, Spanish localization team
In December 2020, our Chinese team got to work on the project. They started a little later because initially, the developers employed translators from their fan community to lead localization efforts, as these were the same people Owlcat had already worked with on Pathfinder: Kingmaker. However, it quickly became apparent that a fan team wouldn’t be able to process the sheer volume of text in Wrath of the Righteous, so we jumped in.
“We realized that when the bulk of the text came in, our two-person team wouldn’t be able to complete the translation in time.”
Irina Lebedevich, Localization Manager at Owlcat Games
Everything went swimmingly. But how did we manage it? We brought in professional localizers with considerable experience who know just about everything there is to know about their job, from crafting button text to adapting complex texts for new audiences with minimal omissions of meaning, intent, and humor. Then we put these professionals in contact with the most devoted fans of the series, the people who were most knowledgeable about the lore and the tabletop roleplay side of Pathfinder. These fans wanted to bring the joy of this new project to other players, and even knew a thing or two about localization themselves. And so it all came together like peanut butter and jelly! Although we must mention here that it doesn’t always work out this way. We just thank our lucky stars that this time, it did!
To top things off, we connected our fan team with our pro team on Discord and let them work out some contentious points together on a dedicated server. This level of communication is actually quite rare.
“When we translated the monk’s skills, talents and Tianzhou-related terms, we adopted a transcreation method and came up with skill names that contain much more content than the original names and sound more “Oriental” while keeping their lengths under 5 Chinese characters. I think the results were quite successful, as most Chinese players were positive about the “new skill names”.”
Jiannan "Mario" Shang, Translator (Chinese)
Transcreation is a cultural adaptation technique applied to a translation that aims to convey the style, tone, and cultural context in addition to the original meaning.
In their Chinese translation, Owlcat Games managed to strike a delicate balance between fan translation and professional localization, sidestepping the all-too-familiar outcry of unhappy fans of a series. We were happy to lend our smithing hammer a hand.
“I would say the overall experience was very pleasant, because most of my peers, including Apollo and translators from other localization teams, have done an excellent job. In addition, the story of Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous is INCREDIBLY FASCINATING. I was often absorbed in the story when I did the translation work and couldn’t wait to see what would be coming next (and waiting eagerly for further batches). So, thank you for your great story, Owlcat Games!”
Jiannan "Mario" Shang, Translator (Chinese)