Hello Tacticians,
I'm ODS Roy, Localization Manager at Ocean Drive. Today, I want to talk to you a bit of the Localization Team's role here at our studio. I'll give you a brief look into what localization is, how it affects the game, and discuss how our contributions helped to shape Artemesia, the world of Lost Eidolons. Specifically, the names of characters and locations.
What is Localization?
Let’s say you’re on an epic quest to save the world from tyranny. You might not get very far if none of your allies can speak the same language! That’s where localization comes in. Localization is the magic spell that transforms our game from an experience designed for a specific audience, to an experience accessible to players worldwide.
When most people hear the word localization, if they even know what it means, they tend to just think of translation. And it's true, that's a big part of what we do — but it's also more complicated than that. Localization is about capturing the essence and culture of a game for new audiences, and language is only one piece of that. It's one thing to translate the content of a joke from Korean to English; it's another to make that joke actually land effectively and get a laugh.
In many cases, a team developing a game doesn't fully consider how the choices they make for their own audience will be received by someone who speaks a different language or has a completely different cultural background. Maybe they want a strict character limit on a text box, but haven't thought about the fact that German tends to be much longer than Japanese. Maybe they haven't considered how a particular word or name might carry different connotations in their own region than somewhere else, or vice versa.
That’s where localization steps in. We focus on the style and tone of translation, and strive to ensure that the final effect will be the same on a player no matter where they're from. In an ideal world, when we do our job right, no one can tell the game the game was translated at all. That’s our goal: avoid becoming somebody else's meme.
How Localization Shaped Artemesia
By the time our team first got involved with the original Lost Eidolons, the game had already been in development for over a year. As a result, most of the early high-level concept work was done by Korean developers, with characters and places named based on a Korean team's judgment of what a fantasy name should sound like in English. As a result, there were a few rough edges. The story was rich and the world had amazing potential, but we felt some aspects of the presentation might detract from the intended tone and experience.
Early on, we had endless questions. Why was this character named this way? Why were these cities named like that? And behind them all, the biggest question: As a player, would this approach make self-evident sense to me? We had characters named things like Ethan, Rancis, Teo, Gary, and even Boromir. We had locations with names like Brendale, Centel, and Loftale. None of these were horrifyingly bad on their own, but we felt that to properly immerse our players into the game's world, it needed a stronger sense of cohesion. The developers had provided a framework and foundation, and now it was our job to build on it.
One of the first things we looked at was the naming conventions of the world map itself.
We knew fairly early on that we wanted all the voiceovers to use a pretty neutral American English accent across the board, diverging only if it felt right for an individual character. So we knew we wanted to avoid rooting any of Artemesia's provinces in a 1:1 approximation of real-world cultures (or even worse, stereotypes).
But when it comes to place-names, you sort of can't avoid linguistics creeping in. A reader's brain looks for patterns of spelling they recognize. If they don't find them, or if you mix them too much, everything just sounds slightly off and fake, even if the audience can't articulate why.
So we went to work.
A lot of our efforts focused on nailing down the feel of each region, choosing a linguistic reference base that matched, and then selecting names from that base that had the right feel for the region’s role in the setting.
"Brendale", the homeland of our hero, inspired by the Italian countryside, became "Benerio".
"Centel", the walled capital of the empire, became the more French-sounding "Floriant".
The Germanic grassland "Grasbia" became "Lamprecht".
The mediterranean coastal region "Kallion" became "Corsarinda". And so on.
Building of the World
With the geography itself nailed down, we now had a solid footing to approach the rest of the world.
Like Westeros, Artemesia is a land full of noble houses, each with their own rich history and character. The developers already had a few ideas for these (banners, animal heraldry, etc), so it was up to the Localization Team to combine that info with our new naming conventions and find a happy medium.
For the noble family of Benerio, whose standard was a phoenix and whose role in the story was a fiery rebellion, their original name was House Fenix. We felt that was a little on-the-nose, and also a little too close to Gears of War’s Marcus Fenix. So we opted for “House Feniche” (from the Italian for phoenix, “fenice”, but with a slight spelling tweak to fantasy it up).
For the noble family of Lamprecht, represented by a wolf, we nixed “House Adolph” (a bit weak, and has some unfortunate connotations) and opted for the more regal-sounding "House Sigewulf" (a contracted version of the German for “victorious wolf”).
And so on, and so forth.
Once the family names were in place, we were better positioned to start revisiting character names, ensuring the sound lined up with the developers’ intended impact.
“Ethan” became the more heroic and less anachronistic “Eden”.
“Michelle” became “Marchelle”, to match the French feel of her homeland, Floriant.
“Karen” became “Karin” (because what kind of fantasy world has somebody named Karen running around)?
“Boromir” became “Balastar”, because we thought it sounded cooler, and so we wouldn’t get a letter from the Tolkien estate. (And, funnily enough, led to some problems down the road, because it turns out the hangul for “Balastar” and “ballista” are really similar.)
I could go on for a while.
We have many, many tables and lists of these. While it might sound tedious to some, these kinds of finicky, granular considerations about spelling and language are what localization is all about.
Some of our changes were pretty minor, while others were fairly significant and required a lot of discussion. But in the end, we were able to align on a world we felt was cohesive and made sense.
That gave us a good starting point when it came time for the thousand other decisions that go into localizing dialogue. Is this character an educated noble or a hardscrabble commoner? Outgoing or shy? Respectful or cocky? And once those decisions were made for the English translation, we were better equipped to aid localization partners working on the game's other languages, to ensure that no matter where a player was from, their experience of the game was the same.
How Players Can Help the Localization
There are lots of things to consider when localizing a game, and many different approaches to take. Our team's philosophy prioritizes inclusivity as the #1 goal. We believe everyone deserves to experience the joys of this hobby, and we strive to make our games available, cohesive, and immersive for anyone who wants to play them.
But at the end of the day, we're only human, and we depend on player feedback, both to gauge interest and to do our work better in the future.
Want one of our games in a language not yet supported? Speak up!
See an issue with a translation? Shoot us a message on Discord!
Our studio welcomes players into the development process with open arms, and the Localization Team is no exception to that.
On behalf of everyone on the Localization team,
ODS_Roy