Game Localization History and Methods: How It Differs from Translation
From Zero Wing's "All your base are belong to us" to renamed Pokémon, StarCraft's Korean text problem, dubbing, QA, and fan translation patches, a look at the history and methods of game localization.
Playing a foreign game in your own language now feels like a given. But adapting a game's text and voices for players in another country takes far more work than it might seem, and the process has built up a long record of trial and error, including some failures that became famous jokes.
In this post, we look at what game localization is and how it differs from simple translation, and how it changed from the clumsy translations of the early days to today's multilingual simultaneous launches. We then walk through the history of Korean localization, technical issues such as fonts and text length, voice dubbing and cultural adjustments, quality assurance (QA), and the translation patches that fans make themselves.
What Is Game Localization?
Game localization is the process of preparing a game for a market other than the one where it was first released. English Wikipedia explains that the game's title, art assets, packaging, manuals, and cultural and legal differences are typically altered along the way. In other words, translating the text is only one part of localization.
Localization goes back to the very early days of video games. The original title of the arcade game Namco released in Japan in 1980 was Puck Man. When it came to the United States, the company worried that vandals would alter part of the word "Puck" into an obscenity, so the title was changed to Pac-Man. The ghosts' names were not translated literally from Japanese either; they were given new English names: Blinky, Pinky, Inky, and Clyde. It is a classic early example of localization that kept the feel rather than the exact meaning.
Early Bad Translations: "All your base are belong to us"
In the 1980s and 1990s, translation was often not a priority for companies. Budgets were small and schedules short, and English text was sometimes written by people who were not professional translators.
The most famous case is Toaplan's shooter Zero Wing. The game came out in Japanese arcades in 1989, and a Mega Drive version was released in Europe in 1991. In the opening of that Mega Drive version, the villain CATS says "All your base are belong to us," a sentence whose grammar has completely fallen apart. The original Japanese line means something like "All of your bases have been taken over by CATS."
Tatsuya Uemura, one of the developers, said in interviews in the 2010s that the translation was handled not by a professional translator but by a design team member in charge of export business. The scene began spreading on internet forums around 1999, and a music video posted on Newgrounds in 2001 made it a huge hit and one of the defining early internet memes. A single bad line ended up being remembered longer than the game itself.
Translation vs. Localization: Changing Names and Stories
If translation carries over "what was said," localization asks "what needs to change so local players get an experience similar to the original?" Names show this difference most clearly.
In the first Pokémon games (Japan, 1996), Fushigidane is a name combining "mystery" (fushigi) and "seed" (tane). The English version (North America, 1998) did not translate it directly; instead it created a new name, Bulbasaur, based on the creature's dinosaur-like look and the bulb on its back. The Korean name, Isanghaessi, goes the other way, keeping the meaning of the Japanese name by combining the Korean words for "strange" and "seed." It shows that even for the same character, each country can approach naming in a different direction.
Reworking the story and expression is also part of localization. Ted Woolsey, who handled Square's North American translations in the 1990s, had to keep cutting and rewriting dialogue while working on Final Fantasy VI and Chrono Trigger, because of small cartridge capacity and Nintendo of America's strict content policies. Sometimes the theme of a game changes entirely. The Nintendo DS rhythm game Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan, built around Japanese cheer squad culture, was judged too hard to localize as is, so it came to the West as a separate title, Elite Beat Agents, which uses the same gameplay with a story about special agents helping people.
The Scope and Workflow of Localization
Not every game is localized to the same degree. English Wikipedia roughly divides the scope of localization into four levels.
| Level | What changes | Typical use |
|---|---|---|
| No localization | Almost nothing | Released abroad in the original language |
| Box and documentation | Only the box and manual are translated | Arcade games, regions where many people know the original language |
| Partial localization | In-game text is translated, original voices kept | Japanese RPGs, visual novels |
| Full localization | Both text and voice in the local language | Large (AAA) games |
There are also two main models for timing. Post-gold means localization begins after the original game is finished; translators can play the completed game and work carefully, but the overseas release comes later. Sim-ship (simultaneous shipment) means localization runs during development so the game launches in many countries at once. It shortens the release gap, but translators risk working on an unfinished game without context.
When the work is outsourced to a specialist company, the developer hands over a "localization kit." It contains schedules and contacts, plot and character descriptions, walkthroughs, glossaries, and the files to be translated. It exists to prevent so-called "blind localization," where people translate lines without knowing the game.
The Path of Korean Localization
In Korea, bringing foreign games into Korean in some ways began with fans before official releases. According to English Wikipedia's article on fan translation, many Korean fan translations of DOS PC games by the Japanese company ELF appeared from around 1996, and ELF later hired some of those translation teams for official Korean releases.
Even officially released games often did not support Korean properly. A typical example is StarCraft. In Korea it was released through LG Soft as the English version, and Korean text typed in the game came out garbled. From 1999, programs such as "HanStar," which added Korean display and translation, were widely used, and the problem was fixed when the game was updated to version 1.12 in February 2005. StarCraft: Remastered, released in 2017, supported 13 languages including Korean from the start.
On the console side, local subsidiaries were a major turning point. Pokémon Gold and Silver came out in Japan in 1999 but was released in Korea in 2002. Nintendo of Korea was founded in Seoul in July 2006, and starting with the Korean Nintendo DS Lite in January 2007, it began releasing hardware and official software with full or partial Korean localization. At the same time, Nintendo of Korea drew criticism in 2015 for the translation quality of some games, a sign that the standard had shifted from "is there a Korean version?" to "how good is it?"
Fonts, Text Length, and UI
The first thing localization runs into is the characters themselves. Korean can combine into a large number of syllable blocks. The Korean industrial standard KS X 1001 (formerly KS C 5601) included only 2,350 commonly used Hangul syllables, so for a long time characters outside that range could not be displayed properly. Most games now use Unicode, but if a font file lacks a needed character, you still get empty boxes or broken text.
Text length is another big issue. The space for text on screen is usually set for the original language, so translating into a language like German, which tends to express the same meaning at greater length, makes text overflow buttons and speech bubbles. Games designed with localization in mind prepare for this in advance:
- Make buttons and boxes expand to fit the length of the text
- Keep text separate instead of baking it into images
- Build translation files from complete sentences rather than fragments, so grammar that changes with the preceding word (such as Korean particles) can be handled
- Format dates, numbers, and currency according to regional settings
- If players can enter names, accept the special characters of that language
Voice Dubbing and Culturalization
As voice acting became common in games in the 2000s, localization grew harder. Teams had to decide whether to record new voices or keep the original, and as cinematic presentation improved, matching new lines to characters' lip movements became important. According to English Wikipedia, localizing Fable II into five languages involved 270 actors and 130 staff, and the dialogue script for Star Wars: The Old Republic ran over 200,000 lines.
Changing content to fit cultural and legal differences is called "culturalization." Because each region's rating bodies (PEGI in Europe, ESRB in North America, CERO in Japan, and so on) have different standards, the same game can launch in different forms.
- Germany: Because of the strict standards of the rating body USK, the German version of Team Fortress 2 (2007) removed blood and dismemberment. The German version of Wolfenstein (2009) removed Nazi symbols, but a single swastika remained on one art asset, and the game was recalled.
- China: Hearts of Iron (2002) was banned because its maps showed certain regions as independent states.
- Character design: In the Western release of the horror game Fatal Frame (Zero in Japan), the protagonist's age, appearance, and clothing were changed.
Geopolitical strategist Kate Edwards raised awareness of this field with a talk at GDC 2006 on balancing cultural content in games. Some observers point out that one reason so many games are set in fictional worlds is that it makes such sensitive issues easier to avoid.
Localization QA and Fan Translation Patches
The work isn't over when translation ends. In localization QA, testers actually play the game to find mistranslations, inconsistent terminology, cut-off or overlapping text, broken characters, tone that doesn't fit the context, and culturally problematic expressions. Many problems only show up on screen, so reviewing translation files alone is not enough. Preparing a glossary and style guide in advance helps keep wording consistent even when many translators are involved.
When an official localization doesn't arrive or falls short, fans sometimes step in. One early recorded case is the Dutch fan group Oasis translating the MSX game SD Snatcher into English in April 1993. Fan translation grew rapidly as emulators spread in the late 1990s, and the group RPGe completed an English translation patch for Final Fantasy V in October 1997.
The most famous case is Mother 3. For this game, released only in Japan in 2006, the fan site Starmen.net spent about two years on an English translation, and the patch released in October 2008 was downloaded more than 100,000 times in its first week. That translation later became the starting point for retranslations into many languages, including Korean. There are also cases, like Capcom's The Great Ace Attorney, where overseas demand shown by fan translations led to an official international release. However, most fan translations are made without the copyright holder's permission, and some have received takedown requests ahead of an official release announcement.
In the end, the history of game localization has been an effort to answer one question: what should change, and what should stay, so that players in another country enjoy the game the way the original intended? We have moved from an era when a single bad line became a meme to one where multiple languages are planned from the early stages of development.