The Chinese market for video games is the world’s largest, both in terms of revenue and the number of players. Nevertheless, it’s still considered one of the most challenging markets for localization. Like in Asia as a whole, Chinese culture and perceptions differ from what European developers are familiar with. Beyond the global dissimilarities, differences can also be found in the finer details. Today, we’ll look at what you should take into account when translating a game for the Chinese market.
Pay attention to the target region for localization
The Chinese language incorporates a few hundred dialects and approximately 10 main language groups. Yet despite this large number, Chinese localization tends to consider four key regions for the purpose of localization: Mainland China, Singapore, Taiwan, and Hong Kong.
The differences between regional variations can be almost unnoticeable or rather pronounced. Inhabitants of certain regions use Traditional Chinese (the classic version of characters written with a large number of strokes) unlike Mainland China, where Simplified Chinese is the norm. But the variations don’t end here: all too often, completely different words with alternative spellings and pronunciations are used to name the exact same phenomenon or item. That’s why the target region where you plan to launch your game should also be taken into account when localizing.
Here are a few examples of how the exact same word looks in Simplified and Traditional Chinese:
Customization: 自定义 vs 自訂義
Settings: 设置 vs 設定
Screen: 屏幕 vs 熒幕
Menu: 菜单 vs 選單
Search: 搜索 vs 搜尋
Device: 设备 vs 裝置
Change: 更改 vs 變更
Keep an eye on the format for dates and numbers
If your code only supports the Western date format, now would be a good time to change that, because localization can’t fix everything. In China, dates are written in the following order: year, month, day. Ideally, the date should be written in characters like this: 2020年09月28日, where 年 (nián) means year, 月 (yuè) means month, and 日 (rì) means day. But Arabic numerals are widely used in everyday Chinese life like they are in the rest of the world, so you can still express the date without having to use Chinese characters.
Dates aren’t the only potential stumbling block, numbers can be tricky too. Chinese has two numerical units that aren’t found in English: 万 (wàn) means ten thousand, 亿 (yì) means a hundred million. In English, numbers are usually broken down into three-digit chunks, but it’s neater to break them down into groups of four in Chinese. For example, Europeans would represent fifteen thousand as 15,000, but it would be shown as 1,5000 in Chinese. So, 一万五千 (one “wàn” and five thousand) would look more logical to a Chinese audience.
Consider line length
One Chinese character is roughly equal to the width of two Latin letters. Despite this, Chinese lines are usually shorter so a distinct phrase can fit into one line. If it doesn’t fit, characters automatically get carried over onto a new line, which can look messy and impact readability by partially distorting the meaning. While words in English get separated in places where you need a space or punctuation mark, Chinese sentences have a distinct lack of spaces. One wrong move in a conversation about pandas (熊猫) could turn it into a description of bears (熊) and cats (猫).
In cases like this, you either need to know how many characters can fit into a character’s speech bubble or insert a line break where the word can be carried over in one piece to avoid losing or distorting the meaning. Otherwise, the text might be displayed incorrectly: it might end up being too small or illegible.
Source: Godhood
Be mindful of cultural sensitivities
Mainland China is a heavily censored country. Due to the largely patriarchal society, the nature of the political landscape, and traditional family values in China, a very sensitive approach needs to be taken to topics like feminism, the LGBT community, sexualized portrayal of characters, as well as criticism of the authorities. For example, the game Free Fire was blocked in China because it was deemed too vulgar and violent.
Due to the strict rules, publishers adapt content in games destined for China, creating themed skins and incorporating traditional Chinese realia and holidays. Recent laws have also cracked down on in-game purchases: gamers aged from 8 to 16 can pay a maximum of 200 yuan (about 28 US dollars) per month, while players aged from 16 to 18 can pay 400 yuan (around 56 US dollars).
Children can only play for a fixed gaming hour: from 8 PM to 9 PM on Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays, and public holidays. On top of this, a “Healthy Gaming Advice” message must be shown on the screen before the game begins.
健康游戏忠告
抵制不良游戏,拒绝盗版��戏。
注意自我保护,谨防受骗上当。
适度游戏益脑，沉迷游戏伤身。
合理安排时间,享受健康生活。
China has banned video games containing violence, sex, and gambling. These strict rules can have a significant impact on gameplay. In the Chinese version of PUBG Mobile for example, players don’t die after getting shot in the head, but just hand over a loot box and wave goodbye. The blood in the Western version is absent in the game for a Chinese audience too.
Remember the meaning of different colors
Another important cultural factor you should consider when entering the Chinese market is color. White is the color of mourning in China. One of the main reasons for this is that the earliest mourning clothes in China were made of natural, undyed linen. Another theory connects this to Buddhism, where white symbolizes the paleness of death.
This is what the white mourning clothes look like
In contrast, red symbolizes success and celebration. You may have noticed that games and videos shared via Chinese social media look very bright, and this is down to the traditional colors, where the most popular choices would include yellow, blue, and red.
Pay attention to important holidays
Many centuries of Chinese history have nurtured a wealth of traditional holidays, although some of them are very similar to European holidays. For instance, China has the Qixi Festival every August, which is a celebration of love, similar to St. Valentine’s Day. And then the Ghost Festival arrives eight days later, which is reminiscent of the Halloween we’re more familiar with in the West.
Respect should be shown for China’s rich, ancient culture, so it would be a good idea to post greetings via social media for the most important Chinese holidays: Chinese New Year, the Mid-Autumn Festival, and the Dragon Boat Festival.
One more point while we’re on the topic of social media. Keep in mind that you won’t be able to reach your target audience in Mainland China via the usual services like Google, Facebook, X (former Twitter), Instagram, etc. Instead, you need to get on Baidu, Weibo, Xiaohongshu, YouKu, WeChat, and other similar platforms. But you don’t have to use all of them. Chinese apps can sometimes be more reminiscent of an entire ecosystem. Take WeChat as an example, where not only can you scroll a newsfeed and watch videos, but also order food and even wire money. All of this from the comfort of one app.
Don’t forget the linguistic considerations
Imagine that you’re entering the Chinese market with an awesome app, but far less people are downloading it than you’d expected. The reason might be surprisingly simple: the name of your product might sound like another word with negative connotations. For example, the number four 四 (si) can be pronounced the same as the word for death 死 (si) in Chinese. Publishers who have paid attention to their product name and localized it for the new audience will find themselves in the best position. For example, Lay’s potato chips are known as Le Shi (乐事) in China, which can be translated as “happy things,” while the brand BMW was adapted from “Bayerische Motoren Werke” (Bavarian Motor Works) to “Bǎomǎ” (宝马), or “precious horse.”Names like these take the target audience’s cultural context into account, and unlike a typical literal calque of the original term, this approach also shortens the name down to two neat characters.
The game localizer George Ou conducted research into the names of games in Chinese Steam and identified an interesting pattern. English versions of names for games tended to place more emphasis on bloodthirstiness and aggression. The following words were among the top-twenty overused words in English names: “war,” “hunter,” “tank,” and “battle.”In Simplified Chinese, the most frequently encountered words included: “世界/world,” “东方/touhou,” “少女/maiden,” “三国(志)/3-kingdom,” “幸存者/survivor,” and “探灵/ghost hunting.”All of this clearly reflects the Chinese gaming community’s cultural identity and array of preferences.
Another pitfall in translation is the meaning of words. For example, the word “play” in English can be used to mean “begin a game” and “begin playing a video,” but these two phrases will have a completely different translation in Chinese. The same applies to the pronoun “you”: English has one pronoun for formal and informal forms of address, while there are two different words in Chinese, where 你 (nǐ) is the familiar form, and 您 (nín) is used as a polite singular form of address.
The Chinese have a very specific type of humor, so you usually can’t use a literal translation to convey the meaning of a pun or a proverb, especially when the joke is based on a play on words. It’s even harder to localize a joke in Chinese. This type of translation is a good case in point of where it’s best to translate sense for sense, not word for word. You can use references to local series and keep up with trends on Weibo and Xiaohongshu (also known as RedNote) to create beautiful, poetic Chinese jokes.
Let’s take a meme about the series Story of Yanxi Palace (延禧攻略) as an example.
Meme from the series Story of Yanxi Palace
The word-for-word translation of the female lead’s phrase would be “all men are big pig’s trotters.”But a better translation would be “all men are pathetic” or “all men are pigs.”
Incidentally, we have other similar phrases here: the Chinese phrase for “lead male role” 男主角 (nán zhǔjué) sounds like “male pig’s trotters” 男猪脚 (nán zhūjiǎo).
Keep an eye on ratings and note trends
As we’ve mentioned, China is a leading video game market. But to secure a place among the top games, you need to consider both the cultural context and players’ interests in the target country before embarking on any localization.
According to the statistics, the majority of gamers in China prefer playing casual and action games with quest and shooter elements. Take the casual game Yuan Meng Star as an example, where cute animated characters participate in various competitions. It became the most popular game on the Chinese market two months after its release and has remained on the list of top games in terms of active users for a year.
MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) and massively multiplayer online games are less popular yet still enjoyed by this target audience. By the way, China was the country chosen for the first release of the most popular MOBA Honor of Kings, which introduced players to characters from Chinese mythology and history.
The least popular genres among Chinese gamers are sports, strategy, and simulation games.
