Localization Case Study
Localization case study: Series by Green Grey
Series by Green Grey
In March 2022, the team at Green Grey asked Inlingo to help them localize their project Series. The project consists of visual novels: the player chooses a story and, as the plot unfolds, makes decisions that influence the outcome of events. The translation team worked to localize six novels of different genres into English.
In this case study, we’ll discuss how the team was selected for the project, what challenges the translators faced while working, and how they managed to translate over 377,000 words in three months.
Visual novels: the story begins
Series is a collection of visual romance novels. The stories are categorized by genre, from thriller to science fiction. The player can choose a plot that catches their interest, whether it’s forming a relationship with a vampire, getting swept up in a romance with a chef, or finding love among angels and demons.
The genres and descriptions of novels in Series
Novels combine features of video games, movies, and literature. The characters in Series can be animated and express a variety of emotions, their surroundings change, and background music and cutscenes help players immerse themselves in the setting. At the same time, most of the game is text-based: you read the story and choose what your character will say or do. Your decisions shape how the story unfolds, impact the characters’ fate, and move the plot forward.
This is what dialogue choices and their effect on character relationships look like
In addition to your dialogue choices, the outfits and hairstyle you pick bestow certain traits on your character and thereby influence the course of the story. You select your character’s look from choices provided at the start of the novel. Then, as the plot develops, you can use in-game currency to acquire additional options, such as clothing, hairdos, and other elements of their appearance.
In most cases, the player makes these selections based on which stats they want to increase. For example, in the novel The Contract of Temptation, the main character can develop multiple stats at the same time: power, affection, and aesthetics. The character’s look isn’t the only thing that affects stats. The decisions you make as the story progresses also have an impact, as do the relationships you form with secondary characters. You can flirt and ignite love, increase friendship and trust, or fan the flames of a rivalry. No matter which path you choose, it will somehow affect the ending.
The app has its own currencies: tickets and gems. Tickets refresh daily and allow you to read through new episodes of novels. If you don’t have enough tickets to finish a story completely, you can wait until the next day or buy them from the store with real money. You can get gems in various ways: as a reward for completing episodes, watching ads, completing quests, as an incentive for opening the app every day or by purchasing them with real money. However, they have a broader use, allowing you to buy clothing and select special actions that unlock additional content and scenes.
Inlingo: how we set up the process
Green Grey approached Inlingo in March 2022. The app was still in development, but several novels were ready to be localized into English. In June, Inlingo received six different finished stories and began putting together a team for the project.
Olga Perevoshchikova, Project Manager at Inlingo
One important requirement that Inlingo has for translators is experience working with similar genres and subject matter. For example, when we were selecting a translator for the novel The Game of Dragons, we chose someone who had watched Game of Thrones and could do a better job catching references to the popular TV show. Another requirement for future project participants was a willingness to work on material rated for ages 18+, since some of the novels are fairly explicit. In addition, each of the translators was required to complete a 400-word test task that included an 18+ passage. The tests were evaluated by our native in-house translator, Morgan Shafter.
By August, we had translated six novels: The Contract of Temptation, Wandering in Dreams, Dracula: New Story, Showbiz Star, All Secrets of Heaven, and A Door into Summer. In less than two months, 12 native translators had translated 377,000 words. After the majority of the text was translated, Green Grey’s team started sending materials in batches as new episodes of novels were released. Inlingo received 6–10 fresh episodes a month with 5,000–15,000 words in total. The platform now offers over 30 novels from a variety of developers in Russian and English, and is constantly adding new episodes.
The localization of Series in figures
1
language
623,000
words
1
years of work
14
translators
3
project managers
3-5
tasks per month
The nuances of translation: challenges we encountered
Every project is unique, and Series is no exception. During the localization process, the translators encountered challenges that required special solutions. In this section, we’ll share how we handled these issues: what strategies we chose, what we focused on, and how these decisions impacted the final product.
Diving into the subject matter
Every novel is a different world with its own plot and characters, all with their own personality. For this reason, Green Grey provided us with plenty of reference materials to help with the localization, including project specifications, character descriptions, and detailed synopses. The translators and editors carefully reviewed this information before getting to work. Nonetheless, the translation team sometimes had to conduct thorough research to convey the meaning of specific terms more precisely and find the most accurate analogy in English.
Olga Solovyova, English Language Editor
The Contract of Temptation involves a very specific subject with a lot of terminology and extensive background information. For example, the Russian-speaking community uses the term “обратка” (“obratka”) to describe the emotional feedback from a submissive that is felt by a Dominant. We spent a long time trying hard to track down an exact English translation for it, but we couldn’t find one. The strings also had rather strict character limits, so providing a detailed explanation wasn’t an option. Ultimately, after discussing the issue with the client, we decided to translate the phrase descriptively as “emotional response.”
Character studies
When translating visual novels, you have to keep a large number of dramatis personae in mind. Every character has a particular personality and way of speaking that must be preserved during localization.
In The Contract of Temptation, the main character most frequently interacts with three central figures. For example, Henry Phalen is an alluring intellectual and aesthete who is always markedly polite. His lines contain a great many adjectives and grammatically complex constructions:
Jeff Buckler is aggressive, brusque, and high-strung. These characteristics are reflected in his colloquial lexicon and straightforward syntax:
Juliette Sakurai is artistic, emotional, and flirtatious. She loves calling others affectionate pet names. Her expressive and enthusiastic nature is communicated through adjectives, ornate speech patterns, and a lot of exclamations:
By paying attention to the characters’ personalities, we were able to highlight their temperaments and individual traits. This makes it easier for players to emotionally invest themselves in the story by empathizing with the characters and feeling compassion or aversion toward them.
Conforming to the context
All languages have words that mirror the time period when they were used. For example, the plot of the novel Stop the Cuban Missile Crisis is based on real events, so the story often references concepts like denunciation, the GULAG, and other things that reflect the circumstances of Soviet reality. Inlingo’s team tried to convey the meaning of these words in a way that was as accessible as possible to a native English-speaking audience. The translators paid special attention to the term “клевета” (“kleveta”). They discussed potential options and tried to find the one that was closest in meaning.
Olga Solovyova, English Language Editor
It was really interesting to work on Stop the Cuban Missile Crisis, which is closely tied to historical context. The plot centers on the conflict between the Soviet Union and the United States that took place in October 1962. Our task was to not only preserve the historical accuracy, but also translate the USSR-related storyline in a way that was understandable to English-speaking players.
Adapting attire
One of the visual novels’ mechanics is the selection of outfits, each of which has a poetic name. It was important for the translators to not only convey the meaning of the name, but also adhere to how the outfit looks, since the choice of clothing can affect the plot.
An example of an outfit choice in the game
Anastasia Fedorenko, English Language Editor at Inlingo
In the novel The Royal Debut, a black and pink outfit named “Back to 2007” required special adaptation. What does the year 2007 mean to a Russian-speaker who is 25–30 years old? That was the heyday of the emo subculture. When adapting the name, we took inspiration from the Hawthorne Heights song “Ohio Is For Lovers” because it was THE emo anthem for many. As a result, we changed the year a bit too: “Back to 2004.” In the final version, the main character says, “Sometimes it’s nice to revisit your teens. It makes me want to sing about how Ohio is for lovers!”
Time to rhyme
At times, a story required the localizer to not only convey the speaker’s personality and the context, but also use special skills. In the novel Showbiz Star, for instance, Inlingo’s team had to translate song lyrics while still making them rhyme.
Diana Rychkova, English Language Editor at Inlingo
The story’s main character performs several songs. Rhymed lines were woven into the narrative and constantly interrupted by the author’s lines and the character’s thoughts, causing many rhymes to be lost in the rough draft of the translation. On top of that, some lyrics had alternative incorrect versions that the character sang when something went wrong. That’s why it was important to choose a rhyme that would correspond to the original line. To translate the lyrics while maintaining all the original rhymes, we made a separate document where we collected the lines that were scattered throughout the text. This way, the translator could focus on the songs’ structure and preserve the rhymes.
Taken from the final translation, this example shows song lyrics that appear when the player makes an incorrect choice
While working on Showbiz Star, the translators went beyond ordinary literary translation and performed poetic adaptation as well. This required the translation of not just the style and substance of the text, but also its rhyme, rhythm, and musicality. In the end, Inlingo’s team succeeded in reflecting all the poetic elements of the songs without sacrificing meaning.
Results of the project
1623,000 words translated in one year
2Adapted cultural differences for an English-speaking audience
3Performed not only literary translation, but also poetic adaptation
4Highlighted characters’ distinguishing traits by noting their personality and way of speaking
5Complied with the specific conditions of the visual novel genre, in which the text is the main way of engaging players. The localization of such texts, therefore, allows for creativity. The novels also have visual elements that must correspond to their names.
Who worked on this case study
Olga Perevoshchikova
Project Manager
Olga Solovyova
English Language Editor
Diana Rychkova
English Language Editor
Anastasia Fedorenko
English Language Editor
Arina Gridneva
Content Manager
Ekaterina Meshcheryakova
Writer