Localizing all the material, terminology issues

When localizing a product, it is vital to make it suitable for the target market. With digital contents it is easier, you open your favorite tool , check the source, translate it to your target language (no, I swear, it is never that easy and that straightforward!) and you're good to go, possibly after some proofreading and in-game LQA.

However, when working with board games, you need to make sure you also take care of all the "hardcoded text" (this is also valid in video games, where for a great localization you should also think of anything that is visible in the game, such as streets/traffic/shops' signs, writings of the walls, posters and so on).

If there's a written text, it should be translated. That is why we decided to localize the cards of this tool

It was by far one of the hardest things we did (and you could tell by the poor quality of the graphics, after all there is a reason why we are translators and not illustrators or designers!)

Along with the cards' creation we also had to choose carefully which terms to use and why.

We are sharing with you a tiny bit of our super long discussion, here's our reasoning behind one of our translation's choices:

Rewind - Indietro

When we started translating the words related to the various functions of the script change tool, which we referred to as a “role[playing] control” or “fanta[sy] control”, we realized that the most direct translation of the word “rewind” would have to be discarded. In fact, the word riavvolgi is strictly related to the action of rewinding old audio and video cassettes, and wouldn’t be understood by most of the younger people, who were also the specific target audience of one of our two versions. In addition, it would be unnatural to utter a sentence using the verb riavvolgere in Italian to refer to the action of rewinding a scene in actual role-playing.

Therefore, we decided to choose the word indietro, which means “[to go] back”, so that its meaning would be easier to apply in every instance.