Unity is known as a top-notch game development tool. The list of games made with Unity increases every year because the platform is constantly updating.
Whether you are one of Unity’s developers or just planning to join the community, remember the importance of adding a game localization step to your development cycle. Or learn with us how to do it afterward. When done right, game localization gives you a competitive edge and increases your revenue.
In this article, you’ll learn how to translate Unity games with the Crowdin plugin, send your game content from Unity to Crowdin, provide context for your localization team, download completed translations, and more.
Unity – Game Development Platform
Unity is one of the world’s leading platforms for creating and operating real-time content like 2D and 3D games. Creators, ranging from game developers to artists, architects, designers, filmmakers, and others create Unity projects to bring their ideas to life.
Unity’s platform provides a set of software solutions to create and run interactive, real-time content for:
- Mobile phones
- Tablets
- PCs
- Consoles
- Augmented reality devices
- Virtual reality devices
The biggest advantage of Unity is that it is cross-platform, meaning that you can develop your game for any system you choose without difficulties. By learning Unity, you will be able to develop your game once, then deploy it on various platforms without having to learn different frameworks for each platform.
Currently, Unity supports over 20 platforms which include Windows, Linux, Mac, Android, iOS, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo 3DS, Facebook Gameroom, and many more platforms.
Besides making your game accessible across multiple platforms and devices, game localization is an important way to attract new international players and expand your audience.
Why Do You Need Game Localization
With localized versions of your game, you can increase sales, get more downloads, expand your international player’s community, take your place in the competitive marketplace, and increase your App Store rating.
Read our recent article dedicated to game localization, and discover the importance of having a localized version of your product, what elements you need to localize aside from the in-game text, and learn from the industry experts.
Unity i18n: Unity Games Localization with Crowdin Plugin
Our newest release, the Crowdin Plugin for Unity, is created to help you to integrate your Unity projects/games with your Crowdin project and make the localization process more efficient and faster.
Our plugin works based on the Unity Localization package, so please install it beforehand and make some preparation.
In the beginning, it is important to create the localization tables in Unity. They will include the target languages and the strings (keys) that you would like to localize. The same applies to any kind of assets that your game contains. You may include them in the tables and localize them too. You’ll have separate tables for each type of content: strings and assets. After everything is prepared in your Unity project, you can connect the plugin.
Localize your product with Crowdin
How to Connect Crowdin and Unity
Before performing the following steps, make sure that you have completed all the setup steps in Unity. You can find them on the Setting up the Crowdin Plugin for Unity section on the Unity page.
- Log in to Crowdin, create a localization project and go to your Account Settings > API > create a new Personal Access Token. You need it to connect Unity with Crowdin.
For this, open your Unity project > Tools > Crowdin > Connect to Crowdin.
- Upload source strings and assets from Unity to your Crowdin project.
For this, choose Tools > Crowdin > Push strings/assets to Crowdin. You can also upload your previous translations to Crowdin. For this, choose Push string/asset translations to Crowdin.
Each string and assets table will convert to a separate CSV file (for texts) and folder (for assets) on your Crowdin localization project in the Content tab.
-
Invite your in-house translators, hire a translation agency or a vendor from the Crowdin translation agencies list. You can also invite your gamers’ community to help. Learn more about translation strategies and choose the one that works best for you.
-
Download translations from Crowdin to Unity (both strings and assets).
Pull the translations and place them in the localization table.For this, choose Tools > Crowdin > Pull string/asset translations from Crowdin. In case there are no translations for some strings or assets, you will see the source.
Provide Context for Your Translators
Context is game-changing in every type of localization. It can be a mobile app, a website, an email or a game, still, your translation team will need context to ace localization and make your product “native” for clients from different parts of the world.
Screenshots are one of the most informative ways to provide context. That’s why, in our plugin for Unity, we added a Take Screenshot feature. You can find it in the Tools > Crowdin. It’ll make your working process easier and save some time.
To upload a screenshot to Crowdin from your Unity project, you need to press “Start”, and make a screenshot. After this, it will be pushed to your Crowdin project with all detected strings tagged.
Enterprise-level Game Localization
Depending on the scale of your project, team, and personalized requirements, you can choose between Crowdin and Crowdin Enterprise.
Crowdin Enterprise is a perfect choice for growing and big companies that need more customizable workflows, robust security, a range of connectors and add-ons. Get a faster content turnaround using automation workflows.
Everything is managed within your company’s Organization. You can create separate projects for different game types (mobile, console, PC) and group projects. For example, you can create a group for your marketing, localization, and design team, or simply treat groups like folders, where you can put related projects together and grant members access to several projects at once. It is a secure location to manage all your projects, project groups, resources, people, and teams.
