Rangeela is a Dutch media localization company, specializing in games. We have been interviewing Harry van Horen, owner of Rangeela, to better understand how Wordbee Translator bring values to his business.

Why did you choose a career in the translation/localization industry?

Actually I didnt choose it, it chose me 🙂

I’d been working in the games industry for 30 years, mainly in the distribution of games in the Benelux. We localized games then on a low level. After I left the company in 2000, I was asked by a large games publisher to help them localize some of their products so I used Rangeela to do that work. Rangeela started in 1990 as the publisher of the first Dutch computer games magazine, Hoog Spel.

What is the main challenge gaming companies are facing today when it comes to localization?

There are a few challenges and they differ per client. But all of them have one thing in common: tight deadlines! It’s really hard to deliver quality when you hardly have the time to look at the text.

“Call of Duty” Modern Warfare 3, has an incredible 41 000 lines of dialogue, how would you manage the translation of such a huge project?

A job like that can easily run amok within your company.  For this, you need structure, dedicated translators, but above all, control. You need to be on top of what is happening . You can’t do this without good tools, and in my mind, Wordbee is perfect for jobs of this size.

How does translating gaming apps differ from other platforms, other than characters limitations?

Actually we don’t see many differences in the gaming industry with regards to localization of mobile apps. To us, it’s just another platform and like all other gaming platfoms, it has its quirks, but nothing dramatic. There is one big difference, however: a lot of these games are made by indie developers who never actually considered localizing, so there is no structure in the game for it. That really becomes a challenge… translating within the actual code of the game itself is quite a nightmare.

Each game tells a story. Which game was realy fun or special to translate and why?

This is so true… and the stories I could tell you range from great to horrific. However, we are bound by NDAs so I am sorry, no juicy tales here J

You’ve been a Wordbee user for many years now. What is the feature you find the most unique/valuable in Wordbee Translator?

Wordbee has many features my people like. Wordbee is easy to work with, you don’t need lengthy trainings and it is unique in its flexibility. However, what I like most is the great support Wordbee gives. Every time we have a problem, the support desk picks it up quickly and deals with it. They’re very  helpful, even if the problem is not caused by Wordbee, but by the files my clients have delivered!

Rangeela translates games mainly into Dutch.  How do you collaborate with the translators who will translate into the other languages?

We are slowly moving translators with other language pairs to Wordbee. For Dutch, we do 90% of our jobs in Wordbee. The remaining 10% are done using tools specified by the client.

Do you think there is room for Machine Translation in a game localization workflow?

Given the current quality of MT, I don’t think it’s an option to use for games. Some of our clients have requested that we use it, and we did, reviewing the MT texts, but in the end, this was more costly than it would have been just using translators for the job.

More information about Rangeela: http://rangeela.nl/