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GDC 2011: ArenaNet's Adam Vance talks localization for Guild Wars
Ask the average Guild Wars player what makes the game so enduring, and "localization" is probably not on the top of the list. But the game is truly a masterpiece of blending players across an international community, with a single multilingual client supporting a wide range of communities across the entire world. ArenaNet's Adam Vance hosted a panel on the localization process for the game at GDC, discussing the many trials and tribulations the game faces from both a business standpoint and a cultural standpoint. It certainly doesn't seem like a difficult task from a conceptual standpoint -- even just running a block of text through secondhand solutions such as BabelFish can produce something that looks somewhat translated. But as Vance explained, simply changing the text from one language to another is an issue, and linguistics only scratches the barest element of what's needed for adapting a game. "Localization should be as much a science as an art," as he put it during the panel. While the focus remained on localizing Guild Wars from a business standpoint, players will still find interesting facts within the discussion.
