Yeah! So basically the arc was:
- I saw that a semi-popular Brazilian Youtuber had put out a Snake Farm video and gotten a decent number of views
- I went "oh shit, I should get a Brazilian Portuguese version of the game out as quickly as possible"
- I put out a call for translators on social media and got a couple dozen applications, then hired one of them (Bruno Sampaio, who does great work)
- I'd already put together a spreadsheet of every piece of text in the game along with context and subtext for the French translation (which had been suggested and done by @Siph), so I basically made a new page of that spreadsheet, changed every instance of the word "French" to "Portuguese," and sent it off
- A week or so of discussion, clarification, and implementation later, the pt-br version of the game was ready and uploaded!
- As far as I know that one Youtuber never played Snake Farm again. Still worth it tho
Most interesting parts of the process:
- Seeing English puns/portmanteaus get translated from English to Portuguese. I think my favorite was TOMBSNAKE -> SEPULCOBRA
- Also fun: new jokes being added in! "HI, I'M GOOSE" became "OI, EU SOU GUTO" which, as I understand it, is a reference to a Brazilian DBZ meme; the ECONOMIES OF SCALE expansion became "A VIDA COBRA" ("life charges interest"/"the life snake")
- The base font the English version of the game uses just doesn't work for Portuguese, so we had a big process of finding an acceptable pixel font alternative that was readable while keeping the original game's aesthetic. (The French version of the game uses the English font because the entire game is in ALL CAPS so the lack of accents makes it look bizarre but not illegible)
Localization is fun to do and I’ll do it again in a heartbeat! SNAKE FARM was a really fun project to work on, and I’m really proud of my work. I heard from Portuguese-speaking friends that the Brazilian localization is great too!
If you want your game localized into French, I’m available for hire! I strive to do my best to keep the text feel both tonally authentic and natural in French, and I also don’t shy away from écriture inclusive and neo-pronouns. It’s not my main job so I can keep rates affordable if you’re a small indie game developer. Hit me up! pro [at] siphonay [dot] fr
