Localisation ballpark cost?

However, before I start getting too excited, I'd be interested if anyone has some ballpark figures for the cost of the whole process?

Here's what I do: I call a localization provider and ask them.

For documents, I've heard a good ballpark is 75 cents/word, but I imagine it would be more for a game -- Its not just words you have to translate, it might be art that has writing on it, or it might be something more subtle, like changing the color of in-game elements as to not invoke cultural stigmas; ie, in the US, green is the color of progress, luck and wealth, while in China it's red. Here, 13 is an unlucky number, but in China, 4 is unlucky. Likewise, names of people, places and items in your game might not have a translation, but sound similar to words in the target language that have a rude connotation, or a connotation that's antithetical to the thing itself.

When you're localizing an artistic expression, its as much about localizing the experience as it is simply the words.

I'm a project manager for a translation provider. We'd be happy to get in touch with you and get you a competitive quote for the translation side. We have done mobile apps and game localization in the past.

But you should also keep in mind that there will be a development cost as well. You'll need a dev to work on your game code for the following:
1) To even be able to handle multi-language
2) If you're planning on including double-byte languages (Asian, Russian, Polish, etc) you may need additional dev time to accomodate their larger memory footprint
3) You may need to create separate language builds if the code gets too big when you start multiplying the 5,000 per language. Although probably not an issue with just 5,000.
4) Translated text tends to vary in size from the original language, for example Spanish tends to be longer than English. After you import translated text, you may find that you'll need to edit graphic elements that no longer look good with the translations.

If you are interested in getting a quote, contact our UK office at 0800.081.1815

Hope that helps.
Gabe Gils Carbó
Project Manager

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Your language is our language.

Thanks all for the advice. Looks like I need to do some research into how easily we can support multiple languages and how much development time that will add to the project