Types of Game Testing - Localization Testing

While general text issues are a minor part of functionality testing, some QA departments use dedicated localization testers. This is especially true with Japanese publishers. Early Japanese game translations were rife with Engrish, and in recent years this has become a more serious concern with Japanese developers as games have taken on a more cinematic presentation. To maintain the impact of the drama, localization testers are employed to review the game's script (which may be thousands of pages long for RPGs or other story-driven experiences), looking to make technical corrections as well as reviewing the translation work itself to ensure that it matches natural speech patterns. Thus, a localization tester acts as an editor. Though localization testing is currently a mainstay of Japanese game development, it will likely expand as the Chinese, Korean, and Russian game industries gain global traction. Those seeking work in this area do not necessarily need to speak foreign languages, but being able to understand the original texts is a helpful and desirable skill. Unlike other forms of testing, however, localization may involve very little actual game interaction. In some cases, the only times that the tester needs to play the game is to understand the context of dialog or interface messages that are not immediately obvious. The game's "script", which is not a script in the literary sense, but rather a collection of all the text strings referenced in the game, is typically catalogued in a spreadsheet that the tester is given to work with.