Valor MMO · Languages

Fifteen languages, including right-to-left Arabic

Valor is published in fifteen languages: English, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, German, French, Russian, Simplified and Traditional Chinese, Polish, Italian, Turkish, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean and Arabic. The same work had to be done three times, in the website, in the launcher and in the game, and it had to keep up with a release every few days.

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The home page in Arabic.

Right to left means the whole page turns

Arabic is not only translated text. The menu, the buttons and the page layout all mirror, so the logo sits at the top right and the reading order runs the other way. The game does the same.

The Valor MMO home page in German, with the headline Eine lebendige Mittelalterwelt and translated menu and buttons. — The home page in German.

Each language at its own address

Every page exists at its own address in every language, and each tells search engines about the others. A German speaker searching in German lands on the German page.

The character creator’s first step in Korean, with the three ancestry cards and every button translated. — The character creator in Korean.

The game itself, not only the menus

Quests, conversations, item names and every window are translated. Korean, Japanese and Chinese need their own fonts, and the titles still have to fit the same gold-ruled headers.

The Valor title screen in Simplified Chinese, with the Play, Settings and Quit buttons translated. — The title screen in Simplified Chinese.

Short labels are checked by hand

Automatic translation is good at paragraphs and poor at single words. A button that says Play, a tab that says Bag, a count of one item: those are read and corrected by hand, because a wrong word on a button is the first thing a player sees.

The Valor launcher in Spanish, with the menu reading Inicio, Tienda, Noticias and the Play button reading Jugar. — The launcher in Spanish.

The launcher switches at once

The launcher changes language from a menu at the top without restarting, and remembers the choice. The game follows it.

The in-game Language menu listing each language under its own name. — The in-game language menu.

Every screen looked at before release

Before a release, every screen is captured in every language and looked at for text that is cut off, overlaps or wraps badly. It is the same discipline we bring to a town’s website that has to serve Spanish-speaking residents.

More of the project

The rest of Valor

The game

A shared medieval world: a town, keeps to fight through, the sea, and tavern games.
The launcher

A Windows application we wrote to install, update and start the game.
The character creator

Six clear steps from a blank slate to a named character, with a live 3D preview.
Interface design

The title screen, character windows, conversations and mini-game screens.
The website

valormmo.com: guides, patch notes, accounts and a live server status.
Technology

What Valor is built with, from the game engine to the web server.