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Nintendo discusses their approach to worldwide simultaneous localization

by rawmeatcowboy
08 August 2013
GN Version 4.0
A portion of a Siliconera interview with Nate Bihldorff, Localization Manager at Nintendo's Treehouse

S: More and more major Nintendo games are starting to see simultaneous or near-simultaneous launches worldwide, like Skyward Sword and Super Mario 3D Land. When you have to prep a story-intensive game like Zelda to launch in English and Japanese at once, how do you coordinate with the development team? Do you have story input?

NB: We’re in touch with the dev teams from long before formal localization begins, giving feedback on all manner of game elements, and once formal localization starts, we talk every day. As such, we’re constantly asking questions about the plot, background on characters, and even series etymology on enemy and character names. We feel a real responsibility to curate these worlds and preserve the vision of the developers, so I’m sure we get incredibly annoying as we pester them about whether, say, a particular enemy is related to a Moblin or an Octorok.

Full interview here