Ever since localization was introduced to Roblox I always appreciated its importance, however, there is one question which I never seemed to have convinced myself about.
If I had to use assets in my game which undoubtedly belong to Roblox and are very much recognized by the Roblox community; referring to assets such as “Dominus Aureus”, “Domino Crown”, “Beast Mode”, should these be translated into the supported languages or should they remain in the English language?
My opinion at the time of writing this thread is that such assets should remain in the English language just the same as they remain in the English language when the language is changed on the website itself to another language.
I feel the names of items on roblox are more or less similar to most pop-culture items in real life. They are universal symbols that can transcend past language barriers. I would keep items like Dominus Aureus which already is in latin, and other items to the names roblox has for them in the catalog.
I accidentally implied that the word “Dominus” is in English. Yes, the word “Dominus” is in Latin but keeping intact to this thread; on Roblox we somewhat have added the word “Dominus” into our English vocabulary.
Proper nouns are rarely translated into other languages - it’s why we maintain names like Mount Fuji (in some Japanese, Fujisan, where “Fuji” is the name and “san” means mountain) as it’s given name. Of course descriptors like “mountain” are translated because that isn’t part of it’s given name, but as a noun to describe what it is - which if your asset has a descriptor, that descriptor definitely should be localized.
Obviously this has exceptions (we are talking about languages here), but for the most part if it’s a proper noun, keep it in it’s language of origin.
I definitely see your point in making the assets in different languages to help people who don’t have english as a first language, but I don’t think it’s necessary.
This is for one major reason. All the items you have suggested I would not have searched for as their current names. For example with the Beast Mode face (using an english example) there is no way I would have known it would be called that, yet people still find it.
This is because when shopping for catalog items you can see what they look like, therefore you know what you’re purchasing even if you do not know the name.
As far as I am concerned the naming is irrelevant, the only important thing is the product.