Hello, I looked up some repositories for google translate API modules written in Node.JS and found out how easy it would be to implement into Roblox / Lua + Web capabilities. This is the result of that!
This does require your game’s security permissions have Allow HTTP Requests enabled, you can find that under Game Settings.
I am not responsible for use of this model by users that take, download, or otherwise reference from this model and its source code. This was made for educational purposes only and to implement an idea I found capable by the Roblox engine. The user is responsible for their own actions with the source code in this model.
Even though it’s a cool resource, you shouldn’t use this in a real game. As machines don’t always bring accurate translation which destroys the whole purpose of localizing. I recommend manual translations by hand or hire a translator.
Dear @len_ny , I would now write my opinion about this topic:
For me such google translators are not good because they often say wrong words because there are several words with several meanings and generally google translators are not good and you should rather get native speakers to translate than some machine or APIs that do this because with real people you also get more quality at the same time.
Roblox supports ~60 languages, some of them pretty nice, most games have maybe 1,000 unique strings that need translating and translators on average charge maybe 20R$ a string.
From some basic math we know:
1,000 * 20 = 20,000R$
20,000 * 60 = 1,200,000R$
So by using this you would be effectively saving over 4,000$.
Furthermore, in my opinion the cost is by no means the annoying part. In practice trying to first, find translators to cover all 60 of those languages is near impossible and then trying to co-ordinate that team to quickly update the game for new strings is straight up a logistics nightmare which could delay your development pipeline by up to a month.
Why i’m not arguing human translations aren’t better in terms of quality, in almost every other aspect they are not and this solution is by far superior, especially if you plan to get human translators to review them and fix any which are inaccurate.
Hey there @LuaBearyGood,
I am a Greek translator and a Translation Manager. To begin with, no translators charge less than 70R$/string, unless they have no experience + they are not native.
I have contributed to multiple games as a translator and as a translation manager for 5 games, all of them had an increase of foreign players by 20%. When having your game translated, you expect player increase and of course, more purchases. By translating a game, you make it accessible to millions of people who do not know English, mostly young people. For games that the majority of players are <13, translations are the best thing to consider.
Not to mention, you do not have to do all 60 languages. That’s why Roblox statistics exist! You can see from which countries your game is played by and you go with that!
To conclude, that’s why translation managers exist. They review, set up, and communicate with the translators in exchange of a decent payment.
So in conclusion, paying for actual translators is even more expensive then I stated and you can instead expect to be paying upwards of 15,000$ on average to get a game translated into every language.
I get that you guys are hard coded to hate auto translation since it makes your job obsolete, but using it to some degree can benefit almost every game
But depending on the translator these prices can also go down because not every translator wants a lot for his translations, there are also some who only want 15-50 Robux for strings or even less.
At the end of the day you are still going to be paying like at least 5,000$ for non real time translations.
I’m not saying translators are completely obsolete yet however I think they should be used with machine translation to be easier and cheaper for the developer, at least for now.
There are also some thing translators simply can’t do like real time translations.
What’s the problem with them not being real-time? What if translations are 1 day late? Better 1 day late than incorrect translations that will probably piss off a player and make them leave.
Well if I were for example translating player chat messages I feel making the player wait a day for the message to be displayed is slightly more likely to piss them off then the translation being slightly innacurate