Back in March, Chris covered a Mad World patch that had the both of us scratching our heads: The English translation of the game’s party system UI was using the term “mob” for “party” or “group.” While you can kind of see the logic, it’s not something an actual professional localization team would ever do, as the word mob means something entirely different in English-language games. Fixing that kind of ambiguity in auto-translated text strings is exactly the work of a solid bilingual localizer.
Sam had a similar experience in HPMA; a UI update clearly aimed at the Chinese audience had been poorly localized, to the point that tabs – which surely worked perfectly for Chinese characters – were completely unreadable in English (see header pic above). And they just… shipped it out that way.
Those are just two small games from recent memory – I bet you have some whoppers. Which MMO has the worst localization?
Every morning, the Massively Overpowered writers team up with mascot Mo to ask MMORPG players pointed questions about the massively multiplayer online roleplaying genre. Grab a mug of your preferred beverage and take a stab at answering the question posed in today’s Daily Grind!
