Loek van Kooten, MA

英語、中国語、韓国語、オランダ語のローカライズが必要な方は、お気軽にご連絡ください。 #ゲームローカライズ #IP360 #海外展開 #インディーゲーム #ローカライズ

経済産業省の「IP360」（コンテンツ産業成長投資支援事業）の募集が始まりました。 ゲーム、アニメ、マンガなどのコンテンツを海外展開する際のローカライズ費用を最大50%（上限4,000万円）補助する制度です。 個人開発者も対象で、法人化していなくても申請可能（上限1,000万円）。 「ローカライズは高い」と海外展開を躊躇していた方にとって、これ以上ないチャンスです。 第1回の申請締切は3月24日（火）17:00。 詳細はこちら： https://www.vipo.or.jp/project/ip360/ 私は30年以上、日本のゲームを世界に届ける仕事をしてきました。

🇯🇵 ゲーム開発者の皆さん、ローカライズ費用の50%を国が負担してくれる制度、ご存知ですか？

We start with the easy stuff, so beginners are welcome too. #Japanese #LearnJapanese #Kanji #JLPT #WordOfTheDay #Japanology #Morality #Ethics #道徳 #JapaneseEducation #JapaneseCulture #Bushido

たしかに道徳に反していたのかもしれない、だけど、この人とどうしても結婚したいと思ったの。 Tashika ni dōtoku ni hanshite ita no ka mo shirenai, dakedo, kono hito to dōshite mo kekkon shitai to omotta no. "Perhaps it is indeed immoral, but I was determined to marry this man. "

Add 彳 (action) and you get virtue expressed through conduct. Together, 道徳 (dōtoku) is "the way of virtue": morality, ethics. Fun fact: in Japan, 道徳 (dōtoku) is an official school subject. Since 2018, every child studies it with government-approved textbooks.

道 (dō) means "the way" - movement (辶) guided by a head (首), someone leading the way down a road. The same kanji in kendō, judō, and chadō. 徳 (toku) means "virtue" - originally written as 悳: a straight line (直) above a heart (心), meaning "a straight heart. "

When love breaks the rules, the Japanese have a word for what you're breaking: 道徳 (dōtoku).

com/articles/211639 #GameLocalization #Translation #CJK #Chinese #GameDev #Loekalization

Localizers constantly fill and trim to hit each language's sweet spot. AI translates meaning. Localization translates how it feels. 25 commenters debated Chinese grammar, verb morphology, and narrative perspective. That conversation is the job. gcores. com/articles/211208 gcores.

A creative decision that requires understanding both languages at a level no algorithm reaches. In a follow-up article, the same author shows that Chinese game terms naturally fall into four-character patterns for rhythm, while English caps at about two stressed syllables.

He chose it anyway, because it sounds better and fits the game feel. The community agreed: when given the choice, Chinese players voted for this title over the more literal alternative. Not a mistake.

Because 杀戮 (slaughter) in Chinese is what the powerful do to the powerless. You slaughter civilians. You don't slaughter a final boss. So Chinese players can't read it as a command. Their brains flip the whole title. The localizer knew this.

Gcores, one of China's biggest gaming platforms, just explained why AI can't translate games.

No more accidentally sending half-Japanese messages to your friends because you forgot to switch back. Just type. Your first month is completely free. No credit card needed. learn.japanology.nl

Our quiz system on learn.japanology.nl now detects automatically whether you need to type romaji, hiragana, katakana, or kanji, and switches for you. No Gboard, no installation, no hassle. When a question asks for romaji, you type romaji.

Everyone learning Japanese knows the frustration: constantly switching between your regular keyboard and a Japanese IME. On your phone, on your laptop. So we built one. Right into the app.

You don't need a Japanese keyboard anymore.

#Japanese #LearnJapanese #Kanji #JLPT #WordOfTheDay #Japanology #Japan #Illumination #ChristmasLights #JapanWinter #電飾

Tokyo Midtown? Kiko the fox is practicing 電飾 (denshoku) on learn.japanology.nl right now. We start with the basics, so jump in even if this is your first Japanese word. Link in bio!

That act of polishing evolved into beautifying, then decorating. One character traces the whole journey from scrubbing to dazzling. Put them together: lightning tamed into decoration. 電飾 (denshoku) is raw power made beautiful. 店先に置いたクリスマスツリーの電飾がちかちかと瞬き、年の瀬を知らせる。

Ancient scribes drew the actual zigzag of a lightning strike, then added rain clouds above. Raw storm energy, captured in ink. Today it simply means electricity. 飾 (shoku) started as someone wiping dirt off something with a cloth (巾).

電飾 (denshoku) means decorative lighting, the kind that transforms ordinary streets into glowing wonderlands every winter. But the kanji tell an origin story that spans millennia. 電 (den) shows rain (雨) with a lightning bolt (申) stretching through it.

Japan turned lightning into fairy lights.

They're what we do. Studios come and go. AI hype comes and goes. We're still here. www.loekalization.com

So the people who know how to localize games are being let go. And the technology that's supposed to replace them has been proven, by its own creators, to not work. Who's going to localize your next title for the Japanese market? The Korean market? The Chinese market?

At the same time, Cohere published research showing that AI reasoning models (including Claude, Gemini, and DeepSeek) actually make translations worse when they try to "think" about it. Every language pair. Every model. The smarter they tried to be, the worse the output got.

EA, DICE, Criterion, Ripple Effect, Motive, nDreams, Tripwire, Full Circle. All in one wave. Some of these studios just shipped hits.

The gaming industry cut thousands of jobs this week. Let's talk about what that means for localization.

They're funded by Big Tech, VCs, or startups, just like the web3/NFT grifters before them. Consumers and professionals don't want AI slop. For real insights, listen to experts like Rafael Brown: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rafaelbrown/ Ignore the noise. Demand substance.