Scott Gall (Localization) - Developer Interview

In our seventh interview, we're diving deep behind the scenes and are talking to Defiance's localization lead, Scott Gall, who keeps the German and French translators on task and helps them do their jobs.

Could you introduce yourself, what's your job title and how long have you worked for Trion and on Defiance?

Hey! I’m Scott WholeLottaLoc Gall, a.k.a. scottg because of the high Scott population at Trion. I joined the company in 2011 and since then I’ve worked on five games, plus our platform. My first whiff of Defiance came in June 2011 when we translated the text in the E3 trailer There Will Be Consequences. A few months later I saw a live demo on PC but I didn’t start working on Defiance game assets until summer 2012. That’s when Trick gave us the lore glossary and we began translation of the first VO script

What does your job involve, and what exactly do you do for Defiance?

I’m the localization lead so I make sure our localized versions meet the needs of players who don’t play the English version. As the loc lead I’m the person who is most likely to be punished for problems specific to a localized version.

A lot of my job is understanding and planning around the schedules of other teams so I ask a lot of questions with a calendar in my hand. I weigh the upcoming features and content to make sure the number of translators and loc testers we’ll need will be available and budgeted. During development I collect docs from individual devs and ask about the progress of the assets being created that we will localize. I look out for technical problems or cultural assumptions that would impact the presentation of German or French. For example, the recent mysterious disappearance of œ in French in the Store, and making sure our new welcome message won’t mislead players about TV show availability in Germany or France.

The loc lead is usually the person who arranges casting and recording for the localized versions. I make special work files and lookup tables that the translators need for professional translation software tools. I put our localized “stuff” into the right development branch at the right timing, so that the right build gets our intended translations and bug fixes. A few tools are very helpful for that task. But one Defiance tool in particular that is very smart seems to actively work against me…

After each release goes live, Defiance Data sends me a message about errors in the loc versions and I think about where to improve next time. That’s a good lesson: players notice the problems. And if there are problems then ALLES HAT KONSEQUENZEN! TOUT ACTE ENGENDRE DES CONSÉQUENCES!

Have you always had the same position within Trion?

I was hired as a translation lead. That was a mission to empower our translators to use their core translation skills and third-party tools knowledge to fit Trion’s specific needs. I spent a lot of time troubleshooting technical problems and plugging gaps in knowledge-sharing loops as the company’s IP portfolio grew quickly. Imagine an ant working at the top speed of a cheetah. That’s a translation lead supporting multiple games. As loc project lead now I have a broader set of concerns for a smaller number of games, so I guess I’m more like a hawk-eyed monkey swinging around to inspect new bananas and track predators while monitoring the supply of nuts for the winter. Just like that, yes.

What do you do during a typical work day?

Mornings and evenings are hectic. I start patching game client builds while scanning the radar for signs of trouble from the previous night or for the upcoming day. By 10:00 a.m. our overseas loc vendor partners are ending their business day so I grab and validate any translation deliveries before my counterparts go offline. After that I run tools to identify untranslated English text that is finalized for translation, or is not finalized but which we have to start translating anyway because of the impending deadline. By 11:00, or maybe 12:00 if tools haven’t run smoothly, I am ready to ask our German and French staff to do certain linguistic tasks due that evening or next day. Around lunchtime I check the project bug database to see what’s cooking, or what is undercooked, and catch up on release notes, especially from designers. Sometimes there’s a live report from German or French version players.

I help match release notes to context problems that translators are unable to solve, and sometimes the translators use game text I haven’t read to explain content to me I’ve overlooked. By 2 p.m. there’s probably an emergency from another team and I need to figure out whether it’s realistic to sacrifice a piece of our planned work that day, and if so then which piece. If we change gears to fight fires then it might mean I’ll need to use an overseas vendor that night to make up for what we didn’t complete during our day. Making handoffs to vendors takes time to do well if you want text back that is publishable. Especially when I’m busy with that, translators will help monitor our ticketing system, which is how we are assigned new work for Defiance marketing, community, and customer support. The 3-to-6 p.m. block passes very quickly. It’s the only time of day for strategic planning, and sometimes we need to slow down and discuss details as basic as how we will translate certain item names. I ping designers about anything peculiar in their final release notes that might imply extra productivity on my part the next day, I finish up non-Defiance tasks for the day, and then it’s time to go shopping...

What languages do you speak?

English. Japanese. Music. Love. I enjoyed my three years of Spanish study and would go back to it if the Japanese language ever disappeared. Which I suppose could happen if all those monsters keep attacking Japan! So let’s say you’re traveling in a Spanish-speaking country and a Japanese person there says to you “Mi kaijū es tu kaijū” you will want to respond in Japanese with “結構です”. There you have it, your first Japanese language lesson.

How did you start out in the gaming industry?

When I was a freelance translator in Tokyo, a production company I had done some work for was approached by Konami and asked to localize Suikoden III into English. I was invited to join their team.

Has localization always been something you wanted to do?

When I first heard about it, no. When I first did it, yes! A friend suggested in the ‘90s that I apply to Square because I was living in Tokyo and he met a localization coordinator of theirs. But he had the impression that the devs and their loc team might be sleeping under their desks due to forevercrunch. Rather than investigate it I just said no way, what a bunch of losers, forget that industry. I wanted to go further in copywriting. But working in translation around the launch of the PS2 changed me. Then after Suikoden I was addicted to the idea of game loc but I couldn’t find the right job that would also offer work visa sponsorship. I joined Lionbridge Japan, which specialized in enterprise software localization. I annoyed everyone there by spending a lot of energy on our games industry customers even though it was a fraction of our total revenue. I owe Lionbridge my gratitude for teaching me software localization. I owe Google, one of my customers at Lionbridge, for showing me what rapid iteration is when they launched AdWords and AdSense with our Japanese translation. I owe Xbox Japan for their maniacal and impossible Thursday night translation orders for cert and QA doc translation needed by Friday. That exposure was priceless to help me understand what it took to work in games.

What's on your desk?

Three monitors. To-do lists in caveman handwriting. A two-year old paper sticky note from the finance department to remind me of the difference between push and accrue. Defiance and RIFT collector’s editions. Overpriced screen wipes. Astro A50 headset. DVD set of Reilly, Ace of Spies. A hellbug figure. Ferrari keys. Ha! As if.

Outside of work, what do you enjoy doing?

Starts with the letter G… on PC and console. Last month I was way into StarDrive 2. Now I’m playing Helldivers. I haven’t gone back to Bloodborne since I rage quit in a boss fight. Next I’ll probably try ESO. I also go motorcycle riding and I like traveling abroad. I haven’t been able to combine those two yet but I’m trying. Once in a blue moon I join a football pick-up game at the park or practice trumpet. I also volunteer at the Votanis Collective library.

What are some of the challenges of working on several different games at once?

The first thing that happens is you forget debug commands. Then you stop trying to remember the new commands and just check the list every time. Our methodology is standardized across games but our tools are not. I get impatient sooner with one game not having the ease of navigation or a tools feature that another game has. Text import and export for loc on one of our titles is very labor-intensive though accurate and extensible, while on another game it’s incredibly fast but prone to human error and limited in scope. For me the releases aren’t as much fun as when I had singular assignments because I know I could give more creative input if I had more time to dedicate. On the upside, I’ve learned more. Not every company has as much IP with depth as we do so I’m lucky that I volunteered for one war but came home a veteran of five.

What's the most challenging part of working in your position?

An article I read by an indie developer who was surprised to see how many localization aspects went wrong on his small project warned that loc production requires “an excruciating attention to detail.” I think that’s accurate. At scale it’s nearly beyond human capability for a small team to stay on top of everything without extensive automation or setting their own schedule, both of which seem rare if not impossible.

Another challenge is understanding the scope of content for the next release at all times. It’s harder than it should be and that’s a common issue across the industry. Even if a milestone release date is provided by designers for a given text string, if the batch of content it belongs to gets postponed you will have put your translation time into something that is no longer urgent and might undergo rewrites again before release. If content gets downsized and qualifies for an earlier release than originally planned, a batch of text could pop up you hadn’t expected, right before code lock.

Also! Cuz ppl rite like dis on da interwebforumz i’z fraid i write like lolcat some day. For many games it’s often “better” to cheat syntax, break grammar, abbreviate, and avoid great names simply because they’re long or don’t fit on one line of the inventory window. I read a book once in a while just to remember the breadth of written expression available to humanity.

Are there any amusing localization tales you can share?

Last year on Defiance we got feedback from Defiance Data that some players didn’t like our German renaming of Hog Leg after it had gone out in English, which had been a mistake on my part. One player in particular seemed overly upset about it so on the loc team we kicked around the idea of renaming the weapon in the German version to be the character name of the player who was upset. Cooler minds prevailed but we’re still accepting Hog Leg rewrite suggestions for German!

On FFXI before I joined them, a town NPC’s dialogue didn’t get translated and he was returning Japanese text when the player interacted with him. When the loc team fixed it they added a line to retcon the error. The next patch players found him to say in English something like “I came from a faraway land and I’ve been studying your language really hard this past month. I guess you can understand me if I talk like this now.” I love that workaround.

Speaking of Defiance and FFXI, I might be the only person alive, or still alive, who has worked on 2 live service open-world games on PC and a Microsoft console and a Sony console. If anyone finds a way to make that seem humorous, let me know. :)