Localizing your game into Spanish, which Spanish do you choose?

This blog was originally posted on Localize Direct's blog on April the 22nd, 2016.

There are around 300 million native Spanish speaking people in the world spread across 22 countries. Localizing your game is the best way to reach them but then you have a choice to make: Which Spanish do you choose?

Note that "Latin American Spanish" isn’t actually an official language, there is a “neutral” Latam Spanish that can be provided, but in reality Latam Spanish would be a mix of Mexican, Argentinian, Colombian etc. If looking to release into Central and South America then perhaps you should target a specific territory?

Anyway, the decision you make should be based on your research into which is the best market for your game. However what are the pros and cons from a language perspective? Are there further factors that you need to bear in mind when choosing? Obviously if you can do more than one then great, but what if you can only choose one? Here we discuss the pros and cons with some Spanish translator/gamers. Please note that the views expressed here are those of the respondents and not those of LocalizeDirect (disclaimer disclaimer). You’ll also be interested to read how their views of the "other" Spanish variants are subjective.

Questions posed to:

OK let’s get going:

1. What would you say are the key differences between LatAm Spanish variants and Euro Spanish? Not just specific words but perhaps tone/usage?

(RM) They are rather different. A Spanish user won’t easily accept a LatAm translation, as it may sound "not serious". A few decades ago in Spain, we had LatAm dubbing for cartoons, and we made fun about that fact (we still do nowadays). The tone, the usage, even the pronunciation changes a lot and it’s rather difficult to have users happy with a LatAm translation. In fact, Microsoft delivered a LatAm translation for Halo 2 and the game was heavily criticised due to that; for the recent Master Chief Collection, they deleted that dubbing for the Spanish market and delivered Halo 2 with English dubbing. This was criticised once again (as Halo 2 is the only Halo ever to not have Spanish translation and dubbing), but the English dubbing was preferred to the Latam one.

It’s the same the other way around: there’s no "LatAm Spanish". In fact, Spanish is different in Spain, México, Colombia, Argentina, Peru… It should be adapted to every regional variety to offer the best value to each country but, as that’s pretty difficult, the best option is to have at least Castilian Spanish and LatAm Spanish (as this is the common language for all the Latin American countries). In fact, it’s just a matter of doing a little adaptation from one to the other to make critical changes that are not accepted in the other variant.

(JG) Simply put, LatAm Spanish tends to use simpler, more direct structures (simple verb tenses, less periphrases in some cases) and a more informal tone.

(CB) The biggest differences are in terminology and also how words are used, which may mean that a word that is totally normal in Spain, may be not that correct in Latin America. For example, the verb "coger" (to grab/pick up) that we commonly use in Spain would be understood as “to have sex with someone” in Argentina. This may only make most of the Argentinian players giggle a bit, as they know that the word actually means “agarrar” (the word they use over there for grab), but rest assured that forums will have many screenshots of your game with the corresponding jokes. On the other side, if you use “agarrar” for something that is just “pick up (from the floor)” it would be perfectly fine in Argentina, but it would sound weird in Spain (and some other Latin American countries) as it would mean to grab something with excessive force, as if it was going to run away, and you usually don’t do that with things you grab from the floor.

Other changes can be found in the use of formal or informal. In Spain and most Latin American countries, formal mode ("usted", for “you”) is usually left to more polite situations, like talking to the elderly, talking to people you don’t know for the first time and to whom you want to be polite or to people you respect (your boss, a teacher while you are at school or even university), When you go to speak to someone at a public service —doctor, hospital, council…—, when you are a soldier and you want to address to someone of a superior rank, etc.).

As the nature of the videogames is rather informal (entertainment is informal and most of videogames are addressed to people that are either children or people used to be addressed in informal way in videogames), formal mode is left for just specific situations within a game where the formal mode is needed for characterization (for example, if your character is a soldier and the AI speaking to the player/soldier is meant to be the Captain, or when your character speaks to an old lady NPC) and thus most of the text will be written in informal addressing ("tú").

However, in countries like Argentina, Uruguay and some Central American countries, they use the so-called "voseo" for the second person (use of “vos” instead of “tú”), which was quite common in the old Medieval Spanish. On the other hand, in Colombia and Costa Rica mainly, “usted” is used in both formal and informal contexts, so much so that a mother could address her child as “usted” as much as they would do to their own mother.

(MG) One element is attitude rather than phonetic aspect of it, I think that in Latin Spanish we "go round the bush" a whole lot more than European Spanish, who I think “cut to the chase” right away.

2. Is there (one) particular thing that clearly indicates you aren’t playing a version aimed at your particular locale?

(RM) It’s difficult to highlight just one thing. There are many things that make it extremely clear. For example, in LatAm Spanish they talk in a formal way ("usted", “vos”), while in Euro Spanish we use the informal way (“tú”). Also, there are words as “coger” that are common use in Euro Spanish (as it means “to take”), but that can’t be used in LatAm Spanish (as it means a crude version of “to have sex”). And, obviously, different vocabulary for common words (“car”, “strawberry”…) that can result in difficult general comprehension of the text.