[duskwuff]

> There are some tools for RPG maker and Unity games that extract text, run it through ChatGPT, and place them back into the game.

For the love of god, please don't do this. This shows an immense lack of respect for players using other languages.

1) Text in games often comes as bits of out-of-context text which are easy to mistranslate. A button that says "attack" should be translated as an imperative verb, for example, not a noun. Even human translators have problems with this if the developer doesn't provide appropriate context.

2) Text in games also tends to involve game-specific jargon. If your game has names constructed from English words (e.g. a place called "Stonehall"), those names should probably be translated to similar terms in the target language, and that translation should be consistent throughout the game. An LLM may be able to come up with a substitute name, but it might not be thematically appropriate, and it'll have trouble keeping that translation consistent.

3) There's more to translation than just getting the words right. Tone is important, especially in languages that have marked distinctions between speech registers. Again, even human translators can have trouble with this; shoveling a bunch of text into an LLM is unlikely to work any better.

[danbolt]

When these machine translations fail, they tend to reflect poorly on the brand as well. It can cost more than simply hiring translators in the first place. [1][2]

[1] https://www.escapistmagazine.com/minecraft-legends-arabic-tr...

[2] https://www.minecraft.net/en-us/article/minecraft-legends-ar...