Fallout: New California Devs Discuss Localization Options

Now that the fear of a shut down is out of the way following the announcement of a board game under the same name, the ambitious fan project of Fallout: New California is getting ready to deploy its open beta. Since the game will be playable to the public for the first time in over 6 years, the issue of localization might be a concern for some. Luckily, the team has provided some insight on accessibility as well as a way for players to help.

According to a recent Facebook post, “So — We have two localization efforts underway — Brazilian Portuguese, and Russian — and a bunch of false starts in French, Polish, and Czech. Brazilian Portuguese is pretty far ahead but it seems to have stalled out several months ago, and the team lead vanished. He might be back, he might not. You never know. This is hard work, and all volunteer, so you just learn to roll with the punches. Russian is still going strong.”

He then added that they’ve been asked about Italian, German, and Spanish and how translators can help in translating over 16,000 lines of dialogue, much of it reportedly very tricky. Thanks to “the slang and poetic weirdness,” it’s a little difficult to balance between multiple languages, because “raider speak” is almost a language in its own right. That being said, they are currently looking for a Spanish and Italian team to help make the translations as accurate as possible.

As for what they are using right now, it’s essentially a mod that emulates Google Translate, which we all know isn’t always the most reliable. “It’s laborious,” said the creator – especially so when you think of it in the perspective that they are doing this all for free.

“So I don’t expect miracles, but if you’re down for it, at this point, you will be late and probably arrive next year, long after the English release. So you have to be prepared for that as well.

I’ll still be around to guide you in finding the best localization. Linguistics, especially for Proto-Indo-European group languages is a hobby of mine, so all the Romance and Germanic languages I can help with a little. I don’t expect an Arabic and Farsi localization, but I can spot words and phrases I still recognize. I also live in Arizona, so Spanish I’m not fluent in, but I can understand quite a bit.”

If you’re interested in helping out, you can let them know right here! To support the mod, make sure to mosey on over to their site here to check those out!