Hi there! My name is Rafael Smeers and I have been working with videogames since 2017. Across time, I have honed my skills across a plethora of fields, especially Quality Assurance, Localization, Inbound Marketing, and Game Design.
In the localization field, I work with many types of texts (from store page info to in-game strings as well as dev-logs and PR e-mails), either as a translator, editor, reviewer, proofreader or tester. Throughout the projects I’ve worked on, I’ve faced challenges that allowed me to rethink approaches, which I now use to provide creative and efficient solutions.
🧠 Variables: Dauntless was a very variable-heavy project to work on. Assuring variables worked correctly while also meeting grammatical gender agreement took extra attention and teamwork between editors.
📊 Consistency: Glossary and TM management goes a long way to help dealing with inconsistencies. During the localization of Dauntless, I manually monitored the translation memory to assure translation inconsistencies would not lead to more inconsistencies. This also helped us identify which terms we should add to the glossary to prevent further issues.
🌐 Internationalization: I’m happy to provide internationalization assistance when necessary, using good practices involving UI, typography and cultural reading. On Dauntless and MINImax Tinyverse, adapting the UI often did the job, but I wanted to take a different approach with 24 Killers. Thus, I came up with an idea to solve text truncation instances by using a retro MP3 player autoscroll feature, which is not revolutionary, but perfectly fits the game’s visual style.
💡 Transcreation: Whether it is a joke or a name with a pun potential, the opportunity can’t be missed. Transcreation is what makes game localization special and, when done correctly, is sure to bring a smile upon the player’s face. But rather than changing meanings, I see it as a way to make so that the developer’s original view is accurately conveyed through languages.
<aside> 🖼️ 24 Killers’ text is completely available in Brazilian Portuguese, including graphic content not necessarily involved in puzzles, but nonetheless important to building the game’s atmosphere. This sets it apart as one of the only indie story-heavy adventure games with all graphic content translated.
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<aside> 📚 Having played over 2.000 titles, I have a large reference pool to draw from while performing localization. This makes my services fitting not only for common ground genres, but also niche-appealing ones.
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<aside> 📄 I have experience in markup languages such as XML and HTML.
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<aside> 🌐 Verified member of IGDA LocSIG, a focal point for the growing number of game localization professionals in order to build community, draw together best practices and processes, and emphasize the requisite international dimension of game content development towards the goal of improving global game development processes and local end user experiences.
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<aside> 🏆 In June 2021, MCV/DEVELOP attributed Dauntless’ worldwide success (with over 25 million players) to its quality-consistent localization and wide language availability.
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<aside> 👛 Affordable rates starting at USD 0.03 per word.
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Brazil is an expanding market in the gaming industry, with a population of over 200 million people. Translating your game into Brazilian Portuguese can make it more accessible to an entire country where less than 5% of the population understands English. Additionally, translating your game will help increase its visibility and algorithm performance on platforms such as Steam. It is important to note that although there is a common misconception that Spanish is similar to Brazilian Portuguese, these languages are actually quite distinct, both linguistically and culturally.
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