A group of modders from the Maghreb and the Middle East spent more than three years translating in full The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild in Arabic. A work motivated by the passion to make more accessible one of the biggest hits of the Nintendo Switch in these regions.
The modders have been hard at work on the technical, translation and implementation of this localization.
Meticulous work
Eternal Dream is a team of modders made up of passionate players from the Maghreb and Middle East countries. Their goal: to locate and make more accessible to players in these regions the video games that made their childhood and their lives today. The least we can say is that the team is not idle. Katana Zero, Danganronpa, Persona 4, Celeste, Hollow Knight or retro games like Mario, Metroid and other Castlevania; all these titles have passed through the expert hands of this group of enthusiasts to bring them an advanced Arabic localization.
Since 2019, part of this large team, made up of 20 people, has worked in their free time on the complete localization of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, which has never been released in Arabic despite the worldwide success of the game. Dreamer, one of the leaders of Eternal Dream and specialized in the technical aspects, explained to us the stages of this long-term work.
“We started by analyzing and seeing if it was technically possible to integrate Arabic letters into the game, which are read from right to left. Once we saw that it was possible, we moved on to the translation phase. We then corrected everything and carried out a general audit before finally integrating everything into the game via the modding tools we had”.
A team from all walks of life
For three years, therefore, the work was carried out by a very diverse team eager to bring more accessibility to the games that have marked the world. Among the 20 people involved, we can find people of all nationalities: Algerians, Tunisians, Saudis or even Yemenis who have managed to follow development despite the war raging in their country. “It was a difficulty because at any time, the members of Yemen could stop working on the project. But they got there and we are proud of it. »
The biggest challenge the team ultimately faced was the space available for the Arabic sentences. "We had to revise certain turns and sometimes change the orientation of the sentences so that they could fit correctly in the space available in the game", reveals Dreamer. After three years, it is now possible to play Breath of the Wild in Arabic.
For Dreamer, this project would bring hope in a more constructed and sustained work on the localization in his native language of video games. "Arabic is a rich language, and it's a shame not to integrate it more by default in video games, especially on Nintendo games when we see that sales of Switch, for example, have increased over the years in Middle East ". Indeed, even Nintendo CEO Tatsumi Kimishima revealed in 2018 in a question-and-answer session with investors that sales of Nintendo products were increasing significantly in Asian and Middle Eastern countries.
Sources : Kotaku, Game Developer
