Launching a game is a major milestone, but scaling it globally? That’s the real boss fight. In this challenge, localization isn’t just a side quest—it’s the main storyline of your global success. 

In game localization, scalability means the ability to handle increasing demands, whether it’s more languages, greater content volume, or more complex technical requirements—without compromising on quality. 

At Altagram, we’ve mastered the mechanics of scalable localization, ensuring every word resonates across cultures while keeping up with the industry’s demand for faster turnarounds and higher volumes. 

Managing large-scale projects or frequent content updates demands a smart strategy that balances speed with precision, ensuring top-tier quality at every step.  

In this article, we break down our approach to scalable localization, showing how to future-proof your project strategically, even under the most stringent production conditions. 

The 5 Main Features of Altagram’s Approach to Scalability  

Creating a scalable localization workflow starts with clear goals and well-defined success criteria. Choosing the right markets is crucial, and our expert insights help identify user preferences and cultural nuances for each linguistic region. At the same time, setting clear boundaries ensures optimal resource allocation, preventing unnecessary complexity and inefficiencies.  

To be sustainable, a game localization project must be trustworthy, consistent, adaptable to the client’s needs, and flexible for sudden new developments, all while keeping pace with innovative technology. Based on our experience, we examine these essential characteristics: 

1) Unwavering Quality: The Key to Trustworthy Localization 

High-quality localization ensures players receive an immersive experience, regardless of the game's complexity, volume of text, or number of languages involved. 

Reliability is a cornerstone of scalability, and it begins with assembling the right team —experienced experts who specialize in the genre and with whom we have established strong working relationships. However, as we take on new titles and larger volumes, we also need to grow our team of specialists to cover new games, genres and IPs. 

All new translators and editors involved in production start with smaller translation tasks, which are then reviewed for language skills, cultural adaptation, communication efficiency, and punctuality. This ensures that as we scale up, we maintain the same high standards of quality. 

2) Robust Localization: Managing High Workloads with Precision 

Scalability means absorbing workload spikes and adapting to unexpected surges without compromising quality or timelines. This is especially challenging when handling multiple services simultaneously, such as text localization, voice-over, and testing. 

Key strategies include: 

• Proactive planning: Understanding the client's release calendar, anticipating peak workloads, and staying aware of marketing campaigns that could affect demand. 

• Smart project management: Automating and fine-tuning workflows so our teams can focus on multiple updates efficiently. 

• Resource coordination: Ensuring team availability, tracking potential blockers like bank holidays, and streamlining communication across text localization, voice-over, and testing. 

• Technological integration: Using automation and API connections with client databases to manage updates more quickly and efficiently. 

3) Scaling Smart: Maximizing Efficiency Without Compromise 

Localization at scale requires optimized workflows to handle growing content volumes efficiently. Careful planning ensures smooth operations, preventing last-minute bottlenecks and maintaining high quality. 

For a notable MMORPG game, we took a proactive approach ahead of its bi-annual expansions, ensuring seamless localization during peak production cycles. This involved analyzing historical data from previous years to forecast expected volumes, coordinating with stakeholders to forecast approximate word counts, and checking team availability in advance. By sharing timelines early, we ensure that the right localization specialists are secured at the right time, preventing last-minute scrambles. 

Backup plans were also put in place to accommodate last-minute requests or unexpected challenges, ensuring we had the capacity to cover all needs without compromising quality. This level of preparation not only optimized resource allocation but also reduced stress for the project managers, the client or translators and editors. With better planning, teams could dedicate more time to focus on quality, addressing specific localization questions, and ensuring the highest standards. 

4) Agile Expansion: Adapting to New Markets with Ease 

A scalable strategy must be agile—ready to expand into new languages, adapt to cultural nuances, and keep pace with industry trends. 

For instance, after the launch of a major RPG into 12 languages, our client decided to expand into a new market, and they had a short, strict deadline. To achieve this feat, we leveraged our proprietary Alocai Q&A platform to accelerate onboarding of the translators in the new target language. The existing knowledge base from the first 12 languages contained on Alocai, with the tool’s ability to detect duplicate queries and facilitate discussions between translators enabled faster localization and the best possible quality.  

5) Innovation in Action: Harnessing Technology for Excellence 

Automation and machine translation are game-changers in scaling high-quality localization. However, not all content is suitable for machine translation (MT).  

From a technical standpoint: 

• Before localization, it is fundamental to internationalize your app, game, or software during the design and development phases. This ensures that text is properly separated from the code, for example, by using string resources instead of hardcoded text, making translation much easier. This also guarantees support for multiple character encodings, such as UTF-8, which is essential for global language compatibility. Additionally, planning for text expansion ensures that languages requiring more space fit seamlessly within the interface without disrupting the design. Right-to-left (RTL) languages like Arabic and Hebrew can also be properly supported, maintaining readability and usability. Adjusting elements such as date, time, currency, and number formats based on locale further enhances the user experience, tailoring it to every regional market. By implementing these measures early, developers can streamline localization and avoid costly redesigns later in the process, ensuring a smoother cultural adaptation. 

• A dedicated localization management platform centralizes information and streamlines workflows. Our Alocai platform enables faster communication, improving quality assurance across projects.  Automated assignments and request handling, and various tools we use for Audio (either QA or monitoring), can all result in time savings and faster PMing. 

• Our ModelWiz MT solution, developed specifically for video games, evolves with real-time feedback from linguists, improving terminology and translation accuracy over time. The result? Faster review processes and enhanced consistency. However, we always assess whether MT is appropriate for a project and ensure human quality assurance through additional linguistic reviews. 

But technology alone isn’t enough. True scalability relies on a strong and agile talent pipeline.  

Strengthening Our Linguist Network 

Scalability also depends on recruiting, training, and retaining top talent. Our recruitment strategy includes: 

• Continuous hiring to expand our pool of tested translators and editors for new projects and languages. 

• Rigorous selection with real-world testing before onboarding. 

• Proactive relationship management so we have an engaged and professional team ready to scale when localization demands increase. 

Whether expanding into new languages or managing high-volume projects, our scalable localization strategies balance cutting-edge technology with expert-driven workflows, ensuring seamless and sustainable growth for your game. Scaling your game globally might come across as a challenge, yet with the right mix of human expertise, automation, and strategic planning, Altagram helps you navigate complex localization needs, ensuring unmatched quality at any scale. 

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