Turkish Game Localization: Major Challenges and Secrets to Success

2024-05-21 | ANASTASIIA OSYPENKO

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

• Turkey represents one of the fastest-growing gaming markets in the MENA region, boasting 47 million active players and a gaming revenue getting close to $1 billion.
• People in Turkey rarely speak other languages and require game localizations that take their culture into account.
• There are several language-specific aspects to be aware of. For instance, sentences with placeholders should be paraphrased completely, and text fields should be expanded up to 30% to accommodate longer phrases.
• Localization requires human input: don’t neglect localization QA and give native speakers the opportunity to play the game. Also, consider partnering with a local marketing agency to boost your promotion efforts.

Turkey represents one of the most lucrative gaming markets, and a lot of companies might benefit from entering it. The country’s video game market is expected to reach over $1 billion in revenue by 2027, while the majority of the population doesn’t speak foreign languages. So, why not grab the opportunity and localize your games to Turkish?

In this post, we’ll talk about the advantages the Turkish gaming audience offers and the best practices to follow when localizing your game to Turkish.

WHAT’S COVERED:

• Why you should consider the Turkish market
• Types of games that gain popularity on the Turkish market?
• 5 major challenges in Turkish game localization
• 5 tips to localize your game to Turkish

Why you should consider the Turkish market

Turkish translation from European languages has its challenges, but it’s absolutely worth it to embark on the localization journey and overcome them. It will give you access to a wide audience that is ready to explore different genres and pay for gaming experiences. 

Let’s explore the major reasons it makes sense to enter the Turkish game market.

Tremendous market growth

According to Statista, the total revenue of the mobile app game market in Turkey reached $391 million in 2022 and is projected to rocket up to $626 million by 2027. In turn, the video game market reached $985 million in 2022 and is predicted to soon cross the billion mark. The average revenue per user is currently estimated at $73. 

These are among the highest rates in the MENA region (which also opens up a fruitful domain of Arabic game localization). According to a report by NewZoo, the Turkish gaming market is the 18th largest in the world. 

Turkey has also been experiencing a boom of investments and more startups emerging in the gaming sector, which also signifies a lively development of this domain. 

Increasingly wider gaming audience

According to the latest 2023 report on Turkish gaming, the number of gamers is steadily growing. For instance, the percentage of internet users has increased from 85% in 2022 to 87.1% in 2023, and the same dynamic applies to smartphone users. This data shows that there are increasingly more people who are eligible for gaming. 

In 2023, the number of active gamers in Turkey reached 47 million, which makes this country a potentially profitable target for game developers.

Young population

Turkey has a population of over 86 million people, and their median age is 31.8, which means that there are plenty of young people who are interested in gaming and ready to invest their time and money in it. 

According to the 2020 report, 79% of Turkish adults play games, and the percentage is probably even higher if we consider teenagers and young adults only.

Low English proficiency

According to the 2023 EF English Proficiency Index, Turkey occupies the 66 position, which is rather low. Even though the ranking has improved in recent years (the same report from 2019 placed Turkey at position 79), the majority of the Turkish population still can’t enjoy content without proper localization. Recent data from the popular gaming platform Steam shows that Turkish is in the top 10 most common languages used by players there.

Middle ground between West and East

Turkey has a unique geographic position, which makes the country connected to Europe and the US on one side and the Middle East and Far Asia on the other. Game developers from different corners of the world can start expanding their reach from Turkey. 

Game marketing businessman Meriç Eryürek claims that Turkey is the best point of entry for both Eastern Asian companies looking to expand to Europe and European companies looking to explore the Asian market. For example, the Chinese game Arena of Valour has been localized to Turkish as the first international release, before considering the Middle East as a whole and Europe.

Types of games that gain popularity on the Turkish market

Turkish players are engaged in a variety of genres, and their preferences represent the global game genre dynamics.

According to Gaming in Turkey, local players most often choose action-adventure, puzzle, and racing games (each category was mentioned by almost half of respondents). 

The survey among gamers who have been actively playing for more than 5 years shows that the most popular genres are MMORPG, action, simulation, and sports. 

Besides that, multiple sources claim that mobile gaming is particularly popular with the Turkish audience. 

With that said, any common game genre might find its players in Turkey, especially mobile versions. The crucial thing is to deliver a localization that is linguistically correct and culturally relevant. Let’s explore the major rules to follow when adapting a game to Turkish.

5 major challenges in Turkish game localization

Turkey is a unique MENA country that features a left-to-right language, which is easier to translate from English and other European languages.

If you’re considering localization for their Arabic-speaking neighbor countries in the region, right-to-left orientation is a major concern, as you need to rethink the whole UI/UX layout. For more tips, check out our guide to Arabic game localization.

Language orientation aside, Turkish localization has its challenges. Here are the major things to be aware of:

1. Length of phrases and sentences

Turkish is an agglutinative language, which means that its word formation relies on stringing morphemes together. Sometimes, the results are very long words and phrases compared to English.

When the target language normally uses longer phrases, you should make sure that your localization tool allows for flexible text expansion. Text expansion means accommodating textual areas in size to fit the target language. As our Turkish localization experts suggest, you should allow for up to 30% of text expansion when translating from English to Turkish. 

This can be challenging with short buttons and menu items, so the localization team should know how to use the most concise translations.

2. Suffixes in placeholders

Given the agglutinative nature of Turkish, there are a lot of suffixes that change the meaning of the word, and it poses a problem when placeholders are heavily used. On top of that, words in Turkish are conjugated differently based on the latter in the last syllable of the suffix. 

Here’s an example described by our Turkish translation expert Cagdas Mandali:

Say, the text to translate is “Send energy to {player_name}”. The suffix and its conjugation will depend on the name that the placeholder will be replaced by. 

There’s also an issue of blending letters. “To Rodrigo” is translated as “Rodrigo’ya,” while “To Elly” is translated as “Elly’ye.” “Michael’s” is translated as “Michael’ın,” while “Slava’s” is translated as “Slava’nın” (the extra “n” is added when the name ends with a vowel).

Since there is no legitimate way of finding a one-size-fits-all translation, we localize the given phrase as “Send energy to the player whose name is {player_name}.”

From this example, you can see that sometimes, it’s essential to change the whole structure of the sentence with a placeholder. 

3. Special characters

Several Turkish letters are written with diacritical marks (Ç, Ğ, İ, Ö, Ş, Ü), so it’s important for your game design to use fonts that support those letters.

Plus, there’s a distinction between the dotted and dotless “i,” which is the same letter in English. This might cause issues in case of incorrect auto-capitalization when the system puts capital “I” instead of “İ.”

4. Formatting of numbers

Situations that involve numerical values might lead to great confusion when placed without regard to local usage. For instance, the percentage sign precedes the number in the Turkish language, while the currency sign follows the number—both are the opposite for US users.

The major numerical values to be aware of:

• Date format: DD.MM.YYYY
• Time format: HH:MM[:SS]
• Numeric format: 999.999,99 (comma as a decimal separator and period to separate groups of thousands) 
• Currency sign: 100₺ (after the number)
• Percentage sign: %50 (before the number)

5. Sensitive issues

As a general rule for the MENA market, game developers should be careful with sensitive topics related to religion and sexuality. There have been cases when the Turkish government banned games such as Minecraft (for “encouraging children to resort to violence”) or Pokemon Go (for “insulting Islam” as the players tried to catch pokemons in mosques). 

If your game contains some content that is related to sensitive topics or discusses Islam in particular, you should completely rethink those fragments before releasing the game in Turkey.

5 tips to localize your game to Turkish

Now that you know about the major challenges that you might face when translating a game to Turkish, we want to share some additional tips that will help you secure success with game localization. 

1. Adapt cultural context

Culturalization is crucial. According to the 2020-21 survey, over 73% of players are unsatisfied with the Turkish adaptation. Among the translation aspects that need to be improved, the respondents mentioned expressions used in daily language and “adaptations of culture.”

What can you do to connect your game to the local culture? If your game has some culture-specific jokes, for instance, related to a TV show, search for local examples to replace those jokes.

Besides that, consider collaborating with local celebrities to act as voice actors. This is what League of Legends did, for example, and achieved great success because of this strategy. 

2. Allow for mistakes in speech when they are present in the original

When characters in your game mispronounce words or use foul language, the translation should reflect these characteristics. Plus, many international words became an integral part of Turkish daily vocabulary and it doesn’t make sense to translate them.

Our Turkish adaptation expert Cagdas Mandali recalls a situation from his practice:

One game that I localized featured kids who were rude and swearing all the time. I translated their dialogues in the same manner as Turkish street kids would talk, without attention to grammar, and misspelling some words. 

However, the developers decided to go with the “proofed and corrected” version of the text where those kids were talking like ladies and barons. Luckily, after the texts went online, developers decided to change the text to the “street version.”

3. Don’t split sentences into separate strings

This is a technical tip that relates to your localization tool. Given that the Turkish language has a different word order compared to English, splitting phrases and sentences into separate strings will lead to incongruences and confusion.

4. Always test localized versions

This is true for the localization in any language. It’s such a complex process that it’s hard to control every detail without having feedback from real users and native speakers. 

Give Turkish translators and native-speaking testers the opportunity to actually play the game to spot any inconsistencies and errors. Professional game translation services normally include proofreading but don’t offer localization QA, and proofreading language issues alone is not enough. 

Sometimes, even the same expressions will need to be translated differently in different parts of the game depending on the context. Based on our data, reserving at least 5 hours of playing for the localization team can solve a lot of problems.

5. Localize additional materials and marketing campaigns

If the game has an active online community that discusses tutorials or walkthroughs, consider translating them as well to boost your localization efforts.  

The same applies to ads and other marketing activities. Order professional translations of your campaigns to attract the right audience and don’t make a bad impression with native speakers. 

Cooperating with a local marketing agency might be a great path to success. When localization of the game is done, you still need to promote it, and if you don’t market the game using the target language and addressing the target culture, all the hard work translating the game might be in vain. 

The localization of the Wolfteam game is a great example here. The localization company engaged 8 local stars to play against each other, and this event sparked waves of excitement among local players. 

Another great example is Paramanya: the company created a fake news story about a mysterious man spreading money all around Istanbul, which became viral and led to the game becoming the top-grossing one in Turkey.

Achieve success with Turkish game localization

Entering the market in Turkey is a great opportunity to reach an active gaming audience. It can be the perfect chase for the first release in the MENA market, as it will give you insights into how your game can perform in the Middle East and if it makes sense to expand further.

To make sure your localization is done right, hire experienced translators who know the language nuances and understand Turkish culture. On top of that, add localization QA to your agenda and consider partnering with local marketing to spark interest among the audience.

Make Turkish gamers discover your game now and book your spot at the top of the MENA region. Contact us to discuss Turkish localization services, your title potential or get an instant quote for MENA localization.