The Challenge
Sony Online Entertainment Inc. (SOE), the online gaming division of Sony Pictures Digital Entertainment, is a worldwide leader in massively multiplayer online gaming that creates, develops and provides online entertainment for the personal computer, console, wireless, and online markets. With more than 13 million registered users, SOE's award-winning website, The Station ® (www.station.com) hosts a variety of entertaining games and player communities spanning numerous genres. In addition to blockbuster hits EverQuest® and Jeopardy! Online, SOE has an array of cutting-edge online games in development such as PlanetSide™, Star Wars® Galaxies™, EverQuest® II, and the world's premier online-only console game for the PlayStation®2, EverQuest® Online Adventures™.

Because SOE’s online gaming popularity is based on constantly evolving quests and daily content updates, it was vital that SOE find a localization partner that could overcome the technical challenges of database generated content as well as the logistical need of coordinating large teams of translators to attain volume levels of over 25,000 words per day while ensuring the linguistic consistency upon which the gaming software depended. Terminology Management also presented a significant challenge in that thousands of items and keywords the game functionality depended upon needed to be localized in a consistent but rapid manner.


The Solution
Localizing SOE’s award-winning site and associated games continues to involve a series of challenges. SOE’s need for daily, simultaneous update releases in Korean, Japanese, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, French, and German. Scribe Consulting developed dedicated teams for each language and integrated their labors through the GlobalVault service available over Scribe’s Intranet. Scribe’s GlobalVault system was also integrated with SOE’s content management system, allowing daily updates of source material to trigger immediate notification to vendors of tasks awaiting completion. The automated nature of Scribe’s workflow avoided time zone differences, delivering the advantage of a continuous global network of vendors.

Scribe Consulting localized both site content and SQL 2000 in-game text content for a variety of games comprising 2.3 million words in the last quarter alone. This is a massive undertaking coordinating both internal and external resources with a volume exceeding 27,500 words per day.


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