Zakarya / Blog / Colormatic (Initial) State of Translation
May 20, 2025
As of now, almost nothing I have published has been translated into any other language. I do not have the resources or personnel to properly get things translated, and I do not have enough experience with the languages I'm currently learning to confidently translate things myself.
I'll instead be talking about my plans for the future regarding internationalization. Colormatic is not intended to be US centric, or even English centric. As soon as I can, I will expand to as many cultures and countries as possible.
I believe that it is important to make our creations available and (more importantly) accessible to everyone all around the world. I have done what I can to integrate accessibility features into what I've built, whether it's screen reader compatibility or support for joysticks in the FPC. Developing accessibility features is hard though, especially because I currently have no way to test them properly.
I would like Colormatic to be a worldwide project from very early on, and have members of Colormatic Studios around the world as soon as possible. My goal is to get in contact with people who are in other countries and/or speak other languages who are willing to contribute.
Keeping multiple teams synchronized across the world is very difficult though, especially if there is a language barrier. I intend to solve this problem by developing a culture of global understanding and having teams frequently interact, even if it's non-verbal. There's also the issue of timezones, and that will probably have to be dealt with on a case-by-case basis, because the distance between timezones would be different for every two teams.
As languages evolve over time, the concepts they are formed around will mold, shift, merge and split; kind of like how clouds do. This results in literal translations of texts being almost nonsensical unless you understand the language and culture it's translated from. Languages are also very closely tied to culture and that can fundamentally change how people form their sentences, whether it's word choice, order, or inflection. For example, if two people speak the same language but don't share the same culture, it is very likely that they don't speak the same dialect of that language.
This means that when translating from one language to another (and one culture to another), one must take certain creative liberties for their translation to make sense in the target language. Famous examples of this include various translations of the Bible, Edith Grossman with Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote, Robert Fagles and Emily Wilson with Homer's Odyssey, and TV subtitles.
We'll need a standardized system for:
When to use and how to handle indirect translations to help the audience understand the meaning better,
Translation notes in different languages for different media types to clarify cultural details, pop culture references, folklore, unfamiliar concepts, etc.,
The way translators should keep the original feel and voice of a text while still following cultural norms in the target language,
Maintaining consistency between each translation of the same text.
This is not an exhaustive list, but it should give a good idea of the scope we are going for. Having a system like this will ensure consistency between languages and uphold the original intent and cultural nuances of the source material. For example, many video games (like those in the Final Fantasy series) make a priority of localizing dialogues, cultural references and even humor in order to enhance the player experience worldwide. This attention to detail provides equal and shared experiences for everyone, regardless of cultural background.
Internationalization and global accessibility is a big priority for Colormatic, but approaching translation is a complex subject and is really easy to get wrong. I plan to establish teams in other countries that speak different languages to try and get this right.
Integrating translation and accessibility to promote inclusion directly aligns with Colormatic's focus on celebrating human collaboration and creativity, because all kinds of people all over the world collaborate and create together.
If you speak multiple languages, feel free to reach out to me, I could use the help.