Translate a Unity or Godot game into English

What you upload: a CSV table of keys and languages

Unity (through the Localization package) and Godot can both work with string tables in CSV: one column of keys, then one column per language. That is the file Manuce translates, whatever your source language is: French, German, Spanish, Japanese. In Godot the header row looks like keys,de; the English column is en, or en_GB / en_US if you want to separate the two varieties. If the column does not exist it is added; if it is half empty it is completed.

Game tables usually carry two kinds of markup that must come through untouched:

• in Unity, Smart String variables ({0}, {playerName}) and rich text tags such as <color=#FFD700> or <b>;
• in Godot, format placeholders (%s, %d, {name}) and RichTextLabel BBCode: [b], [color=red].

For example, Du hast [color=yellow]%d Münzen[/color] gefunden becomes You found [color=yellow]%d coins[/color]. The colour and the %d stay exactly where they belong in the English sentence.

What changes when the target is English

Pick a variety. British English (colour, armour, centre) or American (color, armor, center): decide before ordering and name the column to match. A game should not show Armour in the inventory and Armor in the shop.

Length. English usually runs 10 to 15 % shorter than French, and often shorter than German or Spanish too: a long menu label tends to shrink to Save game. Buttons gain room, but dialogue boxes sized for the source language may look half empty.

Plurals. English has only two categories, one and other, and zero takes the plural: 0 lives, not 0 life. French, by contrast, treats zero as singular, so a Smart String such as {0:plural:{} life|{} lives} must yield the plural form for 0. Godot CSV tables have no plural forms; if you used two keys (LIVES_ONE, LIVES_OTHER), check that your code picks the right one for 0.

Punctuation and capitals. French-style spaces before colons and question marks go (Score : 120 → Score: 120) and « » or „ “ quotes become English quotation marks. American menus often capitalise every word (Load Saved Game), British usage leans towards sentence case (Load saved game): set one rule.

Formality and gender. Informal and formal forms of address (tu/vous, du/Sie) collapse into you, and gendered variants often become the same English sentence. Keep both keys if your code expects them; they will simply hold identical text.

What Manuce returns, and what it does not do

You receive the same file in the same format: key order, quotes, comments, line endings, encoding and BOM preserved. Only the English values change. For a game CSV this matters: an added or missing BOM, or quotes lost around a value containing a comma, is enough to break the import.

Every translated value is checked against the source: if a {0}, a %s or a [/color] is missing or altered and the mismatch persists, the source value is kept and the report says so. A line left in the original language is easier to fix than a crash in the first conversation.

Not translated: keys, empty values, URLs, email addresses, numbers, colours (#FFD700), date formats, identifiers, and anything you mark as non-translatable. Pricing is based on the words in the values only, keys and tags excluded; English is charged at the base rate (×1 coefficient).

What Manuce does not cover: text that is not in the table. A title painted into a texture, a string hard-coded in a C# or GDScript file, scene labels never turned into keys all stay in the source language. Voice lines and subtitles held outside the table are not handled either.

Preparing the export and checking in-game

Before exporting:

• use descriptive keys: MENU_QUIT tells more than STR_0042, since the same source word may need to be Quit (the game) or Leave (a party);
• mark the invented names of your world as non-translatable if they must stay as they are;
• make sure the source column is complete: an empty value stays empty.

After reimporting, run the game in English and check first:

• the strings flagged in the report, to fix by hand;
• counters at 0 and 1 (1 coin, 0 coins);
• dates and numbers formatted by your code: 03/04 reads as 3 April in the UK and March 4 in the US, and 1 250,5 should appear as 1,250.5;
• frames and speech bubbles sized for the longer source text.

Ask for the free extract before paying: one translated paragraph at your chosen level is enough to judge the tone of your dialogue.

In practice

1. Export your Unity or Godot string tables as CSV, with a key column and one column per language.
2. Choose British or American English and name the column (en, en_GB or en_US).
3. Upload the file, review the quote and the free extract, then start the translation.
4. Reimport the returned CSV into your project and read the report.
5. Play the game in English: counters, dates, flagged strings, layouts.