11 years and 7 million words

This month SBT Localization celebrates 11 years of its existence as a localization team and 5 years as a non-commercial entity. On this occasion allow us to share some entertaining facts about us.

Since the aim of our organization is the creation of Ukrainian gaming content, the majority of translations is done into Ukrainian language (English as well). We did lots of stuff during this period: games, books, subtitles and programs but our passion lies with videogames. We adore them dearly and our top priority remains firmly with bringing as many Ukrainian localizations as it is possible and more.

Overall, there are 46 videogames that have our translation (RPGs, D&D, adventures, horrors, detectives, puzzles, shooters, turn-based strategies, survivals etc.), 25 books (4 short stories, 7 comic books, 10 art books, 2 cookbooks, 2 fiction books), 3 cartoons and 1 TV series.

Feeling that there are not that many games? You should consider that some of them have more than half a million words i.e. Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition, Baldur’s Gate: Siege of Dragonspear, Kingdom Come: Deliverance. Just imagine that Baldur’s Gate 2 Enhanced Edition contains more than one and a half million words!

If we are going to take into consideration the projects that were already released (some of them are still in progress) the word count is 6,5 million words and some books for another half a million. In order to make some comparison let’s name several well-known works such as ‘Do Oxen Low when Mangers Are Full?’ by Panas Myrnyi with 100 000 words, ‘The Witcher’ book series (8 books) by Andrzej Sapkowski with 800 000 words, and ‘Harry Potter’ book series (7 books) by J.K. Rowling has over 900 000 words.

At the moment SBT Localization consists of 30 official members and 7 volunteers. Everyone could join our ranks but most of us are professional translators and editors, also there are several teachers and philology students.

SBT Localization is proud to have a lot of girls among its members – 21 against 16 boys. So if you are willing to add to the scales, you are most welcome.

We believe that you need to love the work you do, so all the members need to go through the volunteer phase. It could be shorter or longer depending on the skills and efforts. However, we also think that you need to be paid for your work, therefore we offer incentive for volunteers as well. It is possible thanks to the constant support of our dearest benefactors from Patreon and Buy me a coffee.

Thank you all for the greetings. To all of you good health and a peaceful sky.

Sofia Shul

translated by Olia Khmelnytska

July 23, 2023