2022: Recalling all good things

Hello everyone! This year was definitely a hard one. Full-scale Russian invasion had a massive impact on every Ukrainian, and every SBT team member. Some of us are defending Ukraine by serving in UAF, territorial defense or working as volunteers. We need to mention Ukrainian Vancouver here, who, among other activities, informs the world about life in Ukraine in English. Between all this we still find time to make game worlds feel Ukrainian!

Our nation is indomitable, thus we firmly believe in our victory. While our soldiers bravely reclaim our land, we reclaim our people’s minds. We must thank Russians: their attempts to destroy us made Ukraine quite recognizable for the world, so Ukrainian language is much more relevant now – demand for it scaled drastically! So, let’s try to get through our accomplishments and just good memories of 2022.

Thanks go first

It would’ve been very hard for us to get where we are now without your continued support, especially with the year being what it was. We therefore offer our sincere and wholehearted gratitude to those who chose to support our localization team through Patreon and other means.

Yuliia Hladka, MilvusUA, Dmytro Mazurok, Ivan Puchko, Oleksandr Veretelnikov, Mykola Koval, Roland, Stanislav Stepaniuk, Ailigean, Alex BeatlAex, Anastasiya Zhyshchynska, Andrii Serbovets, Andriy Krasnychuk, Bohdan Matviiv, Bohdanko, Easy Sugar, ehehehe, Halaster, Hanni, Iurii Bregman, Marko Savchuk, Mary Augstkalns, Michael Bodnar , naloii, Novster, Oleksii Ivanov, Pavlo D., Ruslan Vyshnevskiy, Yaroslav, Yuri Demchan, Andrii Honcharov, Відлуння Епохи, Andrii Malakhov, Andrii Kozhushko, Anton Bubnov, Artem Kushch, Andrii Dudka, Maksym Khvastov, PUBLIC and STATIC, Rascher, Roman Lysenko, Taras Syniuk, VoronXVI, Roma Shturm, Mega0n, Sviatoslav Holovatyi, Vsevolod Karasevych, Oleksii Pachin, Danylo Kulykovskyy, Dmytro Babenko.

Alex Game, amigo1995kot, Andrii Ilkiv, Dinadin Cross, Dmytro Kyrychuk, exmolution, Ivan Nikiforyak, Jarlaxle Baenre, Mancubus.UA, Nazar Kompaniiets, Oleksandr, Rini, ROMBOS GT, s0fko, sNb, Vasyl Stokolosa, Vitaliia Kubatska, Volodymyr Zhuk, Wiktor Kor, Bohdan Krasniak, Oleksandr Solovyov, Stac Makar, Iryna Makovska, Vasyl Nabochenko, Karina Voloshyna, Maria Polishchuk, Maksym Hladkyi, Oleh darcklion, Oleksandr Bohomaz, Maksym Poluliakh, Artem Lukyanets.

And great gratitude goes to Crowdin team!

Wish you good health, peace, joy, and all the best.

Now let’s recall our accomplishments in 2022!

Ready to play

Results of our work might not be instantly visible for public – this is the specific feature of games development. Some of listed accomplishments were, in fact, achieved by previous years, and some of our current work will be known about only in the next year. Well, without further ado, let’s go on:

January

Microft’s Pride (addon for Sherlock Holmes Chapter One)

A patch for Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition with partially updated translation

February

Bombagun (editing)

This Land Is My Land (long awaited patch with some improvements)

“Assassin’s Creed Valhalla: Song of Glory” comic book

“Bloodborne Volume 2: The Healing Thirst” comic book

“The world of Horizon Zero Dawn” artbook

March

Atom RPG

M for Mystery (addon for Sherlock Holmes Chapter One)

May

Streets of Rage 4 (mobile version)

AtmosFear 3 (translated mod for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call of Pripyat)

June

Original Weapons Renewal 3 and Sky Reclamation Project (translated mods for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky)

July

STALKER Clear Sky Enhanced (translated mod for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky)

September

An update for Atom RPG: Ukrainian voicing, updated translation

“Cyberpunk 2077: Trauma Team” comic book

October

Shadow of Chernobyl Gunslinger Adaptation (translated mod for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl)

November

Savage Worlds: Test drive

Also, “Outsider” comic series were translated up to chapter 2 (p. 179‒199).

What else?

Videos and podcasts

Received a video from Lviv Translators Forum and shared it:

Our team had a chitchat at our 10-years anniversary and answered community’s questions.

We held an online seminar “Translation of videogames. Variative part, context, and other riddles” for universities students.

Another related lection:

Also, we had a lot of other streams, which you can find in out YouTube channel

Articles

Sometimes we write about our impressions from working on some particular project. And because we like videogames a lot, we also write reviews on them – for example, what interesting things you can find at in-game stores.

Bloodborne: The Translation Thirst (Ukr)

Song of Glory 1. Traesure of Æsirs Awaits!

Trauma Team. Blood, Sweat, and Cyberpunk

Ukrainian Female Streamers: Who Are They?

Games For Two

Summer Steam Sale: Games With Ukrainian Language (Ukr)

On GameDev DOU you can listen to a voice chat recording where we participated: Ukrainian game localization and its problems (Ukr).

Other

There weren’t a lot of really interesting things. Naturally for a wartime. We focused our activities on development and wider usage of Ukrainian language, so we often discussed localization with various game developers, created our petitions (to Ubisoft in particular) and supported other petitions that were related to our activity.

As you can remember, a process of standardization of videogames terminology started almost 2 years ago. Unfortunately, because of wartime, a work of National Commission on the Standards of the State Language was partially put on hold. All resulting glossary has been published under CC BY-NC-SA. It is available here. If you have your suggestions, you can submit them via this form.

Some numbers

In this year we managed to process almost 1 500 000 words only in our volunteer projects (1 482 067, to be precise). That includes 1 080 000 words of translation and 402 000 words of editing.

The most active month was October with 327 887 words. The “laziest” one was November with just 55 440. That was on reason – we hurried with our volunteer projects in October to be able in November start a big and tasty piece of localization (it’s a secret, don’t tell anyone!). Also, don’t forget about blackouts – how are you supposed to work without electricity and Internet? Nevertheless, we manage, and Ukrainization of game worlds is going on.

Current Projects

Editing stage

Kingdom Come: Deliverance — 44% (of 1 041 845 words)

Into the Breach — 76% (of 57 098 words)

Liftoff: FPV Drone Racing — 6% (of 12 236 words).

Translation stage

Trudograd — 34% (of 584 380 words)

Darkest Dungeon — 75% (of 92 552 words)

Planescape: Torment — 7% (of 999 290 words)

What to expect in 2023?

Tales of the Neon Sea – translation is long since complete, we have a hope that developers will just add it into the game.

The Stanley Parable Deluxe Edition — Ukrainian language should be added by the first months of 2023.

Baldur’s Gate II: Enhanced Edition — translation still needs a bit of editing but can be added with the next patch planned for 2023.

The Banner Saga 3 – language patch is ready, but we are still doing some refining and testing.

Undungeon – paused by now, but we hope that Ukraine will win the war by 2023 and developers will be able to return to this game.

Hard West – paused because of more prioritized projects, but we will definitely finish it in the next year.

For those who like more material things we have:

God of War: Lore and Legends (preorder in MAL’OPUS Publishing)

The Elder Scrolls: The Official Cookbook (preorder in MAL’OPUS Publishing)

Beside that, there will be one… two… three… four! Four amazing projects, which we worked or are working on, and which will see the world in 2023 year. So, brace yourself, there will be a lot of good stuff. Because, as you know, Ukrainians are cool, and *somewhat obscene phraseology about unavoidable future of Russians in Ukraine*.

Keep safe, love each other, donate for UAF! Ukrainization of the universe goes on!

We wish you a merry Christmas and a happy New Year!

December 24, 2022

Translated by Rostyslav Fedorko