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New Year is already on the doorsteps, and it’s the traditional time to take a look at the year that’s ending to remember the achievements one can be proud of and the mistakes one should think about to become better in the future. So what was SBT Localization able to achieve in 2021?

It’s just words, it would seem

In total, we’ve processed 1 346 000 words – taking into account volunteer projects only. November was the most active month for our translators, and May was the least active. In those months they have translated 186 and 70 thousand words respectively. As for editors, they also were most productive in November when they edited 166 thousand words. And in December they’ve all probably decided to leave it until the end of the holiday season and therefore edited literally nothing (1 thousand words doesn’t count). But December didn’t end yet. Maybe some editor will spend New Year’s Eve editing text under the Christmas tree – who knows?

Alice Chester became the most active translator of 2021 – she was among the top 10 translators of the month 10 times. Taras Korzhyk and Bohdan Peredrii were close to becoming leaders with 9 times in the top. Solomia Kotiai, Rostyslav Fedorko, Anna Tsvira, Roman Hardashuk, and Tetiana Khvastova got to the list of top 10 translators of the month a little less frequently but yet over 5 times.

All of the editors have spent their spare hours and minutes on SBT Localization but Sofia Shul was the most active editor on volunteer projects. She ended up in the top 10 eight times this month. Yurii Bisyk, Olia Sushytska, and Iryna Andrieieva also were at the top a couple of times.

What were the projects?

2021 wasn’t the year when all of the expectations came true, a lot of stuff went not as it was meant to, and a lot stayed behind the curtains. Despite all of that, we’ve managed to complete something and some projects are expected to see the world in 2022.

Books

It just happened that our work’s visible results were mostly books. That is why we will mention them first and foremost.

The World of Cyberpunk 2077 (“Світ гри Cyberpunk 2077”) by Vovkulaka publishing house was published first. Actually, it was first published at the end of December 2020 but due to some technical issues at the print a lot of copies had to be redone. So in the end, the book was out in January 2021. In other words, our year has started with adventures.

Also read: About the travel of the art book “The World of Cyberpunk 2077”: A Cyberpunk story (by Sofiia Shul)

MAL’OPUS publishing house has released the art book The Art of The Last of Us («Світ гри The Last of Us») in the same month. Actually, it was a pleasure to work with MAL’OPUS – that’s why later last year they published a couple more books that we translated.

Also read: The Last of Us: And Another Art Book! (by Tetiana Cherednychok)

The Art of Mass Effect Trilogy was released in April.

Also read: The Art of Mass Effect Trilogy: on the art book and translation process (by Tetiana Nepypenko)

The Art of God of War was released in July.

Also read: God of War: When Gods Walked Among Us (by Sofia Shul)

In September, the Bloodborne comic The Death of Sleep was released.

Also read: Translate Bloodborne to Transcend the Hunt (by Roman Hardashuk)

You can now preorder a Ukrainian translation of the Bloodborne comic Vol. 2: The Healing Thirst

The long-awaited book Friends. The Official Cookbook came out in October.

Also read: Friends. The Cookbook of the legendary show (by Tetiana Nepypenko)

And The Art of Far Cry 6 which was released in December had marked the end of the year.

Also read: The story of a rebellion or How we have translated The Art of Far Cry 6 (by Bohdan Peredrii)

The publishing business is a challenging one, and therefore sometimes a book can be released in a year or even later after it was fully translated. So some of the products of our work will come out only in 2022: comics Bloodborne Vol. 2: The Healing Thirst and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla: Song of Glory vol. 1, as well as the art book The Art of Horizon Zero Dawn.

Also we should mention the web-comics Outsider. We translate and upload it on our website under the supervision of Oleksandr Lukianov and with the author’s permission (find the last pages of the comics here). Since we receive the comics as all the other readers do, we have to spend a lot of time on localization. Because it’s quite easy to add a little more text in the bubble but to redraw sounds and inscriptions is quite a tough task. So this year we’ve posted 30 localized pages of the comic (up to p. 178).

Games

We’ve put a lot of effort into books, which resulted in not as many game localizations done last year. Most of the time developers add localization either on the release of the game or much, much later. Anyway, we have something to be proud of.

In July, the DLC to Streets of Rage 4: Mister X Nightmare was released. Project manager – Yura Dragon.

In September we finished the translation of Armello but the developers didn’t add the localization yet. So, let’s be patient. But writing them emails and comments that you really wait for Ukrainian localization is an even better option. The demand for it is the only thing that can influence the developers. Project manager – Roman Hardarshuk.

The updated localization for This Land Is My Land was released in November. The first localization was made by the developers themselves, and we’ve edited it along with Unlocteam. But the translation of all kinds of new content, DLCs text inter alia, was made solely by the SBT Localization team. We still support the localization of the game since it’s still in early access. Project managers – Yura Drahon, Sofia Shul.

And, of course, our gem of games – Sherlock Holmes: Chapter One we’ve been working on since mid-2020. This detective was released in November and got a lot of positive feedback from players. Project manager – Tetiana Cherednychok.

Also read: Sherlock Holmes: Chapter One: the ambitious quest (by Olha Sushytska, Tetiana Cherednychok)

Also, we finished the translation of the main game for Baldur’s Gate II: Enhanced Edition. And now we are working on the additional text that includes different DLCs – Throne of Bhaal, for instance.

And here is the status of the rest of our projects:

Baldur’s Gate II: Enhanced Edition (the new content) – 40.72% translated (out of 400 thousand words approximately)

Tales of the Neon Sea – 92% translated (out of 85 thousand words)

Undungeon – 33% translated (out of 132 thousand words)

Darkest Dungeon – 18% translated (out 94 thousand words)

Kingdom Come: Deliverance – 23% edited (out of 1.04 million words)

Atom RPG – 5% edited (out of 870 thousand words)

Into the Breach – 42% edited (out of 57 thousand words)

The Banner Saga 3 – 72% edited (out of 124 thousand words)

Some other things we did

There is a lot of stuff to do at SBT Localization except translation and editing. For instance, one can manage projects, work with statistics, create content for the website and update it, communicate with developers about new and present projects (both via emails and while visiting different events like Games Gathering or ComicCon), provide all kinds of technical support, create podcasts, useful videos, stream games. And a lot of other stuff that most of the time stays behind the curtain (sometimes even the team doesn’t know about something).

Long story short, we are doing our best to encourage different kinds of activities, but there are people who every single month do useful things for the team and for the spread of Ukrainian localization and they don’t really care whether there will be a reward for it. They do those things because someone has to. Those people are: Yurii Bisyk, Yanis Verminko, Yura Dragon, Oleksii Ivanov, Olia Khmelnytska, Tetiana Cherednychok, Sofia Shul, Ivan Yankovyi. And also we would like to thank Oleksandr Lukianov, Roman Hardarshuk, and Yulia Hladka for their activity.

Among the other things, we would like to mention that we take part in the standardization of Ukrainian video game terminology since the beginning of 2021 and organized the competition among streamers – SBTournament (ШБТурнір).

Also read: The first tournament from SBT Localization is officially over

SBT Challenge: Epilogue

Videos and podcasts

Thanks to Yanis Verminko two podcasts were released.

And Yura Drahon did 32 streams of different games: Warhammer: Vermintide 2, Valheim, Diablo 2, There Is No Light, to name a few.

Also, we want to mention Dungeons & Dragons since Yurii “Shahor” Bisyk created a bunch of adventures that you can play according to the D&D rules (5th edition). You can find the list of the adventures on our website and download them.

There were not only entertaining videos but educational as well. In that kind of video, we are sharing our experiences. You may find them on our educational YouTube channel – SBT Education.

Character gender in video games or On a quest for context. UTICamp2021 – Tetiana Cherednychok.

Placeholders in Video Game Localization (ENG). MultiMEDialtecTranslation 8 2021 – Tetiana Cherednychok

The lecture by Maksym Strikha – hosted by Roman Hardarshuk

Translation of video games 101 – Sofia Shul, Tetiana Cherednychok

Translation of video games and comics – Tetiana Cherednychok, Sofiia Shul, Bohdana Vozniuk, Oleksandr Lukianov (The translators forum in Lviv)

Localization of video games: the thing for those who want to try everything as a translator – Tetiana Cherednychok (Translation summer school)

Except for our articles on how we were working on different projects, there were a couple of articles that might be also interesting for you to read:

PlayStation games with Ukrainian localization (Yanis Verminko)

Problems of professional and amateur Checz localization (Bohdan Peredrii)

Women in video games (Yanis Verminko)

Why doesn’t SBT Localization translate AAA games? (Roman Maniachuk)

Playing Ukrainian: the talks with video games translators from SBT Localization (ITC interview)

You scratch our back, and we scratch yours

Once a week we usually conduct give-aways of video games and some other goods stuff on one of our social media accounts (Facebook, Twitter, Telegram, Instagram). In 2021, we gave away 277 games, 29 books, 9 neck gaiters, and 6 mugs.

We also gift neck gaiters and mugs upon the request of our donors on Patreon.

Thanks to all the people who supported the Ukrainization of video games universes with a good word and money.

Our Thanks

We truly thank everyone who supported the SBT Localization team in 2021 on Patreon and in other ways. We wish you and your families health, success and prosperity!

$100

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Ivan Buderkevych, Yuliia Hladka, Volodymyr Pohrebniak, Oleksandra Kutsan, Anastasiia Zhyshchynska, Andrii Malakhov, Andrii Kozhushko, Andrii Krasnychuk, Anton Bubnov, Artem Kushch, Bohdan Rutylo, Oleksandr dordaderabar, ehehehe, Halaster, Yurii Brehman, Ivan Dziubyshyn, Maksym Khvastov, Kurdyshmyak, Mary Augstkalns, Mis’ko, naloii, Nomad Comanche, Oleksandr Lukianov, Oleksii Ivanov, Pavlo Donchenko, Yaroslav Urbanevych, Rascher, Roman Lysenko, Serhii Salnykov, Taras Kovtun, Taras Syniuk, Stepan VoronXVI, Dmytro Derevianko, Roman Shturm, Taras Korzhyk, Yanis Verminko, Iryna Makovska.

Novster, AkiHiki, Alex Game, amigo1995kot, Andrii Ilkiv, Andrii Serbovets, Dmytro Kyrychuk, Andrii exmolution, Jarlaxle Baenre, Karina Voloshyna, Kirito Kadzuto, Maksym Hladkyi, Mega0n, MilvusUA, Nazar Kompaniiets, Oleh darcklion, Oleksandr Bohomaz, Olesxander, Riniakarui, Vasyl Stokolosa, Volodymyr Zhuk, Wiktor Kor, Bohdan Krasniakov, Vladylena Matviienko, Oleksandr Soloviov, Pavlo Zhuk, Stas Makar, Vasyl Nabochenko.

SPECIAL THANKS FOR SUPPOR TO THE CROWDIN TEAM!

Join Us!

SBT Localization always enjoys new talented, enthusiastic people who want to join the Ukrainianization of the universe. Try your hand at the translator test, then if you succeed, write to us via the contact form or search for SBT Localization pages and chats: Facebook, Twitter, Discord, Instagram, Mastodon.

If you do not have enough time to to do the localization work yourselves but are willing to help bring the Ukrainian language to games, you can support us in a way you like:

1) become our patron on Patreon ;

2) transfer any amount to account 5169 3305 1649 7846 (PrivatBank, recipient Ivanov Oleksii) or 5357 4115 0001 2666 (Monobank, recipient Yankovyi Ivan). Be sure to include your name and last name in the description field (sometimes the bank does not show the sender’s information), so we will know whom to thank.

UKRAINIZATION OF THE UNIVERSE MARCHES ON!