Team: Priscilla Moore

You've read about the graphics in Astraware Solitaire and you've also read Kat's view on its development. So I will write a little about an aspect that perhaps many of you won't even notice. For those of you who do notice it, I hope this feature makes the experience of playing even more pleasant. I'm talking about localisation.

Among other things, I am responsible for getting all resources translated into different languages. The process starts when the English text is nearly finalized. I then get the strings from the developer and have the job of translating them. Not all localisation is done in-house; I am a native Spanish speaker so I work on the Spanish strings but my knowledge of other languages is not very advanced, so we also rely on an external company for this.

To handle the strings, I take the text document that contains them and covert it into a spreadsheet. The table has all the strings listed vertically and each string has its translation listed horizontally on the same row. This format enables me to identify which string I'm working on as well as which language.

The most challenging part of the process is making sure all the text fits on-screen. So once all the localised strings are put in the file, I figure out the longer text for each string (a task that only takes two minutes when done using formulas in the spreadsheet) and the developer creates a special build of the game containing all the strings. This special build in what we call 'Longlish' lets us see how well the text fits on the small screens. Sometimes we need to move things around the screen, sometimes artist time is needed to make changes to graphics or even the font, and sometimes we don't have other option but to abbreviate words (some times in the most unusual way).

While all this is being done, different versions are fed out to beta testers and those who understand other languages send us back their feedback.

Currently, Astraware Solitaire only supports Spanish, but other languages will be added soon. It took a lot of time and effort but it is all worth it if some of you decide and prefer to play it in this language. For other games like Astraware Sudoku and Bejeweled, we have done localisation into French, Italian, German, Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese. Who knows, maybe in the future we will decide to localise into other languages, perhaps even those that don't use the Latin alphabet.

A few years ago, I never thought I would be part of a games development process. But here I am today and I've enjoyed the experience. I hope you enjoy the result.

Sitting by my desk in overcast England, it is hard to believe that only a week ago I was walking around sunny Barcelona. On Saturday 10th February, John and I started our journey to one of the largest mobile shows in the world: 3GSM. Being my first time at 3GSM, I was very excited about looking at the greatest and latest products and phones but, most importantly, about meeting people from the companies that make it all happen. We spent some time around booths of some of the companies we work with and it was especially rewarding seeing Bejeweled showcased in the Access stand.

I must admit, I was impressed with the size of the show, the great variety of products you could find and the amount of people it moved. After covering the eight halls of the exhibition, I had seen mobile phones for all tastes - from the extra-small and light to complete all-in-one office-solution ones. And it is also worth noting that all were accompanied by a myriad of accessories and software, so users of all kinds are clearly going to be spoilt for choice.

I was extremely tired after spending a week walking around the halls and meeting people from different companies. But the experience was very interesting and gratifying and it also gave me a more tangible demonstration of how big the mobile market really is.