{"id":4647,"date":"2023-06-26T12:54:03","date_gmt":"2023-06-26T12:54:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/openworldvc.com\/?p=4647"},"modified":"2023-10-11T15:40:19","modified_gmt":"2023-10-11T15:40:19","slug":"s2-ep2-ft-tamara-tirjak","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/openworldvc.com\/2023\/06\/26\/s2-ep2-ft-tamara-tirjak\/","title":{"rendered":"S2 EP2 &#8211; Ft. Tamara Tirj\u00e1k"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Watch the episode on YouTube<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed aligncenter is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe title=\"OpenWorld S02E02 20230621 OB\" width=\"1170\" height=\"658\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/uS7Z8A_uiK8?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Episode Transcription<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed alignright is-type-rich is-provider-spotify wp-block-embed-spotify wp-embed-aspect-21-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe title=\"Spotify Embed: S2EP2: Ft. Tamara Tirj\u00e1k\" style=\"border-radius: 12px\" width=\"100%\" height=\"152\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen allow=\"autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/embed\/episode\/3WzU5bCowMEptSekKkL969?si=lr88vKSgTD676YetSq3-uA&#038;utm_source=oembed\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>LARA<\/strong>: Hi, everyone! Welcome to another episode of Open World. How are you doing today? Hi, Ale. Hi, Meli. And today we have a very, very special guest with us. Tamara. Hi, Tamara, how are you doing today? Thank you so much for joining us. We are so excited to have you here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>TAMARA<\/strong>: Hello, everyone. It\u2019s amazing to be here, so thank you very much for the invitation, and I&#8217;m really looking forward to our discussion today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>MELISA<\/strong>: Thank you, Tamara.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>ALEXIS<\/strong>: Thank you, Tamara. Well, I was hoping to kick the interview with you telling us a little bit about you, about your career, your journey, how did you start in the industry? What\u2019s your first thoughts? And did you ever imagine getting to where you are now? Wherever you wanna start, we are all ears.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>TAMARA<\/strong>: So, if we do a bit of time travel, back in\u2026 I\u2019m not gonna say the year, okay? But I was around seven years old when I got my first computer. I&#8217;m not gonna say the model because that will reveal my age. But I became very excited and passionate about gaming and programming and games. And I also was very interested in languages. So these two things kind of defined my childhood, games and languages. And my studies led me in all sorts of sidetracks, very exciting ones, but it was just amazing, it\u2019s quite a miracle that eventually, these two passions kind of came together in working in video games as a localization professional. But talking about my professional career, I like to say that I&#8217;ve been through the localization food chain, starting as a freelance translator and moving to become an internal reviewer, project manager at this small-ish SLV in Budapest, and then MLV, and then I am now on the client side, so to say, working at Frontier Developments for the last eight years or so, and it\u2019s an amazing place to be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>ALEXIS<\/strong>: That is one of the interesting things\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>MELISA<\/strong>: That\u2019s amazing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>ALEXIS<\/strong>: Yeah. One of the interesting things about this industry is that you don\u2019t only have to be a linguist and translate video games to be a part of this entire food chain, like you mentioned, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>MELISA<\/strong>: Do you think, like\u2026 like, looking back, do you think it made sense for you to go through this journey to be able to be where you are today?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>TAMARA<\/strong>: Yes, absolutely. Looking back, you know, in retrospective, it\u2019s amazing to see how all these experiences, how my studies, the student organizations I was part of, and then, you know, all these steps in my career eventually added something, something very useful that I can still use today. I mean, just a simple example, if I think of, well, we work with, you know, partners, clients\u2026 No, sorry. We&#8217;re working with vendors and localization partners, and being on that side of the industry, I know what they need, I know how they work, and I am able to provide them everything that I possibly can so that they can do the best work that they possibly can.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>MELISA<\/strong>: That\u2019s great. Yeah, you understand the whole process a lot better being on both sides. And I have another question also. I read a Nimdzi report where you talk about a healthy work culture on your team as a leader. Can you share any specific tips with us?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>TAMARA<\/strong>: Well, one of the things that I really love about my current job is managing a diverse team of absolutely amazing individuals. And as a leader, I believe that my job is to enable and empower these people to do their best, and also to explore and bet on their strengths and to have them continuously grow as a professional. And Nimdzi actually has been an absolutely fantastic partner in that for us. As for tips, hmm\u2026 I always encourage transparency and open communication within my team. We have, you know, daily stand-ups so everybody knows what the other people are working on. And this also helps us towards becoming better cross-cultural communicators, which is extremely important if\u2026 In our team of 11 individuals, we have nine different nationalities and cultural backgrounds, so it\u2019s very important to do that. Also a really fun practice that we have in place is a weekly gathering called \u201cLa vida loca.\u201d It&#8217;s a casual Friday session where we can, you know, geek out about languages, cultures, training, share ideas about a project and, you know, just celebrate all these achievements that the team members have.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>LARA<\/strong>: That\u2019s so cool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>ALEXIS<\/strong>: I love that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>TAMARA<\/strong>: Yeah. And not just focus on the day-to-day production method.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>LARA<\/strong>: Oh, my God, amazing. That\u2019s so cool. Thank you for saying and sharing\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>MELISA<\/strong>: Yeah, it\u2019s very cool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>ALEXIS<\/strong>: Yeah, I love that you give it a name to the casual Fridays, an ultimate goal, right? Now, if you were to say some of the biggest challenges that you\u2019ve had in your role as Head of Localization or even growing towards your role, what would you say that you may have faced?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>TAMARA<\/strong>: Hmm\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>ALEXIS<\/strong>: Maybe it\u2019s a tough question, I don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>TAMARA<\/strong>: No, it\u2019s fine. But I think my answer will probably resonate with the other professionals who have a similar journey to mine, so who have come from the language service providers side over to a game company or any other company, for that matter. And I think one of the biggest challenges when you make that move is to learn a new language or other many new languages so that you&#8217;re able to talk about localization to people who are from all sorts of disciplines, and talk to them in a way that it creates bridges and leads to a shared understanding and, you know, to solving problems collaboratively. And don\u2019t forget that they don\u2019t know anything about localization, so if you, for example, try explaining like the cost savings that you can achieve by leveraging your TM if you\u2019re not allowed to say translation memory, fuzzy match, big translation\u2026 anybody of the game of taboo, if you remember.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>ALEXIS<\/strong>: Yeah, yeah, yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>TAMARA<\/strong>: So yeah, that\u2019s quite a challenge. But, you know, after you spend some time listening to your colleagues talk about their challenges and their work, it\u2019s not that tricky to figure out how to talk to them about localization in a way that makes sense for them. A couple of examples. If you talk to a EU coder about how you handle formatting text or placeholders, they\u2019ll be really thrilled to hear that, producers, budgets, timelines, how you stick to them. And of course, if you talk to management, they will want to hear about the ROIs for the different languages, cost savings, if you achieve those through efficiency and new tools and technologies, as well as how you&#8217;re driving growth and revenue for the company. And also, in my experience, everybody loves hearing about things like transcreation tricks and game culturalization so that [inaudible] good, you know, lunch time chat, how you can generate some excitement about your daily work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>ALEXIS<\/strong>: It\u2019s always an interesting topic for those who are in the localization industry, the transcreation part, isn&#8217;t it? It\u2019s like a constant. Everywhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>TAMARA<\/strong>: Yes, it\u2019s a bit, \u201cWow! I never thought about that before.\u201d Yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>ALEXIS<\/strong>: But hey, you don\u2019t know what you don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>LARA<\/strong>: I\u2019m a huge, huge fan of Planet Coaster and, obviously, Planet Zoo, right? And I know about Planco. Would you like to tell our audience about it? And do you know someone that speaks Planco? Because that\u2019s so cool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>TAMARA<\/strong>: Yeah, of course. I really love Planco and I love talking about it, but, come on, what kind of language geek would not be excited about talking about a constructed language?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>LARA<\/strong>: I know! It\u2019s so good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>TAMARA<\/strong>: So yeah, Planco was born during the development of, as you say, Planet Coaster, which is, for those who don\u2019t know, a theme park simulation game that Frontier released in 2016. And there were a couple of ideas generated about how to create a living world, a world where the player gets a tangible connection to all the guests that roam around in the park and whom, you know, as the player, I&#8217;m supposed to entertain. And one of these many suggestions was a substitution language based on English, Planco. And the idea came from our amazing audio team, from an excellent Sound Designer, now Dialogue Manager, actually, called James Stant, and he is the father of Planco. And the idea was that, we wanted the players to have more connection and more quality beyond the \u201cOoh!\u201d, \u201cAhh!\u201d, \u201cWow!\u201d, \u201cGrrr!\u201d, and you know, all these non-verbal sounds to make the guests more real. And we didn\u2019t want to localize any of that chatter because we wanted these parks to be location-agnostic, and the Planet universe is a separate and completely entirely separate world without connection to the real countries, real languages, so creating Planco was just a fundamental aspect of creating this experience. Um\u2026 Yeah. Apart from the creator, I honestly don\u2019t know anyone who is fluent in Planco. But of course, many of us know a couple of words and expressions. So a couple of my favorites would be, \u201cHayo,\u201d which is \u201cHi.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>LARA<\/strong>: \u201cHayo!\u201d Oh, my God, yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>TAMARA<\/strong>: \u201cVeyb oe,\u201d \u201cThank you.\u201d \u201cAlle-ooma\u201d, \u201cRollercoaster.\u201d If you say the word, \u201cAlle-ooma,\u201d that\u2019s kind of how the coaster\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>LARA<\/strong>: Yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>TAMARA<\/strong>: We have \u201cHass-wuuf\u201d, \u201cHot dog.\u201d So \u201cWuuf\u201d as in, you know, what the dogs say here in the UK. And my personal favorite is \u201cWippi tentifu,\u201d which is \u201cA happy octopus.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>LARA<\/strong>: Oh, my God. So cool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>MELISA<\/strong>: That\u2019s extremely adorable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>TAMARA<\/strong>: Yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>ALEXIS<\/strong>: So creative. I love that it has an intention behind. \u201cAlle-ooma\u201d is like\u2026 It makes sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>LARA<\/strong>: Yeah. And when you&#8217;re playing, like, Planet Zoo\u2026 Yeah. I love to hear like the little people saying, \u201cHay! Hay!\u201d to the animals, like \u201cHey!\u201d Oh, my God, it\u2019s so cute!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>TAMARA<\/strong>: Yes, there is definitely an intention behind the words because, since these are, you know, not understandable for the players, we still wanted them to give information. I mean, \u201cWippi tentifu,\u201d that\u2019s just the happiest thing you can imagine, just saying it. And then words that are related to frustration and anger, they will have those kinds of sounds, so even though you don\u2019t understand the actual words, they do carry information about the happiness, tiredness, anger of the guests, so as a player, you can actually act upon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>LARA<\/strong>: Yeah, absolutely. It\u2019s so good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>MELISA<\/strong>: It definitely adds to the experience in the game, for sure. And in your experience, Tamara, how difficult would you say it is to build a new language for a video game?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>TAMARA<\/strong>: It\u2019s definitely not for the faint of heart, but in our experience, it\u2019s totally worth it, while keeping in mind that the creation and maintenance and the use of a constructed language does create a lot of collaboration between various departments, and they all bring their expertise together. So you have game design, audio, localization coming in and joining this endeavor. And at Frontier, the concept artists and 3D modelers have also been absolutely amazing in embracing it and just decorating the world with Planco signs and things. And\u2026 Yes, so Planco at the moment has a vocabulary of about 5,000 words, so that\u2019s quite big, so you need to have a pretty solid process in place from the get-go in order to manage and use a language. So our translation tool is memoQ, and we have a couple of custom hacks in there so we can use it as practically a translation engine to convert English text into Planco, along with the pronunciation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>LARA<\/strong>: Yeah, it\u2019s so cool. For the people that don\u2019t know, there is like <a href=\"https:\/\/www.planetcoaster.com\/planco-dictionary\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/www.planetcoaster.com\/planco-dictionary\">an entire page dedicated to Planco<\/a>, like a dictionary, so you can go and check it out online. It\u2019s so good. So good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>ALEXIS<\/strong>: We can put it on the description of this video.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>LARA<\/strong>: Absolutely. You have to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>ALEXIS<\/strong>: We will.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>LARA<\/strong>: Yeah. I know that Planet Zoo has been releasing a lot of DLCs, right? Because I have them all. And I know that you mentioned to me that you\u2019re a big fan of Planet Zoo, too, and I have to ask, which expansion is your favorite? Because to me it is the Tropical Pack because I love sloths, like, oh my God, the cutest, and Grasslands because the challenge one takes place in Argentina, so that was amazing, too. So, yeah, which expansion is your favorite? Can you choose one? I mean, it\u2019s so hard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>TAMARA<\/strong>: Yeah, it\u2019s a really tough one because, you know, they are all so unique. But I think my personal favorite would be the Conservation Pack.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>LARA<\/strong>: Oh, yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>TAMARA<\/strong>: Yeah, which highlights the important role that zoos play in helping the planet. And it features some endangered species, some eco-friendly buildings and scenery, and it educates people about the importance of sustainability. And that\u2019s actually one of the main pillars of the game, so I think it\u2019s really amazing that an entire pack was dedicated to it. But talking about packs, I would be happy to share my favorite part of working on all these packs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>LARA<\/strong>: Oh, my God, yes, please do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>TAMARA<\/strong>: So, as you know, most of these packs highlight a geographical area or a specific habitat and brings in new animals and scenery pieces. So when we start working on a new pack, localization is actually brought in quite early, so we get to do some research and feedback on the proposed scenery items to make sure that they&#8217;re not just beautiful, but they also represent the culture in a respectful and relevant way. For example, the Australia pack that features some indigenous artwork, and for that we worked with an indigenous artist and cultural ambassador called John Smith Gumbula, and it even featured his own original artwork on, I think, a collection of painted rocks and such. And the second aspect where we bring in this connection between the animal species and the cultures or the area to which they are related to is the naming pools. When a new animal is born or purchased in Planet Zoo, they get assigned a default name, which the players can change to their heart\u2019s content, but the default name comes from a bucket of names. So for example, our first DLC was the Arctic Pack, and for that, the reindeers get their names from a bucket of Finnish, Swedish and Norwegian names. Then the polar bears and the Arctic wolves get a Innuit name, and then the dall sheep get some popular North American name. So we all gather these names for the buckets. And of course they are all sanity checked to make sure that the meaning is okay and they don\u2019t sound like something rude or offensive in a major language. So yeah, I love how with these thematic packs we can celebrate the diversity and the cultures around the planet, and bring those in for our Planet players to enjoy. And this is also a really exciting way for localization to get involved and contribute.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>LARA<\/strong>: Yeah, it\u2019s all amazing. I mean, I love seeing the <em>llamas<\/em> and the capybaras with Spanish names. It\u2019s so cool. Like, I love it. It\u2019s amazing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>MELISA<\/strong>: And it\u2019s great to know that your process incorporates the localization team early on. That\u2019s such an important part, that we can contribute exactly in that like, you know, and it can be beneficial for the game to have that insight from people from different places\u2026 and the language impact\u2026 the impact it can have in different languages, how it sounds. I think it\u2019s great that you have the process like that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>LARA<\/strong>: Yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>ALEXIS<\/strong>: Yeah. Such a great care. And it shows. It really shows. Tamara, we know that you&#8217;ll be giving a talk at Game Quality Forum, which will be in Amsterdam on June 27 and 29\u2026 through 29. We truly can&#8217;t wait. We\u2019ll be there. Can you tell us a little bit about what your talk is gonna be for our audience?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>TAMARA<\/strong>: Yes. Indeed, I&#8217;m going to Amsterdam\u2026 oh, it\u2019s already next month, huh? And I&#8217;m very excited, very excited about that. I will be speaking about integrating localization into the game production pipeline. And, you know, this is a topic that often comes up with localization professionals as we explore how we can be brought in earlier into that process and, you know, in a meaningful way, and how we can shift from being [indistinct 20:16] center to a growth driver. Because, you know, you can&#8217;t really make games for a global market without involving the expertise of the localization teams. And over the years, Frontier has built quite a mature localization program, so I&#8217;m really looking forward to sharing our journey with my fellow game localizers, and also to learn about their journey. And with these events, I find that I always head back home with my head full of ideas and motivations and insights to go home\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>ALEXIS<\/strong>: You have an outlet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>TAMARA<\/strong>: Yeah. And just, you know, take all these valuable treasures back home and start improving things even further. And I&#8217;m actually not going alone from Frontier, my colleague Ekaterina Zaytseva is also joining me, she&#8217;s a Senior Localization Manager, and she will be joining the panel discussion on Diversity, Equity and Inclusivity, which is led by Marina Ilari from Terra Localizations, if I&#8217;m not mistaken.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>ALEXIS<\/strong>: Yes, it rings a bell. It rings a bell, yes. No, such an interesting topic. Such a useful one. We\u2019re looking forward to it. And it\u2019s a topic that everyone involved both in the video game localization and in the video game development and publishing side should check out. So thank you for that. And with that, it\u2019s the end of our episode with Tamara. Thank you everyone for joining us. Thank you, Tamara, so much for taking the time off your schedule to meet with us. We\u2019ll be seeing you guys again in 15 days with another episode of Open World. Don\u2019t forget to follow us on our socials, we are on Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, everywhere. So thank you very much, and see you next time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>MELISA<\/strong>: Thank you, Tamara!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This week, Tamara Tirj\u00e1k visited us from Cambridge. She is Head of Localization from Frontier Developments and will be present at Game Quality Forum at the end of June! Our hosts explore strategies for a healthy work environment while geeking out over Planet Zoo!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":4648,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[116],"tags":[119,120,117,29],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/openworldvc.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4647"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/openworldvc.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/openworldvc.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openworldvc.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openworldvc.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4647"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/openworldvc.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4647\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4701,"href":"https:\/\/openworldvc.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4647\/revisions\/4701"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openworldvc.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4648"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/openworldvc.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openworldvc.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openworldvc.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}