I’m not going to cover everything I have seen over the past few years, but I want to share some of the most important points. At the beginning of the project, when CIG added the ability to use custom localizations, everything seemed fine. I decided to take the file containing all the localization keys and the original English text, and translate it entirely into French. I was far from imagining that even a simple language file was something CIG apparently could not manage properly. How Localization Entries Work First, let’s talk about the entries themselves. An entry is a label followed by a text string, separated by a specific character. In this case, it is the equals sign. Each line contains one label and the text associated with it. The game calls that label in order to display the text linked to it. So far, everything is normal. But once you start looking deeper, you quickly discover a strange level of management, and sadly, it reflects many other issues found throughout the game. Poor Use of Placeholders To avoid creating entries for absolutely everything, localization files use what are called placeholders. They often look like this: ~mission(itemName) The problem is that even this basic rule is not properly respected by the studio. For example, you can find several entries like: 2019_Ann_Sale_Day1=Expo-hall Day 01 when they could have simply used a placeholder for the day number: 2019_Ann_Sale=Expo-hall Day ~mission(dayNumber) Instead of having 12 separate entries, there could have been only one. And this is just a small example. Imagine what this looks like across all the RAB entries. Duplicate Text Attached to Multiple Labels Then you have the exact opposite problem: the same text, literally the exact same text, attached to multiple different labels. This serves absolutely no purpose, except making the file heavier for no reason, even though it is already too heavy for what should be a simple language file. For example: Adagio_RepUI_Area=UEE Advocacy_RepUI_Area=UEE AmbassadorFlights_RepUI_Area=UEE And so on. Instead of handling this properly and centralizing repeated information, CIG duplicates entries everywhere, making the file heavier, messier, and harder to maintain. Labels Called In-Game but Missing From the Language File Then there is something even more questionable. In-game, to link something to the language file, the game can call something like: @Advocacy_RepUI_Area to display the text: UEE The problem is that there are tons of places in the game, especially in the MobiGlas, where a label is called even though it is not attached to any text at all. For example: @port_DeskFlair This label is visible to all players, but it does not exist in the language file. So instead of displaying a proper text string, the game simply displays @port_DeskFlair. This is bad, especially when the label could easily be added to the language file and linked to a proper string. Last-Minute Changes Another extremely annoying issue for people working on this translation is that CIG has a bad habit of modifying, adding, or deleting labels and texts at the very last minute. Sometimes this happens right before a LIVE release, and sometimes even during the lifecycle of a LIVE version. This forces us to constantly check whether CIG has changed, added, or removed something, and to react as quickly as possible so players do not notice broken or missing strings in-game. In other words, we have to compensate for CIG’s lack of logic behind this simple file. The Accent Problem Finally, let’s talk about something especially frustrating for us French speakers. As everyone knows, accents are everywhere in French. French is one of the most spoken languages in the world, yet the accents are still not properly supported by some of the fonts used by the game. On our side, we use accents because we respect the French language. But in-game, letters that should have accents can be cut off or invisible, which creates readability issues. This specific problem has been reported since the very beginning of the project. And what has CIG done about it? Nothing. These Problems Go Beyond Translation All the examples I gave here are daily problems for the contributors working on the French translation. And many of these issues also affect other parts of the game, especially mining. The community tool Regolith suffered from these typical “made by CIG” management problems as well. Personally, I find it shocking that a simple language file can be this badly managed internally. It shows a certain lack of rigor, logic, and methodology. If CIG manages a language file this poorly, it makes you wonder how they manage other, much more complex parts of the game. And the worst part is that we are forced to deal with all of CIG’s management problems in order to keep providing a proper French translation for French-speaking players. Closing Words Thank you for reading. I hope this helps shed some light on issues that are usually invisible to most players. And a huge thank you to everyone who has supported SCEFRA since the beginning, especially Terada, Kennox, AirOne, Drakehinst, Onivoid, Ange, and many others.Onivoid, Ange, and many others.