Terra Translations CEO Marina Ilari on Why Game Localization Is Her Passion

Marina Ilari, CEO of Terra Translations and Terra Localizations, joins SlatorPod to talk about her professional journey and the world of game localization. 

The CEO shares the strategic decision to create Terra Localizations in 2008 to cater specifically to the gaming industry’s requirements. She attributes the company’s growth to the ability to offer boutique-level services while scaling efficiently to handle larger projects.

Marina discusses the complexities of game localization, which requires specialized project managers, linguists, and QA teams. She explains that clients range from indie game developers, who might have budget constraints but are deeply invested in quality, to large publishers who finance and market games globally.

The podcast also touches on the challenges of marketing and competing in the game localization industry against both small and large players.

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Addressing the impact of AI and other technologies, Marina acknowledges their role in creating efficiencies and advancing tasks within the localization process. However, she underscores the importance of ethical and responsible use of AI, particularly in a creative and culturally sensitive field like game localization.

Marina also talks about Terra‘s new HR service offering, Terra Team Up, which emerged from a client demand for recruiting and consulting services, primarily targeting the Latin American talent.

Marina concludes by reflecting on the importance of staying true to the company’s values and culture, which she believes has been key to their sustained growth and success.

Transcript

Florian: Today, I’m really happy to have on the podcast, Marina Ilari. Marina is the CEO at Terra Translations and Terra Localizations, gaming division, and she’s also a Women in Games Ambassador, and Marina is a fellow podcast. She’s hosting the En Pantuflas podcast, and they also just crossed the 200-episode mark. Let’s talk about your backstory. How did you, I wouldn’t say end up, why are you based in Milwaukee? And what’s the backstory? You’re a linguist. I researched your profile, of course. On your LinkedIn page, there’s a great opening. It says, I grew up in a small agricultural town in Argentina, where VHS rental store and the arcade were pretty much the only entertainment option. How does one get from a small agricultural town in Argentina to Milwaukee?

Marina: I always say those were my nerdy beginnings but it really did help out my career. But yes, I did end up in Milwaukee for personal reasons. My husband is from here, and we got married in 2009, and I moved here, and I’ve been here ever since. Mainly, we travel quite a bit, but yeah, I’m based here. I’m originally from Argentina. Professionally, my background, as you well said, I trained as a translator. I am certified as a translator. I have also postgraduate degree as an expert in video game localization. But I started out as a linguist, helping my mother, mainly, who is also a translator and who is the founder of my company, Terra Translations. I worked there as a translator, as an editor, as a project manager. I did vendor manager work. I did everything under the sun there. But seven years ago, I took over the role of CEO of the company, and that’s what I’m doing now.

Florian: Were you a gamer as a kid?

Marina: Yes, absolutely. I’ve always been a big gamer. I think people are really surprised to hear this because they are like, oh, so your kids play video games? No, actually, it’s me. But yeah, it’s one of those misconceptions that people don’t think women maybe my age play video games. But even though women account for half of the gamers worldwide, it’s still regarded as a male pastime, so to say. Also the average age for a gamer in the United States is 34 years old, which also you think what do you mean, they’re all teenagers, right? No, actually. We’re adults.

Florian: What’s your favorite game these days?

Marina: Oh, my goodness. My favorite game of all time is the Zelda franchise. I’m a big Zelda fan, and my favorite of all time is the Zelda: Breath of the Wild franchise. But yeah, I have many favorite games, though. I play a lot, and I recently finished Baldur’s Gate 3, and that was super fun. I like playing with friends also. I use it as a way to socialize, catch up with friends and the like.

Florian: For you, it’s also, of course, market research, I guess, if you’re gaming.

Marina: Oh, 100%. I always tell my family, I’m also working. I’m entertaining, socializing, but I’m also working. Definitely market research. I think it’s very important that I know about games, that I know about different genres, that I know what’s going on in the industry. I actually take the time and I think it’s important for my work.

Florian: Tell us a bit more about Terra Translations. I guess it didn’t start as a game loc company because when it started 30 years ago, that was like California Games. That’s what I played when I was a kid. There was not much localization going on there. Tell us more about Terra Translations and then also Terra Localizations, which is the loc division, the game loc division.

Marina: Terra Translations is a family business. As I said, my mother founded it. It was over 20 years ago. We grew significantly in the last few years. We are headquartered here in Milwaukee, where I’m based. We also have offices in Buenos Aires, in Madrid. We have highly specialized teams in video games, in health care, and also we work in the safety and manufacturing industry. Now, in 2008, we created Terra Localizations, which is when our company really started specializing in video game localization. We saw a niche. We saw an opportunity to help video game publishers, developers take their games internationally and do it really well. We understood the audience. As I shared, I’m a gamer myself, I’ve always been extremely passionate about the industry. We saw also necessary to develop sort of a separate brand, like a sub-brand that would target gaming specifically with the right esthetics, the right messaging, highlighting specific expertise, the passion that our company has for this vertical. That’s where Terra Localizations was born. It really allowed us to dramatically extend the capabilities that we use to serve our clients. It allowed us to grow significantly. A lot of this growth is thanks to partnerships that we have with Triple-A game clients. The creation of Terra Localizations, I always say, was widely regarded as a good move for my company.

Florian: I can imagine, yeah. Just to dwell on that point a bit, in this particular vertical in gaming, you have to really project that it’s not just on a drop-down. Okay, we do X, Y, Z in gaming, but you have to really have the brand, the website, the look and feel. So this is essential to actually get there and succeed.

Marina: It’s a passion industry. It’s considered a passion industry. People who go into games, they work to go into games, they’re very passionate about it. They’re really interested or at least have a very strong affinity for games. I think in order to connect with those clients and showing them that you understand their audience, you understand what they’re trying to do to be successful, really helps. It really does help.

Florian: For you, so how is it to run both, I guess, brands? It’s not two businesses, but it’s two brands. Is this a challenge? Do you have separate teams? What do you share? What do you not share internally there?

Marina: No, we all function under the Terra umbrella, so we’re all part of Terra. But marketing-wise, we do have the two brands, the different social media presence, different websites. It’s more about the marketing assets. We do have the marketing team divided into the two brands. But other than that, internally, it’s the same HR team, the same leadership team. Yeah, it works. It sounds like it could be a lot more complicated than it actually is. It’s more about the branding. Also, obviously, the gaming team is not the same team that works in healthcare.

Florian: It’s a very interesting setup that I think other LSPs should really look at because, again, usually it’s like a drop down and then you get to the life sciences page or something. I mean, so actually spinning this out into a separate website look and feel on the marketing side, but of course, leveraging all the combined company resources, like behind the scenes is actually, yeah, it’s very smart. It works.

Marina: Yeah, we saw no other way to do it. It made no sense to try to sell everything to everyone.

Florian: Now, game localization is a special market in terms of you have very boutique game loc studios, and then you have these giant global companies. How do you compete, for example, with the small ones, but also with the big ones that take care of the entire game development cycle and all of the different services, including localization? How do you compete with them? How do you win business?

Marina: Yeah, that’s a great question. We definitely are not a giant. Our company, we sit at around 230 employees right now. But I do think our appeal comes in the fact that we are able to offer very boutique-level service that our clients who have had experience maybe with other larger players, they come to appreciate. We’re in that sweet spot of being boutique enough. We can provide this VIP type of service, but we’re also able to scale. Our company focuses on really heavily on company culture, on quality, on innovation. We have a really high employee retention rate, a true passion to help our clients, to help them succeed. We aim to become that trusted partner that they would be happy to celebrate things with us. They would also seek us if they have a problem. That sort of relationship, that partnership is what we aim for. I think that’s how we differentiate ourselves from other companies.

Florian: Talk us through a little bit the game localization process because many people on this podcast will have heard about game localization, they may have, I don’t know, they know maybe a few companies in the space, but from a business point of view, they’ve never actually done any game localization because I think barriers to entry are not exactly low. Tell us a bit more about job size, turnaround time, account size, who does what. Just give us a bit of insight there.

Marina: It’s a big industry, so it’s estimated at 220 billion. I always like to quote this because it blows people’s minds. It’s bigger than the film industry and the music industry combined, so very big market. It requires very specialized type of work. We’re talking about very specialized project managers, linguists, QA. These are not your everyday translation projects. You’re dealing really with very complex file formats, processes, technology. The average account size can vary significantly depending on the type of client that you’re serving. But to simplify, there are basically two types of clients in this industry. You have the indie game developers and the publishers. The indie game developers, they might have budget constraints, but they are very invested in the quality of the game. Even though they might not be the bigger players, you never know which game is going to be successful in this industry. Working directly with the developers can actually be very satisfying and also artistically satisfying. Now, on the other hand, you have the publishers. Those are the companies that they finance, they market, they distribute video games, and they fund the game development and also their marketing, their distribution, and many times, their localization. They play a crucial role in bringing these games to a global audiences. Those are the types of bigger say, bigger clients that you can get in the industry. But definitely very different profiles. Talking about indie game developers versus these big publisher companies.

Florian: How do you do sales? Who are you targeting? You don’t need to spill all the secrets, but do you go to the GDC in San Francisco every year? How does that work? Do you walk around the booth?

Marina: Yeah, it wasn’t actually very easy to find our place in this community because it’s a pretty close-knit community. Everyone that specializes in this kind of knows each other. It took years, really. It took years of going to conferences, events, talking to clients, building our portfolio, building up case studies where we can show we can actually help you in this and this and this, and opening the door to having these conversations with the bigger players. It wasn’t an overnight success. That’s why I always try to say it really did take years. But yeah, definitely getting involved with the community, caring about where these developers, these publishers are, and the conversations organizations that they like to have, what they read, where they go, and trying to hang out there. Seeing any opportunities also to volunteer in the industry, to contribute to the community, has also been really beneficial to us. Have it be sharing information, writing articles, speaking at conferences and events, and volunteering in these associations to help bring visibility to different topics in the industry. No secret. You were saying don’t reveal your secret, but it’s no secret. It’s really just a lot of work and perseverance.

Florian: Quick operation question. Is it almost 90% English into whatever other language or when you’re servicing maybe some of the Japanese game developers, you go out of Japanese, or what’s the setup there?

Marina: The two main exporters for games are the United States and Japan. Many times they could be localized from Japanese. Many Asian developers, though, they localize into English. They localize, say they develop in Chinese or Japanese and they localize into English. From there, they go to all the different languages just because the pool of specialists is a lot broader that way. The majority of the work that we do, I would say, is going from English to other languages. That isn’t to say we don’t do other language combinations because it’s definitely there. But I’m going to generalize and say the majority, it’s going from English.

Florian: There’s a super passionate Japanese to English game translator community out there, especially on X, former Twitter, that’s super fun to follow. Every time we publish an article about that topic, there’s like 100 retweets, which is kind of rare.

Marina: That’s so interesting. Also, the gaming community is very vocal. The games that are localized from Japanese, sometimes they need to go through adaptations, and sometimes fans don’t like this. They want the real thing. They don’t want you to change anything in the script. They don’t want you to transcreate anything. They’re like, the real thing. There’s a whole debate as to how much should you transcreate to resonate with this culture? How much do you leave of the essence of the original Japanese language? Because there have been big adaptations in games, for example, in Japanese, they say goodbye, and that’s the line, but in English, they translate it as, I love you. You know, completely different because they’re trying to to more of the Western language, and these people love each other, and they’re saying goodbye, so they have to say, I love you. But many players are like, yeah, it’s not what the original says.

Florian: That’s the great part about this game localization, generally, and about this particular subgenre in particular. I mean, this is great. Where else do you have vocal debates on translation like that, on the actual core of the language, right?

Marina: Yeah, I think so. I think it’s fascinating. People are super passionate about this. That’s why it’s so important to do it well because really fans, they care and they notice every single leader, and they will let you know if they’re unhappy. Also if they are happy, which that’s also very rewarding when you start hearing that they are super happy with how the localization is into their language. I can’t think of anything that’s more rewarding than that, honestly.

Florian: Yeah, and it’s public, unlike a lot of the feedback that you’d get in the LSP world, which is all confidential content, and maybe you get a pat in the back via a private email. Here it’s sometimes thought out in the public in Reddit or in X or some other platforms, Discord. One, of course, super sensitive topic is AI, LLMs, machine translation. Give us an update on how is this now being used or not used in game localization? Has anything changed since the ChatGPT launch, the LLMs, 18 months ago?

Marina: Yeah, that’s interesting. I think there have been changes, yes. As you well said, it’s a tricky topic because game localization is very culture sensitive. It is creative in nature and it really seeks to resonate with the players, with the gamers, what we were just saying. It’s tricky to use that type of technology. But I’ve seen it used in non-sensitive materials, educational, maybe technical documentation on the game, and I’ve seen it used successfully in those areas. Also, I think AI, particularly with what you mentioned, the LLMs, they can help us in many different maybe processes to help us create efficiencies, to advance tasks that before we had no resources, no time, no budget to do. I think that’s a really interesting and important implementation of the technology that is available to us now and that we can leverage. One example I have for this is from one of the members of our LQA team. He’s part of the Portuguese team. His name is Carlos. Hi Carlos. He developed, with the help of ChatGPT, a tailor-made freeware corpus analysis toolkit. It had really amazing results because it helped simplify a long, boring process, and it made it exciting for the team. That’s a really good example, I think, that how you can implement this technology to your benefit in this vertical. In my team, we’re constantly trying to experiment, create innovations, bring in ideas and test things out for our team internally, but also to offer to our clients. That’s what I see now in the industry, and I’m hoping people are leveraging it the right way and using it also ethically and responsibly. I also believe in using this technology in a responsible and ethical way.

Florian: I think a lot of people, myself included, sometimes take a too narrow view. Okay, it’s just used for maybe translating, localizing the dialogs, but there’s all these other processes that are going on where tools like ChatGPT and the 50 others that are out there now can help you get a lot of efficiencies. In a business like ours where text is at the core, there should be a lot of applications for this. Another technology that’s frontier and has been there a while is AR, VR, metaverse. I’m putting on the Apple Vision Pro. I haven’t gotten mine yet, but maybe I should. How are you about that? Is there a big groundswell of developers that are developing for something like Apple Vision Pro now? Does that have any impact on localization?

Marina: All right. I’m actually super passionate about this topic. People talk about XR, extended reality, the metaverse, to something to look for in the future. Oh, that’s like the future, but it’s the present. It’s really the present because these technologies, they continue to advance more and more. I say my son is a user of the metaverse by using technologies such as Roblox, for example, or VR technology with Oculus, for example. I also consider to be an avid user of a metaverse-like technology by playing games like Fortnite, for example. We can interact with friends. It’s not just all playing games. You can watch shows, you can go to concerts, basically like socialize in a virtual world. But it’s true the metaverse is still being built, and the term doesn’t really refer to one specific technology. It’s really a shift in how we will interact with technology. I think localization will play a very important role in the space. Localizing the metaverse will mean working with a universe or universes of content, like literally universes. We would be dealing with huge brands, but also we will be dealing with small one-person creators. How do you scale such a massive endeavor. It’s something that I think about a lot and I don’t have all the answers now. I have theories, but I always try to experiment with this technology and be at the forefront and also read about the subject. In fact, I recommend, if anyone listening is interested in learning more, there’s a really fascinating book called The Metaverse: And How It Will Revolutionize Everything. And there it says, there are just so many unknowns about this technology. How can we grow this technology with the infrastructure that we have now? It’s impossible. So infrastructurally, things will have to change significantly for it to work. How will we monetize this model? That’s another very huge one for the metaverse. Also, how will we localize it? That’s what I’m most interested in. But it’s all unknowns at this point.

Florian: Just think about it. This podcast, we’re recording it on a video platform. It’s like a Zoom call, but what if we put on some headset that was maybe a little lighter than the Apple Vision Pro. Maybe I’ll choose generation number three or four. But then you’re sitting in a studio, for example, and you’re much more close. That’s something I’d get excited about.

Marina: Yeah, and augmented reality, I think that’s going to be huge too. Using the reality, so real life, but also augmenting it with things through the use of glasses or a set or something.

Florian: Let’s go back a little bit more to the business side again. What’s the current momentum in terms of insourcing, outsourcing in the game industry with the developer? I think they do some things in-house, but then they tend to outsource. I’ve been in this industry now for 20 years. It’s coming in waves. Where’s the wave currently in gaming?

Marina: It varies significantly from company to company. Many companies have very mature localization departments where they do have reviewers or QA in-house and localization project managers in-house. I see other big players though outsourcing, even the project management side of things and working with companies. Many different models to some companies prefer to have a one-stop solution, others prefer to work with single-language vendors. There’s actually a little bit of everything in game localization. Companies are run differently. Again, depending on the level of the maturity of their localization department is how they choose to run it.

Florian: It’s a lot of complexity. You seem to like to add complexity to Terra because you also launched another business line called Terra Team Up, which is a HR service offering. You’re taking other people’s complexity onto your business as well and managing it for them. If I could outsource all the HR, I’d probably do it. Tell us more about that. What’s the plan with Terra Team Up?

Marina: This service, it’s called Terra Team Up. It actually came because clients were asking us about this. We were getting approach by clients to help them with the recruiting needs. We have a very robust HR team of specialists at Terra. That’s something that we’ve built from the outset. With so many years in the industry, we really developed very effective processes for finding and for keeping the right talent, especially working remotely. And so the very low rotation that our company has, the very positive culture that my company has, is something that I think clients see, they appreciate, and that’s why we decided open this new service offering. But we offer recruiting, consulting, staffing services, specifically mainly for sourcing talent in Latin America.

Florian: And you’re offering to other LSPs or to clients or both?

Marina: Yeah, everything. Clients and LSPs as well.

Florian: Also with legal and healthcare, so this is a very, very complicated of course in the US. How deeply are you still in these regulated areas? How does that gel with the gaming and the more creative business lines? I imagine that’s tricky to run both.

Marina: Yes, there are absolutely different teams and different trainings that teams have to undergo to. I think it’s actually a really interesting niche for medium or small-size LSPs to focus on these heavily regulated industries where we can offer a really secure environment and very specialized people working on this. Our healthcare team, they work with really strict security standards. They’re HIPAA compliant. We have to have them undergo a lot of training and use very specific processes for this type of content. For game localization also, you’ll be I’m surprised to know that also really high security standards are needed because we’re dealing with also very sensitive content, copyright content that would be disastrous if they get leaked, for example. We’re also dealing with very secure environments and secure servers and secure processes and people that need to be heavily trained in those topics. But yeah, I believe in working with expert teams. We give it all so that teams are super experts in the area that they work with. Certainly, no one from the gaming team will be involved in a healthcare project. It’s a completely different team, even though we’re all part of the same company.

Florian: It’s just tough to sell this. You need different salespeople because nobody can wrap their head around everything and kind of be perceived as that expert that you trust from the client. Just final comment on AI. How do you look at this industry that’s now changing quite quickly because there’s so much attention on language AI, which used to be this niche topic, and now it’s a global topic, if not the global topic. Where do LSPs fit? Should we think of LSPs as systems integrator with an expert layer on top? Or what’s your mental framework heading into the next few years?

Marina: Yeah. I’m very optimistic. I’m a very optimistic person, always. Optimism first for me. But I do see AI as being able to elevate the work that we do. Now, more than ever, I think we need experts. We need expert linguists. We need expert subject matters, subject matter experts. We need expert project managers that know how to work with automations and integrations. There will continue to be growth and volume when it comes to the global content, and this content also driven by machine augmentation. I’m a believer in the humans at the core concept and in using these technologies in a responsible way, in an ethical way. AI can help with enabling expansion, but it cannot do it on its own. The human value, the human expert, I think will go up. That’s my vision.

Florian: Yeah, same. I mean, I’ve shared this in many presentations also that. I think but the level of expertise just going up on all metrics. Yeah, you need the subject matter, you need the creativity or creative experts. I think everybody just has to step it up a little bit in terms of the value they deliver because these tools are pretty great. Speaking of growth, you guys grew very quickly. I just checked before the podcast on our language service provider index, and you went from 10 to 15 million, like one, five in 2023. That’s a 40% jump. Must be one of the fastest growing LSPs in our index. Now you’re getting to that critical step. You said, it’s not small anymore, it’s getting to that next level of growth. What are your plans? How do you roadmap this for the next one, two, three years? If that growth, even if it slows down a little bit, it’s still quite quick.

Marina: Yeah. I mean, growth is great. I’m very proud of how we were able to grow, but it’s very hard, too. Not many people talk about that. I just think it’s very important to stay true to your vision as a company and your mission as a company, so not sacrificing what makes your company special for the sake of growth. For us, it’s all about people, having a positive culture internally and externally also with everyone that we work with. It takes a lot of hard work. It takes a lot of determination from company leadership and safeguarding the values of your company, quality and loyalty and deep family commitments, community commitments. They are very present in every decision that we make. Leadership in our company really are seen as ambassadors for our values, and they make a constant effort to listen, to value each person that works with us and promote this culture with new hires. But some of the decisions we’ve had to make, actually, to safeguard that culture for our company, they were not easy. They potentially had a big impact in our profitability throughout the years. But it has shown us that if we support, we value the people that we work with in our community with a broader focus than just the profits, it, ironically, our company becomes stronger and more profitable. That’s how I like to do business, basically.