Once Upon a Time: Friendship, School of Magic, Translation Challenges, and Toy Story

Like most of our adventures, it started with a translation job. We were working on Spellcaster University, a game where you build and run your own magic school. You get to train wizard students, build a troll’s dungeon, engage in magical duels, and deal with other ins and outs of managing a school of magic.

Sneaky Yak Studio, the developers, wrote the game in French, so our first task was to localize it into English, and then to other languages: Polish, German, and Spanish, with about 60 000 words in each language.

Finding a good French-to-English translator was our first challenge. The thing is, our linguists are all native speakers of the target language. No matter how good they are at the English language, it isn’t native to them We embarked on a quest for a bilingual superhero, fluent in both. We searched high and low and tested about a dozen people before we found Marc and Richard, our star French-to-English team: skilled, passionate, and a pleasure to work with.

And after that, the sailing was as smooth as it could be. The vibe was super positive, Sneaky Yaks supported us all the way, patiently answering our questions – and having fun!

That's how our friendship with Sneaky Yak Studio began. It blossomed with a small gift exchange: for Christmas, we ordered a crocheted Christmas decoration--a skull in a magical hat, glasses, and a smoking pipe in its teeth, representing one of the game’s characters. We hope our partners had fun finding a place for it on their Christmas tree! :D

Imagine how thrilled we were to receive a return gift! Along with a beautiful handmade card, there were two Familiars: cute little dragons, hand-painted with love. They have a special place in our hearts. Thanks to the personal touch, no one else in the world has dragons like these! <3