Various languages

How do you guys manage the various languages of your game? I see big games like travian having their game in each language. They probably hire people to translate it + give support + host in that country.

How could I do this in the future? I'm just doing this as a hobby :) Maybe I will find some active players when my game goes live who want to help, but still giving support in the language would be a problem. For example now I want to write news about my game in the german galaxy-news (same news as on the .net) but I can't write proper german ;)

The best thing to do once your game is running is to ask your players for help. If you're having a couple of thousand players the chance is pretty high that someone is a native speaker of another language.

Some companies do use professionals to translate their games but this will probably be too expensive for someone who is mainly running his game for fun. 

Another thing you can do is contact a German company. They might be interested in running the game for you in Germany. 

Thanks, ye I was also thinking about asking some players to help after a while. Ah well, will still take a few months before I finish the english version + a few months of testing so not in a big rush :)

My company is newcomers in pbbg market. We have successful launch in native language, and now have dilemma of choosing between two possibilities:

1. Start global - English version.

2. Do country by country translations.

What is your opinion which way is better?

I would recommend the "country-by-country-way" as every country has different preferred ways of payments and different target groups. This way it will be easier to diversify between the versions.

You might also need to work on the designs (e.g. right to left for the Arab countries).

In the end it depends on the strategy/plan you're running your company with, but I'd go with separated local versions.

I'm going to launch a new version of my game in february 2009, with 3 languages: Dutch, English and German, main language is English.

If that version is ok, i'm going to set up another version that will be in German only.
And yeah, my players help me translate, they like it and they do it for free :).