THE CHALLENGES OF IGAMING LOCALIZATION IN ROMANIAN

The Romanian language is spoken by 91% of the population as their primary language, while English is spoken by only 29% of Romanians (mostly in urban areas). There are also about 2-3 million indigenous Romanians that live outside of Romania, scattered across many other countries. So, this is the “linguistic pool” the Romanian players come from. As for their gaming behavior, they act as all the other European gamblers do: frequenting online casinos, poker rooms and betting heavily on team sports.

Some urban areas also provide the most players to play on online casinos and betting websites, as the Internet access in rural areas is still at a very low level.

The experienced poker players – especially the young ones – are well-familiarized with English poker terminology and they may even choose to use the English versions of the services, so that the terminology is consistent in between different operators.

So, right off the bat, it seems that one of the biggest challenges is to make these players feel like they belong to a larger community: the Romanian online players community. This requires keeping the specific terminology consistent in between the Romanian localized versions of the various services too. That means in between different clients with different platforms and different requirements, and, most importantly, in between different translation teams, working for different customers. This is achieved through coordination, research and standardization efforts.

While terms like “poker,” or “dealer” may keep their English form, Romanian language has an extensive jargon for the game of poker. And native speakers would surely appreciate and enjoy gambling on websites that care about linguistic context.

If in doubt, just think about important differences such as “high card” which translates into “cartea cea mai mare” (obviously longer), or “four of a kind” for which Romanian has a single word – “careu”. But even when it comes to simple terms like “call” or “check”, their Romanian equivalents have no resemblance whatsoever to the English ones: “call” turns into “sec” and “check” will be “pas”. And that’s only poker! But, while horse racing betting is done mostly in English, when it comes to sports betting, we have the same challenges, where “top scorer” is “golgheter” and “penalty” is “lovitură de pedeapsă” or, even more complicated, “lovitură de la 11 metri”. Kind of exotic, isn’t it?

Moreover, due to its grammatical characteristics, Romanian needs more space (up to 12%) to accommodate its catchwords, game instructions, or sales promotional texts. Finally, the style of addressing is equally important and can lead to the eternal dilemma:

• Do I use the polite pronoun (“dumneavoastră”) and its specific verb conjugation, but I lose the informal flavor (while providing a sense of classic protocol); or
• Do I use the informal “tu” (while modern English has “you” for both singular and plural subjects…) to create a more friendly and personal message, but with the risk of offending players with a more conservative mindset?

In a nutshell: when trying to address the online Romanian players, doing so in their iGaming language is an asset in your communication tool kit. At All-in Global you will find the iGaming experts you need to localize your gaming business for the Romanian market.

Contact us to discuss how we can help with your Romanian gaming localization or request a quote now!