THE CHALLENGES OF IGAMING LOCALIZATION IN RUSSIAN

iGaming is one of the fastest-growing industries in the world, attracting more and more people, with dozens of new providers and hundreds of new products springing up every day. From promising startups launched by groups of enthusiasts, major iGaming players have evolved into a global industry with a gross annual turnover running into billions.

With this said, no wonder that business started growing rapidly sweeping new markets, and this is when the need for localization services has become an urgency.

And this has brought in numerous issues, particularly if we are speaking about the Russian market. To start with, all the key terminology in iGaming sector has been created by and for English-speaking users, and apart from that it has some special nature. Sounding quite natural and familiar to all who deal with iGaming industry on an everyday basis, such terms as “Free Spin”, “Odds Boost”, “Wild symbol”, “Rebuy”, “Add-on”, “Wager requirements”, “Winning ways” and many others would need an additional explanation for a person, who is a stranger to the gambling world, even if his native language is English. And just imagine how weird they sound translated for a Russian speaker? it took some time, before the Russian speaking audience got accustomed to this “weird” terminology.

Another issue that should be mentioned in reference to iGaming localization in Russian language is SPACE (and we are talking not about Elon Musk and his plans to colonize the planet Mars). Mobile devices boom has contributed to the migration of iGaming industry to mobile platforms. Every iGaming provider has a mobile app or a mobile version of the web-site, which has rigid space limitation requirements. In many cases, this has turned a localization job from “a die hard” to “mission impossible” for Russian linguists. Here’s a vivid example: English term “Free Spin” (what a beauty consisting of just 8 characters!) in Russian has turned into a more than twice longer monster “Бесплатные вращения”. As a result, various strategies have been used by different operators, from shortening Russian words, which is actually a thing to avoid in the interface part, to transliterating English terms with Cyrillic letters or even leaving hard to localize terms in English.

The last but not least issue that should be mentioned when speaking about iGaming localization into Russian language is QUALITY. In the early days when iGaming industry made its first steps on a global scale, many operators just didn’t pay due attention to the quality of their content translated into different languages. It was not uncommon that the content was localized by non-professionals or was machine-translated without any kind of revision. However, as the rivalry on the market was getting more and more fierce, the operators had to compete for regular customers in various ways, including the improvement of content quality in target markets. And this has brought in a demand for professional linguistic services in iGaming area. Hence, if you need your content to stand out in any language, better entrust this to the first professional language service providers with a long-term experience in the iGaming area – All-in Global.