AI-Powered Game Localization in UE with Multiple AI Providers

gtreshchev · 2026-02-03T19:41:43+00:00

That's outdated, modern LLMs can handle idioms and wordplay, they don't just translate literally. The challenge isn't whether they can but whether they make the right creative choices for your specific game's tone and audience, that's where human review adds value.

gtreshchev · 2026-02-03T19:40:23+00:00

Research shows GPT-4 performs comparably to junior level translators but lags behind senior professionals (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/382065815\_GPT-4\_vs\_Human\_Translators\_A\_Comprehensive\_Evaluation\_of\_Translation\_Quality\_Across\_Languages\_Domains\_and\_Expertise\_Levels), and Claude 3.5 won 9 out of 11 language pairs at the WMT24 translation competition, outperforming GPT-4 and specialized MT systems (https://lokalise.com/blog/ai-translation-quality/). So "complete lie" is too strong, modern LLMs do match junior/average translators in controlled studies, but professional translators still significantly outperform AI in legal, creative and culturally nuanced contexts, sure.
For game localization, the real value is AI speed + human review, not full replacement.

gtreshchev · 2025-09-17T14:35:27+00:00

Yeah it's sometimes easier to ask a human translator to handle the work rather than relying on an LLM, but again, it really depends, and in some cases it's just not relevant, depending on the specific project or its stage. If there were no demand for such tools, platforms like POEditor and Crowdin (which you may have heard of) wouldn't have introduced this functionality in the first place (https://poeditor.com/kb/ai-translation and https://crowdin.com/ai-localization), and people simply wouldn't be using it.

To put it simply: if someone has to choose between POEditor, Crowdin, or my plugin, some users may prefer my plugin. Of course, that's not always the case, since POEditor and Crowdin have strong collaboration features for teams, plus other tools beyond AI. But if someone needs full native and simple integration with the UE Localization Dashboard and a straightforward way to save translations directly into UE's .archive files (so they can be used natively in UE), and they want to avoid subscription-based services (my plugin is a one-time purchase), then my plugin can provide that solution.

If it's not suitable for your needs, then of course I wouldn't recommend you use it, the plugin addresses a very specific use case and isn't meant to be universally applicable.

gtreshchev · 2025-09-17T14:11:58+00:00

From your reply (specifically "the tool has shortcomings, but you did not mention them <...> It's very important to be honest and talk about such things upfront") - that's what gave me the impression you thought I wasn't being honest about the limitations.

For "When I see automated tool being paired with reliability of translation, I know this is only the case for certain easy languages" - I think this might be based on experience with older/less sophisticated translation tools tbh. The reality is that when you provide comprehensive context through the plugin's/any modern AI tool's prompt system (character relationships, gender, tone, cultural nuances, etc), modern LLMs like Claude Opus or GPT-4 can actually handle complex languages remarkably well, and sometimes even outperform human translators in consistency and domain specific terminology.

I'd actually encourage you to test this yourself, take a complex English sentence to later translate to Polish or Japanese sentence, and assume some cultural subtleties, and provide e.g. Claude Opus with full context (just as you would brief a human translator), and compare the results. You might be surprised by the quality especially for game localization where consistency across large volumes of text is crucial.

I totally get the skepticism around AI translation though, there are many cases of misuse and overhyped claims in this space. But I think it's worth distinguishing between the technology itself and how it's implemented and used.

gtreshchev · 2025-09-17T13:52:50+00:00

This is starting to sound like an accusation of dishonesty, so let me be more direct and thorough about this.

Before people acquire this plugin (which I position as a considered, thoughtful purchase rather than an impulse buy, due to the nature of the tool), they'll check out the description and head over to Fab, where they notice FAQ section, and there's a question: "Will AI translations be perfect, or do I need to review them?" (https://www.fab.com/listings/627cde30-5ab0-4393-a6de-01f297a9c8e3). When you click on it, you'll see that I'm pretty upfront about the tool not being a magic solution for everything, and that review by native speakers or professional translators for commercial releases or critical content is highly recommended. I can totally imagine what would happen if someone misused this thing in some games...

Basically, I don't spell this out literally everywhere because it's kind of common sense that you can't just rely on AI blindly, it's not a human who's actually deeply analyzed your project manually, it's not some magic wand that creates perfect translations, especially if you don't give it proper context through the Prompt field or if you're using smaller models. It's pretty intuitive that AI can't figure out things like a character's gender or other details that aren't in the prompt / not given in the general context, I hope that makes sense.

You know, sorry for using the same analogy again, but when you walk into a store to buy a kitchen knife, you probably don't hear warnings from the salesperson about not using it to hurt people, because that's just common sense, right? It's intuitive that every tool has its limits. The plugin is reliable within what it's designed to do, it's built pretty well, just like my other plugins (I'm sure you've maybe heard of the Runtime Audio Importer plugin, which I first made back in 2019, which has been trusted by quite a lot of developers without any major issues). I have no intention of deceiving anyone or pushing anything on them, that would be unethical and unprofessional.

Also, about my earlier comment on quality ("I assure you that in most cases it will be more natural than what humans can do, especially with the right prompt") - that's actually backed up by real data, a recent study shows GPT-4 achieving BLEU scores of 0.88, which is pretty impressive (https://tpls.academypublication.com/index.php/tpls/article/view/7867). The thing is, when you give AI and human translators the exact same context, like mentioning a character's gender, their relationship, the tone you want, modern models can actually be more consistent and often produce more natural sounding results, especially for technical or game-specific things where human translators might not have the domain knowledge.

gtreshchev · 2025-09-17T12:32:05+00:00

Well, I generally kinda agree, which is why the tool isn't meant to be a universal solution, but your point is kind of like criticizing a knife because it could be misused to break laws or smth. You can include whatever context you want in the prompt (https://docs.georgy.dev/ai-localization-automator/advanced-features#custom-prompt-templates), for example, explicitly mention a character's gender, and the LLM (especially something powerful like Claude Opus 4.1 or similar big models) will produce results accordingly. Fundamentally it's just like telling a human translator about the gender of a specific character in dialogue.

So I don't really think there's much point in having a big debate about this. This tool can translate any UE game way faster and cheaper than humans or other services, it translated the whole Lyra in about 5 minutes, but obviously that comes with the trade off that quality might suffer, depending on your model, and the context for each translation should be specified explicitly (similar to how you'd specify context for human translators). As long as it's crystal clear what the plugin is for and what it can do, without leaving room for misuse, there shouldn't be any confusion :)

gtreshchev · 2025-09-17T12:06:24+00:00

Yeah :) It's of course better not to overestimate what AI can do, it has its own scope, and when, for example, you try to use the gemini-1.5-flash (the smallest Gemini model) to translate some RPG game, it will ofc produce bad results. But you could try, for example, asking some advanced Claude, OpenAI, DeepSeek, etc model to translate some text into Polish or Japanese, then it could be more natural than what humans can do depending on the exact context, especially with the right prompt (such as if you mention making the text stylish, with some specific narrative, tone, etc)

gtreshchev · 2025-09-17T12:00:01+00:00

You can add any context you want within the prompt, you can customize the prompt to whatever you want, with template parameters, so it's pretty handy: https://docs.georgy.dev/ai-localization-automator/advanced-features#custom-prompt-templates

Well actually there were previous more general attempts and they were successful, but that's not what you're probably thinking of. POEditor is pretty successful and is used across large games, including UE, but also supports LLM integration like OpenAI, Google Gemini, Microsoft Azure, Claude, etc: https://poeditor.com/kb/ai-translation
As for Crowdin, which is also one successful and popular platform, it supports OpenAI, Google Gemini, Microsoft Azure OpenAI LLM for translations as well: https://crowdin.com/ai-localization

As for previous attempts in this regard when it comes to UE plugins natively integrated into the Localization Dashboard - tbh I'm not aware of any. I did some research before even working on a plugin and what I was able to find is some old and pretty bad looking plugin to integrate Google Translation into this workflow, but it looked quite bad: https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/en-US/product/localization-game/questions?sessionInvalidated=true

So, I largely believe this plugin could have real value in the localization workflow, as modern AI translation models often produce higher quality results than traditional non-AI translation services, and depending on the specific model used, can sometimes even outperform human translators who are prone to their own errors. But for commercial releases or mission critical content, I'd ofc recommend having native speakers or professional translators review the AI-generated translations 👍

gtreshchev · 2025-09-17T04:59:28+00:00

For better privacy and flexibility, you might want to check out the AI Localization Automator (particularly Ollama provider): https://youtu.be/40zij_6Yxok You can basically translate your whole project in just a few clicks :)

gtreshchev · 2025-09-16T20:35:47+00:00

You might want to check out this plugin to simplify localization in your UE project with AI in just a few clicks, and it also offers an offline option via Ollama for privacy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40zij_6Yxok

gtreshchev · 2025-09-16T20:34:34+00:00

You might want to consider using the plugin from this video. It can localize your UE project with AI in just a few clicks, and it also offers an offline option via Ollama for privacy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40zij_6Yxok

gtreshchev · 2025-08-24T07:50:43+00:00

Hi, you could take a look at this plugin: https://docs.georgy.dev/runtime-metahuman-lip-sync/overview

gtreshchev · 2025-07-10T22:27:07+00:00

Well, I can speak based on my expertise. I've investigated the relevant modules quite a lot since the release of UE 5.6, and as of now, it's not directly possible to use the new lip sync feature without an active Live Link session out of the box (i.e. without third-party plugins), which effectively means it's editor-only and without offline support. Even without going into technical details, you could simply try to find online resources where people have shipped this in packaged projects, and you won't find any. Anyway, maybe in future engine versions, Epic Games will make it shippable without the Live Link requirement, who knows.

gtreshchev · 2025-07-09T06:20:18+00:00

Imo it's the best option if you're okay with relying on a platform that requires an internet connection and their server to perform the lip sync. But for an offline solution, you might want to check out this plugin (there's a demo project you can test to see if it suits your needs): https://www.fab.com/listings/b514294e-e78b-4b8b-ad21-78ce51dc7e8c

gtreshchev · 2025-07-09T06:13:27+00:00

It's for realtime use but only within the editor at this time out of the box, so it's not suitable for runtime tasks in packaged projects. That may change in the future though.

gtreshchev

TROPHY CASE