Hey there,

I am Lianna (she/her) and I am currently breaking into the localization and translation field. I offer translation and localization services for the language pair German <> English. :) 

# Qualifications

I am currently finishing up my Bachelor's degree in linguistics at a large German university; after that, I would like to enter the localization industry professionally.

I have also been working as a volunteer on the German translation of various open source projects, especially in the GNU/Linux world. I am most familiar with the Weblate platform, but I am willing to adapt to whatever translation pipeline you would like to use for your project.

I am a native German speaker and have been actively learning and speaking English since early childhood. I am familiar with many German dialects and sociocultural communities, so I am able to localize with language aspects such as youth slang, dialects, age, subculture and such in mind. No real person speaks perfectly standardized German, so subculture and identity have a huge impact on authenticity. This is something that I put a particular focus on and that LLM approaches to translation cannot offer.

Let's address the elephant in the room: while machine translation is not a feasible replacement for a human adept at localization yet, there is no denying that it keeps getting better with the advancement of large language models.

That is why I consider it one of my top priorities to focus on culturally aware localization over pure translation. I take into account your target audience, cultural differences and norms. I am especially interested in natural-feeling localization that relies extensively on the kind of cultural knowledge and people skills that "AI" does not possess.

# Some notes on how I intend to work

If needed, I would like to stay in close contact with you to ensure that the style is in line with your vision; for example, whether we address the user formally or informally in the interface, whether to use gender-sensitive language in the German localization or not, how to handle dialects and individual speech styles, and similar issues that you might want to give input on.

I will maintain a glossary of important terms in your game and interface so that the translation stays consistent across individual strings.

If applicable and wanted, I can give input on specific internationalization issues that often crop up in German <> English translations. I am decent at programming myself, so I know most of the common pitfalls such as missing support for special characters in your typefaces, the average longer length of German strings compared to English, or the difficulties with grammatical gender.

# Availability & Rates

As I have a family and am still finishing my degree, I am available part-time. Specifics may be discussed.

My rates are 0.05€ per word in the source language.

I am willing to provide up to 100 words in custom sample translations for free beforehand, so you can easily "try before you buy". I encourage you to seek feedback on said samples from other native speakers to judge whether you think I am a good fit for your project

I can work with a wide variety of tools and formats; no matter whether you're an indie developer who just needs an XML or JSON file translated or someone well versed in computer-assisted translation tools like Transifex or Weblate.

You can reach me either here on itch.io or via e-mail (lianna@tutamail.com) Looking forward to hear from you!