How translations work

You don't need to understand any of this to use Tranzio. But most people feel better installing something into their games once they know what's actually happening, so here is the whole model, in plain language.

A translation is a patch#

Games keep their text in files: menu labels in one place, dialogue in another, item descriptions in a third. When a studio localizes a game officially, they translate those files and ship them with the game. A Tranzio translation does the same thing, just after the fact: it's a small package (we call it a patch) that contains translated versions of those files, plus any fonts the language needs, plus dubbed audio if the team recorded voices.

Installing a translation means Tranzio carefully swaps the game's original text files for the translated ones, inside your own copy of the game. The game itself doesn't know the difference. It just reads its text files as usual, and now they happen to be in Japanese, or Portuguese, or whichever language you picked.

Why you need to own the game#

A patch contains only the translation: the translated text, the fonts, the recorded voices. It never contains the game's original files, art, or code. That's what keeps the whole thing fair to the people who made the game, and it's why the installer asks where your copy of the game is. No copy of the game, nothing to patch.

Restore points make it reversible#

Before touching anything, Tranzio copies every file it's about to replace into a restore point. Change your mind later, or want to check something in the original language? Open the game in your library and choose Revert to original. The originals come back exactly as they were, byte for byte.

One game, many adaptations#

An adaptation is one team's version of a game in one language. Tranzio has no single official translation of a game, it has as many adaptations as people care to make, and you pick the one you want. A popular game might have four Japanese adaptations and two Portuguese ones.

A faithful line by line translation is one kind of adaptation, not the rule. One team keeps the characters' names in English, another translates them. One aims for accuracy word for word, another for how a line sounds when it is spoken out loud. And nothing says an adaptation has to stay serious: a grim horror game can be rewritten as a comedy, with jokes in the text and new voices recorded to match. That freedom is the whole reason adaptations exist.

A game that already ships in your language is fair game too. The publisher's own Japanese is just one version, and yours can sit beside it. Because Tranzio replaces the written lines and the spoken ones, how far you take it is up to you: rename the cast, rewrite the jokes, redub the scenes with your own actors, or change what the story says altogether.

Installing a different adaptation later cleanly replaces the one before it, so trying a few costs nothing. Choosing an adaptation walks through how to compare them.

Coverage: how much is translated#

Translating a game is a huge amount of work, and adaptations are often shared before every last line is done. Coverage is the honest number that tells you how far along one is, overall and area by area. A game can be 100% translated in its menus but only 70% through its side quests, and the game page shows exactly that, so you're never surprised.

Coverage also distinguishes text from audio. "Text only" means everything you read is translated but the voices stay original. "Text + full audio" means the team dubbed the voices too, which is rarer and a lot more work.

Who checks quality#

Anyone can build and publish an adaptation, which is exactly what makes Tranzio grow. To help you judge what you're installing, every adaptation carries a source badge:

Community means it is published and playable, made by players like you. Most adaptations are this, and many are excellent; the rating and the install count are how you tell. Beta means the team is still actively working on it and you should expect rough edges.

The one real caveat#

See it in practice#