Website for Avatar Studios
Avatar Studios is a production company created and operated by the creators of the popular TV series Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra. At the time of this project, although Avatar Studios did not yet have its own website, the company provided a link to a wiki page run by fans. This project aimed to create a website for Avatar Studios from scratch and localize it into Japanese. I worked on this project with Harlyn Lane, Kyle Chow, and Tulsiben Patel.
Video Overview
The Steps
The following graphic depicts our work process, from developing the website to the final output.
To begin, we worked on compiling a glossary of essential terms that would appear on multiple website pages. These terms included characters’ names, locations, and specialized phrases specific to the Avatar world. We also provided a list of words and phrases that should be placed on the DNT list, which stands for “do not translate.”
Afterward, we created an English style guide for consistency’s sake since we were building the website from scratch, and each person was assigned pages to work on.
Translation
Since my part in the translation process was small, I will describe an overview of the process of translating the website into Japanese. For a more in-depth explanation of the process, please check out Kyle Chow’s and Tulsiben Patel’s websites (linked below) since they were the foremost translators on this project.
WPML
We concluded that the WordPress Multilingual (WPML) plugin would be the best option as a group. This plugin makes it possible for a website to support several languages. It is possible to translate pages directly within the plugin or export the webpages as an XML Localization Interchange File Format (XLIFF) file, which can then be imported into a CAT tool.
Memsource
We exported the XLIFF file of the webpages and imported it to Memsource. We also uploaded our glossary to Memsource since Memsource MT allows us to do so.
From there, we went into each translation to post-edit.
After the webpages were translated into Japanese on Memsource, the files were exported as XLIFF and imported back into WPML.
Lessons Learned
Stylization
Due to how WPML is set up, we could not assign a different, separate font for each language. Some of the fonts used to construct the English version of the website either did not have an aesthetically pleasing appearance or were displayed as corrupted fonts because they were incompatible with the Japanese language. To rectify this, we installed a plugin called Fonts Plugin | Google Fonts Typography, allowing users to use Google Fonts on their websites.
We needed to find google fonts that supported Japanese and would also look good in English. This was used for the headers (h1, h2, h3), body text, navigation bar, and footer. We also updated our style guide to include Japanese fonts.
Conclusion
This was a fun and exciting project to build a website from scratch and localize it. This forced us to brainstorm before we even created the website to plan how and how we would translate it and localize the site. Which website hosting would be the most beneficial? WordPress or Drupal? Which CAT Tool would we use to translate the site contents? Which plugin would be best to translate and localize with? As a group of four working on the site simultaneously, how could we strive for site-wide consistency in grammar and design styles?
By using the WPML plugin, if the client ever wants to add additional languages to the site, the process would be simpler and quicker since the plugin is already configured.
Websites
Want to see the Avatar Studios website that we built and localized? Unfortunately, the site we created is now unavailable, but please check out my teammate’s websites regarding this project for a different perspective!
Harlyn Lane: https://sites.miis.edu/harlynhlane/creating-and-localizing-a-website/
Kyle Chow: https://sites.miis.edu/kylechow/2022/05/19/building-and-localizing-a-website-for-avatar-studios/
Tulsiben Patel: https://sites.miis.edu/tulsibenpatel/create-and-localize-a-website/#Creating_a_Website_with_Localization_in_Mind
Regina Dukes 