Article in partnership with Day Translations. Is there such a thing as a dream job for people who can speak multiple languages and also enjoy gaming? Maybe there is!

Game Tester Jobs with Languages

While browsing through sites like Indeed and LinkedIn, I came across many vacancies for games testers who can speak foreign languages. It’s actually very entertaining and eye-opening to see what types of job roles there are out there in the market.

For those who are multilingual and who enjoy videogames the appeal of jobs testing videogames testing jobs for people can be huge. The ability of speaking more than one language combined with computer literacy and competitiveness can give high calibre individuals great job satisfaction and the opportunity to combine something that they do for fun with a good remuneration.

Let’s look at what this type of job entails and what the requirements are.

Multilingual Game Testers Description, Skills and Expectations

The job description for multilingual game testers often read like a dream: with opening lines such as “get paid to play videogames” and “play videogames for a living”, the temptation is there to lure candidates to apply for these jobs. The game tester role mainly consists of performing quality assurance on games and ensure they are fully localised. In other words, the tester needs to make sure that the games not only are translated into another language but that all the written and spoken content makes sense considering a specific country’s cultural references. The tester gets first hand experience of how local users will interact with the translated game during the testing phase. Apart from checking any grammar error the tester must ensure that there are no inconsistencies with the overall look and feel of the game; everything must make sense for gamers in their local language. In other words, the translated game should keep the suspension of disbelief and emotional involvement of the gamer, because words or expressions that don’t sound natural or well translated in a local language can take the player away from the immersive experience.

The requirements for game testing roles often include having good numeracy and having a higher diploma or degree in subjects like computer science. Excellent spelling and grammar are also expected from candidates.

Skills that candidates should be able to demonstrate include being familiar with CAT (computer-assisted technology) tools for translation, such as Trados, SmartCAT, memoQ or others.

Candidates should not only proofread and check text, images and speech, but also suggest improvements as necessary. The job can be highly pressurised with conflicting deadlines, so being able to juggle multiple projects at once without compromising on accuracy is a key requirement.

Most Requested Languages for Game Testing Jobs

Recruitment ads for game testers often feature these languages in the job description:

• Arabic
• French
• German
• Italian
• Portuguese
• Spanish
• Russian
• Turkish.

Also Eastern European languages such as Polish, Bulgarian and Hungarian are included in job descriptions, as well as Asian languages such as Chinese, Malay, Hindi, Korean, Vietnamese and Japanese.

One aspect that makes these jobs even more interesting is that many don’t require candidates to be physically present in an office and can be done remotely. For those companies that prefer candidates to work on site, they offer a variety of incentives from free snacks and hot drinks to chill out areas and social events.

So, are these jobs appealing enough for someone with languages and a love of video games? Looking at all the requirements, it seems that these jobs could potentially be fun and a good source of income; however, reading between the lines, particularly looking at the high levels of pressure and tight turnaround times for completion of tasks, it seems that candidates may need to move on or renegotiate conditions to prevent suffering from burnout.