Interesting to see the increase in discussion around this topic as of recent. So I am going to address some of this conversation from two different angles, localization for the site and localization for games.
Now one thing to note is localization is not the same as translation, and is a much more complex process that deals with much more than just translation but that is a whole nother topic.
So from Weight Gaming’s perspective localization is something we kind of get for free but is also a bit out of our reach. Discourse (the forum framework we use) has a fair amount of localization already and is constantly improving thanks to localization efforts by volunteers helping with the opensource project. Since it is an open source project though that means localization can be slow and it not guaranteed that a specific localization will be implemented.
Now the larger part is with posts, as localization of the sites framework only helps with things like menus, but not with topics, replys, or anything else created by site users. Manually localizing such content is usually cost prohibitive so automated translators are usually used and we actually have one available using the Bing API:
The thing is these services are not cheap and the only reason we use the Bing API is its translation service is one of the few with a free (though limited) version that we can use.
The largest issue for us though is the lack of demand. Around 73% of our user base comes from English speaking countries (US, UK, Canada, Australia) and I am sure the registered users tilt more toward the 80-90% mark. Now you might be thinking that “well that leaves 27% of users that come from a non-English speaking country, shouldn’t we try to support them since that is such a large chunk?” The answer to that is its complicated. While it is true that 27% of our traffic comes from non-English speaking countries, even ignoring factors like VPNs or other systems that could be distorting those numbers, Germany is currently where we get most of our traffic from that is not an English speaking country at a whopping 3% of our traffic.
That means all other non-English speaking nations each make up less than 3% of our traffic and with that I think you can began to see how that is hard problem to solve.
Now from a game development standpoint localization is usually too expensive for most small-med projects (much less free/hobby ones) to do. This is why the open source and indie markets depend so heavily on giving their fans the ability to localize games for them. In all practical concerns fan localization will be the only option for most projects or very focused localization efforts in rare cases.