How to translate your Roblox game for players worldwide

Roblox players come from all over the world, and many of them don't read English comfortably. A game that's only in English asks those players to guess what buttons do and what the goal is, and many won't bother. Roblox has built-in tools that make translation far easier than on most platforms, so even a solo creator can reach players in other languages.

Check where your players are first

Before translating anything, open your experience's analytics in the Creator Hub and look at players by country and language. Two things are useful:

• Which languages your current players use, so you can serve them better.
• Which big Roblox markets are missing. If a language is large on Roblox overall but tiny in your game, your game page or onboarding may be putting those players off.

Start with the two or three languages that matter most rather than trying to cover everything at once.

Automatic translation

Roblox can automatically translate text in your experience into a range of supported languages. When it's turned on in your experience's localization settings in the Creator Hub, Roblox detects in-game text and shows players a machine translation in their language.

It's a quick win, but machine translation has limits: game terms, jokes and short UI labels are easy to get wrong. Treat it as a baseline and fix the most important strings by hand.

Capturing your text: localization tables

Roblox stores translations in a localization table: each source string in your game alongside its translation for each language.

• Automatic text capture can collect strings as players see them in live servers and add them to the table.
• You can also upload strings directly, for example by exporting the table as a spreadsheet, filling in translations and importing it again.
• Your own scripts can look up translations with LocalizationService and a Translator object, which is useful for text you build in code, like "You earned 50 coins".

Use full sentences with placeholders rather than gluing pieces together. Word order changes between languages, so "You earned " + amount + " coins" won't translate well; a single string with a placeholder for the amount will.

Translate the game page

The game page is what players see before they decide to join, so it's the most valuable thing to translate. In the Creator Hub you can add translated versions of your:

• Title (short and natural in each language, not a literal word-for-word translation).
• Description, with the first line still saying what you do in the game.
• Icon and thumbnails if they contain text.

Our guide to writing a Roblox game description applies in every language: lead with the action, keep it short.

Make your UI survive translation

Text often gets longer in translation; German, French and Portuguese are commonly much longer than English, and some languages need different fonts.

• Leave room in buttons and labels for longer text.
• Use automatic sizing (AutomaticSize, or TextScaled with a size constraint) so text fits without being cut off.
• Avoid text in images. Text baked into a button image can't be translated by Roblox's tools.
• Use icons where they're clear, such as a gear for settings or a cart for the shop.
• Test each language by switching your Roblox language setting and playing through the first few minutes.

Making your game mobile-friendly covers scaling UI, which helps here too.

Translate onboarding first

If you only have time to translate part of the game properly, translate the first few minutes: the goal, the first instructions and the first purchase prompt. A player who understands what to do in the first minute will often figure out the rest. See designing the first 60 seconds.

Get help from your community

Players often volunteer to translate games they love. You can give trusted community members access to help with translations, review machine translations and suggest better names for in-game items. Credit them in the game; it's a good way to build a community in a new region. Building a community around your Roblox game has more on running one.

Measure the effect

After translating, compare players and retention from that language's region before and after, using matching windows of a week or more. Remember that holidays differ by country, so a rise in one region may have nothing to do with your translation. Keep a note of when each language went live so you can line it up with your numbers later.

Checklist

• Players by country and language checked in analytics
• Two or three priority languages chosen
• Automatic translation turned on as a baseline
• Localization table filled; key strings checked by hand
• Code-built text uses placeholders and a Translator
• Title, description and text-based images translated
• UI has room for longer text; no text baked into images
• Onboarding translated first
• Each language tested in game; launch dates logged

Before you translate your game page, it's worth getting the English version right. The BloxIQ Optimizer checks your title and description against clear rules, and our free title checker shows where long titles will be cut off.