Localisation and Assets
Learn about localizing your Yarn Spinner scripts with Unity.
Localization is the process of translating and adapting content to a specific language, region or culture.
This section of the documentation is designed to give you an understanding of the architecture behind localising and adding voice over to Yarn Spinner for Unity projects, if you just want to add localisations or voice overs to your game, check out our Voice Over and Localisation Sample and Guide.
Yarn Spinner Scripts are written in human-readable language. This is generally a single language, and (most of the time) will be written in the language that your development team primarily speaks. The language that a Yarn project is written in is called the base language.
If you want your dialogue to be understood by people who don't speak this language, you will need to translate it.
Yarn Spinner is designed to make it easy to extract the user-facing text of your dialogue into a strings file, which can then be translated into a different language, and then loaded at run-time. You can translate your project into as many languages as you'd like, and Yarn Spinner will handle it for you automatically.
Yarn Spinner is also designed around the idea that a line of dialogue may have assets associated with it. Most commonly, this means an audio file that contains an actor performing the line, so that it can be used in your game as a voice-over. These assets are also localisable.
I just want to add voiceover in a single language. Why do I need to localise, too?
The philosophy of Yarn Spinner's approach to localisation is: if you want your dialogue to be text-only, and in a single language, you don't need to do anything at all. If you want to do anything else, you will need to set up a localisation and manage it using Yarn Spinner's processes.
We've found that most users who want to start using Yarn Spinner want to quickly get dialogue on the screen, and don't want to do lots of work to get the basics going. That's why we make the simple use-case (text only, a single language) as easy to use as we can.
However, if you're building a game that's voice acted, it makes your life significantly easier if you build your systems with localisation in mind from the start. Additionally, if you have the resources to add voice-over to your project, you should also have the resources to translate your game to other languages (even if you only have voice-overs in a single language.)
To that end, we designed it so that voiceover is intimately tied to localisation, so that you have to at least start thinking about localisation at the start of the process.
Working with Localisation
Yarn Spinner makes it easy to add multiple languages to your game. The gist is:
Select your Yarn Project in the Assets panel
Click "Export Strings as CSV" in the Inspector
Translate the exported CSV file
Import the translations back into your project
You can use either:
Built-in Localisation System: Manage translations directly through Yarn Spinner
Unity Localisation System: Integrate with Unity's Localisation package
We provide both Yarn Spinner's Built-in Localisation System and Unity's because our built-in system is easier to setup. The Unity Localisation System has more features, but requires a lot of setup.
If you're working on a large game with quite a few team members, and are using external services like Google Sheets, and have UI-text that's not powered by Yarn Spinner, then you might want to use the Unity Localisation System.
Localisation Terminology
Localisation: A set of information that describes where to find text and assets for a given language.
Base Language: The language that your Yarn script files are written in.
Strings Files: A text document that contains translated versions of Yarn lines.
Line ID: A unique code that identifies a line of dialogue or an option in the original source text.
Localised Line: The text of a line of dialogue, in a particular locale.
Localised Line Asset: An asset (for example, an audio clip) that's associated for a particular line, in a particular locale. For example, an audio clip containing the voiceover for the line "Hello there", in German.
Line Provider: A component that receives line IDs from the Dialogue Runner, and fetches the localised line and localised line assets (if present) for the player's preferred locale.
Workflow
To localise your Yarn scripts, you specify the 'base language' that your scripts are written in. You then add unique line ID tags to each line that identify each line. Finally, the localisation system reads your tagged lines and fills the string table for your base language. You can then add additional translations for your lines to the string tables for other languages.
Writing Yarn Scripts
Every Yarn script is associated with a base language. By default, Yarn Spinner sets the base language to that of your current locale. For example, if your computer is set to use Australian English, then Yarn Spinner will use that as the base language.
The base language of a Yarn Script is controlled by the Yarn Project that it's a part of. You can change the language of your base localisation by changing the 'Base Language' setting on a Yarn Project.
Adding Line IDs
In order to match different versions of a line, you need to add a line id to each line of dialogue. A line ID is a tag that appears at the end of a line that uniquely identifies a line of dialogue in your game.
Here's an example of a line of dialogue with a line tag:
In this example, the line of dialogue has a line ID of 1a64a5.
Yarn Spinner can automatically add line IDs to your dialogue for you. To do this, select your Yarn Project, and click 'Add Line Tags to Scripts'. Yarn Spinner will re-write all of the script files, adding a line ID to any line that doesn't already have one.
Using Localised Content in Games
Once you've added line IDs to your Yarn scripts, they're ready to be used in your game's localisation system. You can choose between using the Unity-provided Localization package, in which case Yarn Spinner can prepare your string tables and fetch content from those tables at run-time, or our Built Yarn Spinner localisation system.
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