Across narrative, UI, and onboarding content, I follow three editorial principles:
- Consistency — one term, one translation, tracked across every instance.
- Register discipline — tone and phrasing matched to content type, not applied uniformly.
- Cultural naturalness — grounded in the phrasing conventions of Chinese game and drama writing, with attention to how a line reads aloud, not just how it reads on the page — laying the groundwork for voice-over work down the line.
Content Type
Term / Case
Localized As
Editorial Rationale
Narrative
Sand hill
沙丘
Standardized across all instances to avoid inconsistent renderings (e.g. 沙山, 沙堆) that would fragment the player's mental image of the environment.
Narrative
SOMETHING (capitalized for emphasis)
是不是 (softened interrogative)
Chinese typography has no direct equivalent for capitalization-as-emphasis. Bold text and emphasis marks were considered and rejected as too visually intrusive for a first-person internal monologue; a hesitant question particle was chosen instead to preserve the intimate, unspoken quality of the line.
UI / System
PAUSED / RESUME / RESTART
暂停中 / 继续游戏 / 重新开始
UI verbs follow a consistent verb + object structure rather than bare verbs, prioritizing clarity and length consistency across the pause menu over narrative texture.
Tutorial / Onboarding
Before you begin, choose your settings
开始前，请选择您的偏好设置
Adopted the polite register (您) typical of onboarding flows in Chinese software and games, distinct from both the intimate first-person narrative voice and the terse imperative style of UI buttons — signaling a shift from "player as character" to "player as user" being addressed directly.
