Trails series developer Nihon Falcom eyes using AI translation to shorten localization process 

In a recent interview with 4Gamer, Nihon Falcom’s CEO Toshihiro Kondo shared his views on using AI to translate games. According to the creator, the company is open to potentially introducing AI into the initial stages of their localization process to make global rollout more efficient. 

“When developing a game, speed is an important factor. Until about 20 years ago, 80 to 90 percent of our players were Japanese. However, recently, the ratio of overseas users – especially from Asia, has been increasing. It has come to the point that if our games don’t sell overseas, we could end up not being able to release games in Japan either.” Against this background, Kondo considers that AI translation could be a way to shorten the time needed to get Nihon Falcom’s games to audiences outside of Japan.  

This includes the Trails series, according to Kondo. However, the CEO appears aware that AI translation would need to be supervised and edited by humans. “The Trails series is all about enjoying the story, so human effort would still be needed to make final adjustments to the translated words and lines.” 

While it has been disputed that editing AI translations can be more time-consuming for staff than working from scratch, Kondo believes that using AI could help Nihon Falcom optimize their localization process. “From a management perspective, I think that by leaving the initial translation work up to AI, we can compress the entire process and ultimately speed up development.” 

By using AI translation, Nihon Falcom also hopes to shorten the gaps between Japanese and overseas releases of future Trails games. “We can’t release Trails titles simultaneously worldwide because the amount of text in them is several times larger than that of a typical RPG. Translation begins after we’re done working on the Japanese version, so the overseas versions come out a year later at best. Hence, if we could use AI translation to reduce this to six months, or maybe even make the releases simultaneous, it would be a blessing for us as a company, and it wouldn’t be a bad thing for the fans either.” 

Nihon Falcom is set to release The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky the 1st, a full 3D remake of the first ever Trails title, in 2025 for the Nintendo Switch.  Other platforms and Western publishers are TBD, according to Gematsu.