Granado Espada, a popular Korean MMO that won a bunch of awards at the 2006 Korean Game Awards, is coming to English language audiences in South East Asia, New Zealand, and Australia in an open test beta starting 17 May. Singaporean company Infocomm Asia Holdings has been working since last year to localize the title. Nothing terribly exciting in this press release, except they spend an ungodly amount of time detailing how hard they've worked to translate things correctly and logically:

We proof-read the translated text that came back from the professional translation firms. We then edited the text for grammar and syntax errors. The edited text is then used to build a test client for the game, and the team of gamers checked the in-game text for contextual errors. We also changed words or phrases that may be sensitive for cultural, political or religious reasons.

This is exciting if for no other reason than I have long despaired over garbled and nonsensical subtitles in films, so I can hope that this attention to detail will eventually carry over to other forms of media. Imagine, double checking that the text makes sense before something goes to press! Maggie Greene

First English Version of Granado Espada Ready in May [via Multiplayer Online Games Directory]