Hi, I’m Loek van Kooten—a game localizer, translator, software developer, localization engineer, black belt judoka, and lifelong gamer with a passion for creating immersive, culturally authentic gaming experiences. Over the past 28 years, I’ve worked with some of the biggest names in the industry, including Electronic Arts, Nintendo, SEGA, Valve, and Microsoft, helping their games resonate with players across the globe. Whether it’s AAA blockbusters like EA SPORTS™ F1® and Arma 3, or indie masterpieces like Return of the Obra Dinn, my mission is simple: to help your game thrive in every market.
Proven Results That Drive Sales
Localization isn’t just about translating text—it’s about transforming your game into a global experience. My work has consistently delivered measurable success:
- Gremlins, Inc.: Post-localization sales increased eightfold in China and fourfold in Japan, making these markets the largest contributors to the game’s success outside of English-speaking regions. (More insights here and here.)
- Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew: Delivered localization into Japanese, Simplified Chinese, and Traditional Chinese (164,310 words per language) with 50 hours of LQA for each, earning rave reviews from players and boosting sales significantly.
- Someday You’ll Return: Director’s Cut: Japanese players praised the localization for its natural, immersive quality, with feedback such as, “The translation feels like the game was originally written in Japanese” and “This is clearly the work of professionals—fantastic!”
Comprehensive Localization Expertise
I bring a unique combination of linguistic mastery, cultural understanding, and technical expertise to every project:
- Master of Arts in Japanology: Native-level fluency in Japanese, developed through extensive academic study and over two decades of professional experience. Winner of Japanese National Speech Contest, organized by the Japanese embassy in The Netherlands.
- Proficiency in Mandarin Chinese: Demonstrating advanced fluency in reading, writing, speaking, and listening.
- Proven Multilingual Workflow: While I personally specialize in English/Japanese/Chinese-to-Dutch localization, my team—including my native Japanese wife, with 30 years of professional translation experience—handles English-to-Japanese/Chinese/Korean with precision and expertise.
For each project, I coordinate closely with trusted, long-term collaborators to ensure cultural accuracy, linguistic consistency, and seamless delivery—even across time zones.
Innovating Localization with Cattitude
Tired of inefficiencies in standard localization tools, I solo-developed Cattitude, a revolutionary MySQL-based Computer-Assisted Translation (CAT) tool with more than 64,000 lines of code in PHP and vanilla JavaScript (excluding libraries) that optimizes workflows and improves quality for game developers and translators alike.
Key Features:
- Patched Matching: Transforms fuzzy matches into perfect translations by intelligently merging segments, significantly reducing translation time and costs for large-scale game projects.
- Live QA Features: Ensures consistent terminology across all languages in real-time, crucial for maintaining coherent narratives and user interfaces in complex game worlds.
- Subtitle Synchronization: Automatically syncs subtitles with video content for narrative-driven games, streamlining the localization process for cutscenes and voiced dialogue.
- Seamless Context Integration: Displays string context directly beneath each segment, reducing errors and improving accuracy. This feature is particularly valuable for localizing in-game items, character dialogue, and UI elements.
- Game-Specific Asset Management: Handles various file formats common in game development, supporting direct integration with popular game engines for efficient workflow.
- Collaborative Workflow: Facilitates real-time collaboration between developers, translators, and testers, ensuring smooth communication throughout the localization process.
As Lazy Bear Games described it: “Your CAT tool is like a BFG in the world of translation—hats off, truly.”
Real-World Localization Challenges Solved
Localization often involves more than just translating text. It requires adapting humor, cultural references, and user interfaces to resonate with players:
- Banjo & Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts: Transformed quirky humor into culturally relevant jokes that Dutch players loved, earning praise from both players and critics.
- Someday You’ll Return: Delivered a flawless Japanese localization, including in-game signage and UI elements. Japanese players expressed delight, with players exclaiming, “I can read it! This is not just translation; it’s art.”
Why Work With Me?
Client Success Stories
- Electronic Arts: “We couldn’t live without you anymore.”
- SEGA: “You’re faster than Sonic!”
- Charlie Oscar: “Our Japanese sales quadrupled thanks to your work.”
Gaming Passion
A lifelong gamer, I’ve spent countless hours leading localization with a player-first mindset. From programming games in Z80 machine code at 10 years old to leading a 70-member EverQuest guild for 7 years, I understand gaming from the inside out.
Cultural Expertise
My passion for cross-cultural understanding extends beyond my personal life into my professional endeavors. I’m married to a native Japanese wife, raising two bilingual children, and I also care for a Chinese 留守儿童 (liúshǒu értóng), or “left-behind child,” by funding her education and providing support from afar in Changsha, China. These experiences give me a deep appreciation for cultural nuances and inspire me to foster global connections.
At the heart of my work is Japanology, a Japanese language school my wife and I founded and currently operate in Leiden, The Netherlands. With over 70 active students, Japanology offers a unique and rigorous approach to mastering Japanese, tailored to learners at all levels. To support our teaching, I personally designed, programmed, and curated a cutting-edge digital learning environment.
This platform includes:
- An interactive practice section with tens of thousands of entries, most accompanied by example sentences, allowing students to practice writing, reading, translating, conjugating, and listening (with high-quality audio). Progress tracking is visualized with dynamic graphs, and the platform is fully compatible with mobile and tablet devices (iOS and Android).
- A Dutch-Japanese dictionary featuring over 29,000 entries, regularly updated with bonus vocabulary and example sentences encountered by our translation agency. The dictionary also includes a frequency analysis function, showing which translations are most commonly used by native Japanese speakers.
- A Kanji (character) dictionary with 1,548 kanji, complete with etymological explanations, example words, and details about their JLPT level and usage in Japanese schools.
- A Dutch-Japanese corpus containing 145,217 word pairs from Japanese dramas studied in advanced classes. This corpus provides a practical way to see how theoretical language applies in real-world contexts, complete with audio support.
- A Dutch-Chinese (Simplified) dictionary with 4,766 words, offering example sentences and Mandarin audio, and seamless conversions of Japanese kanji (漢字) to Chinese hànzì (汉字), highlighting the linguistic ties between Chinese and Japanese.
This platform is not only a testament to my technical and linguistic expertise but also a demonstration of my commitment to creating scalable, user-centric tools. It serves as a foundation for my work in game localization, where I ensure every detail is culturally and linguistically precise.
Loek van Kooten
Master of Arts in Japanology | Game Localization Engineer | Translator | Software Developer | Black Belt Judoka
www.akebono.nl | www.loekalization.com | www.c4ttitude.com | www.japanology.nl
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