Four years after it launched, Breath of the Wild can now be played in Arabic thanks to an impressive and extensive mod.
Unless you're a developer yourself, thinking of the countless tasks that need to be completed when making a game is almost impossible. So many intricacies that most of us wouldn't even think about. A few huge undertakings many of us don't consider too, such as localizing a game so as many people as possible can experience it in their native language.
Waiting for a game to be translated into your first language can be an arduous task for some people. While most games are available at launch, or soon after, in English and Japanese, there's usually a wait for it to be translated into other languages. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, for example, whose Arabic players have been left in the dark by Nintendo since it launched four years ago.
Well, those players need wait no more, nor do they need to play Breath of the Wild in a language they don't speak nor fully understand. That's not thanks to Nintendo, but down to a dedicated group of modders called Eternal Dream Arabization. The group has translated absolutely everything in the game into Arabic, from the menus to the dialogue and every other piece of text you might come across.
That process has been a time-consuming one, as you might imagine. More than a year's worth of work as a matter of fact. A trailer revealing that the modders were in the process of translating Breath of the Wild was added to its YouTube channel back in May 2020, meaning this has taken somewhere in the region of 18 months to complete, perhaps even longer.
Considering the number of other languages Breath of the Wild has been officially translated into by Nintendo, it's unclear why Arabic-speaking players have been overlooked. According to Kotaku, Nintendo has even pointed to countries such as Saudi Arabia as the reason for some of the Switch's sales spikes. Eternal Dream Arabization has translated or is in the process of translating a number of other games including Super Mario World and Resident Evil Village.