Localization of ANNO 117: Pax Romana
Client: Ubisoft
Client's Industry: Video game development and publishing
Project goals
- Translate the interface, dialogues, and all in-game text for the latest installment of a popular strategy franchise
- Make the game clear and engaging for a Russian-speaking audience while preserving its historical tone and humor
Ubisoft is a major international publisher with a strong presence in the global games industry. Its portfolio includes many well-known franchises such as Assassin's Creed and Far Cry. Many Ubisoft projects are grounded in real historical settings, requiring localization teams to pay special attention to cultural context and period detail. Ubisoft has entrusted this work to Logrus IT for over 14 years.
Task
The client tasked the Logrus IT team with localizing Anno 117: Pax Romana into Russian, enabling a wider audience to experience the game in their native language. The game is an economic strategy in which the player develops two provinces of the Roman Empire: the civilized Latium and the mist-shrouded Albion.
The localization process was shaped by several project-specific factors.
- Firstly, localization had to proceed hand-in-hand with the game's development. Writers and narrative designers delivered texts as they became ready, in batches of varying sizes. Game context, object and character details, and even the interface layout was often still in flux, so already-translated text could be altered as development progressed. Our team had to adapt to these conditions and respond quickly to ongoing changes.
- The game is set during the Pax Romana ("Roman Peace")—an era of relative stability in the Roman Empire. During this period, its many peoples developed close trade and cultural ties—dynamics reflected throughout Anno 117. A second key challenge was therefore to convey the unique flavor of different cultures. Whether it was the speech of a Roman governor, a Celtic chieftain, or a merchant from Aegypt (the game's fictionalized version of Egypt)—each needed its own tone and vocabulary. It was equally important to maintain historical accuracy in the naming of items, buildings, and other details such as population needs and social statuses.
- The Anno series is known for its distinctive tone, blending historical gravitas with wordplay. Irony is woven throughout the game, from character names to descriptions of bonuses. Some jokes are even embedded in explanations of game mechanics. The challenge was to preserve this humor while ensuring the text remained clear and easy for players to understand.
Solution
The project lasted about a year. Periods of intensive localization work alternated with quieter phases while the client's team prepared new story content. To ensure consistency and timely, high-quality delivery, a core team of editors and translators worked on the project throughout. Additional specialists joined them during peak periods.
Because the source materials continued to evolve, the localization team maintained close communication with the client and other language teams via a dedicated platform. Our translators and editors regularly asked clarifying questions about the game world and mechanics, which in several cases even helped the client refine the original text. When information was lacking, the team made forward-looking decisions to minimize future revisions—for example, using neutral constructions when the gender of dialogue participants had not yet been defined.
To ensure the game world felt credible, our specialists consulted authoritative sources on the period, including books, dictionaries, encyclopedias, and academic research. They examined a wide range of questions—who libertini were (former slaves granted Roman citizenship), why they wore pilei (headwear symbolizing freedom), how many types of gladiators existed (more than two dozen), how construction differed between Rome and the marshlands of the British Isles, and what weapons were mounted on Roman warships. Answers to these and many other questions helped produce a vivid and authentic translation. Experience from previous projects for the same client also proved valuable, particularly familiarity with maritime themes from Assassin's Creed: Black Flag. To prevent unnecessary overlaps in the research, each term was recorded in a shared glossary with detailed commentary.
In addition to cultural references, the team paid close attention to the linguistic diversity of the characters. To preserve local flavor, retain information essential for gameplay, and maintain a consistent approach across the entire text, the editors developed a set of stylistic rules at the start of the project and agreed it with the client.
- When working with Latin, the team translated only those terms that have well-established equivalents in Russian (such as "aqueduct," "Caesar," and "vomitorium"). All other Latin phrases and stylistic elements were deliberately left intact to preserve the atmosphere of antiquity. For complex concepts and lesser familiar expressions, explanatory translations were added in parentheses, while famous quotations (such as Sic transit gloria mundi) were left untranslated.
- In handling the speech of characters from Albion, the team drew on real Celtic languages, including Welsh and Irish. This approach helped clearly differentiate the "barbarian" regions from Roman ones, both stylistically and visually.
The game is rich in humor and wordplay, which always present challenges in localization. When, in translation, a joke obscured the clarity of the text, it had to be removed. In most cases, however, puns were successfully preserved or adapted, allowing Anno 117 to retain its humor in translation. Some of the most engaging work involved the "specialists"—characters who alter the properties of buildings and ships. In the original version, their names and descriptions frequently rely on wordplay. For example, the philosopher brothers Philon and Philof were localized as Filavkl and Filotkl (the Russian equivalents of "on/off"), preserving both the playfulness and the Greek flavor.
Result
In November 2025, Anno 117: Pax Romana was successfully released. The localization conveys the atmosphere of antiquity while preserving the series' signature humor. The project became another milestone in our long-standing cooperation with Ubisoft—and work is already underway on future titles.