Do you need to localise a Roblox world into other languages?
Roblox auto-translates titles, descriptions and in-game text, but the quality sits below human translation. When automatic is enough and when it isn't.
Roblox translates titles, descriptions and in-game text automatically, with no setup from the developer. Human translation is needed wherever the text carries the mechanic or the brand’s voice.
How automatic translation works
Per platform documentation, automatic translation is available to any experience immediately and covers the game name, description and in-game text. It only fills gaps: your own manual translations always take precedence.
The player switches it on in their own account settings. Which means you do not control whether a given person sees a machine translation or your source language.
How manual localisation works
An experience has one source language at a time, defaulting to the developer account’s language setting. It has to be set before translation work starts.
From there you add languages through the localisation settings in the dashboard, edit strings in the translation table, access that table programmatically where needed, and swap assets by language.
The AutoLocalize property can be disabled on specific UI objects so the platform leaves alone what should not be translated. Brand names are the first candidate.
When automatic is enough
A world with little text, and what there is being functional: button labels, short prompts. The player understands the mechanic from actions.
When you need a person
The text is the mechanic. Puzzles, questions, dialogue. Machine translation can turn a curriculum question into nonsense.
Brand voice. Slogans, product names, jokes. Machine output reads as machine output here, and the audience says so in the reviews.
Legal wording. Consent text and promotion terms get translated by a lawyer.
The practical approach
Disable auto-translation on brand names. Manually translate everything a player must understand to progress. Hand the rest to the platform.
And have a native speaker read the result before launch, not after the first reviews arrive.
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