A third-year journalism student at Kyrgyz-Russian Slavic University (KRSU), Atai Azamatov, contacted the developers of the popular Minecraft game and translated it into Kyrgyz. In an interview with 24.kg news agency, Atai told how the idea of the translation came to him and how long it took to work with the developers.
— How did the idea of adding the Kyrgyz language to Minecraft come about?
— The idea first came to me back in 2020 during the pandemic, when schools switched to online learning. My friends and I, feeling nostalgic, started playing Minecraft again. While playing, I became curious about what languages were available besides English and Russian, and I noticed some other Turkic languages. That’s when I began thinking about translating the game into Kyrgyz.
— How did the communication with Mojang go? At what stage did they approve your initiative?
— Mojang works through a platform called Crowdin, which is used for localizing websites, documentation, and computer games. I registered and searched for the Kyrgyz language in the Minecraft project, but it wasn’t listed. I emailed the developers and the studio itself but received no response. And only three years later, in May 2024, I received a response from the person responsible for localization in different languages on behalf of the studio with forms to fill out and created a project for the Kyrgyz language.
— There were definitely challenges. Some words didn’t have direct equivalents in Kyrgyz. I had to consult a variety of dictionaries to find the closest possible matches.
— What tools or platforms did you use for the translation?
— I used works by prominent Kyrgyz linguists and translators, including Konstantin Yudakhin, Bolot Yunusaliev, Kasym Tynystanov, Emil Asanov, and the Kyrgyz orthographic dictionary by Kusein Karasaev.
— How long did the entire process take — from idea to implementation in the game?
— I created the project with the permission of the developers at the end of May last year. I finished the translation at the end of March 2025, before the release of the new version of the game. The work took nearly a year.
— What kind of feedback did you receive from the community and developers after the Kyrgyz language was added?
— Only a small circle of people knew about the translation — some friends, family, and a few others. My friend Sezim Damirova helped a bit by contributing several translations.
— In my opinion, this is a great contribution to the development of the Kyrgyz language. I believe this game will make it more interesting for kids to learn the language. I didn’t do it for recognition or praise — it’s all for the sake of the language and our homeland. This is now the first computer game officially translated into Kyrgyz.
— Do you plan to continue working on similar projects in the future — perhaps in other games or fields?
— Possibly, especially if localization projects of various kinds of content are released more often. I didn’t receive anything from the developers. Everything was voluntary, not for money. I want to point out that this was a translation of the computer version. Microsoft, which owns the Mojang studio, is responsible for the version on mobile and console platforms. Microsoft hires translators for those platforms, which is why many languages aren’t yet available there.
