My presentations about translation in video game localisation

1. Key Aspects of a Localisation
Process:
Translation in video game
localisation
Dipinto Vito
12096695

2. Some definitions of what is video game translation
The translator’s role and required skills
Translation procedures and techniques used by
video game translators
Compensation technique in the Italian localisation
of Far Cry 3
Linguistic variation in the Italian localisation of
Word of Warcraft
Experimental video game translation: Dear Easter

3. Video game Translation
• Video game translation is the process of modifying linguistically an existing
video game to make it accessible, usable and culturally suitable to a target
locale.
• The process of translation of video games concerns the sphere of cultural
localisation: that is the adaption of visuals, sound and scripts conceived in one
language by members of one community to another language and another
culture
• The process can be considered as an adaption rather than a translation.
Adaption is meant to recreate the Message, to give it the look and feel of the
equivalent local product.
• Video game translation is performed by translators. Individuals who do not just
transfer words or sentences as unit of texts, but act as cultural mediators who
are responsible for successful cross-cultural communication and for the creation
of functionally optimal target texts in target cultures.

4. ‘The main priority of video game
translators is to produce a
version that will allow the
players to experience the game
as if it were originally developed
in their own language and to
provide enjoyment equivalent to
that felt by the players of the
original versions’
(Magiron & O’Hagan 2006)

5. Controversial issues about video
game localisation
Video game localisation supports the role of Translation as ‘domestication’
= THE TRANSALTED TEXT TO PASS FOR THE ORGINAL
(Mangiron & O’Hagan 2006)
Cultural localisation is about unsettling, recombination, hybridization, ‘cut
and mix’
(Di Marco 2007)
Video game localisation creates neutral translations (Gutiérez 2012)

6. Translator’s role and required
skills
The Translator should Translators should be
Be familiar with the
be able to deal with the aware of the software
specific features of
different kind of text age ratings. (Europe:
screen translation
types displayed in video PEGI; Unites States:
(dubbing and subtitling)
games ESRB; Germany: USK)
Mastering of natural
and idiomatic language. We really need this by
They should not today, can you do it
translate word for faster?
words!

7. Cultural awareness.
“Please be careful not to Video games are packed
break the variables with pop culture reference
throughout the text” , which can be challenging
to localise!
ARE YOU A FAN? SURE, I
JUST WROTE A
FANFIC, WOULD YOU LIKE Familiar with the global
TO READ IT? SURE, THAT’S pop culture.
HOW YOU MAKE A GREAT
TRANSLATION, ISN’T IT?
CREATIVITY

8. Tools Description Useful for:
Translation Memory Fuzzy matching Reusing data
systems: SDL Trados, Reduce translation time,
Wordfast, OmegaT etc. improves consistency and
quality.
Terminology management Extracting terminology Maintaining game
systems Creation of glossaries glossaries
Shared folders. Dropbox Storing Reference, Source
Text, Work in
Progress, finalised files
etc.
Project management Tracking and managing Planning, scheduling etc.
Software: Microsoft projects
Project, qdPM,
Speech recognition tools: Dictation, text-to-speech Improves productivity,
Dragon Naturally and command input reduce translation,
Speaking mistakes,
Improve quality
ApSIC XBench Quality assurance tool Terminology search.
Terminology check,
Creation of translation

9. Translation procedures and techniques used by
video game translators
 Linguistic variation (use of  Compensations techniques
dialects, accents, idiolects used
to achieve a comic effect )  Borrowing
 Re-naming of key terminology  Literal or word for word
and character names translation
 Contestualisation by addition (to  Calques
make clearer a concept to the
player)  Rewriting
 Recreation of play on
words, puns, jokes, rhymes and
idioms

10. Compensation technique
in FAR CRY 3
English Source Text
You see. The thing is, up there, you thought you had a chance way up
in the fucking skies you thought you had your finger on the pussy
trigger. But hermano, down here, down here…? You hit the ground.
Italian Target Tex
Vedi, il fatto è, lassù credevi di avere una chance. Là. Tra quelle nuvole
di merda pensavi davvero di aver il dito sul grilleto. Ma hermano,
quaggiù..quaggiù. Hail il culo per terra.
FINGER ON THE PUSSY TRIGGER =
The Play on words with sexual reference in the Italian language doesn’t have an equivalent
and it’s lost in translation.
The translator, compensates for that lost by introducing in the following sentence an Italian
expression: ‘Hai il culo per terra’ = BT ‘are on the ground’.

11. Linguistic variation in Word of Warcraft

12. Word of Warcraft (in a nutshell)
• Company: Blizzard Entertainment (USA)
• MMORPG
• The player impersonates a character
• Stratified word: race and creatures
• Idea of progression often through missions
• Lots of interactions between users
• WoW the most successful of all times
• 12 millions of subscribers in March of 2011 and Guiness Record!
• The game has been fully localised into different languages and
locale: German; French, Spanish, Russian, Korean, both
Traditional and Simplified Chinese and recently into Italian.

13. What is a linguistic variation?
• It’s the introduction in the target text of language depending on geographical, social
cultural and/or historical conditions (Gutiérez 2012)
 Choice of words
 Linguistic structures
 Accents
 Dialects
 Idiolects (a variety of language that is unique to a person)

14. The localisation of game’s races into Italian:
The Neaples Connection
Races in WOW English Version Italian localication
Humans of Glineas London accent Standard Italian
Language
Dwarves Scottish accent Standard Italian
Language
Trolls Jamaican accent Neapolitan dialect
Troll
‘The savages trolls of Azeroth are infamous
for their cruelity, dark mysticism, and
seething hatred for all other races’

15. Reception
The solution to use Neapolitan dialect has been criticised by many players in the
official forum of WoW
• Neapolitan dialect introduces un undesirable comic effect
• The Neapolitan accent is judged by game players as out of context
• It contributes to break the suspension of disbelief
• Some players complained about the absence of other dialects. Why not make
dwarves speak with a dialect from North of Italy? For example Milanese dialect
(spoken in Milan and the surrounding area)
• It contributed to some generate among players some form of racism
• It reinforced existing stereotypes about people from Naples: criminal, cruel,
corrupted, immoral, deplorable

16. What does this teach us?
• Before reproducing any linguistic variation in the target
locale, translators should research any possible implication
and effect.
• Translators should act as geopolitical strategists and
suggest the best solution to developers.
• In Video games accents, dialects and idiolects act as a
jarring link to reality (real word)
• The solution is to remove the accent altogether, using
standard language
NEUTRALISATION

17. Italian Localisation
Experimental video game =
Experimental translation

18. The reception
• The Italian players didn’t like the translation
• Many players say that ‘it’s a bad translation’.
• It doesn’t make easy to follow. Very hard to
understand.

19. A bad work?
• Not at all! The translation is extremely careful and
clearly the translator had to work hard during the
process of creation.
• But, it feels artificial and disjointed.

20. Conclusion
In video game localisation, translators have the freedom to make
any change they want.
• Translators can choose to create ‘domesticated translations’
, that rely on fluent strategies (standard translation / easy
translation. Extensive use of adaption and rewriting.
• Translators can choose to create ‘ hybrid translations’, trying to
maintain some flavor of the foreign culture
• Translators can choose to create ‘non standard translations’, by
deviating from the norm (the standard) (Community translation)

21. References
Arsludica.org (2012). Lo strano caso della traduzione in Italiano di Dear Esther. [Online] Accessed: 29 November 2012). Available at:
http://arsludica.org/2012/02/27/lo-strano-caso-della-traduzione-in-italiano-di-dear-esther/
Costales, A.F. (2011). Adapting humor in video game localization. Multilingual. Volume 22, Issue 6. pp. 33-35
Dellepiane, A. (2012). Podcast: Videogame Localization special feature on Outcast.it. [Online] Accessed: 27 November 2012). Available at:
http://localization.it/podcast-videogame-localization-special-on-outcast-it/
Dellepiane, A (2012). (not so) Funny accents, the case of Jamaican in the Italian Videogame Translations . [Online] Accessed: 27 November 2012).
Available at: http://localization.it/not-so-funny-accents-the-case-of-jamaican-in-italian-videogame-translations/
Bernal-Merino, M. (2007) .Challenges in the translation of video games. Revista tradumàtica. Numero 5: Localizacio de videojocs. [Online] Accessed: 26
November 2012). Available at: http://www.fti.uab.es/tradumatica/revista/num5/articles/02/02art.htm
Bernal-Merino, M. (2008). Where terminology meets literature. Multilingual. Volume 19 Issue 7. pp.42-44
Chandler, H. (2005). The Game Localization Handbook. Massachusetts: Charles River Media.
Crosignani, S. (2008). Preserving the spell in games localization. Multilingual. Volume 19 Issue 7. pp. 78-41
Dellepiane, A. (2012). Writing for game translators: Dear Esther, the (ghost) in the (game) machine. . [Online] Accessed: 29 November 2012). Available at:
http://localization.it/writing-for-game-translators-dear-esther-the-ghost-in-the-game-machine/
Di Marco, F. (2007). Cultural Localization: Orientation and Disorientation in Japanese Video Games. Revista tradumàtica. Numero 5: Localizacio de
videojocs. [Online] Accessed: 26 November 2012). Available at: http://www.fti.uab.es/tradumatica/revista/num5/articles/06/06art.htm
Mangiron, C. & O’Hagan, M. (2006) “Game Localization: unleashing imagination with ‘restricted translation’. The Journal of Specialised Translation 6: 10-
21. [Online] Accessed: 25 November 2012) Available at:
http://www.jostrans.org/issue06/art_ohagan.pdf
Mangiron, C. (2009). Video Games Localisation: Posing new Challenges to the Translator. Perspectives: Studies in Translatology. [Online] Accessed: 29
November 2012). Available at: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09076760708669046

22. O’Hagan, M., Ashworth, D. (2012). Translation-Mediated Communication in a Digital World: Facing the Challenges of Globalization and Localization.
Clevedon: Multilingual Matters LTD.

23. Questions?