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Recontextualizing disassembled texts: Exploring the concept of the “Web of Texts” in Mobile Game “Blind” localization from Chinese into Foreign Languages
Abstract
Video game multimodality has been discussed mainly from the standpoints of Game and Media Studies, but also increasingly by Translation Studies ( Mejías-Climent 2017 ; O’Hagan 2007 ; Vázquez-Calvo et al. 2019 ). However, there is still little research focusing on how mobile game localizers construe poly-semiotic texts and their subcomponents during the translation process. Due to certain factors, the textual components of video games are commonly separated from its audiovisual elements before being sent to localization experts, who are then confronted with disassembled “texts” forced back to monomodality. Furthermore, the “text” is intertwined with programming languages and subdivided into disconnected snippets. Thus, video game localizers constantly perform what is often called “blind” translation ( Dietz 2006 , 2007 ; O’Hagan and Mangiron 2013 ; Mejías-Climent 2021 ). The present piece of research focuses on the notion of the multimodal “text” as a “web of texts” ( Gambier 2021 ) in the field of mobile game localization from Chinese into European languages and other Eastern languages. It analyses how professional localizers perform their meaning-making processes in regard to “text” and “context” in such a medium and explores how they strive to reinstate multimodality through (re)contextualization. The study replicated “blind” localization processes via a video game translation test finished and commented on by respondents under context-scarce conditions. Data was then triangulated with online surveys and interviews to assess localizers’ considerations towards the “text” as a “web of texts.” Through quantitative and qualitative coding, the paper explores the different elements present in the web(s) and offers a view of the mobile game as a vast entity seen by the translator from an incredibly limited and limiting element, that of the monomodal “text.” Results show that mobile game localizers construct, re-construct, and co-construct the “text” according to previous gaming and translation experiences, or even imagined representations of how, why, and where “texts” are embedded.
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Online collaborative translation experienced a meteoric rise in the e first decade of the 20th century thanks to the affordances provided by the Web 2.0. Two distinct models emerged, solicited and unsolicited models. In the first one a company or institutions request the help of volunteer or participants with translation tasks. In unsolicited models, fans, activists or different collectives self-organize to start a translation initiative. These practices quickly attracted the attention of the Language Industry after large corporations implemented crowdsourcing models (Google, Facebook or Twitter). Translation providers and tech companies explored collaborative initiatives in a context of exciting possibilities for growth, while it quickly became a serious cause for concern for professional translators and professional associations such as the International Federation of Translators (FIT) or the American Translators’ Association (ATA). As a rapidly growing phenomenon, Translation Studies scholars were quickly drawn to research this emerging set of phenomena. Initially, the main issues that appeared on Translation Studies literature were related to motivation, epistemological/ conceptual research, ethics, translator visibility, or the description of existing initiatives. The second decade of the 20th century saw the consolidation of these activities through technological developments and innovative workflows and the expansion to non-profit ventures, while new technology-driven models based on collaborative micro-task approaches emerged, such as “paid crowdsourcing”. By 2020, the number of providers offering translations crowdsourcing has been dramatically reduced. Many start-ups have been absorbed or have disappeared, while non-for-profit models of translation collaboration, such as educational, NGO or activist initiatives continue to grow. This paper offers a critical analysis of the evolution of translation collaboration on the web and potential future directions, as well as a review of existing research trends within Translation Studies. The paper ends with an exploration of potential future research trends and directions in this ever-changing area driven by technological innovation.
Context and genres are relevant concepts in Translation Studies, but paradoxically there is no consensus about their definition and how they challenge text, especially after the 1990s when technology began to impact on translation practices. It is surprising since new writings and textualisation of the interactions have developed concomitant with the dematerialisation of the context. In this study, we will trace the conceptual polysemy of “context”, first in linguistics (taken in a broad meaning) and then in Translation Studies. We will consider to what extent context and contextualisation are related, when translation is defined as a context-dependent meaning-making process. What does re-contextualisation imply, and how does context apply to (multimodal) text in a digital environment?
This book addresses the hot topic in audiovisual translation (AVT) of video game localization through the unique perspective of dubbing, an area which has so far received relatively little scholarly focus. The author analyses the main characteristics of video game localization within the context of English-Spanish dubbing, and emphasizes the implications for research and localization as a professional practice. The book will appeal to translation studies scholars and students, as well as AVT professionals looking to understand localization processes from a systematized approach.
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-88292-1
Video games have become one of the most popular forms of entertainment
in the modern digital society. The global success of the
game industry has fostered the development of the game localisation
industry, as developers and publishers strive to sell their games
in different languages and territories to maximise their return on
investment. This, in turn, has been reflected in the increasing demand
for trained game localisers who can cope with the different challenges
posed by this emerging type of translation and meet the
industry’s needs. Based on the long-standing experience of the MA
in Audiovisual Translation at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona,
this paper focuses on pedagogical issues concerning the training of
game translators and, specifically, training them online, taking into
consideration the specificities of distance education. After briefly
presenting an overview of this MA and its online modality, the
paper shifts to the teaching of game localisation, focusing on translation
competence and curricular design, describing the tasks that
students are asked to do. Special emphasis is placed on the teaching
resources and tools used to provide a collaborative learning experience
to distance education students that prepares them to embark
on a career in this fast-paced and technologically-driven industry.
This chapter gives an overview on how fans conduct audiovisual translation (AVT) and other multimodal translation practices (scanlation; fan translation of manga) as part of their multimodal, productive and leisure activities online. An umbrella term for this topic could be multimodal fan translation.
The subject of fan translation has many peculiarities, and one of them is that it is ingrained in the context of fandom. Fandom is a portmanteau term of “kingdom of fans,” denoting a community of fans with a shared devotion to a popular cultural product. Media and fan studies refer to a fan as “a person with a relatively deep positive emotional conviction about someone or something famous, [who is] driven to explore and participate in fannish activities” (Duffett, 2013, p. 18). As Sauro (in press) explains, this is a comprehensive definition of fan as it includes both consumer and producer practices. Some fans convey their enthusiasm in such a way that it becomes a driving force for creating different fan products, including fan translation. Fan translators do not intend to substitute what professional translators can and should do. Instead, they cover sectors and texts that the translation industry does not normally reach for a variety of reasons (e.g. an anticipated lack of economic benefit). This is common to both amateur translation and fan translation, which are slightly different concepts.
This article discusses a new taxonomy of dubbing synchronies in the Spanish localized version of the video game Batman: Arkham Knight. To do so, the concept of the video game is first reviewed as the most sophisticated example of audiovisual text in terms of its multimodal nature. The article also describes how the message is conveyed through the different communication channels that form a part of its semiotic structure. Next, the research approach proposal is presented, based on the multimodal configuration of video games: game situations will be the unit of analysis used in this approach, since they are a basic unit with which to organize the content of a game and they distinguish video games as a unique type of audiovisual text. These game situations are used to analyse the specific features of dubbing and types of synchrony. Finally, some results are offered to confirm that the taxonomy of dubbing in video games discussed here applies to this particular case.
https://lans-tts.uantwerpen.be/index.php/LANS-TTS/article/view/463
From its humble beginning in the 1970's, the video games industry has flourished and become a worldwide phenomenon. Although most games are developed in Japanese and English, the globalisation of popular culture and the desire to expand to new markets have led most producers to localise their games into many target language versions. This has brought about the emergence of a new field in translation, game localisation, which combines elements of audiovisual translation and software localisation. This paper looks at the specific features of game localisation which give it its unique nature. It examines the priorities and constraints associated with translation of this particular genre, which relies heavily on imagination and creativity to deliver a satisfactory game experience. Using as a case study the best-selling PlayStation series, Final Fantasy, examples are presented to illustrate the challenges game localisers face, focusing particularly on linguistic and cultural issues.
Video games are part of the growing digital entertainment industry for which game localization has become pivotal in serving international markets. As well as addressing the practical needs of the industry to facilitate translator and localizer training, this book seeks to conceptualize game localization in an attempt to locate it in Translation Studies in the context of the technologization of contemporary translation practices. Designed to provide a comprehensive introduction to the topic of game localization the book draws on the literature in Game Studies as well as Translation Studies. The book’s readership is intended to be translation scholars, game localization practitioners and those in Game Studies developing research interest in the international dimensions of the digital entertainment industry. The book aims to provide a road map for the dynamic professional practices of game localization and to help readers visualize the expanding role of translation in one of the 21st century's key global industries.
Risk analysis can be applied to translation in several ways. One application concerns the specificity of translation, where risk is the probability of losing a translation-specific kind of credibility; it concerns relations between people and can be called ‘credibility risk’. A second kind of risk ensues from the translator's uncertainty when making decisions about how to render an item; it involves cognitive processes and can be called ‘uncertainty risk’. A third kind of risk then has to do with the way texts are interpreted and used in contexts, where some elements are high-risk because they are key to communicative success, while others are low-risk; this kind of risk applies to the different parts of texts and can be called ‘communicative risk’. This third sense of risk then allows for a rationalist model of translators’ decisions and effort distributions, positing that high effort should be invested in text items with high communicative risk. Although the differences between these levels of analysis can be confusing and require some careful definitions, the interactions between them offer a rich, non-essentialist view of translation as a social relation, as a product, and as a teachable mode of decision-making.
Video games are currently one of the fastest evolving media that have risen from obscurity and conquered mainstream culture in less than fifty years. In 2012, its revenue was estimated at about 78 billion US dollars globally, which places digital games at the forefront of popular entertainment 1 . This turning point in the history of the video game industry can be attributed to two primary factors: firstly, to the overall development of the video game concept and secondly to the increase in the cultural value of interactive entertainment. None of this would, however, come to fruition if not for the development of the specific translation techniques that allowed the industry to reach out to a global audience (Bernal-Merino 2007). This paper examines some of the characteristics of video game localization from a linguistic and cultural standpoint, focusing on the relevance of context (Newmark 1991) and lexicalization patterns in translation (Talmy 2001). It also explores the role of transcreation in interactive entertainment software and analyses how the strictly technical limitations of the medium impact the overall result of the translation process (Mangiron and O"Hagan 2006; Chandler 2005; Bernal-Merino 2007). Using as a case study the highly successful yet notorious for its flawed translation series, Call of Duty, examples are given to illustrate the challenges translators face in video game localization.
The crucial role of conventions in translation has been extensively recognised in Translation Studies. The localisation of digital texts entails mainly instrumental texts that need to be received as original productions in the target context of reception, and therefore, source-text conventions should in principle be replaced by those in the same target genre (Nord 1997; Gamero 2001). After a theoretical review of the notion of convention, this paper will consider whether target text conventions are actually incorporated in localised texts. For this purpose, web navigation menus were selected, as they represent the most conventional textual segments in websites (Nielsen & Tahir 2002). For the purpose of this study, a comparable corpus of navigation menus was extracted from the Spanish Comparable Web Corpus (Jiménez-Crespo 2008a). Following a descriptive study on conventional features of original Spanish corporate websites (Jiménez-Crespo 2008b), these findings were contrasted with translated texts in order to shed some light onto the role of convention in the translation products. The results of the contrastive study show that conventional terminology in Spanish websites is significantly less present in translated texts. This is explained in terms of interference from source texts conventions and the specific constraints that operate during the translation process.
Purpose – The aim of this paper is to present a sampling method using virtual networks to study “hard-to-reach” populations. In the ambit of social research, the use of new technologies is still questioned because the selection bias is an obstacle to carry on scientific research on the Internet. In this regard, the authors' hypothesis is that the use of social networking sites (Web 2.0) can be effective for the study of “hard-to-reach” populations. The main advantages of this technique are that it can expand the geographical scope and facilitates the identification of individuals with barriers to access. Therefore, the use of virtual networks in non-probabilistic samples can increase the sample size and its representativeness.
Design/methodology/approach – To test this hypothesis, a virtual method was designed using Facebook to identify Argentinean immigrant entrepreneurs in Spain (214 cases). A characteristic of this population is that some individuals are administratively invisible in national statistics because they have double nationality (non-EU and EU). The use of virtual sampling was combined with an online questionnaire as a complementary tool for Web 2.0 research in behavioural sciences.
Findings – The number of cases detected by Facebook and the virtual response rate is higher than traditional snowball technique. The explanation is that people increase their level of confidence because the researcher shows his personal information (Facebook's profile) and also participates in their groups of interest (Facebook's groups). Moreover, the online questionnaires administration allows the quality of the information to be controlled and avoids duplication of cases.
Originality/value – The present article is the first that uses Facebook as an instrument to study immigrants. Therefore its adoption represents a great challenge in the social research field because there are many barriers of access and search. It also proposes a novel mix of traditional methodologies updated with the use of new virtual possibilities of studying hard to reach populations, especially in areas of social research where the contributions of these methods are less developed.
Els videojocs han crescut fins a convertir-se en una indústria d’entreteniment global. Aquesta globalitat no s’hauria aconseguit sense els esforços de transferència lingüística que fan que els jocs, independentment de l’origen que tinguin, arribin als jugadors en la seva llengua i contextos culturals. Malgrat la importància crucial que té la traducció, el seu valor no es té en compte en els estudis sobre videojocs, ni tampoc en els estudis de la traducció. Posant un èmfasi especial en la multidimensionalitat i en la multimodalitat dels videojocs, aquest treball defensa que la recerca sobre videojocs des de la perspectiva dels estudis de la traducció no sols serà profitosa per a la indústria dels jocs sinó també per als mateixos estudis de traducció, atès que obre noves vies de recerca.
Translating children’s literature has been an object of interest researched from a number of vantage points, including the question of constraining factors. Scholars have highlighted mainly the question of dual readership or cultural adaptation, frequently without a global and systemic analysis of all impediments. This article examines the Polish translation of the German book for children, Katharina von der Gathen’s Klär mich auf , from a constraint-based framework. This article focuses on the reconstruction of the constraints in the translation process: the point of departure is the framework with three basic factors that constrain translation, i.e., the intention of the author/translator, text type, and the profile of the audience. The presented argumentation incorporates other formal impediments, such as the visual layer of the book and the semiotic make-up of the source text, language taboo and censorship or the literary polysystems. The analysis of the constraint framework helps to comprehend the translation in terms of the ST-TT relationship regarding their intended audiences, genre-related features, and the child-adult duality.
This book explores the impact of a video game’s degree of realism or fictionality on its linguistic dimensions, investigating the challenges and strategies for translating realia and irrealia, the interface of the real world and the game world where culture-specificity manifests itself.
The volume outlines the key elements in the translation of video games, such as textual non-linearity, multitextuality, and playability, and introduces the theoretical framework used to determine a game’s respective degree of realism or fictionality. Pettini applies an interdisciplinary approach drawing on video game research and Descriptive Translation Studies to the linguistic and translational analysis of in-game dialogues in English-Italian and English-Spanish language pairs from a corpus of three war video games. This approach allows for an in-depth look at the localization challenges posed by the varying degree of realism and fictionality across video games and the different strategies translators employ in response to these challenges. A final chapter offers a comparative analysis of the three games and subsequently avenues for further research on the role of culture-specificity in game localization.
This book is key reading for students and scholars interested in game localization, audiovisual translation studies, and video game research.
With the purpose of showing that video game studies should become part of the emerging discipline of multimodality, the present chapter introduces the basics of the study of gameworlds and uses the multimodal document approach to analyze document-like screens coming from two video games: Football Manager 2018 and Europa Universalis IV. These document-like screens are analyzed using the tools coming from the GeM model, which treats these pages as multi-layered semiotic artifacts. Within this approach, all four layers are covered: the base layer, the layout layer, the rhetorical layer, and the navigation layer. Our analysis proposal tries to pinpoint the semiotic specificities of the different layers and test whether the GeM model needs to be adapted for the purpose of approaching these screens. At the same time, the gameworld environment is viewed as an important mediator between the player and the digital game system. We hope that such integrated approach can be beneficial to both multimodality and video game studies and expand the directions of future research endeavors.
This volume puts forth an original theoretical framework, the ludonarrative model, for studying video games which foregrounds the empirical study of the player experience. The book provides a comprehensive introduction to and description of the model, which draws on theoretical frameworks from multimodal discourse analysis, game studies, and social semiotics, and its development out of participant observation and qualitative interviews from the empirical study of a group of players. The volume then applies this approach to shed light on how players’ experiences in a game influence how they understand and make use of game components in order to progress its narrative. The book concludes with a frame by frame analysis of a popular game to demonstrate the model’s principles in action and its subsequent broader applicability to analyzing video game interaction and design. Offering a new way forward for video game research, this volume is key reading for students and scholars in multimodality, discourse analysis, game studies, interactive storytelling, and new media.
Creativity is one of the most highly debated topics in translation not only because of how it relates to authorship but also because of the unavoidable cultural ramifications and the business implications for all the parties involved. Identifying the parameters within which creative translation operates in entertainment media requires a complex process that comprises a large amount of variables beyond the linguistic ones. Semiotics is suggested as a robust analytical tool to study the layering of meaning-making in entertainment products, in other words, their polysemioticity. Multimedia interactive entertainment software (MIES), a. k. a. video games, adds levels of complexity never seen before in translation due to their functional requirements. In order to identify the features that separate other entertainment products from MIES, this article analyses also the translation of novels, comics and films. The concept of playability is utilised as a way of isolating the pragmatic challenges of video game localisation.
Game localisation is an emerging field in Translation Studies that initially began attracting attention in the late 1990s, when the first studies analysing this new translation phenomenon were published by professionals working in the field. In the last decade, research on game localisation has gained impetus. Particularly, in recent years, the number of books, journal articles, book chapters, undergraduate, masters and doctoral dissertations aiming to shed light on this relatively young area of study have increased considerably. This paper examines existing research on game localisation, focusing on published papers (articles and book chapters) and books. It presents a diachronic view of game localisation research, describing the main topics and methods used, as well as the issue of research materials. Finally, it explores potential future research avenues and calls for reception studies, which are necessary to consolidate game localisation as an established research domain within Translation Studies.
The ecology of gaming is vast and diverse, comprised of individuals who engage with the medium through markedly different modes. The aim of this paper is to explore the interface between the multimodal play afforded by games (specifically, multiplayer games) and the balance of gameplay in the competitive arena (or metagame). Framed through competition, play and digital games theory, and driven by a case study analysis of gameplay (and ancillary media surrounding gameplay), this paper offers preliminary findings indicating that multimodality has the potential to palpably influence the production and consumption of games. Based on this outcome, this paper makes both conceptual and practical suggestions on which future research and design can elaborate.
This book is a multidisciplinary study of the translation and localisation of video games. It offers a descriptive analysis of the industry understood as a global phenomenon in entertainment and aims to explain the norms governing present industry practices, as well as game localisation processes. Additionally, it discusses particular translation issues that are unique to the multichannel nature of video games, in which verbal and nonverbal signs must be cohesively combined with interactivity to achieve maximum playability and immerse players in the games virtual world. Although positioned within the theoretical framework of descriptive translation studies, Bernal-Merino incorporates research from audiovisual translation, software localisation, computer assisted translation, comparative literature, and video game production. Moving beyond this framework, Translation and Localisation in Video Games challenges some of the basic tenets of translation studies and proposes changes to established and unsatisfactory processes in the video game and language services industries.
Video games localisation is an emerging type of translation that has deserved very little attention from a translation studies perspective to date. This article discusses what is involved in video game localisation, what assets need to be localised, what the different localisation models are and what translator competence is required in order to localise video games successfully. It also emphasises the need to encourage the study of this new discipline and the training of translators who have the skills and competence required to face the challenges posed by this new translation field.
The potential usefulness of Hall's concept of high- versus low-context cultures to international marketing has been discussed widely. However, implications of this concept in marketing have largely been discussed descriptively and little attempt has been made to empirically compare various cultures in a real setting. In this article the authors report the findings from a cross-cultural study that attempts to show whether Hall's description of the characteristics of high- and low-context cultures can indeed be empirically confirmed. With the use of a survey consisting of 16 items, subjects from three different countries—China, Korea, and the U.S.—representing both high- and low-context cultures, are studied. Overall, the results show that the three cultures differ in a way that is consistent with Hall's conceptualization. Specifically, the Chinese and Korean subjects are shown to exhibit tendencies that are consistent with Hall's description of high-context cultures, and the American subjects are shown to exhibit tendencies that are consistent with low-context cultures. For example, the subjects from China and Korea are found to be more socially oriented, to be more confrontation-avoiding, and to have more trouble dealing with new situations. The article concludes by pointing to a further need for efforts in developing measurement scales for the concept. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
While research on texts as units larger than sentences has a rich tradition in translation studies, the notion of context, its relation to text, and the role it plays in translation has received much less attention. In this paper, I make an attempt at rethinking the relationship between context and text for translation. I first review several conceptions of context and the relationship between text and context in a number of different disciplines. Secondly, I present a theory of translation which is to be understood as a theory of re-contextualization that explicates the relationship between context and text in its design and categorial scheme. Finally, I sketch a recent development in translation and multilingual text production, which may limit the scope of re-contextualization in translation.
The notion of context has been extensively invoked but rarely critiqued and elaborated in the study of translation and interpreting. This paper first explores recent thinking on the notions of context and contextualization in pragmatics and linguistic anthropology and examines the extent to which these notions have explicitly or implicitly informed current thinking on translation and interpreting. It then argues that closer attention to processes of contextualization in both the production and reception of translated texts and interpreted utterances can tell us much more about the goals and ideological positioning of participants than any static listing of contextual variables, however detailed and comprehensive. The discussion is supported by various examples of the way in which translators and interpreters frame their interaction with others.
Aquest article presenta els diferents tipus de text que poden trobar els traductors quan treballen per a la indústria del software d'entreteniment multimèdia interactiu i explica que els videojocs exigeixen habilitats diferents als traductors, com ara conèixer les memòries de traducció, ser capaços de cercar informació i ser creatius.
En aquest article es plantegen les competències necessàries per a dur a terme la localització de videojocs i de jocs d’ordinador correctament, com ara un bon domini de la informàtica i estratègies de cerca a Internet, coneixement dels gèneres i convencions dels jocs d’ordinador, i expertesa en el temes que tracti cada joc en concret. També es revisa el procés de localització i el treball en equips virtuals en aquest tipus de localització.
La mondialisation économique qui définit nos sociétés contemporaines comme globales a entraîné une rencontre de la traduction avec les technologies, de façon à les adapter aux diverses situations locales. Dénommée tout d'abord « localisation » dans certains milieux professionnels, cette rencontre s'est vite complexifiée en incluant d'abord l'industrie de l'informatique puis divers marchés (finances, médecine, loisirs, etc.), affectant manifestement des secteurs entiers de la communication et de notre organisation sociale. Cet article traite plusieurs des faits marquants de cette rencontre de l'Internet et des nouvelles technologies de l'information et de la communication avec la traduction, qui est devenue une composante majeure de l'internationalisation des produits et des services.
Creativity in the Translation of Video Games
- Bernal-Merino
A Preliminary Portrait of Chinese to Foreign Language Mobile Game Localisers: Profiles, Perceptions and Possible Integrations into New Sinology
- Moreno-García