MICHAŁ LISECKI

Akademia Techniczno-Humanistyczna w Bielsku-Białej

From T9N to L10N (or I18N, or C13N) 1.

Prolegomena to translation and localization in video games

Key words: video games, translation, localization, transcreation, multimodality, multidimen-

sionality, proper names, onomastics, audio-visual translation

Słowa klucze: gry komputerowe, tłumaczenie, lokalizacja, transkreacja, multimodalność,

wielowymiarowość, nazwy własne, onomastyka, tłumaczenie audiowizualne

Introduction

In the contemporary world, communicative practices are predominantly mediated by

a wide range of digital technologies supporting speech, image, video, and textual communica-

tion equally. Digital environments, and in this paper specifically video games, do not only

serve a purpose of new kind of interaction domains, but are, in fact, a new paradigm mediat-

ing and augmenting their users’ social activities. (Lisecki, 2014:21-22) The current global

status of the gaming market available to international communities of gamers from around the

world equally has largely been possible because of all the translation (T9N) and localization

(L10N) efforts, sometimes recently also preceded by more careful internationalization (I18N)

practices, allowing for users across different cultural or language backgrounds interact and

communicate with in those environments.

Video games, although at first ignored and denigrated by scholars of various disciplines,

who saw them rather as trivial and a medium for children (Newman, 2004:5), only recently

1 Across various texts on translation and localization those acronyms are widely used and therefore also briefly

introduced here at the beginning in this paper. However, as a piece of scholarly writing, we shall refrain from

using the abbreviated forms further in this paper. Their application in the texts results simply from a need to

economize on the time taken to type these across various texts and includes the initial and final letters with

a digit which stands for the number of the replaced letters. Thus, localization becomes L10N, translation T9N,

internationalization I18N, and culturalization C13N. V8N for validation and G11N for globalization can also be

found.

162 Michał Lisecki

started gaining recognition and wider attention. Consequently, so far underexposed in transla-

tion studies (TS) as well, only recently translation and localization in the context of video

games has slowly started to earn interest, as both the industry as well as the scholarly world

started to realize that it can bring benefit not just to the games industry but can also contribute

some interesting insight into TS research within the multidimensional and multimodal audio-

visual translation (AVT) environments. (O’Hagan, 2013)

Present paper is therefore undeniably only prolegomena to a multitude of approaches

present not only in computer studies but notably in TS with special emphasis on translation in

video games involving rich narrative and lending themselves to a wide variety of translation

technologies, these days being largely a subject to localization (Costales, 2014: 226). To this

regard, it outlines a selection of issues that seem to be featured prominently across TS within

video games, especially the aspects that translation faces in a complex combination with tasks

involving game localization, and set against a background of somewhat better-established

areas of AVT studies. Rather than deliver a straightforward answer to any questions raised

across various studies, this paper seeks to present a concise and yet possibly most comprehen-

sive overview of the multitude of ways of approaching at researching translation in games,

quite often resulting immediately from the very limitations of the medium and the specificity

of the ephemeral nature of the gaming market.

The background: terminology and typology

The market of video games has seen a constant growth of interest, propelled by an unpa-

ralleled technological development in recent 10 years. At present, the game industry has

broadened its gamer’s profile as more and more players engage in social gaming interaction

and in casual gaming, not just on their computers or consoles, but also through various mobile

devices2 with multimodal gaming environments becoming more and more complex. The

stunning 11-digit figures in USD for the value of the gaming market in the leading countries

across the world (Polish Gamers report, 2017: 7-11) has also contributed to the fact that re-

searchers started to recognize the fact that digital entertainment has become a widespread

phenomenon and video games these days serve a tempting corpus of analysis for scholars

across various disciplines.

2 According to a recent report for IDATE the market of eSports (the practice of playing video games competi-

tively) attracts an audience of nearly 350 million people worldwide, mainly on the Web and the market of the so-

called “serious gaming” (applied games designed for a primary purpose other than pure entertainment) is worth

10 billion EUR.

163 From T9N to L10N…

The gaming industry has not only been researched for its technological potential, but it

has also served various types of social (Corliss, 2011), ludology studies (Newman, 2004; Mal-

liet, 2007; Frasca, 2011), as well as psychological studies seeking explanation on the relation-

ship between their highly addictive character and their structure (King et al., 2010). Additio-

nally, it is because of the need to “deal with compelling storylines, complex characters and

multimodal environments that need to be successfully adapted in order to maintain the game

experience […]” (Costales, 2014: 226) that translation efforts grew into bigger challenge

evolving into complex localization tasks.

At first, however, the status of translation in video games remained underexplored, with

noticeable inconsistency in terminology in research, where the same research domain received

different names of “electronic games”, “computer games”, “digital games”, or variations in

their spelling with “videogames” and “video games” (as noted by O’Hagan, 2013). Even

though research in this field is a relatively recent phenomenon in Poland, yet similar incon-

sistency in reference terminology persists as well: “gry wideo” (Szeja, 2012; Polish Gamers

Report – Raport Branży Gier Wideo, 2015 and later eds.), “gry komputerowe” (Domaciuk-

Czarny, 2016), with some authors recognizing the unique character of their objects of research

and foregnizing the names by retaining the original forms: “gry RPG” (Lisecki, 2016) or fully

domesticating them: “Tekstowe Gry Fabularne (TG)” (Herbut, 2017:73 ff.).3

This inconsistency may result from the very technical specificity of the multimodal me-

dium of games and, in fact, it seems that authors wished to convey this specificity of particu-

lar forms and devices they considered in their studies: computer-based form of entertainment

software used on various electronic platforms, game console-based systems4, as well as mo-

bile formats (phones and tablets) including such unusual applications as video-less games

3 A similar keyword terminology search across Google Scholar (as of December 2019) showed the following

tendencies: a search for “video games” returned a stunning 1M hits, and a runner up “computer games” scoring

roughly over 0.5M hits, with all the others being marginal, namely “digital games” (79000), “electronic games”

(38700). Bearing in mind that Google Scholar is still not very popular among researchers in Poland publishing

their articles in Polish, a comparable search for Polish counterparts of the above mentioned keyword terminology

does not seem to be representative, yet again it is as follows: “gry komputerowe” (3830) and “gry wideo” (998),

which is not a well-established and quite a misleading translation in Polish as it uses the latin based root (video)

which in Polish implies the use of outdated VCR technology and thus results in the use of this concept as

a whole to be deprecated across research papers as well. 4 These days, these are not single-user systems anymore but allow for seamless and highly immersive online

participation involving sound, text, as well as visual communication, thus blurring the distinction between com-

puter and console games (O’Hagan, 2013). This, in turn, together with high popularity of console gaming, has

allowed for the limited translation attempts to evolve into more complex localization practices, referred to later

more extensively further in this paper.

164 Michał Lisecki

providing immersive gaming experience to visually impaired players by conveying the audio

layer only to reinforce the feeling of fear or suspense (Mangiron & Zhang, 2016).

Principally, we can assume that since the first video games were made the core idea was

always the same – to entertain. Nevertheless, people entertain themselves in games in various

ways and these, consequently, result from the types of games they engage in. Some research-

ers apply a rough classification of game genres covering sports, arcade, action or simulation,

occasionally going into details with some more specific sub-types like first person shooters,

role playing games (RPG), hack and slash, multi-user dungeons (MUDs), narrative or later

graphic adventures (Newman, 2004; O’Hagan, 2013).

Unlike in some simple games in the early days of the industry, where gaming rules, the

plot and action were very simple because they were greatly limited by the capacity of the sys-

tem, video games these days present users with multitude of options they can get engaged in,

offering them highly immersive, multimodal and multiuser experiences.

In these, often richly narrated “cyber worlds”, where communication - not just with

a simple game interface, but also between global users – is the key to success, translation be-

comes a challenging task.

T9N, L10N, I18N and C13N

Across research the abbreviated concepts, some of which were mentioned at the be-

ginning –T9N, L10N, I18N and C13N, have been defined in various ways and detailed with

varying complexity. That is why it is vital to provide here at least some general description of

how they are understood further, before attempting at presenting their implications for transla-

tion in case of video games in more detail.

In brief, translation (T9N) in the context of video games will most often mean all sets of

translation and text manipulation strategies aiming at converting a text into another language,

most commonly involving translation of cultural in-text references, humor and intertextual

allusions, and “… the need for balance between transcreation and loyalty when selecting

translation strategies.” (Costales, 2014:227) However, it is clear that in case of modern games

standard text translation strategies are not enough and rather than translated the multimodal

content needs to be localized.

Localization (L10N) refers broadly to the adaptation of a product (application or docu-

ment content) to meet the language, cultural and other extra-linguistic requirements of a given

market. Commonly thought of as a synonym for translation of the user interface and docu-

mentation, localization is however quite often a more complex set of tasks involving, among

165 From T9N to L10N…

others, such customization tasks as: conversion and adjustment of all sorts of date and nume-

ric formats, currencies, keyboard usage (resulting from different regional settings for various

languages), adjustment of different sorting resulting from differences in the alphabets

(spelling), use of symbols, icons and colors, adjustment of those elements of text or graphics

which might be subject to misinterpretation or may be seen as offensive in any way. Of

course, L10N may necessitate much more than that and may involve “a comprehensive re-

thinking of logic, visual design, or presentation if the way of doing business (e.g. accounting)

or the accepted paradigm for learning (e.g. focus on individual vs. group) in a given locale

differs substantially from the originating culture.” (Ishdia & Miller, 2018)

Figure 1: How people sometimes see L10N

Source: https://www.nerfnow.com/comic/289/

Nowadays, some software products try to anticipate the need for localization by applying

internationalization (I18N for short), which is the process that enables for a product’s code

base, architecture, and user interface to display the game content in multiple languages. It

consists of adapting the product and its design so that it lends itself easier to localization.

Some companies (like Microsoft) define internationalization as a combination of world-

readiness and localization, involving enabling a product to be used with multiple scripts and

cultures.5

Video games, as a virtual form of recreating our reality, inevitably carry a subtle or some

more overt reference to culture they take their origins from. Culturalization (or C13N) goes

5 See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internationalization_and_localization

166 Michał Lisecki

“a step beyond localization” by making a more careful and culture-sensitive “examination of

a game’s assumptions and choices, and then assesses the viability of those creative choices in

both the global, multicultural marketplace as well as in specific locales. … [it] allows gamers

to engage with the game’s content at a potentially more meaningful level. Or conversely, cul-

turalization ensures that gamers will not be disengaged by a piece of content that is considered

incongruent or even offensive in the game’s environment.” (Honeywood & Fung, 2012:1).

Until recently it has quite often been left unrecognized by game developers as it is not just

a specific task, but rather a more general intent for all international adaptation of content.

Most typically it involves three phases: 1. reactive culturalization (assuring the feasible status

of the content by e.g. avoiding disruptive issues that might prevent the game from entering or

remaining in the target market); 2. Localization and internationalization (making the content

legible by applying simple internationalization tasks); 3. Proactive culturalization (usually

about making the content locally relevant and staying meaningful).

In the global world of video games a call for culturalization seems to be clearer than ever

before. Such was the case of adapting The Witcher (see Figure 2) for the Middle East market,

which involved – among others – making up for one of the characters’s (Yennefer) dishabille

by making her put on some underwear.

Figure 2: The Witcher - global (left) and culturalized (right) editions.

An example of Yamato Empire of the Rising Sun – one of the campaigns in Age of Em-

pires, involving armed Japanese forces invading and taking control of the Korean Peninsula is

an interesting case of how sensitive cultural-historical aspects of games can sometimes be.

Despite the fact that such a situation took place, due to concerns in South Korea with the

theme of a Japanese and in response to a reaction from the Ministry of Information in Korea

denying that such invasion had never taken place in history, entire scenario instructions, histo-

167 From T9N to L10N…

ry text, and campaign maps were edited. As a result, the final release contained information

on conflicts with the Kyushu clan, rather than Yamato intervention in the Korean peninsula.6

Another gaming studio aiming to scale their social game Star Chef over to European and

Asian markets, reported – apart from successfully localizing several aspects of the game (e.g.

lack of availability of Facebook in China, which was part of the software’s interface), they

had some classic text-based translation pitfalls (‘Green Thumb’) and at one point almost fail

through by introducing in the game a picture of one of their Asian dishes – a bowl of noodles

with two chopsticks dipped in the food. This soon turned out to be a major glitch in the game,

as later one of their users reported it at them that in China this was a way of offering food to

dead, which obviously resulted in a quick update with a fix.7

Figure 3 Splash Screen for English speaking geographies (left) and Asian geographies (right)

https://medium.com/@99Games/localization-more-like-culturalization-eacead7aab1d

Also, the interface in the game had several aesthetic changes introduced to make the dé-

cor of the items in the game more suitable for the Asian tastes. Figure 3 shows a modified

Asian geography screen with an Asian chef and the platter replaced with some Asian dishes.

Sometimes game developers resort to somewhat dubious tactics to get around the re-

strictions of, e.g. ban on violence, which is widely respected across China or Japan. It is often

a case that e.g. images of skeletons, werewolves, zombies, or mummies – quite common

idioms across various types of games, had to be somehow altered or replaced, e.g. bones of

dead players were replaced in World of Warcraft by tombstones. (Zhang, 2012:347)

Some culturalization attempts may seem ridiculous, although they result from some legal

requirements applying to a given country. Such was the case of Wolfenstein II in Germany

(see Figure 4), which at that time8 required Hitler’s characteristic moustache to be “shaved

off” so he wouldn’t be recognized – a case quite often openly laughed at by many players.

Apart from that also the dialogs in the game required for some elements to be removed from

6 See an entry on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korea_under_Japanese_rule and the comment

https://ageofempires.fandom.com/wiki/Yamato_Empire_of_the_Rising_Sun 7 See https://medium.com/@99Games/localization-more-like-culturalization-eacead7aab1d 8 In August 2018 the ban on the use of Nazi symbols in the games was lifted.

168 Michał Lisecki

the subtitles or dubbing accordingly. The German version of the game not only replaced every

swastika with the game's logo or other inoffensive symbols, but when Hitler's character enters

a scene, in Germany, he is referred to as a "chancellor" rather than as “the Führer”.

Figure 4: How Wolfenstein censored Hitler in Germany https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTQ1eBiRRRo

Apart from the above-mentioned cultural norms or requirements, translation in case of

video games has also been always largely shaped by the medium itself, i.e. the technical spe-

cificity and the limitations that are applied differently in different games, sometimes subject

to variation across different game genres. Therefore, even though different game classifica-

tions apply similar categories, due to hybridization of modern games they cannot be easily

tagged. (Costales, 2012:389) Let us then consider the technical implications of this complexi-

ty for the translation tasks.

How technology has shaped T9N

Translation in video games has always been significantly determined by technological

aspects which are slightly different among various game genres, as well as between different

gaming systems: gaming consoles (Playstation, Nintendo, Xbox, or Sega in the earlier days),

mobile devices (smartphones, tablets, etc.) or PCs.9 Moreover, there is a clear difference in

games today and those of the earlier stages of technological advancement that has a straight-

forward influence on the necessary translation practices. At first these were mainly the basic

9 In this paper, however, because of its necessarily brief character, we concentrate on video games as present on

PC or gaming consoles exclusively. This is a widely accepted view among other researchers, most obviously

resulting from clear differences in the very format of other digital devices, which are predominantly portable.

(Sajna, 2013: 220)

169 From T9N to L10N…

elements of the interface that needed to be translated: game setup options for sound or music,

volume, graphics, some in-game settings such as the difficulty level, single or multiplayer

mode settings, as well as the language options, including the choice of subtitles for the video

clips or in-game dialogs. Of course, depending on a game genre this included translating

various elements with different complexity. In case of simple arcade games translation was

not even needed in order for a player to get quickly engaged and learn the basics of the game

“on the go”. Similarly, some simple action or racing games will only infrequently require any-

thing more than just some rough information on some raw game data (e.g. speed, number of

bullets left, damage level, etc.) which lends itself quite easily to be translated.

At present games are nowhere near as they used to be. They involve very complex plots,

extensive worlds, fancy graphics, some solid narrative techniques not infrequently incorporat-

ing the in-game dialogs delivered not just in a form of text, or not even generated by some

poor speech synthesis software but produced by human actors, quite often supported by mo-

vie-like cut-scene videos with high quality soundtracks in the background recorded by

acclaimed artists10 with special lip-synch techniques applied by game developers to go with

the characters’ facial expressions at a phoneme-level precision (Chandler, 2005:11), all this

with an option of multiuser experience of global gamers.

On top of that, as games are prepared for localization, the dialogs that the characters en-

gage in pose a serious challenge of a need to be lip-synced for a given language again (Man-

gion, 2018:126). The cutting-edge technologies applied in most modern games make them

highly immersive worlds capable of creating environments close in many ways to those from

10 In fact, with 6 or 7 digit USD budget figures, it has become commonplace for games to hire leading illustra-

tors, artistic designers, historians or cultural advisors, or star acclaimed actors and even be directed by movie

directors with the soundtrack recorded by famous bands or even orchestras. (Costales, 2014:229) Reportedly,

such was the case of the game Darksiders, whose creative director was an acclaimed comic books writer Joe

Madureira (Marvel), or Batman Arkham Asylum whose creative plot writer was Paul Dini, the writer of Batman

stories. Actually, the way some games were created resembled all the processes of making a movie, involving

real actors play each scene which the game character was later involved in. Such was the case of Heavy Rain, an

interactive drama and action-adventure game featuring four characters involved in a mystery story, interacting

with the game by performing actions highlighted on screen. The fact that the player's decisions and actions du-

ring the game affected the narrative, combined with the scenes played by a crew of more than 70 actors and

stuntmen, made it a clear winner of several prestigious awards. (URL:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_Rain) It is often the musical score that receives a lot of attention of gamers

and this resulted, for instance, for Jeremy Soule – an American movie music composer, to write music for

Skyrim, with the game's main theme “Dragonborn” recorded with a choir of over 30 people singing in a fictional

“dragon language” and later layered to produce an effect of 90 voices. However, in terms of the number of hu-

man voices heard in the game we should be proud to quote one of the Polish games – The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

with impressive number of 500 voice actors working across its various versions (URL

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/this-is-how-much-the-witcher-3-cost-to-make/1100-6430409/)

170 Michał Lisecki

real world. In fact, many of them are so successful at it that recently psychologists alarmingly

point that “(…) like electronic gambling machines, video games have many features that

make them psychologically engrossing.” (King, 2010) Therefore, it does not come with sur-

prise that in such environments translation plays a crucial role and has to concern possibly any

aspect of the multimodal product: the interface, the narrative (dubbed sound, text), intertextual

allusions and elements of humor in in-game dialogs between the characters or between the

characters and the players as it is often a case that they engage in multifold quests involving

making choices about the plot.

Figure 5: Immersive player dialogs in Skyrim with Nexus Mod

As modern games involve enhanced gaming experience with highly interactive surround-

ings, game’s characters speaking human voices, quite often engaging in rich conversations, it

has become clear to game developers as well as most researchers that more complex transla-

tion and localization strategies have to be applied than in terms of other types of “more static”

software. They recognized a considerable difference between translation and localization in

case of video games and other types of software. Despite the fact that both require for transla-

tion and engineering worlds to come together in order for some fragments of language to be

appropriately embedded within the software, and they also both follow a similar localization

cycle, there are considerable differences in terms of the purpose they fulfill (ludic and enjoy-

able in terms of games vs. utilitarian in terms of applications). Localization and industry ex-

perts also point at the fact that localization practices applied in software are not easily trans-

171 From T9N to L10N…

ferable to games where “each genre, and even title, begs different approaches to retain the

distinct flavour unique to the original game.” (Mangiron & O’Hagan, 2006:13)

Some researchers, when explaining the complex nature of modern video games point that

as a piece of interactive multimedia (as they involve a combination of text, pictures, video and

sound) a video game can be broken down into a collection of “assets”: text assets – text-based

elements of user interface like menus; art assets – any images and graphics, e.g. maps, signs,

etc. that need to be changed because containing text information in a different language; audio

in-game assets and cinematic assets – any audio or video elements, sounds, cut-scene videos

or any movie-clip like elements, voiceovers for the script that make up the story line of the

game; printed materials – any element of packaging and instruction manuals (Chandler, 2005:

53 ff.). All of the above mentioned are strictly translation tasks which, when integrated, seam-

lessly form a part of an engaging gaming product.

This urge in video game translation research to find possibly best ways of describing the

peculiarities of adjusting the translated product to such an extent as to make it just as immer-

sive for the players as the source product, resulted in search for some more precise terminolo-

gy. The above-mentioned Chandler’s concept of “assets” is just an attempt at overcoming the

generalizations of “localization”, which – although a well-established term in the gaming in-

dustry, yet it does not seem to be fully applicable in TS as it refers to many non-translation

related activities.

Transcreation

In a nutshell, transcreation involves combining interpreting and adaptation skills in order to

convey possibly the same understanding or meaning of a concept, and emotions in the target

culture as was intended by the source culture text. As such, it is most widely applied in adver-

tising in taglines, messages and slogans. Its main assumption is to keep the intent of the origi-

nal content, giving liberty of choices in terms of what linguistic devices are applied when

“recreating” the original text for the target culture recipient. This will quite often involve

a mix of creativity, linguistic skills and cultural awareness that could help you to avoid any

potentially embarrassing blunders, as well as to ensure the right impact on the target audience.

(O’Hagan & Mangion, 2013:196 ff.)

As mentioned in the previous section (5) games are made of assets of diverse nature –

audio, text, video, packaging, yet again quite often all interpermeating. Helvia (2006:7-13)

makes a detailed presentation of all the skills required from a translator in order to be able to

localize and ultimately perform a successful transcreation:

172 Michał Lisecki

a) Familiarity with general software terminology and specific games platform terminolo-

gy – failing to recognize this may result in providing a poor gameplay experience, e.g.

by introducing long and complicated messages distracting, misinforming or misleading

the player,

b) Familiarity with the specific features of screen translation – to localize successfully

a translator has to be familiar with subtleties of dubbing and subtitling, e.g. lip-syncing,

adjustments to character intervention slots,

c) Mastering of natural idiomatic language – gamers favor street-speak slang, colloquial

language in most games. However, in some narrative fantasy games, a translator must

take great care to reflect the specificity of the language and even the prosody (in case

of dubbing), especially if one is transcreating a game that was originally a book (e.g.

The Witcher) as players will quite often check for authenticity with the book transla-

tion,

d) Creativity – this category encompasses very careful use of puns, all sorts of humor, but

also apply special strategies in case of translation of proper names (characters’ names,

objects, weapons, abilities, command names, etc.), in order to allow players engage in

the game seamlessly,

e) Cultural awareness – this involves a lot more than just simple rendition of words from

one language to another, but rather mediating the two cultures. Some examples were

quoted earlier in this paper in the section on C13N (see the censorship-sensitive actions

in Wolfenstein, or Age of Empires, but also culture adjustments in Star Chef). Another

example involved a change in the script of Warcraft III localized for the Korean mar-

ket, involving a case of a son betraying his father – a practice morally unacceptable in

the Korean society as a case of extreme dishonor. However, in the western tradition it

is a widely known fact, with no moral evaluation of such extreme extent as that of Ko-

rean culture.

f) Familiarity with games culture – gamers report “a certain degree of repetition and in-

tertextuality in games” (Hevia, 2006:11), which presumably is expected also of a local-

izer in terms of the use of certain elements of “gaming lingo” such as abbreviations, but

also techniques and use of objects. Some publish these in form of glossaries11, yet

again many more are used symbolically as in-group markers. Familiarity with the cul-

ture is by far the most important reason for some fan translations to be sometimes giv-

11 See a glossary of abbreviations used in RPGs: https://rpggeek.com/wiki/page/RPG_Glossary

173 From T9N to L10N…

en even a higher rating than the official translations or even earned an “amateur transla-

tor” a full-time job with the official translation, which was the case of PSP-based edi-

tion of Ys: The Oath of Felghana, a game by XSEED Games, who instead of localizing

the game decided to cut costs by buying the rights to the fan translation available for

previous PC editions of the game12. On the other hand, one might see it as a far better

practice than releasing officially translations, which quite often were very “artificial”,

or sometimes alarmingly poor. As reported by the players, such was the case of other-

wise official translations of Max Payne 3 including such language mistakes as

“*spowrotem*”, or Mount & Blade: Warband with some further an orthographic mis-

take of “*tarcze obite skurą*”. Apart from these cases of typos, in Magicka a dragon by

the name “Fanfir” is actually referred to as “mag Fanfir” (EN mage or spellcaster), and

the what zombies did in Resident Evil was “*zombie wychodzą z drewna*” (EN wood

– can be translated into Polish as “las” or “drewno”).13

The very fact that gamers tend to be very critical towards the quality of translation and

localization can quite often result in a given game gaining or losing popularity among

players whatsoever. Reportedly a Japanese developer of Final Fantasy VII, turned to

a carefully prepared in-house localization of the game, after it received a lot of bashing

by fans.14

g) Familiarity with global pop culture – similarly to the previous category, intertextual

allusions are equally valued and recognized by players. As many of the titles take their

origins in comics, books, or sometimes movies (e.g. The Lord of the Rings, Harry Po-

tter series, Spiderman) knowledge of the content they originate gains importance.

What’s more, recently we have seen a reverse practice of movies based on videogames,

with some well-acclaimed examples of the following series: Resident Evil, Tomb Rider,

or Wolfenstein.

From the above we can clearly see that despite a rather relatively low interest in the phe-

nomena of game translation and localization prior to 2010s (O’Hagan & Ashworth, 2002;

Newman, 2004; Chandler, 2005; Bernal-Merino, 2006), after 2010 we saw a considerable

growth, especially among TS researchers, in interest in game translation. One reason for this

reluctance to get interested in researching the domain of video games and recognizing it as

12 See https://www.gry-online.pl/newsroom/japonskie-rpg-ys-the-oath-in-felghana-oraz-ys-origin-trafia-na-

steam/z7104a1 13 For a rich collection of examples of fan translation in Poland see https://gadzetomania.pl/4418,polacy-nie-

gesi-lecz-swoj-jezyk-maja-rzecz-o-fanowskich-tlumaczeniach-gier 14 See https://kotaku.com/how-the-english-translation-messed-up-final-fantasy-vii-1834175294

174 Michał Lisecki

a valid field of research for TS may have been the fact that in the first games it was just

a simplistic interface and the rules of most games could have been clear without understand-

ing anything more than just “start” and “game over”. At that point translation was not even

particularly needed and the narrative part in the game or dialogs between the characters in the

game were very limited or non-existent.

It was not until the appearance of some games with nonlinear gameplay, rich storylines

and dialogs, that translation tasks started to be really challenging. These dialogs quite often

come with several alternative solutions that a player could choose, thus changing the path

taken in the game and resulting in a total change of the quest’s story15. This called for some

more complex translation strategies to be applied and challenged terminology consistence as

well. (Costales, 2012)

It is not just the gaming interface, no matter how complex, that needs to be translated

these days. As multimodal domains they comprise interactive text and high-res graphics to

play with. At points, they also contain some non-interactive pre-rendered movie clips quite

often in a form of a cut-scene functioning as introduction to the storyline of the game or as

a breaking point played in between the game’s “episodes” to enhance the effect of immersion

(King et al., 2010). Having recognized all the complexity of text-based multi-user games

(Lisecki, 2014: 175 ff.), researchers also acknowledged the fact that with graphics coming

together with text in a form of a rich context for multiuser interaction, from the perspective of

text typology, video games now involve a new kind of hybrid content. (O’Hagan, 2013)

Drawing on all the multitude of translation and localization practices mentioned above all

coming under the umbrella-term of transcreation, it can be stated that the hybridity of many

current games, and technically speaking also their multimodal and multidimensional charac-

ter, result in a clear need for the application of quite different strategies and approaches within

the localization process of a single title. (Costales, 2014:235)

Localizing the hybrid audio-visual

As part of the gaming industry, video games require similar treatment to cinema and other

entertainment industry products, and this also includes the interest of translators. (Mangiron &

O’Hagan, 2006:13; Costales, 2012: 390; O’Hagan, 2013; Drab, 2014) After all, they often

15 Some examples include Deus Ex, Fallout, Witcher, Skyrim, Far Cry 5, Dwarf Fortress, Mass Effect,

Planescape: Torment, Baldur’s Gate, Dark Souls, to name just a few. See

https://gamedesignconcepts.wordpress.com/2009/07/30/level-10-nonlinear-storytelling/ for a more extensive

explanation on many types of nonlinear gameplay.

175 From T9N to L10N…

generate much more output for translation than an average film or novel. In addition to the

large amount of text content to be translated, difficulties arise in the translation process due to

the limitations imposed by the very medium. Many also hold the view that video games

should be looked at as cinema also because they are not just a branch of business, but rather

a form of artistic expression, as some cultural scientists and folklore specialists claim. (Ber-

nal-Merino, 2006; Tolbert, 2016:125; Muriel, 2018)

Nevertheless, translation researchers also point at the differences in the necessary

approach to translating this specific form of other forms of audiovisual translation. For in-

stance, in contrast to translation in the movie industry, “video games, being products, are not

designed in such a way as to convey certain significant ideas to the audience; on the contrary,

they must be entertaining and bring profit to their producers.” (Sajna, 2013:221) This gives

game translators freedom to change virtually any element as long as it poses a chance of

bringing the producers higher profit. On the other hand, similarly to games, some animated

movies started recently to adopt similar localization techniques to those mentioned earlier in

this paper, involving quite a serious interference in the end-product16. However, at the same

time, this kind of change might be too expensive to introduce in a movie.

Similarly to other audiovisual media, video games face certain challenge they try to over-

come for the sake of keeping the player entertained and immersed. There are three main types

limitations in audiovisual translation, namely: technical, linguistic and cultural.

Subtitling

When it comes to subtitling, even though both, movies as well as games, adopt this mode

of expressing content, they do it in different ways, not all resulting from the technical speci-

ficity of a given medium. Subtitling in games is quite often excused by a need to “keep the

players immersed” as they can get a sense of being experienced to the original sounds of the

game and the characters (foreign language spoken in the game), without usually losing track

of what is going on. Even though present in the context of games since their early beginnings,

subtitles have long been considered in the games as just an additional element, not given

enough attention and applied in a disharmonious way with the development of other elements.

(Deryagin, 2019)

16 In fact, this kind of practice on the verge of L10N and I18N has recently been widely adopted by such movie

recording studios as Pixar or Disney. See https://youtu.be/FxzL7UYyAeg

176 Michał Lisecki

Figure 6: Assassin's Creed Odyssey quest log with information

on player's progress through the game and current objectives.

Contrary to subtitles in the movies, in video games subtitles in cut-scenes can quite often

be sped up or skipped (usually by pressing some key like “space bar”), which some skillful

players quite often exercise if they already know the quest or mission, especially if they are

aware that the main goal of a follow-up part in the game will be outlined later in the game

with some kind of script for the whole cut-scene kept in a game diary, logbook allowing

a player to get to know the storyline even better. In contrast to colloquial and spoken-like

character of the translations of subtitles in the cut-scenes, the text in the “game diary” or

“quest log” (see Figure 6) usually adopts a slightly more informative style with longer sen-

tences explaining in a descriptive way the bottom line of the cut-scene and the resulting quest.

The player can spend considerably more time reading this than just the subtitles before pro-

ceeding, and can always come back to it at any later point in the game.

By far the best explanation to most (if not all) problems with translation in case of subti-

tles, may be the one delivered in an interview with a video game subtitler. (Deryagin, 2019)

In film subtitling, we believe that the audiovisual context is king. You have the image, the

sound, the dialog, and the onscreen text, and you need to pay close attention to all of

them to produce a quality translation. But in game localization … translators rarely get

to see the game, let alone play it, so there’s no context to rely on when you’re translating

the subtitles.

177 From T9N to L10N…

This gives clear evidence that problems with subtitles in games result not only from the

widely known limitations shared across other AVT media but also from the specificity of the

fast-paced workings of the video gaming industry with incredibly short production dead-

lines.17 In this respect many translators preparing subtitles also suffer from “sim-shipping” –

a mode of preparing the localized version(s) simultaneously with the original, which reported-

ly is a common practice in the industry, and means that translators only have access to the

game’s script but not the actual game as it is developed at the same time. This, inevitably,

influences the translation, which is performed “blind” – without prior in-depth knowledge of

the game and in a state of constant flux. (Mangion & O’Hagan, 2006:12)

One of the resultant problems of this lack of context for translators is an ambiguous case

of translating gender-sensitive elements across languages that carry morphologically clearly

marked gender (e.g. in inflectional languages like Polish gender is marked in the inflectional

endings). In video games where players have a choice of various genders (not just male or

female, but all types of non-binary or genderqueer characters – bigender, genderfluid, third

gender, etc.) all of which have to be expressed appropriately in various contexts in translation.

A real problem appears then if a translator has no access to this context.

Chojnowski (2001), in this respect, quotes an example sentence in a multiplayer game (in

this case it is Baldur’s Gate 2), which can be translated in a couple of ways depending not just

on the gender of the main character, but also on the gender of other players in the band or

team, putting a translator in a problematic position.

(EN): I have agreed to buy some ale for three boys in the Umar Hills

village.

(PL): Zgodziłem się kupić trochę piwa trzem chłopakom z wioski na

Wzgórzach Umar.

Chojnowski suggests a choice of plural form in such cases as some kind of solution in

cases where the main character travels in a band of other companions.

(PL): Zgodziliśmy się kupić trochę piwa trzem chłopakom z wioski na

Wzgórzach Umar.

However, the problem persists in those cases (majority of games) where a player travels

through quests also alone.

17 Unfortunately, this is also reported in case of other modes of delivering the content in video games (dubbing,

voice-over) not just by translators but also by the voice-over actors. See

http://www.voiceovervoiceactor.com/raise-your-voice/2011/11/30/how-does-voice-over-work-for-video-games

178 Michał Lisecki

It is also noticeable that the somehow rather stringent standards of film subtitles18 are not

strictly observed in games. This can sometimes be a real problem as all too often game pro-

ducers fail to recognize not just the basic standards, but simply make it too difficult to follow

the subtitled elements by making them too little, deliver them in too many lines with number

of characters exceeding the widely accepted 40 characters. (See Figure 7)

Figure 7: Deus Ex Mankind Divided with the lines exceeding the 40-characters limit, "stacked" in 7 lines (sic),

and lack of ellipsis avoiding irrelevant elements. https://youtu.be/WVjTrDGHylM?t=83

Of course, there is a lot more about subtitles in games that sets them apart from those in

other movie or video applications, all of which also results in a change for a translator. These,

among others, include a rather constant competition with other elements of the HUD19 which

can make the screen look really “cluttered” (Figure 6) and limits the space for the subtitles;

the fact that they can freely also appear, just like in comic books, appear in some kind of bub-

bles and tend to be interlingual more often than intralingual; the freedom games give with

changing the color, font style, the size, and the background. One might risk saying then that at

that point the job of a video game translator in terms of working with subtitles differs consid-

erably from that of others within AVT domain.

18 Although, there does not seem to be any agreement between the practitioners and translation theorists about

the number of characters allowed for one subtitle line, however, most commonly an accepted standard is two

subtitle lines, 35-40 characters each. (Cintas & Ramael, 2007:84) 19 HUD is short for Heads Up Display, which is the display area where players can see their character’s statistics,

overall game progress, quest completion level, armor level, current health or HP (hit points), etc.

179 From T9N to L10N…

Figure 6: Subtitles in Spyro Reignited, which were missing in the cut-scenes

In fact, subtitles in games these days are an integral part of the game, and although often

turned on optionally are considered as very important by the players. Infrequent cases of quit-

ting subtitles by a producer are almost instantly criticized by players. Such was the case of

Spyro Reignited Trilogy (Figure 8), where producers quit subtitles in cut-scenes while leaving

them all throughout the game. The backlash which snowballed from outcry by the game play-

ers resulted in the producers’ recognizing the players’ claims, taking action and fixing the

game four month later.20

Dubbing

All in all, subtitling has undeniably more appeal to game developers, mainly because of

shorter implementation times and considerably lower costs, but also because in the gaming

community across the world English has a status of lingua franca. Nevertheless, it is dubbing

that can be seen (or rather heard) more and more often in video games these days, and it is not

just dubbing in games for children anymore (which is still the case in movie industry where

animated movies are exclusively dubbed, whereas a choice in case of some other movies will

largely depend on the approach in a given country). (Chaume, 2006:6)

20 Later, Activision – the makes of the game, made a statement also saying that “… while there’s no industry

standard for subtitles, the studio and Activision care about the fans’ experience especially with respect to acces-

sibility for people with different abilities, and will evaluate going forward.”. See

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/03/spyro-remaster-skips-subtitles-leaves-hard-of-hearing-gamers-in-the-

cold/

180 Michał Lisecki

As games localization is said to have many characteristics in common with AVT, there-

fore some assume dubbing and voiceover21 to be present in games in the same way. There are,

however, some crucial differences that make work of a translator different. Namely, the be-

fore-mentioned “blind translation”, quite often resulting from sim-ship, where translators and

consequently the voice-over actors too, do not have access to the whole script or the context

for the script prior to commencing the job. (Mangion & O’Hagan, 2006:13)

Moreover, due to lack of linear nature of a video gameplay, just like in case of subtitles,

dubbing translators or voice actors do not know the scenes where given lines would later be

used or displayed in a game. This means that they quite often have to prepare sounds and lines

that would make sense in a variety of contexts they are to be used in the game. As players in

most games these days can decide on sequencing of the actions (quests), as well as on the

ultimate solution in the game22 it is possible for most dialogs (with exception of some fixed

cut-scenes) to take place at different places, locations in the game or at various stage of the

development of the game’s plot. This means that the process of translation has to cater for that

and prepare a given fragment to be uttered in different game contexts. The nonlinearity in

video games will then quite often mean that a translation has to be prepared to suit various

contexts resulting from a multitude of choices a player makes all throughout the game, all of

which influence the plot of the game as they provide the player with different dialog options

to choose from. (see Figure 5) In contrast, movie translators prepare their translations to be

used only in a specific context, always preceded and followed by contexts know ahead of the

translation. (Chaume, 2006:6-9)

Even though we can safely assume, to a limited extent though, that fundamentally transla-

tion in case of video games involves similar practices to those applied in AVT as it quite often

involves translation of dialogs dubbed or subtitled in cut-scenes (Bernal-Merino, 2006), how-

ever, there is a wide range of new aspects, many of which result immediately from the fact

that in case of games we deal with user interaction, therefore their localization focuses “… on

21 As the two are sometimes mistaken or even considered to be the same, it is worth noticing that there are con-

siderable differences between them. A voice-over, narrative in nature, does not capture the original sounds or

voices and does not synchronize with the movement of the actors’ mouths or movement in general as it is rec-

orded in a form of commentary “on top of” the original sound read by just one actor. Therefore, it is virtually

non-existent in video games. Dubbing (quite often used interchangeably with revoicing), on the other hand, in-

volves replacement of the original sound track containing source language dialogs, for another track with trans-

lated dialogs recorded in the target (translated) language. (Chaume, 2006:6-9; Diaz-Cintas, J. & Orero, P.,

2006:477-479). 22 There, actually, can be quite a few solutions in modern games depending on the choices a player makes or on

the type of character the player uses (the character’s physical skills, gender, race, history, strength, magical

skills, etc.)

181 From T9N to L10N…

recreating the original feel of the gameplay more than in any other comparable audio-visual

medium.” (Bernal-Merino, 2006) It is interesting to note that their translation often involves

a combination of freedom of the translator to adapt the content to the target locale and a sense

of loyalty and faithfulness towards the original source text (a novel, a film, or a comic

book).23

Finally, apart from all the technical specificity24 of the medium of video games, it is also

the specificity of the market (gaming industry) that has an immediate influence on translation

and that is why it should also, at least in brief, be mentioned here.

Stages in L10N

Localization in terms of games has grown into an important part of the gaming industry as

developers and distributors came to realize that entering profit-promising foreign markets can

be very beneficial.25 And all that despite the fact that to fully localize a video game product

these days it is necessary to coordinate a lot of elements within the project.

Figure 9: Sample localization schedule timeline (Honewood & Fung, 2012:32)26

Apart from simply getting familiar with the translated text (which quite often can be

a problem because of the before-mentioned “sim-shipping”) it is necessary to create a glossa-

ry for the translation, translate the script and text, the accompanying game manual and the

23 This is quite often a case of games based on books, e.g. Harry Potter series, The Witcher series, Metro 2033,

or those based on comic book characters, like Marvel Heroes, Spider-Man 2, or The Punisher. 24 At points referred to, in this paper, as “limitations”, although they rather all create a new paradigm for the

translation job than prevent it entirely. 25 In fact, software developers now know that even simple localization attempts can bring surprisingly high bene-

fits. One mobile app developer reported to gain record high 767% increase in his application downloads simply

by localizing keywords only, which basically involved translating the keywords for the software. See “iPhone

App Localization: How To Get 767% More Downloads By Localizing App Keywords”[URL

http://makeappmag.com/iphone-app-localization-keywords/] 26 This localization schedule timeline is for a small project, involving one translator per language, 2 weeks worth

of translation work, and 1 week worth of audio recording. For simplicity, regional holidays have not been ac-

counted for. The author makes it clear that if translators attend recording sessions, one week is to be added to the

schedule. The number of translators could be increased to shorten the translation time, but it will increase famil-

iarization and glossary creation costs; time should be balanced with costs.

182 Michał Lisecki

game packaging, all the necessary promotional materials (videos, graphics, etc.), but also to

launch casting followed by a preparation of the recordings and then get the development team

embed everything in the program code in such a way that players are not confronted with

some dubious translation making it difficult to proceed or at best just spoiling the story.

Despite all the effort and costs, game developers are clearly aware of “what’s at stake”.

The global gaming market is no longer just a “playground for kids” and its value was estimat-

ed at a stunning 148.8Bn USD.27 In fact, gamers are no longer just teenagers28 and they have

a huge spending power worldwide. This has recently urged gaming developers to apply loca-

lization strategies largescale, and consequently propelled the market of all sorts of translation

services (apart from more regular content translation also those usually reserved for other

AVT media – dubbing and subtitling), applying holistic market strategies to translation (re-

sulting in L10N, I18N and C13N).

Conclusions

Despite the fact that gaming industry professionals have long been tackling the highly chal-

lenging field of game translation and recognizing its challenge for localization, this form of

audiovisual translation has only recently started to receive recognition among translation re-

searchers (O’Hagan, 2013).

This paper undeniably, as the title claims – is only a prolegomenon to some more exten-

sive, but at the same time – in-depth studies into a field of translation activity, which is in

a constant state of flux. The main aim here was then to present a possibly most complete and

comprehensive view of new variables in translation that stem from the market, the games as

content carriers and the highly multimodal and multidimensional environments they evoke.

Inevitably, this is a somewhat futile attempt at a domain so complex, with studies in statu

nascendi and in such high demand for research with some clear outcomes in a form of guide-

lines.

The new paradigm of video games imposes certain technical limitations, at the same time

transforming more traditional translation procedures and techniques, making translators ex-

tend their range of skills and putting them in an unusual situation in a domain where the ulti-

mate goal is “entertainment”. Accordingly, the choice of translation strategies gets determined

27 See Newzoo Report https://newzoo.com/key-numbers/ (December, 2019) 28 In fact, an annual report on the global and Polish gaming market (https://polishgamers.com/) reports even

distribution between the two leading age groups among gamers (e.g. it reported 39%, 43%, 31% in 2015-2017

respectively in a group 15-24 yo, and a stable 32% in the same years in a grop 25-34 yo).

183 From T9N to L10N…

not only by strictly text-based needs but also by market and industry expectations becoming

more of a functional choice. It seems clear then that by studying how T9N, L10N, I18N and

C13N are all applied in video games we can work out clearer guidelines for translators and

also considerably update the translation theories.

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Video games mentioned in the paper (alphabetic order)

Age of Empires (Yamato Empire of the Rising Sun), Batman Arkham Asylum, Darksiders,

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, Final Fantasy VII, Harry Potter, Heavy Rain, Magicka, Max

Payne 3, Marvel Heroes, Metro 2033, Mount & Blade: Warband, Resident Evil, Spiderman,

Spyro Reignited, Star Chef, Tomb Rider, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, The Lord of the Rings,

The Punisher, The Witcher series, Wolfenstein II, World of Warcraft, Ys: The Oath of Felgha-

na.

186 Michał Lisecki

Od T9N do L10N (lub I18N, czy C13N). Prolegomena do tłumaczenia i lokalizacji w grach wideo

Gry wideo to obecnie już nie tylko środowisko umożliwiające zabawę i prostą interakcję między uczestnikami,

lecz są w rzeczywistości nowym paradygmatem pośredniczącym i wzmacniającym działania społeczne ich

użytkownikow, w tym budujące je wymiany treści w formie dźwięku, tekstu i obrazow.

Obecny globalny status rynku gier dostępnych dla międzynarodowych społeczności graczy z całego świata jest

w dużej mierze możliwy dzięki wszystkim wysiłkom związanym z tłumaczeniem (T9N) i lokalizacją (L10N),

czasami ostatnio rownież poprzedzonym bardziej staranną praktyką internacjonalizacji (I18N), umożliwiającą

użytkownikom z rożnych środowisk kulturowych lub językowych interakcję i komunikację w tych środo-

wiskach.

Niniejszy artykuł to jedynie prolegomena do zagadnień związanych z tłumaczeniem i lokalizacją i stanowi

prezentację wybranych zagadnień, ktore wydają się być najistotniejsze w badaniu tłumaczenia, a zwłaszcza

aspekty, z ktorymi boryka się tłumaczenie w dość trudnej kombinacji z zadaniami związanymi z lokalizacją gier

wideo i osadzone w kontekście nieco lepiej ugruntowanych obszarow badań nad tłumaczeniem audiowizualnym.

Dlatego zamiast prostych odpowiedzi na wszelkie pytania, ktore się rodzą w miarę rozpatrywania rożnych ob-

szarow świata gier, niniejszy artykuł stanowi probę zwięzłego, a zarazem możliwie najbardziej wszechstronnego

przeglądu możliwości podejścia do badań nad tłumaczeniem w grach wideo, często wynikającego bezpośrednio

z samych ograniczeń medium i specyfiki efemerycznego charakteru rynku gier.