Miguel Bernal Merino, Roehampton University, London
Since the development by the MIT of the very first video game called Spacewar in 1962, the video games industry has evolved dramatically to become a worldwide phenomenon worth billions. Although most games are developed in English and Japanese, the new global market and the great investment required have pushed developers and publishers to translate their games into many other languages. This has brought about a new field of specialisation in translation, commonly known in the industry as 'game localisation'. Without much debate on the topic, terminology has spread in all directions, with new terms being coined, and old terms being appropriated by the industry to convey new realities. The aim of this article is precisely to explore the terminology and clarify terms to help future research in this area of translation studies.
1. Introduction
The twentieth century saw the emergence and popularisation of a new branch within the leisure industry: the electronic and interactive entertainment. Great technological improvements have taken us from the early pinball machines in the late 1920s, to today's third generation consoles. The simple off-hour recreations of computer engineers in the 1960s have now developed into a very complex and lucrative industry. ESA, the Entertainment Software Association in the US, states in its consumer survey published in may 2006 many interesting results, for example: sales were over 7 billion dollars, the average game player age is 33, and 38% of players are female. This is a very different image to the stereotypical image of the teenage male gamer. Video gaming is now a global phenomenon capable of producing as much revenue and anticipation as the film industry. Translation has played a key part in the exponential revenue increase, so much so that, according to McArthy (2005:146): the localization process, which has historically been a simple matter of tacking on a few quick text translations at the end of the development process, has become an integral part of the development cycle, and so needs to be addressed form the outset.
Entertainment software is designed nowadays to accommodate different languages and cultures, allowing, on the one hand, the simultaneous release of titles, and on the other, the interaction in real-time of thousands of online gamers. Globalisation has influenced all economic sectors and has increased the demand for translation services like never before. Globalised industries seem to require a variety of different services from translators, which is opening up new specialisations within language transfer itself. We hear terms like 'localisation' (Chandler, 2005) and 'transcreation' (Mangiron and O'Hagan, 2006) associated with the translation of utility and entertainment software. The terms are not actually new but they have been revamped by economy and marketing professionals due to the new nature of our globalised market. The adoption of these terms by translation vendors points at two important issues: the need for a review of translation studies terminology, and, perhaps, a shift in the role that some translators and translated products are expected to play within a globalised 21st century world.
This article will try to analyse and clarify some of the terms used in the industry with a view to locating the translation of video games within translation studies.
Read full article at: http://www.jostrans.org/issue06/art_bernal.php
