1.1 Translation and Globalization: The Case of Video Games
The multimedia interactive entertainment software, which is commonly referred to as video game, first became popular in the USA and Japan in the 1970s and rapidly evolved into the global mass consumption product we all know today. The history of video games is therefore rather short when compared with other leisure artifacts, such as plays, poetry, novels, cinema, etc. Nevertheless, their non-stop progression has made video games into the most lucrative entertainment industry ahead of books, music, and films (Bernal-Merino 2011a). According to NewZoo (2020a), in 2020 the global games market generated revenues of $159.3 billion, representing an increase of +9.3% year on year, with more than 2.7 billion gamers across the world.
More relevantly, the âsuccess story [of video games] was fully dependent, and is inextricably linked to the success story of the game localization profession that had to be created from scratch in order to cover the unprecedented demands of multimedia interactive productsâ (Bernal-Merino 2011a, 11). The field of game localization arose exactly from the industryâs unique needs: allowing video games to go beyond cultural and linguistic borders in order to reach players in different territories, each representing a âlocaleâ, which is âa specific combination of region, language and character encodingâ (Esselink 2000, 1).
At the global level, as NewZoo (2020a) reports, the most significant area is the Asia Pacific region, accounting for 49% of the global total revenue, with China confirming itself as the most important single-country market, notwithstanding the fast growth of emerging areas such as South East Asia and India. North America is the second-largest region by game revenues ($40 billion, 25%), while Europe represents 19% of the total global games market. However, as both producers and consumers, the leading countries are China, the USA, and Japan, which come in at number one, two, and three, respectively, on the Top 10 Countries/Markets by Game Revenues ranking (NewZoo 2020b). Consequently, despite the hybrid and multicultural nature of the game industry (Consalvo 2006), it is possible to speculate that the main source languages of video games are Chinese, Japanese, and particularly English, the latter as either native and/or working language.
In order to grasp the worldwide spread of video gaming, the US Entertainment Software Association (ESA) yearly statistics give an insight as to how it has evolved since the early beginning and has become pervasive in todayâs society. For the purposes of this book, since US English is the source language of the video games in the corpus used for this research, it seems interesting to briefly outline the impact of video games on US society.
According to the 2020 Essential Facts about the Computer and Video Game Industry (ESA 2020, 3), as âthe leading form of entertainmentâ video games are an integral part of American culture: the US players represent a diverse cross section of the American population spanning every age, gender, and ethnicity. In detail, as the report suggests (ibid., 4â5), 75% of Americans have at least one video game player in their household, with a total of 214.4 million US game players, of which 79% are aged 18 or older. Gamers are 59% male and 41% female, with an average age range of 35â44 years. Moreover, video games are a strong engine for economic growth, which has generated $35.4 billion in revenue in 2019.
As regards Europe, the continent has alone over 40 different countries and languages, but the biggest game markets are Germany, the UK, and France (NewZoo 2020b). These three European nations come in at number five, six, and seven, respectively, on the ranking, behind China, the USA, Japan, and the Republic of Korea on a global scale. The list then comprises Canada at number eight and, finally, Italy and Spain coming in at number nine and ten, respectively (ibid.).
Accordingly, it comes as no surprise to learn that the standard set of target European languages for video games is commonly referred to as âFIGSâ (French, Italian, German, and Spanish), an acronym which was coined in the1980s and still represents âthe minimum default group of languages that most games are translated toâ (Bernal-Merino 2011a, 14â15). However, the number of target languages for major games now routinely exceeds ten, including both European and Asian languages (Hasegawa cit. in OâHagan and Mangiron 2013, 60).
Although considered as secondary markets at the global level, Italy and Spain are rapidly growing game consumption areas where full localizations (see Chapter 2) are becoming more and more common (Maxwell-Chandler and OâMalley-Deming 2012, 45). Publishers usually opt for either partial or full localization on the basis of the target locale significance and the possible return on investment. The inclusion of Italian and Spanish into the FIGS group from the beginning of the industryâs consolidation, and recent favorable trends, testify to the importance of these target locales, as shown by the data provided by national associations such as the Italian Interactive Digital Entertainment Association (IDEA) and the Spanish Video Game Association (AEVI).
According to IDEA (2021a), 16.7 million Italians played video games in 2020, accounting for 38% of the population aged between 6 and 64. As regards gender, 56% of Italian gamers are male and 44% are female and as concerns the most significant age groups, 24% of players are aged between 15 and 24, 22% between 45 and 64, and 19% between 25 and 34. Moreover, in 2020, the Italian game market recorded âŹ2.179 million in revenue, with a 21.9% increase compared to 2019, and 82% were generated by purchases of software, of which 43% is digital content and includes console and PC games. As to genres, the bestselling video games for console platforms belong to action (27%), sport games (16%), adventure (12%), shooter (11%), and role-playing (10%), whereas the most successful genres for PC are action (23%), strategy (17%), adventure (16%), shooter (15%), and role-playing (14%). Moreover, as the IDEA census (2021b) reports, in Italy there are also about 160 game development companies and informal teams, with over 1,600 people employed in the industry. The geographic dimension of these companies covers most regions, but the areas with more concentration include Lombardy, Lazio, Emilia Romagna and Sicily.
As regards Spain, according to AEVI (2021), the number of players in 2020 totaled 15.9 million, representing 42% of the population aged between 6 and 64, of which 54% are male and 46% are female. As concerns the major age groups, in Spain 25% of players are aged between 25 and 34, 23% between 15 and 24, and 15% between 35 and 44. In terms of revenues, in 2020 the Spanish game market amounted to âŹ1,747 million, of which 55% was generated by purchases of online software. As to genres, the most popular video games for console and PC belong to action and adventure (34%), sport games (13%), and role-playing (12%). Furthermore, about 9,000 people are employed in the industry in Spain and although game studios are mostly based in the areas of Madrid and Catalonia, the number of companies is constantly increasing across the country.
These data confirm that Italy and Spain are historically more consumer countries than producing ones, although it is clear that the video game landscape is evolving day by day. In the future, this might also affect localization practice and research as far as Italian and Spanish could be both source and target languages and this seems to paint extremely interesting scenarios for both scholars and professionals.
1.2 Aims, Scope, and Structure of the Book
As OâHagan and Mangiron (2013, 26) point out âgame localization introduces dimensions that challenge some of the current assumptions about translation, thus raising epistemic issues for the disciplineâ and it also âinvolves dealing with a new medium whose characteristics may not be fully accounted for in the current theoretical framework available in Translation Studiesâ (ibid., 40). The professional practice of game localization âcould conceivably result in a change in the perception of translation in the 21st century with regards to traditional views on equivalence, creativity, authorshipâ (Bernal-Merino 2015, 2â3) and âin certain aspects, may challenge to traditional theoretical models in translation because of the implications of their [video gamesâ] interactivity and the international simultaneous shipment model the game industry employsâ (ibid., 11).
In this light, the main objective of this book is to contribute to the ongoing scholarly debate on game localization and translation by outlining corpus-assisted theoretical guidelines for researchers and professionals in the field. The focal point is therefore that of conceptualizing this new domain from the perspective of Descriptive Translation Studies, as originally developed in 1995 and later revised by Toury (2012). Indeed, this study aims to describe the strategies adopted by game translators in the linguistic and cultural localization of video games, from English into Italian, and to a lesser extent, into Spanish. More specifically, this research aims to detect the tendencies or regularities, if any, in game translatorsâ decision-making process from a descriptive viewpoint.
The aim to sustain a descriptive work theoretically should not be interpreted as the intent to explain everything that occurs in game translation. This study value, then, should be considered in its own measure and with precautions. Since a more detailed overview of the debate surrounding the descriptive approach in Translation Studies (TS) is peripheral for the purposes of this book, it seems more beneficial to discuss the ideas and premises which have influenced this research, and which show how the emergent field of game localization can be interpreted in the light of TS theoretical ground. For this reason, an explanation about these methodological aspects, which clarifies the reach of the analysis contained in this book, will be provided in Chapter 3.
In order to achieve the aims of this work, my examination has been conducted on a purposefully selected corpus of three video games, namely Medal of Honor Warfighter (Electronic Arts 2012), Battlefield 4 (Electronic Arts 2013), and Mass Effect 3 (Electronic Arts 2012). The purposeful selection of the corpus means that, since it was compiled to be sufficiently large and also homogeneous in terms of genre, main theme, target audience, and audience reception, it was possible to isolate the degree of realism or fictionality of the game worlds, i.e. the relationship between the real world and the virtual game world, as the potential single most important variable which may influence translatorsâ approach to the translation of game texts, which is the major research hypothesis of this book. While the notion of âreal worldâ as the world we all know, the actual world, the way things are, without going into philosophical details, is quite self-evident, it seems worth briefly pointing out that here âgame worldâ is âan imaginary worldâ, âan artificial universe, an imaginary place where the events of the game occur. When the player enters the magic circle and pretends to be somewhere else, the game world is the place whereâ s/he pretends to be (Adams 2014, 137). The magic circle here refers to a much-cited notion developed by Johan Huizinga, a Dutch scholar who pioneeringly published a homage to the importance of play in culture titled Homo Ludens ([1938] 2000), Latin for Man the Player, and observed that games construct a magic circle which separates the game from the outside real world. Accordingly, in Huizingaâs view, playing a game implies setting oneself apart from the outside world, and submitting to a formally defined system or experience that has no effect on anything which lies beyond the circle, with rules which make sense in themselves and are only important within their particular game context. Thus, video game players enter into the magic circle of another imaginary world, interpreted as âall the surroundings and places experienced by a fictional character [âŚ] that together constitute a unified sense of place which is ontologically different from the actual, material, and so-called ârealâ worldâ (Wolf 2014, 461). So, in this sense, âgame worldâ means an interactive and experiential realm.
However, the idea of games as a completely separate sphere of human existence must be challenged. Although the experience within a game, or specifically a video game, does not usually extend directly into other parts of real life, games do have real-world consequences, games interact continuously and manifoldly with the real world and, since the ways in which the worlds inside games and the world outside are connected are crucial in this book, this interrelationship deserves more in-depth discussion in Chapter 3.
The focus of my analysis is on the translation of realia and irrealia, as defined in Chapter 3, because they represent the main borders between the two worlds, and they pose interesting culture-related translational phenomena from an academic perspective. To my knowledge, this subject is still unexplored in game localization, although, with reference to slightly different concepts with different terminology, due to its culture-specificity, it has widely been recognized by TS scholars as one of the most challenging translation issues, not only in the cognate area of Audiovisual Translation (see Pedersen 2011 and Ranzato 2015, among others) but also, for example, in literary translation (see Leppihalme 1997, 2001, 2011).
The transfer of realia and irrealia into other languages and cultures seems to be particularly interesting in the case of video games as this kind of software and audiovisual products usually contain a great number of culture-related elements, be they non-fictional or fictional. Their role in the text can be varied and the specific function they fulfill in the games included in the corpus is analyzed in the following chapters. Generally speaking, such elements are used by game developers and writers to give substance to the scripts of the imaginary worlds they create, to provide the text with features which are often intimately embedded in the culture(s) represented, be they real or fictional, and to which the audience, or parts of the audience, can relate. Realia and irrealia in video games may stimulate mnemonic associations and, at the same time, appeal directly to peopleâs knowledge and emotions as they can evoke images and feelings that are familiar to the audience.
As OâHagan and Mangiron (2013, 103) point out, in video games âcultural issues both at micro and macro levels loom large, especially for major titles, as the industry seeks finely tuned cultural adaptation to appeal to target usersâ. This delicate negotiation can in turn call for translatorsâ creativity and their agency may be so highlighted and celebrated that they are often allowed a freedom almost unseen with other types of translation (ibid.). And itâs not by chance that the âfounding fatherâ of the publications about game localization, probably the most cited one in the scholarly literature at the international level, focuses exactly on the unprecedented freedom game translators can enjoy for the sake of fun, the skopos of video games globally (Mangiron and OâHagan 2006).
More specifically, video games offer interactive fun and interactivity is arguably the most accurate defining characteristic of gaming. The âreaderâ of the videoludic text, namely the player, is not a passive user but rather a co-author. âPlayers co-author games by playing them, since if the player doe...
