| 1. Introduction
Video game localization is the process of
modifying an existing video game to make it
accessible, usable and culturally suitable
to a target audience (Payne,
2007). It is a multilayered process that
requires localization staff to have many of
the same skills as the original developers
of the game, thus making programming expertise
and linguistic and cultural knowledge alike
necessary.
Apart from actual technical and organizational
problems (issues related to compatibility
of operating systems and adaptation of alphabets,
conventions, formats, measures, interfaces
and so forth), a challenging part of the process
of localization of video games concerns the
sphere of cultural localization; that is,
the adaptation of visuals, sound and scripts
conceived in one language by members of one
culture to another language and another culture,
in such a way that they seem at once fully
consistent with the assumptions, values and
other boundaries and outlooks of the second
culture, and internally consistent within
the semiotic strategies of the original video
game text, visuals and sound. Assuming that
the text of a video game thus consists primarily
not of language but in fact of culture (verbal
and non-verbal representation being, in effect,
a vehicle of the social and moral background
from which a video game is produced), the
cultural localization of video games raises
questions related to translatability, comprehension
and loss of meaning, as well as to the possibility
of establishing new identities in the indeterminate
space of cultural translation.
2. When localization is desirable: the multifaceted
work of the localizer
In video game localization, the cultural
distance involved is remarkable when it comes
to the localization of Japanese video games,
a so-called “non-friendly localization
language” (Chandler,
2005: 120-121). What does it actually
mean to localize a Japanese video game into
a European language? Is it possible or desirable
to maintain a coherent and integral sense
of the Japanese identity of the product? A
game incorporates many signs of its origin,
and it is not always straightforward to decide
whether these themes can be localized and
whether localization is desirable. In this
essay, I will examine a few problematic cases
of cultural localization of Japanese video
games, in terms of visuals, voiceover and
script, exploring the potential of their customization.
An analysis of Japanese games will give an
idea of how multifaceted the work of the localizer
is. This work covers different fields of knowledge,
from economic and commercial aspects (recognizing
general dissimilarities between source and
target cultures as regards ethics, morals
and the age of players for whom a game is
deemed suitable) to specific linguistic abilities
and the capacity to conjecture the intended
semantic effect of the original product.
2.1 Customization of
the visual: readapting cultural signs and
logos
A problematic issue in the cultural localization
of Japanese video games is related to the
depiction of characters, locations, explicit
representations of sex, gestures and so forth.
Leaving aside ‘Hentai games’,
where sexual references are more than explicit,
it is not uncommon to come across Japanese
video games populated by characters wearing,
for instance, accessories with a Chinese pattern
perennially misinterpreted in Europe as a
swastika, or terrifying leading characters
humbly bowing or naively indicating themselves
by touching their noses. Massive visual localization
of Japanese video games would erode the exclusivist
biases of a Japanese version (biases that
are ascribed to cultures). However, there
are cases in which visual localization is
desirable or even necessary in order to adjust
the game content based on the country targeted.
In these cases, the localizer, apart from
identifying cultural dissimilarities, is in
charge of adapting the translation in terms
of visual changes.
An example of customization efforts based
on knowledge of geopolitical strategies is
the substantial change introduced to the US
and European versions of Miku, the female
protagonist of the Japanese game ‘Fatal
Frame’, released by Tecmo in 2001 (formerly
known as ‘Zero’, Tecmo 2001).
In the original version, Miku is a frightened
seventeen-year-old girl wearing a school uniform.
While Japanese gamers seem to prefer more
child-like characters, in the US and Europe
gamers prefer adult features. As this would
have affected the success of the game, it
was decided that, for the western audience,
Miku should be in her early twenties, have
western features and not be wearing the original
Japanese school uniform, which made her look
perhaps too young. In the localized releases,
Miku wears a red shirt under her white blouse
and, as shown in figure 1, her hair has been
lightened, she has grown taller and her features
are more realistic and westernized than the
somewhat anime-styled Japanese version. Her
speech also had to be restructured in the
localized versions to sound more like that
of a young adult.
Figure 1. Miku in the Japanese
and the localised versions
Source: http://terror.snm
hgkz.ch/mirrors/thegia/sites/www.thegia.com/news/0201/n11c.html
This cultural localization is an explicit
example of cultural deterritorialization,
as the ‘native’ culture of the
video game has been deprived of its signs
and logos and globalized in order to be more
palatable for the American and European audience.
This massive localization was possible firstly
because when games are more story- than action-driven,
as in the case of ‘Fatal Frame’,
their customization is very challenging but
also more rewarding in terms of copies sold;
and secondly because developers conceived
the game as ‘exportable’ and,
thus, ‘localizable’ from the outset.
The work of the localizer in this case consisted
of identifying cultural dissimilarities and
restructuring the script for the customized
character.
There are some instances in which it is
not possible or sufficiently rewarding to
localize the visuals of a video game, for
reasons of time or budget, and a “transcreation”
or "a quasi absolute freedom to modify,
omit, and even add any elements which they
[game localizers] deem necessary to bring
the game closer to the players and to convey
the original feel of gameplay" (Mangiron
and O’Hagan, 2006) would offer a
different way forward, generating new hybrid
forms of cultural interaction, as in the example
that follows.
Soon after the opening FMV of ‘Final
Fantasy X’ (Squaresoft 2001), the lead
male character, Tidus, meets some blitzball
fans before entering the stadium and kicking
off a blitzball match. While talking to two
female fans, Tidus says that in the stadium
he will lift his arms, with a gesture that
is extremely vulgar and misleading. In France
and Italy the reaction would not have been
positive. Therefore, the European localizers
asked the developers to replace it. However,
even though they may have been culturally
offensive, the visuals could not be changed.
In order to avoid compromising the ‘moral’
quality of the game, a radical rewriting of
the original text became a necessity with
regard to the negotiation of the meaning.
American localization
Tidus: If I score a goal, I will do this.
It means that it is dedicated to you!
The gesture, unacceptable in the ‘real
world’, was thus negotiated and reinterpreted
in the game world through its cultural localization.
2.2 Domestication and
hybridization: acceptability of content and
suitability of ratings
In other cases, it is exclusively the script
(and not images) that needs to be localized
in order for a game to be accepted by audiences
in targeted countries. The issue is very complicated
when it comes to Japanese video games, which
are well known for being relatively ‘loose’
with regard to standards of acceptability
of content. The problem of unacceptable cultural
content and the fear that obscenity, pornography,
anti-religious ideas and culturally subversive
outlooks can be disseminated freely through
video games are widespread in the US and in
European countries. The questions of whether
and how to censor or filter culturally unacceptable
content are widely debated. Generally speaking,
if game content is suitable for a universal
or teen audience, it is likely to have no
problems in being released in other countries.
If game content is rated as suitable for mature
audiences, there will be some issues to deal
with when releasing it in other countries.
However, this matter is not always as simple
as it sounds. Localizers who translate a game
script sentence by sentence might notice how
different ethical and moral standards are
in source and target countries, and point
out the necessity to edit the game content
in order to comply with restrictions in the
relevant countries.
A clear example is the case of ‘Paper
Mario: The Thousand Year Door’ (Nintendo
2004) and the group of antagonists called
the Shadow Sirens. As shown in figure 2, the
Shadow Sirens are three purple, shadowy sisters
who work for Grodus over the course of the
game. Their names (from left to right) are
Marilyn, Beldam and Vivian. In the original
Japanese version of the game, it appears that
Vivian is transgender. Her secret is revealed
by Marilyn, her ugly older sister, who calls
her a ‘man’ during a quarrel,
just to annoy her.
Figure 2. The Shadow Sirens
Source:
http://images.google.com:80/imgres?imgurl=http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/thumb/5/52/180px-Shadow_sirens.jpg
Literal translation of the Japanese version
Vivian: “We’ll defeat that Mario
guy! ‘Cause we are ‘The three
shadow sisters’!”
Marilyn: “How can you define us as ‘The
three shadow sisters’? You are a man!
A MAN!”
Vivian: “Sorry, sister… It was
my mistake… Sigh…”
Marilyn: “I’m sure it wasn’t
just a mistake. You deserve a punishment!”
The game was rated as suitable for those
aged 3 and over in Japan, and it aimed to
obtain the same rating in the US and Europe.
After having noticed the problem, localizers
changed the original text in an attempt to
maintain a ‘Japanese flavor’ (an
unusual inclination towards sexual references
and a captivating intercourse among the three
sisters) whilst avoiding mention of transgenderism.
In the Japanese version, Vivian is actually
mortified by her older sister’s statement,
which sounds more like slander than a naive
reproach. The Italian localization created
the following dialogue:
English translation of the Italian localization
Vivian: “We’ll defeat that Mario
guy! ‘Cause we are ‘The three
shadow sisters’!”
Marilyn: “How can you define us as ‘The
three shadow sisters’? You are a man!
A MAN!”
Vivian: “That’s true, you are
two sisters… But I am a woman too now,
and I’m proud to have turned into a
woman!”
Marilyn: “Hmph. And you surely think
you are more beautiful than we are, huh? You
deserve a punishment for that!”
The captivating intercourse between the two
sisters remains, along with the sexual references,
but the harshness of Marilyn’s statement
is transformed into an attempt to wound Vivian’s
pride because the former is jealous of the
beauty of the latter. Furthermore, Vivian’s
humiliation in the original version is replaced
by a strong sense of pride to be a woman.
An analogous case was found in the GBA game
‘Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga’
(Nintendo 2003), which was rated as suitable
for those aged 3 and over in Japan. During
the epic, arriving in a strange new land,
Mario and Luigi gather a huge collection of
super alcoholic cocktails that, if mixed up
and fermented in the right location, can produce
the ultimate cocktail. As the game aimed to
be rated as suitable for the same age group
both in the US and in Europe, it was imperative
for the localizers to forge a new interpretation
of the items’ structure, based on the
responsibilities of cultural translation.
In the American version the ultimate cocktail
is not alcoholic, but just a ‘cola’,
while in the European versions it is a bizarre
blend of fictional ingredients.
The translatability of a video game is not
only a matter of the most obvious linguistic
differences between ‘foreign’
languages and ‘foreign’ cultures,
but also extends to the boundaries between
cultural values and marketing. Cultural localization
is about unsettling, recombination, hybridization,
‘cut and mix’; it is a process
that stands between so-called reader-oriented
or ‘domesticating’ translation
and source-oriented or faithful translation.
The cultural localization of video games involves
the question of objectivity, neutrality and
the transparency of the representation of
the original version. Considering the categories
of the ‘true’ and the ‘authentic’,
it explores the limits of a video game as
a cultural product and distances itself from
a faithful representation and an accurate
reproduction of cultures, attempting to achieve
a series of hybridizations.
2.3 Loss and compensation: negotiating ‘functional
equivalents’
Cultural localization encourages localizers
to search for hybridizations, but may they
change the original text even when the product’s
customization is not required by the marketing
department? How is a video game translation
‘compensated’ when a localizer
is aware of the fact that in translating the
original version, most of the original meaning
will definitely be lost? Let us now consider
some cases in which the localizer, in order
to reproduce the same effect as intended by
the original text, or in order to compensate
for the loss of meaning from the original
version, engages in partial rewriting.
At the beginning of ‘The Legend of
Zelda: The Wind Waker’ (Nintendo 2003),
Link, the male lead character of the popular
Zelda series, is wandering around on Outset
Island when he meets Masao, an NPC. Masao
mows the lawn of the island with a scythe
and suggests that Link find a sword, so he
can also mow the lawn in order to find some
Rupees hidden in it. The original Japanese
lines for Masao were hilarious. Masao is an
uneducated, simpleton peasant who speaks in
a comical dialect from the southern islands
of Japan. However, as it is preferable to
avoid the use of dialects in video game localization,
since they belong to the ‘real’
world, Masao’s characterization would
have been tremendously impoverished in the
European versions, and he would have talked
in the same way as any other peasant whom
the player would have met in the numerous
villages later on during the adventure. In
a literal equivalent English translation,
some of his lines would have been as follows:
Literal translation of the Japanese version
What's that? Today is your birthday? Well,
congrats, buddy! Are you that old already?
Wow! Time just flies right by, doesn't it?
You blink and POOF! There goes a year!
Why, I swear I just cut the grass in this
field the other day, but look at how tall
it's gotten already...
In-depth rewriting was essential in order
to compensate for the loss of humor, even
if it altered the source text. Masao was thus
transformed into an uneducated, simpleton
coiffeur, responsible for the ‘hairstyle’
of the grass of the island. He refers to grass
as ‘hair’ and uses a humorous
hairdressing terminology (cutting, trimming,
thinning, curling, etc.) in relation to the
grass and his work. The lines above were thus
translated as follows in the Italian version:
English translation of the Italian localization
Today is your birthday? Are you that old already?
I’ll have to shave your beard too soon,
then!
Wow! Time just flies right by, doesn't it?
Well, I’d better go and coiffure the
lawn.
Look at how long it’s gotten already…
And especially with such highlights*!
*(“colpi di sole” in Italian,
which means both sunstroke and hair highlights)
If I didn’t trim it every day, we’d
live in a jungle!
Accepting a possible loss in localization
also means accepting the possibility of adding
to and improving a text during translation.
A video game text cannot just lose meaning,
fascination, humor and characterization; on
the contrary, part of the work of the localizer
should be to compensate for such loss. However,
the extent of this compensation is not simply
a matter of individual taste. The customization
of the text can be considered appropriate
only when it helps to maintain the underlying
textual intention of the original source.
In other words, the aim of localization is
not to produce a literal equivalence of the
original text, but rather to create the same
effect in the game experience for the player
as the original text sought to create. In
fact, rather than ‘equivalence of meanings’,
Umberto Eco defines such ‘compensating
translation’ as a process geared to
producing a ‘functional equivalence’
(Eco, 2003: 56, 62). A
good localizer must generate the same effect
to which the original aspires, offering an
interpretive hypothesis as regards that effect
and remaining faithful not to the text itself
but to its intention. Therefore, “the
decision about what a translation should reproduce
becomes negotiable” (Eco,
2003: 56, 73).
3. Conclusion
This essay aimed to illustrate some practical
aspects of the cultural localization of video
games, both from a technical perspective (introducing
some problematic visual representations that
needed to be customized on the basis of the
targeted countries) and from a linguistic
perspective, highlighting the need for cultural
knowledge among the skills required from a
localizer.
Knowledge of language and of notational conventions
are merely the first requirements for a localizer.
Other skills include an understanding of game
mechanics, game jargon and genre conventions,
and, undoubtedly, the ability to interpret
the effect that the original aims to produce
in the mind of the player and to generate
a functional equivalent.
In the light of the points discussed above,
what does it mean, then, to localize a Japanese
video game into a European language? If the
localizer wants to be faithful to the original
text and respects its intention, it will not
be possible to maintain a coherent and integral
sense of the Japanese identity of the video
game itself. It is the very aspect of identity
that is problematic. Localization should be
understood as a general orientation; as a
way of encountering content that has an origin,
a place, and thus gives rise to a new experience
of orientation and disorientation, new senses
of placed and placeless identity. Given that
the negotiation between two cultures generates
an extremely intricate hybridization of cultures,
in video games as well as in other media,
the localizer plays an active – and
hopefully self-aware and willing – part
in this process.
Bibliography
Eco, U. (2003). Mouse
or Rat? Translation as Negotiation. London:
Phoenix.
Chandler, H. M. (2005)
The Game Localization Handbook Massachusetts:
Charles River Media, Inc.
Payne, N. Culture and
Website Localization <www.kwintessential.co.uk/translation/website-service.html>.
Last updated: 15.01.07. Page consulted on
date: 09.05.07.
Mangiron, C., O'Hagan,
Game Localisation: Unleashing Imagination
with 'Restricted' Translation <http://www.jostrans.org/issue06/art_ohagan.php>.
Last updated: 30.07.06. Page consulted on
date: 09.05.07.
Novembre
2007
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