Bears, the Pope and amateur game translators
It’s kind of nice to see the industry grow up. I have been localizing video games for more than five years, a German language professional for almost 20 and a gamer for about 30 years. Our approach to localizing has changed quite a bit since then (if you are waiting for the obvious example, you will be disappointed). Just to give you an example: While it was Excel files not too long ago, we translators more and more work with online tools and communicate with the client in real time while games are being developed, providing input, seeing context, screenshots, betas etc. “After the fact” will hopefully be a thing of the past very soon.
Nevertheless, the question “should video game translators be gamers” pops up once in a while in various communities, most recently I saw it asked on Linkedin, where a lot of people provided valuable input. Still, when reading this questions, I think of answers involving the Pope being Catholic and something about a bear in the woods. Try this one: “Should legal translators have a background in jurisprudence?” Or: “Do you consider it important for a medical translator to know what s/he is doing?”
I might exaggerate here a little bit, forgive me. Our work as game translators is not nearly as important as the output of our colleagues in the medical field. We do have an educative responsibility, especially when translating for children, but this one might deserve a post on its own.
So the answer to the somewhat rhetorical question is: Yes, please!
Now for the twist: Should gamers be video game translators? Very often indeed!
Every day somewhere on this planet, a group of fans of a particular game get together to localize it into their language. These people work for free, are highly motivated and will not stop until their localized version has been peer-approved and reached gold status. It will take them a lot longer than a team of professionals and the localization won’t be as good. But sometimes it can be even better because they do not care if the translation of some obscure Japanese game will take them two years.
I for example enjoy a good football manager simulation, and by football I mean soccer. The best game in this genre is Football Manager, developed by SI and published by Sega. Due to licensing issues, the game must not be distributed in Germany, where competitor FIFA Manager controls the market and holds the valuable DFL license. So no German version, even if you live in Canada, where none of this should matter. Anything football related, I enjoy playing in German, the language I grew up in, played football in, usually lost matches in. Enter a bunch of guys. Every year they translate the new version of Football Manager into German. This is my shout-out to them: Though your translations are sometimes clunky, your file is naturally not supported by the developer, difficult to install and crashes my game once in a while, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. Keep up the good work.
