Speaking strange languages and living in foreign lands was the dream for Hugo Miranda, after living in his small home country of Costa Rica. After living abroad in both the US and Taiwan, Hugo’s passion for linguistics and bilingualism grew, leading him to work in the video game localization industry, giving him opportunities to share his passion for language with future generations.
Working as a freelance translator requires proactivity to keep up with rates, market research and new technologies. In this episode of Open World, we hear from Federica Lusardi who shares her experience finding her way as an Italian translator in London, from freelance to in-house at Square Enix. She chats about best practices for translating visual novels, marketing campaigns, and how to expand languages for indie games.
Localizing a video game is no small task, and it requires you to compromise, prioritize, maintain a clear direction, and collaborate with the myriad of disciplines involved in creating a game, says this week’s guest, Ulises Uno, Content and Localization Manager at etermax. In this episode of Open World, get the inside scoop on Etermax and the expansion of their mobile trivia games to Latin American markets from Ulises, along with some great industry tips and the concept behind his “meme museum”.
Working on a game with tons of content like Disco Elysium requires solid reference materials and systems in place to ensure consistency throughout the localization process. For Ivan Lopes, having passionate fans and methods to get direct player feedback is also vital in a big video game localization project. In this episode of Open World, our guest shares his experience working on the localization of Disco Elysium in Brazilian Portuguese and how his background prepared him for this challenge.
Creating the world inside a video game requires thoughtful and intentional considerations of cultural elements– from character design and outfits to symbols and architecture. Culturalization expert and geopolitical strategist, Kate Edwards joins Open World this week to share insight and guidance for effectively navigating video game culturalization. She highlights the importance of allegories for bridging real-world culture and video game fantasies and the need for greater active cultural awareness.
Ever thought about how you’d go about making virtual reality accessible? Where would you put the subtitles? What about audiovisual components? Belén Agulló García, this week’s guest, shares her experience working on the Immersive Accessibility Project (ImAc) in Europe as part of her PhD, aimed at bringing accessibility to virtual environments and multimedia. As VP of the new eLearning platform launched by Nimdzi Insights, she also gives us an inside look at this new avenue for localization and translation industry knowledge and information.
Localization cannot be an afterthought. In the same way that you wouldn’t wait until the last minute to choose the music for a video game, the localization of a game needs to be planned from the beginning. This idea is key to Miguel Sepulveda’s localization philosophy, Global Localization Manager at King Entertainment. In this episode of Open World, Miguel shares what he considers to be essential elements of video game localization and QA, emphasizing the need to give languages other than English the same degree of effort during video game development. Non-English speaking players shouldn’t feel like second-class citizens, and should still be able to find their online community “tribe” – especially in our increasingly digital world in the Covid-19 era.
As a project manager, it’s essential to have an understanding of different cultures and languages in order to effectively manage your team and resources. Guest Francesca Sorrentino shares her wisdom and experience in video game localization with us in this episode. How has the localization industry evolved in the eyes of Sorrentino? What are her tried and true CAT tools? Which side is more fun to work in: client or LSP? Hosts Loretta Mulberry and Lucio Nicolas Alcaide also discuss Jali Research’s multilingual lip sync animation technology in the 2020 game, Cyberpunk 2077 for this episode’s LocFact.
Get a first-hand perspective of localizing games in the Japanese market from Yuhei Nasu, guest on this episode of Open World. With over 12 years of experience in the localization industry in Japan, Nasu shares details on what brought him to the industry, a day in the life of a localization producer, the challenges of English dialects and the strict video game rating system in Japan. The Open World team also shares a LocFact on how Pokemon character names are transcreated across different languages. At the end of the episode as usual, Nasu and the Open World team share some of their favorite memes.