Realia and Irrealia in Game Translation 111
actors. “Helpers” are the multicultural members of Commander Shepard’s
The Translation of Realia and Irrealia
in Game Localization
This book explores the impact of a video game’s degree of realism or
fictionality on its linguistic dimensions, investigating the challenges and
strategies for translating realia and irrealia, the interface of the real world
and the game world where culture-specificity manifests itself.
The volume outlines the key elements in the translation of video
games, such as textual non-linearity, multitextuality, and playability, and
introduces the theoretical framework used to determine a game’s respective
degree of realism or fictionality. Pettini applies an interdisciplinary
approach drawing on video game research and Descriptive Translation
Studies to the linguistic and translational analysis of in-game dialogs
in English-Italian and English-Spanish language pairs from a corpus of
three war video games. This approach allows for an in-depth look at
the localization challenges posed by the varying degree of realism and
fictionality across video games and the different strategies translators
employ in response to these challenges. A final chapter offers a comparative
analysis of the three games and subsequently avenues for further research
on the role of culture-specificity in game localization.
This book is key reading for students and scholars interested in game
localization, audiovisual translation studies, and video game research.
Silvia Pettini, PhD, is adjunct lecturer in Translation Studies at Roma
Tre University, Italy. Her main research interests are Game Localization,
Audiovisual Translation, and Lexicography. She has published papers
in international journals such as Translation Spaces and The Journal of
Internationalization and Localization and book chapters in volumes such
as Linguistic and Cultural Representation in Audiovisual Translation
(Routledge, 2018) and The Routledge Handbook of Translation,
Feminism and Gender (Routledge, 2020).
squad, including both human and alien characters, such as Tali’Zorah vas
Neema, EDI, Liara T’Soni, Ashley Williams, Garrus Vakarian, and James
Vega. “Villains” here refer to individual antagonists, namely the Illusive
Man and Kai Leng, because the main enemy is actually the Reapers alien
race, discussed in Section 4.7. Finally, the subcategory of “other charac-
ters” is the most numerous and includes the most relevant human and alien
secondary actors in the narrative, such as Miranda Lawson, Jeff Moreau,
David Anderson, Steven Hackett, Steve Cortez, Samantha Traynor, Aria
T’Loak, Jona Sederis, Mordin Solus, Maelon Heplorn, Eve, Daro’Xen vas
Moreh, Zaal’Koris vas Qwib-Qwib, Shala’Raan vas Tonbay, Han’Gerrel
vas Neema, Tarquin Victus, and Adrien Victus. As this list clearly shows,
individual references in ME3 are expressed in characters’ names and sur-
names which, from a linguistic perspective, by extending the notion to fic-
tional cultures, also represent instances of “culture markers” (Nord 2003).
In this sense, a very interesting case is the naming process behind charac-
ters which belong to the alien race of the Quarians. Tali’Zorah vas Neema
is a prime example. Like all Quarian names, the name of this female soldier
is made up of four parts (Mass Effect Wiki, online), the given name and clan
name separated by an apostrophe, the title, namely “nar” meaning “child
of” or “vas” meaning “crew of”, the latter being adopted in adulthood,
and the name of the vessel the Quarian belongs to. For example, “Tali” is
the given name, “Zorah” is the clan’s name and on reaching maturity she
becomes “Tali’Zorah vas Neema” which associates her with the “Neema”
starship. This naming mechanism allows Shepard to affectionately address
Tali as “Tali’Zorah vas Normandy”, which includes Tali in the Normandy
crew and praises her contribution in the war against the Reapers.
In translation, in line with the tendency observed in Medal of Honor
Warfighter and Battlefield 4, individual references in ME3 are mostly trans-
ferred by means of retention (Figure 4.1), while direct translation (8%) is
used to explain two meaningful appellations. This is the case of the name
of the helper character EDI and of the nickname of the main antagonist the
Illusive Man.
“The Enhanced Defense Intelligence, or EDI (pronounced ‘Eee-Dee’
[iːdiː]), is an AI [artificial intelligence]” installed aboard the Normandy
and “represented visually by a holographic blue sphere and aurally with a
feminine voice” (Mass Effect Wiki, online). According to Marshall (2012),
the concept of EDI is inspired by the fictional machine-human character in
Fritz Lang’s silent film Metropolis (1927), starring German actress Brigitte
Helm in this dual role. Going back to her name, “EDI” is an initialism,
pronunciation deviates from standard articulation [iːdiːaɪ] and makes it a
distinct proper name. However, its meaning is the base for translators’ ren-
ditions, namely IDA in Italian, which is also a female proper name, and SID
in Spanish. The two versions are also initialisms resulting from the direct
translation of the full form “Enhanced Defense Intelligence”: Intelligenza
112 Realia and Irrealia in Game Translation
Difensiva Avanzata in Italian and Sistema de Inteligencia Defensiva in
Spanish which, as opposed to Italian, presents the addition of the noun sis- Routledge Advances in Translation and Interpreting Studies
tema [system] and the omission of the adjective “enhanced”.
The Illusive Man is the cruel and ambitious leader of the terrorist organi-
zation named Cerberus, which aims at making humanity ascendant above
all other races. His real name is never revealed, very little is known about
him, and his nickname purposefully refers to the untraceable author of an
e-mail which was circulating across the galaxy and which called for human-
ity to assert their power over new alien species (Mass Effect Wiki, online).
In fact, the actual existence of the Illusive Man is doubtful, he always and
only appears as a hologram throughout the game and in English “illusive”
perfectly contributes to the characterization of this antagonist, conveying
the idea of being illusory, deceptive, not real although seeming to be, as pro- Recent titles include:
duced by illusion. In ME3 localizations, “Illusive Man” is directly translated
into uomo misterioso and hombre ilusorio in Italian and Spanish, respec- 62 Empirical Studies of Translation and Interpreting
tively but, while ilusorio seems to be the prima facie equivalent of “illusive” The Post-Structuralist Approach
in Spanish, misterioso [mysterious] slightly alters the semantic value, since Edited by Caiwen Wang and Binghan Zheng
it refers to being surrounded by mystery, so enigmatic, cryptic, evasive, not
directly associated with illusion. 63 English and Translation in the European Union
As regards extralinguistic aspects, especially concerning the relationship Unity and Multiplicity in the Wake of Brexit
between the real world and the game world, like in the previous games, Alice Leal
also in ME3 the concept and the design of some characters are based on
celebrities or fictional characters. For example, the US actress Jillian Leigh 64 The (Un)Translatability of Qur’anic Idiomatic Phrasal Verbs
Murray is the body model of Liara T’Soni, while Ashley Williams is inspired A Contrastive Linguistic Study
by the namesake character in the American horror media franchise Evil Ali Yunis Aldahesh
Dead (1981–Present). More importantly, some extralinguistic features of
ME3 characters represent cultural issues concerning gender representation. 65 The Qur’an, Translation and the Media
More specifically, it is the first time in the series that two openly homosexual A Narrative Account
characters, namely Steve Cortez and Samantha Traynor, appear and can Ahmed S. Elimam and Alysia S. Fletcher
engage in same-sex relationships only. However, the representation of male
homosexuality proves to be a moot point. 66 The Translation of Realia and Irrealia in Game Localization
When not engaged in combat, the human pilot Steve Cortez is often Culture-Specificity between Realism and Fictionality
depicted as a man in mourning who spends his time thinking of his late Silvia Pettini
husband Robert and listening to the audio recording of his last call. Before
dying, Robert called Steve to warn him against alien invasion and asked him 67 Translation and the Global City
to escape from the remote station he was staying at. Steve begged Robert Bridges and Gateways
to escape with him, but Robert knew it was too late and asked Steve not Edited by Judith Weisz Woodsworth
to come after him, but to let him go and move on. “Moving on” is exactly
what Cortez is not able to do. In this light, as Parlock (2016, online) com- 68 Gender and Translation: New Perspectives.
plains, Cortez represents the “tragically gay” stereotype because “most of New Voices for Transnational Dialogues
his story arc revolves around him coming to terms with the death of his hus- Edited by Eleonora Federici and José Santaemilia
band” and “his unresolved grief results in him committing reckless actions
that cause his own death”. In Parlock’s opinion (ibid.), “gayness is used
For more information about this series, please visit https​:/​/ww​​w​.rou​​tledg​​
as decoration to show how cruel and unforgiving the world is” and gay
e​.com​​/Rout​​ledge​​-Adva​​nces-​​in​-Tr​​ansla​​tion-​​and​-I​​nterp​​retin​​g​-Stu​​die​s/​​book-​​
serie​​s​/RTS​.

The Translation of Realia and
Irrealia in Game Localization
Culture-Specificity between Realism and
Fictionality
Silvia Pettini
Realia and Irrealia in Game Translation 113
tragedy becomes “a quick shorthand to make the world seem just that bit
grimmer”. From a wider perspective, however, as Tassi (2016, online) sug-
gests, Cortez is one of the best gay characters in mainstream video games
and the potential romance with male Shepard represents a “good move for-
ward for the series, and the industry as a whole”.
4.3 Collective References
As emerges in the previous section, the wars players fight in this book
realism-fictionalism spectrum of games are not solo experiences. The mis-
sions they undertake to save the game world from destruction, whatever the
nature of their enemies and threats, are based on teamwork and coopera-
tion. Clearly, the characteristics of each team are consistent with the degree
of realism and/or fictionality of game conflicts and manifest themselves in
the armed forces involved in military operations, which range from realistic
and culture-specific groups to imaginary intergalactic forces.
In Medal of Honor Warfighter, soldiers are mainly US Special Forces
operatives who carry out specific missions against terrorists in collabora-
tion with other elite soldiers of national special units. These military groups
are the so-called “task forces” whose names are “Mako”, “Blackbird”, and
“Grizzly”. As regards these references, a brief digression seems useful to
examine the translation of the military noun phrase “Task Force”, purpose-
fully explored in this paragraph although it belongs to military language.
First, it must be said that this full form presents very few occurrences in the
source text and concerns Task Force Blackbird only, as described by Mother
during a cutscene set in the hospital where Preacher is recovering after the
terrorist attack in Madrid, as in example (4.6).
(4.6) It’s compartmented program, brand new joint effort between us and
Langley. They’re calling it Task Force Blackbird.
Si tratta di un nuovo programma, un’operazione congiunta tra noi e
Langley. La chiamano Task Force Blackbird.
Es un programa compartimentado, un nuevo esfuerzo conjunto entre
Langley y nosotros. Lo llaman Fuerza de combate Mirlo.
Moreover, the two target versions present different translation strategies:
retention in Italian, since this military Anglicism has even become part of
Italian civilian language, direct translation in Spanish. This difference also
influences the more frequently occurring abbreviated form of the noun
phrase: “TF” is consistently retained in Italian and translated into FC in
Spanish. These abbreviations mostly appear on the bottom left of the screen
at the beginning of every MoHW mission, together with the name of the
Task Force involved, the name of the playable character, the place where the
mission is set with its latitude and longitude coordinates, and when relevant,
114 Realia and Irrealia in Game Translation
the “inspired by actual events” line. The following (4.7) is an example of
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605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
(4.7) TF MAKO – “STUMP” and by Routledge
INTERNATIONAL WATERS, ARABIAN SEA 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
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ACQUE INTERNAZIONALI, MARE ARABICO © 2022 Taylor & Francis
1°25’ N 45°38’ E – Ispirato a eventi reali The right of Silvia Pettini to be identified as author of this work has
FC MAKO – “STUMP” been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
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1°25’ N 45°38’ E – Inspirado en acontecimientos reales All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
The abbreviation “TF” can also be found in dialogs and, contrary to the photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
text type above, it is made explicit in both target languages, as in example retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
(4.8), which makes the meaning clear in context, especially considering that Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
players listen to and read this line during action. explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
(4.8) Check. We’ll let TF Grizzly take care of anyone who wants to start A catalog record for this title has been requested
some shit. ISBN: 978-0-367-43232-4 (hbk)
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armar lío. Typeset in Sabon
by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India
Going back to the analysis of proper names, in-game they represent both
collective names for teams and also the call signs of some team members,
like “Mako One” and “Mako Five”.
In the middle of the realism-fictionalism spectrum, Battlefield 4 fighters are
US marines who form the Tombstone squad, a special operations unit which is
tasked with preventing a Third World War. In game texts, “Tombstone” refers
both to the whole group and to the single soldiers, who use the team call signs
in radio conversations, namely “Tombstone” plus a number, as in MoHW.
Consistent with the galaxy-scale war against alien invasion, actors in
Mass Effect 3 are grouped into a variety of military units, including the
human-led Systems Alliance special forces, especially artillery companies,
such as “Able”, “Bravo”, “Charlie”, “Delta”, “Echo”, “Foxtrot”, “Golf”
and “Hammer”, “India”, “Kilo”, “November”, and “Sword”, race-spe-
cific gangs like the Krogan “Blood Pack”, race-specific mercenary groups
like the Asari “Eclipse”, race-specific clans like the Krogan “Urdnot” and
“Weyrloc”, or multiracial mercenary legions like the “Blue Suns”. As regards
the first group, the list above shows that human forces are mostly named
after the military phonetic alphabet letters (see Section 5.5) and given the
specialization of these terms, their transfer will be analyzed and discussed
in Chapter 5. The only exceptions are the squads named “Hammer” and
 Realia and Irrealia in Game Translation 115
“Sword” which represent the war assets of all allied fleets, starships, and
Contents ground forces available to Commander Shepard during the game’s final mis-
sion to save Earth. The second group of ME3 collective references include
race-specific gangs and mercenary groups which present meaningful names:
for example, the “Blue Suns” are named after the “tattoo of a blue sun
somewhere on their body” which, during high-risk jobs, can be tempo-
rarily removed with an acid wash to prevent them being identified (Mass
Effect Wiki, online). Similarly, it is possible to speculate that “Blood Pack”
refers to the aggressive and cruel nature of these mercenaries who resemble
wolves, while the Asari mercenary legion known as “Eclipse” apparently
refers to the astronomical event connected to their story (ibid.).

List of figures viii 100% 100% 97% 100%

List of tables ix 100%

List of abbreviations x 80%

80% 83%

Acknowledgments xi
60%

1 Introduction 1 40%

17% 20%
1.1 Translation and Globalization: The Case of Video
20%
3%
Games 1 0%

1.2 Aims, Scope, and Structure of the Book 3

Italian Spanish Italian Spanish
Retention Direct translation
1.3 Summary 9
Notes 9
MoHW BF4 ME3

Figure 4.2 Translation Strategies for Collective References.

2 Game Localization and Translation 10
2.1 Introduction 10 In translation, as Figure 4.2 illustrates, collective references in MoHW are
mostly transferred by means of retention, except for very few instances of
2.2 Definition and Terminological Issues 12
direct translation (3%) in Spanish. As shown in example (4.6) above, while
2.3 The Theory of Game Localization and
in Italian “Blackbird” is left unaltered, in Spanish it becomes Mirlo, its literal
Translation 14 equivalent. In BF4, collective references are always retained in both localiza-
2.4 The Practice of Game Localization and tions, whereas in ME3 translation approaches take language-specific direc-
Translation 19 tions: retention in Italian (80%) and direct translation in Spanish (83%),
2.5 The History of Game Localization and and this seems to suggest a domesticating tendency toward the transfer of
Translation 29 meaning behind names. If direct translation is used in Italian to render “Blue
2.6 Game Translation 35 Suns” into Sole Blu and “Blood Pack” into Branco Sanguinario only, in
2.7 Game Culturalization 53 Spanish this strategy is also applied to translate narratively prominent units
2.8 Summary 57 like “Hammer” and “Sword” into Martillo and Espada, respectively.
Notes 58
4.4 Intratextual Metaludic References
This group of irrealia deals with the textual relationships texts in each game
world can build with other texts and, specifically, “metaludic intratextuality”
116 Realia and Irrealia in Game Translation vi Contents
describes the textual links between the game world contained in one single epi- 3 Culture-Specificity in Video Games: The Interface
sode of the game series and (a) previous installments of the same series, or (b) between Realism and Fictionality 59
other game worlds or the world of video games and gaming in general. Thus,
the concept of “metaludic” here means “about any aspect of games or game- 3.1 Introduction 59
play” (Ensslin 2012, 171). In other words, this category shows another direc- 3.2 Realism and Fictionality in Game Translation 61
tion in which the interaction between reality and fictionality can develop and 3.3 Methodological Issues in Game Translation 64
move. As discussed in Chapter 3, the methodological approach to the analysis 3.4 The Realism-Fictionality Corpus 67
of this category is only qualitative, due to the multiple linguistic forms they 3.5 Game Worlds between Realism and
assume, ranging from single words to phrases. Fictionality 73
In Medal of Honor Warfighter, an intratextual reference can be observed 3.6 Realia and Irrealia 88
in a dialog line uttered by Voodoo in one of the final scenes of the game, 3.7 Translating the Name of the Game Wor(l)d 97
where he meaningfully mentions another character of the series during
3.8 Summary 100
the final climactic ending. Preacher (the player) and Voodoo are about to
Notes 100
breach the room where the antagonist, the Cleric, is hiding, and Voodoo
says “For Mother. And for Rabbit.”, thus dedicating their last effort to
their fallen comrades. “Rabbit” is the code name of a veteran Tier 1 coun- 4 Realia and Irrealia in Game Translation 102
ter-terrorism operator who was killed in action in Afghanistan in Medal of
Honor (2010), the series’ penultimate chapter. In sum, Voodoo’s reference 4.1 Introduction 102
to Rabbit provides an interesting example of intratextual metaludic refer- 4.2 Individual References 102
ence within the series, which creates an interrelationship between the text 4.3 Collective References 113
of MoHW and that of its predecessor. 4.4 Intratextual Metaludic References 115
Intratextuality generates related understanding in separate but interde- 4.5 Intertextual References 118
pendent game works and adds layers of depth to the text, based on the read- 4.6 Geographical References 124
ers’ prior knowledge and understanding. Indeed, by mentioning his fallen 4.7 Ethnic References 128
comrade at the end of the game and before the final decisive battle against
4.8 Sociopolitical References 135
the Cleric, Voodoo rings a bell in players’ memories and, more importantly,
4.9 Artifactual References 139
requires them to call their encyclopedic knowledge into play. Last but not
least, Voodoo’s reference shows great team spirit and respect for the heroes 4.10 Summary 147
fallen in the War on Terror or, in Robinson’s words (2016, 9) “a strong Note 147
sense of camaraderie between ‘heroic’ troops”, which contributes to the
overall rhetorical tribute paid to the US Special Operation Forces by MoHW 5 Military Language between Realism and Fictionality 148
developers. In localizations, both Italian and Spanish translators transferred
“Rabbit” by means of retention, thus consciously or not, keeping intra- 5.1 Introduction 148
textuality intact in both target versions. However, it seems appropriate to 5.2 Military Language 151
mention that like other names in the series, “Rabbit” carries an implicit 5.3 Military Titles 154
ironic meaning which is not conveyed: he is called Rabbit because he has 5.4 Clock Code 157
six children, this being a sexual innuendo (Medal of Honor Wiki, online). 5.5 Military Phonetic Alphabet 159
In Battlefield 4 there are two instances of intratextual metaludic refer-
5.6 Radio Communication Procedures 162
ences, which are made at the beginning of the game and they occur in the
5.7 Abbreviations 167
opening dialog lines uttered by two non-playable characters, namely Irish
and Dunn. 5.8 Summary 174
Notes 174
(4.9) IRISH: Hey, Recker. Recker, you conscious? Get back in the game,
man. Stay with me.
 Contents  vii Realia and Irrealia in Game Translation 117
6 Conclusions and Further Research 176 (4.10) DUNN: Nice play, Recker. That was some of the finest driving I’ve
ever seen.
6.1 Introduction 176
6.2 Individual References 179 In the examples above, the gaming-related expressions “get back in the
6.3 Collective References 181 game” and “nice play” seem to have a twofold meaning, since the addressee
6.4 Intertextual and Intratextual Metaludic is actually the player as embodied in Recker. In (4.9), Irish encourages
References 182 Recker to regain his senses and, at the same time, it seems that Irish invites
6.5 Geographical References 183 the player to start playing Battlefield 4 and get back to the game s/he prob-
6.6 Ethnic References 184 ably quit after completing Battlefield 3 (2011). In example (4.10), “nice
6.7 Sociopolitical References 186 play” refers to the prologue mission where Recker drives a car to escape
6.8 Artifactual References 187 from Azerbaijani special forces in Baku, a pursuit taking place before an
accident and representing an implicit event which makes the cause of their
6.9 Military Language 190
sinking clear and which is shown only later in the game when, in order to
6.10 Translating Realia and Irrealia in Video Games: A
make an exit from the submerged car, Dunn orders Recker to shoot the
Summary 194 vehicle windshield. The blast unfolds a flashback of the events taking place
13 minutes and 40 seconds earlier.
References 197 The scope of these two metaludic devices is intratextual: even if they
Gameography 225 are idioms in English, the expressions above belong to the language of
gaming but, in the texts under analysis, they relate to the player’s action
Index 227
in Battlefield 3 and 4, specifically. As regards their transfer, neither “get
back in the game” nor “nice play” maintain their intratextual nature.
In Italian, they are translated into tieni duro [bear up] and complimenti
[congratulations] and in Spanish they become despierta [wake up] and
bien hecho [well done], respectively. As far as Italian is concerned,
while “nice play” might be rendered into the informal expression “bella
prova” which hints at the good driving performance and makes a subtle
reference to gaming, it seems difficult to find an equivalent solution for
“get back in the game”.
In Mass Effect 3, the manifestations of intratextuality include two refer-
ences to the series’ textual universe through the proper names of two ME
sociopolitical institutions: the Grissom Academy and the Treaty of Farixen.
The former, as it is easy to speculate, is named after a military and political
leader in ME history. Jon Grissom is a famed intergalactic hero, regarded
as one of the great pioneers of human space exploration and the Grissom
Academy, whose full name is indeed “Jon Grissom Academy” is the pre-
mier school for young human biotics (Mass Effect Wiki, online). The Treaty
of Farixen, like real-world treaties, is named after the location where the
treaty was signed and represents an intergalactic agreement between human
and alien races which limits the number of dreadnoughts of their fleets
(ibid.). Interestingly, “the Treaty of Farixen is almost certainly based on the
Washington Naval Treaty, signed by the U.S., Great Britain, Japan, France,
and Italy in 1922, limiting these states to capital ship tonnage ratios” in
order to maintain the balance of power and the peace after the First World
War (ibid.).
 of

118 Realia and Irrealia in Game Translation

More relevantly for this study, the proper names “Grissom” and
“Farixen” occurring in the respective noun phrases produce instances of Figures
intratextuality and the translation strategy for their transfer, as usually
happens when dealing with proper names, is retention. However, it is
also true that these proper names are not independent since they always
co-occur with “academy” and “treaty” in the noun phrases “Grissom
Academy” and “Treaty of Farixen”. Accordingly, they might also be inter-
preted as instances of sociopolitical references but, given the focus of this
study on proper names, and given the importance of these names in the
ME universe and the intratextual features of these two noun phrases, their
metaludic role seems to prevail on the sociopolitical nature.

4.5 Intertextual References 3.1 The Realism-Fictionalism Spectrum Axis 69

4.1 Translation Strategies for Individual References 108
Intertextuality is the other complementary side of the relationship 4.2 Translation Strategies for Collective References 115
between the game worlds and the real world, as expressed across texts. 4.3 Translation Strategies for Geographical References 128
It concerns how textual elements inside the game experience link to
4.4 Translation Strategies for Ethnic References 131
other textual elements outside. As a type of realia, these references
4.5 Translation Strategies for Sociopolitical References 136
translate into the purposeful use of “intertextuality” to engage gamers,
convey meaning, and enhance playability (see Duret and Pons 2016). 4.6 Translation Strategies for Artifactual Realia 141
Intertextuality shows how game texts relate to and reference other texts, 4.7 Translation Strategies for Artifactual Irrealia 144
including both speech and pieces of writing of both fictional and non- 5.1 Translation Strategies for Military Titles 155
fictional origin, through different and more or less overt devices such as 5.2 Translation Strategies for Military Phonetic Alphabet 160
quotations and allusions, and how they meaningfully interweave with 5.3 Translation Strategies for Radio Communication
aspects of their game worlds. Therefore, intertextuality is meant as a sys- Procedures 167
tem of purposeful references within a text to other texts, where the lat- 5.4 Translation Strategies for Military Abbreviations 168
ter are no longer placed within their original co-textual and contextual
constraints but exist in relation to new co-texts and contexts in the game
world. The ways in which the authors of game texts may connect with
other texts are manifold and the media involved are diverse. Perhaps
the dominant intertextual links are between games and cinema, where
the audiovisual nature of these media broadens the quantity and quality
of possible intersections (see, for example, King and Krzywinska 2002,
Papazian and Sommers 2013, Secchi-Frau and Spiga 2013, Pettini 2015).
Another compelling area of interface is the one between games and lit-
erature, or other forms of narrative, whose features have been examined
by Bernal-Merino (2009), Ensslin (2014), Mukherjee (2015), and Pettini
(2017b), among others.
As discussed in Chapter 3, the methodological approach to the analysis
of intertextual references is only qualitative, due to the different linguistic
forms they assume as quotations.
In Medal of Honor Warfighters intertextuality is used by developers to
pay tribute, perhaps too rhetorically to some, to the heroism and the sac-
rifice of the US Special Operation Forces deployed overseas. The mythical
representation of MoHW protagonists is also linguistic and expressed via


 of

Realia and Irrealia in Game Translation 119

two explicit quotations meaningfully placed at the beginning and at the end
 Tables of the game, respectively.
The first intertextual reference opens the game with a two-line sentence
written in white at the center of a black background, as in example (4.11):

(4.11) “A nation reveals itself not only by the men it produces but also by
the men it honors, the men it remembers”.
“Una nazione si vede non solo dagli uomini che forgia, ma anche da
quelli che onora, quelli che ricorda”.
“Una nación se caracteriza no solo por los hombres que crea sino
también por aquellos a los que honra y recuerda”.
(John F. Kennedy)
3.1 Characteristics of the Games Included in the Corpus 69
3.2 Playtime and Wordcount of the Corpus 70 According to the website of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and
3.3 Wordcount of the Games’ Databases 71 Museum (2021a, online), and also to the Miller Center of the University
3.4 Taxonomy of Realia and Irrealia 93 of Virginia (online), the quotation comes from the speech John F. Kennedy
gave at Amherst College in Amherst (Massachusetts) on October 26, 1963,
3.5 Taxonomy of Translation Strategies for Realia and
upon receiving an Honorary Degree while taking part in a ceremony in
Irrealia 94
honor of the poet Robert Frost who had died in January of that year. While
in its original setting it referred to the impact artists like Frost had had on
the country’s spirit, conscience, and growth, in the game it seems to con-
tribute to the rhetorical images of sacrifice, heroism, and patriotism, US
warfighters represent, as envisioned by MoHW developers.
From a translational perspective, since Kennedy is a historical figure,
whose speeches enjoy worldwide fame, one might speculate that the transla-
tor had to do some research in order to transfer the quotation. Moreover,
since the website of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum
(2021b, online) provides a multilingual database which contains most of
his speeches’ transcriptions, including the one in question, the solution was
ready-made: even if they may not be the “official” translations, should an
official translation exist at all, they may be safely borrowed. On the con-
trary, the versions contained in example (4.11) are personal abridged ver-
sions created by MoHW Italian and Spanish translators, which are less literal
than the ones provided by the website of the John F. Kennedy Presidential
Library and Museum (ibid.). For example, the rhetorical repetition of “men”
is omitted, and the noun is substituted by demonstrative pronouns.
According to Schulze von Glaßer (2012, 10), the second intertextual ref-
erence in MoHW is a quotation from Stacey Freiwald at the funeral of her
husband, Jason Freiwald, a Navy SEAL killed in action in Afghanistan on
September 11, 2008, during “Operation Enduring Freedom” and, as such,
this quotation aims to pay tribute to soldiers’ families too. Not by chance, the
lines contained in example (4.12) follow the touching images of the funeral of
one of the main game characters, namely Mother, while being enhanced by
the most expressive song of the game soundtrack: “With Honors” by Iranian-
German composer Ramin Djawadi. In this sense, in terms of “gendered


 of

120 Realia and Irrealia in Game Translation

militarism”, MoHW centers “on the consequences which military service has
for family life in the homeland”, and “sacrifice is given a profoundly personal  Abbreviations
and gendered perspective” (Robinson 2016, 11). MoHW “takes the theme of
sacrifice into a very personal place, demonstrating the consequences for those
left in the homeland of fighting the War on Terror” (ibid.).

(4.12) Real life superheroes exist; they walk among us every day, ready
to defend our great nation and its citizens in a moment’s notice.
They are husbands, fathers, brothers, and sons capable of star-
ing death in the face, and still come home to rock their newborn
infant to sleep in the same day.

This kind of warrior cannot be manufactured or purchased. They are AEVI Asociación Española de Videojuegos [Spanish Video Game
born into this life, blessed with a higher sense of purpose, and the Association]
understanding of exactly what their fate may hold. We chose to share AVT Audiovisual Translation
this life with them, because we would rather love an extraordinary man BF Battlefield
for a brief moment, than spend a lifetime with a man far more ordinary. BF4 Battlefield 4
DTS Descriptive Translation Studies
You can never be prepared for certain events in life, they change you, ESA Entertainment Software Association
and their consequences turn your world upside down. Meeting your FIGS French, Italian, German, Spanish
husband’s casket as he makes his final journey home. The prospect of FPS First Person Shooter
raising your children alone. Living the rest of your days without the one GILT Globalization, Internationalization, Localization, Translation
person that loved you unconditionally and never let you down. In truth, GL Game Localization
these men never let anyone down, which is why they are no longer here IDEA Italian Interactive Digital Entertainment Association
today. LISA Localization Industry Standards Association
ME Mass Effect
These amazing warriors chose to spend their brief but amazing lives ME3 Mass Effect 3
with us. We raise their children. We honor and remember them, we live MMOG Massively Multiplayer Online Game
in the present, and we look to the future. They knew we would have MOH Medal of Honor
the strength to carry on in the face of tragedy, and to become stronger, MOHW Medal of Honor Warfighter
more amazing versions of ourselves. They knew we would never be QA Quality Assurance
defined by their passing but inspired by their memory to live more fully RPG Role-Playing Game
and to make each moment we are given count. ST Source Text
(Stacey) TS Translation Studies
TT Target Text
As regards the translation of this second quotation, although Stacey Freiwald UI User Interface
refers to a real-world woman, she is not a “public domain” person and the VO Voice Over
transfer of her speech during her husband’s funeral is known only through
the game. This seems to imply that translators are not constrained by a text
which has been officially rendered into Italian and Spanish, as opposed to
Kennedy’s speech. However, the transfer of this second and long quotation,
which is quite literal on the whole, seems to require translators to reproduce
the same rhetoric as the original to be effective.
In more detail, some expressions must be read in the light of the legendary
representation of US Navy SEALs. The US culture values and beliefs related



Acknowledgments
My gratitude goes to all the people who have supported this project, both
consciously and unconsciously. First, I would like to thank Professor Stefania
Nuccorini and Professor Serenella Zanotti for their generous contributions
of time, ideas, and suggestions. I thank them for sharing their knowledge
and for having accompanied me during the research process in their distinc-
tive, special manner: both caring and authoritative, an extremely rare com-
bination. The joy and enthusiasm they show for their work were contagious
and motivational to me, even during tough times.
My grateful thanks go to Professor Miguel Bernal Merino and Professor
Carmen Mangiron, for their time, interest, and insightful comments on
my research, as well as for their kind support during my research stays in
London and Barcelona. Their pioneering works aroused my interest in game
localization and their great expertise contributed to the study presented in
this book.
I would also like to thank Electronic Arts, and especially Anneta
Mitsopoulou, for their open-minded and far-sighted approach and for their
constant willingness to answer my questions.
My sincere thanks go to the publisher and the editors Elysse Preposi,
Helena Parkinson, and Ruth Berry for being very supportive. I would also
like to thank both the anonymous reviewers for their insights and sugges-
tions, and my friend reviewers Anna Connealy, Joanna Fallon, and Anna
Rita Gerardi for improving the quality of my manuscript.
And last but not least, my deepest gratitude goes to all my beloved fami-
lies: my parents and sister, my partner, and my friends, for their understand-
ing, patience, and encouragement during all the stages of this project. Thank
you very much.
Realia and Irrealia in Game Translation 121
to the military role, which are conveyed through the words used to refer to
these soldiers, must be transferred with the same emphasis. “Real life super-
heroes”, “defend”, “great nation”, “warrior”, “blessed with a higher sense
of purpose”, “fate”, the dichotomy of extraordinary-versus-ordinary man,
“staring death in the face”, “final journey”, “brief but amazing lives” are
just a few of the loaded words and concepts Stacey Freiwald uses to com-
memorate her husband and, with him, the entire US Army.
The use of this quotation, at the end of the game, aims at testifying to
MoHW developers’ deep reverence to these soldiers through the perspective of
their wives, who represent the personal and private side of the tragedy which,
needless to say, affects the whole bereaved family. As the game executive
producer Greg Goodrich reveals (cit. in Campbell 2012, online), the MoHW
team “had the privilege of spending a lot of time with these guys” and
get a real sense of the types of human beings these people are. They have
the same sort of worries as you or me, paying bills, family. But then they
flip that switch between who they are as humans and who they are as
operators, and these superheroes go and do extraordinary things.
(Goodrich cit. in Campbell 2012, online)
Accordingly, in order to reproduce the linguistic tribute, it is possible to
speculate that translators had to resort to their rhetorical or literary writing
skills.
For the purposes of comprehensiveness, it seems worth mentioning that
intertextuality in MoHW also concerns sound and, in particular, it includes
a song of the game’s soundtrack resulting from the collaboration between
the game developers and the US rock band Linkin Park. As the game pub-
lisher announced in a press release during the marketing campaign, “Castle
of Glass” serves as the “warrior-inspired” theme song. “Consistent with the
dramatic themes and authentic action within the game”, the song “looks at
the life of a soldier” and “elaborates on the many sacrifices they and their
families make” (Electronic Arts 2012, online). Moreover, the “Castle of
Glass” official video features “a unique mix of live action footage edited
with gameplay recordings taken from Medal of Honor Warfighter” (ibid.),
thus it is “based on a mutual relationship with the game, providing a
summary of the story contained within the game” (Robinson 2016, 17).
Although no mention is made in game texts, this song clearly exemplifies
both a non‑verbal intertextual reference to pop culture, namely US pop
music, and its use in video games’ soundtracks.
In the meeting ground of video games with music is set intertextuality in
Battlefield 4 and expresses itself in two references made to songs. First, Bonnie
Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart” (1983) plays in the background during
the game’s prologue, and is linked to the BF4 game world through an explicit
mention made by one of the characters, namely Pac. While sinking into the
122 Realia and Irrealia in Game Translation
Caspian Sea in Baku, Pac says “Oh, man, I don’t wanna die to this song” and
Tyler’s 1980s biggest career hit is the referent of “this song”. Its transfer does
not pose any issue since translators deal with a simple common noun in the two
target languages. Secondly, and more relevantly for the nature of this book, an
intertextual reference to the American culture folk music is made by another
character, namely Dunn, when, seriously wounded and with a leg amputated,
he escapes from Azerbaijani forces by car with Pac, Irish, and Recker, at the
end of the mission set in Baku. Dunn is going into shock, the pain due to
amputation and bleeding causes him to have an auditory hallucination and
he utters the line contained in example (4.13). This is a reference to the song
titled “Dixie” by US composer Daniel Decatur Emmett, which was written
in 1859 and became the marching song and de facto national anthem of the
Confederate States of America during the American Civil War (1861–1865)
and of the South thereafter (Wright 2013, 175–176). Indeed, “Dixie” refers to
the Southern US States according to the Encyclopedia Britannica (online). No
background sound can be heard when this line is uttered, the opening bars of
“Dixie” are playing only in Dunn’s mind but the intertextual reference to this
song suggests that he is delirious, and his death is approaching.

(4.13) DUNN: Anyone else hearing the opening bars of “Dixie”?

DUNN: Qualcun altro sente il pezzo di apertura di “Dixie”?
DUNN: ¿Alguien más oye los primeros compases de “Dixie”?

“Dixie” is transferred by means of retention in both target texts, and since

no explanation is provided, players may not understand the referent, whose
culture-specificity makes it difficult to recognize. Players can probably only
deduce that it is a piece of music thanks to the verb “hear” and the noun
phrase “opening bars”. However, while the direct translation of “opening
bars” into primeros compases makes it clearer in Spanish, the Italian pezzo
di apertura [opening piece] is a less intelligible generalization. Conversely,
prime battute, battute iniziali, or battute di apertura [opening bars] would
have been the suitable counterpart, but also a hyponym used as a synecdo-
che such as note [notes] would have allowed players to identify the musical
nature of the reference.
In the science-fiction game world of Mass Effect 3, intertextuality takes a
different shape. Four instances of this phenomenon are found, and they are
all expressed through the human character Ashley Williams. As discussed
in Section 4.2.2, the first intertextual reference lies in her name “Ashley”
and the abbreviation “Ash”, which are inspired by the protagonist of the
American horror media franchise Evil Dead (1981–Present), according to
Mass Effect Wiki (online). The other three intertextual references are of
a literary nature and lie in her middle name and in two quotations which
testify to the influence her poetry-loving father had on her education. First,
Ashley William’s middle name “Madeline” is a reference to Victorian
writer Alfred Tennyson’s 1830 namesake poem (Mass Effect Wiki, online).

1 Introduction
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 “success story [of video games] was fully depend-
ent, 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 unprec-
edented demands of multimedia interactive products” (Bernal-Merino
2011a, 11). The field of game localization arose exactly from the industry’s
unique needs: allowing video games to go beyond cultural and linguistic
borders in order to reach players in different territories, each representing a
“locale”, which is “a specific combination of region, language and character
encoding” (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 mar-
ket, notwithstanding the fast growth of emerging areas such as South East
Asia and India. North America is the second-largest region by game rev-
enues ($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,
DOI: 10.4324/9781003001935-1
Realia and Irrealia in Game Translation 123
Second, as illustrated in the dialog line in (4.14), Ashley quotes the whole
second stanza of the poem of another Victorian writer, namely William
Ernest Henley’s 1888 “Invictus”, and later she overtly mentions the source,
as in (4.15). Finally, as in example (4.16), in order to please his/her beloved
Ashley, Commander Shepard quotes the final four lines of the third stanza
of Alfred Tennyson’s 1854 poem titled “The Charge of the Light Brigade”.
(4.14) “In the fell clutch of circumstance, I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance, my head is bloody, but unbowed”.
“La morsa feroce degli eventi non m’ha tratto smorfia o grido.

Sferzata a sangue dalla sorte non s’è piegata la mia testa”.
“En las feroces garras de la circunstancia, no he gemido ni gritado.
Bajo los golpes del azar, mi cabeza sangra, pero no se inclina”.
(4.15) Invictus, by Henley. One of my dad’s sappy poets.
Invictus, di Henley. Uno dei poeti sdolcinati di mio padre.
Invictus, de Henley. Uno de los poetas sentimentaloides de mi padre.
(4.16) “Boldly they rode and well, into the jaws of Death, into the mouth
of Hell”.
“E prodi essi cavalcarono, nelle fauci della Morte, nella bocca

dell’Inferno”.
“Y valientes cabalgaron a las fauces de la muerte, a la boca del
infierno”.
As regards the context of the dialog excerpts above, in (4.14) and (4.15),
the two characters are talking about Ashley’s relatives who managed to
save themselves from the Reapers’ attack although her sister’s husband was
killed in action. Thus, they start discussing the horrors of war, especially
from the viewpoint of soldiers’ families. Greatly discouraged, Ashley tries
to boost their morale by quoting one of the most famous poems by William
Ernest Henley which, as she explains, “it’s about not giving up”. The dialog
line in (4.16), on the contrary, is uttered just before the final fight against
the Reapers. It could be the last time Shepard and Ashley speak to each
other and quoting a literary work Ashley loves seems to Shepard a suitable
antidote in order to hearten her.
To discuss the translation of these four intertextual references, first, it is
important to mention that, while Ashley’s middle name never occurs in the cor-
pus, “Ashley” and its abbreviation “Ash” are always retained in both localiza-
tions, as explored and evaluated in Section 4.2.2. Secondly, as for the quotation
in (4.15), the title of Henley’s poem is retained in both target languages as it is:
“invictus” is a Latin word made of the prefix “in-” and the past participle of the
verb “vincĕre” [win] and means “unconquered, undefeated” and also “invinci-
ble”. As a proper name, and also thanks to Italian and Spanish familiarity with
Latin words, retention proves to be effective.
124 Realia and Irrealia in Game Translation
As regards the quotation of the stanza, a brief digression is useful. As Guerra
(2011, 209) explains, Henley’s poem made itself known to an Italian audience
via director Clint Eastwood’s 2009 movie titled Invictus about South African
politician Nelson Mandela. The poem is indeed recited in a very important
scene by Mandela (interpreted by actor Morgan Freeman), in order to lift his
spirits during imprisonment for apartheid. Before 2009, according to Guerra
(ibid.), both studies on Henley’s poetry and his works were hardly accessible.
In this view, Invictus the movie served a popularizing function for “Invictus”
the poem. Nevertheless, Guerra (ibid.) complains that the Italian translation
of the poem was produced under the severe constraints of the dubbing process
which distorts the actual meaning and limits the comprehension of the text, as
envisioned by the author. A more in-depth analysis of Henley’s poem and the
comparison between Guerra’s translation and the one quoted in the movie is
beyond the scope of this book. What is more relevant here is that in Italian the
poem’s filmic version is the same as ME3 Ashley Williams’ quotation. On the
contrary, in Spanish, the translation of the stanza is not based on the movie
rendition and different versions may be found, probably because, as happens
in Italy, Henley’s works are not well known to the general Spanish audience.
Given the absence and, consequently, the constraint, of an official translation,
it is possible to speculate that translators’ research work was limited to finding
one of the versions available on the media which, interestingly, in Italian cor-
responds to a filmic quotation, thus showing how cinema may turn out to be a
source and a reference for language professionals in game localization.
With regard to the quotation in (4.16), which comes from Alfred
Tennyson’s “The Charge of the Light Brigade”, which is in turn a hom-
age to the Battle of Balaclava during the Crimean War (1853–1856) and
which is literally referred to as “La carica della brigata leggera” and “La
carga de la brigada ligera” in Italian and Spanish, respectively, it seems
that no official translations exist but varied interpretations are provided on
the Internet. In ME3, the approach is a direct translation which takes into
account the poetic nature of the dialog line. For example, the marked posi-
tion of the emphatic adverb “boldly” preceding the subject in the source
text is kept in both target texts and rendered into the Italian high-register
adjectives prode and valiente [valiant].
On the whole, the transfer of these references present translators with dif-
ferent challenges since, on the one hand, retention allows them to straight-
forwardly deal with titles and, on the other hand, when quotations are made
from works which are not mainstream and, more importantly, whose local
version, if any, is almost inaccessible, they can rely on ready-made transla-
tions from other media or they can make use of their poetic writing skills.
4.6 Geographical References
A fundamental “component of a game world is the gamespace, understood
as the setting for the gameplay” or game experience (Egenfeldt-Nielsen
2 Introduction
Japanese, and particularly English, the latter as either native and/or work-
ing 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 perva-
sive in today’s 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 “the leading form of entertainment” 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., 4–5), 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 35–44
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 tar-
get European languages for video games is commonly referred to as “FIGS”
(French, Italian, German, and Spanish), an acronym which was coined in
the1980s and still represents “the minimum default group of languages that
most games are translated to” (Bernal-Merino 2011a, 14–15). However,
the number of target languages for major games now routinely exceeds ten,
including both European and Asian languages (Hasegawa cit. in O’Hagan
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 O’Malley-Deming 2012, 45). Publishers usually opt for either partial
or full localization on the basis of the target locale significance and the pos-
sible return on investment. The inclusion of Italian and Spanish into the
FIGS group from the beginning of the industry’s 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).
 Introduction
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 €2.179 mil-
lion 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%), adven-
ture (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 develop-
ment 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 con-
cerns 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 €1,747 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 adven-
ture (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 land-
scape 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 O’Hagan and Mangiron (2013, 26) point out “game localization intro-
duces dimensions that challenge some of the current assumptions about
translation, thus raising epistemic issues for the discipline” and it also
“involves dealing with a new medium whose characteristics may not be fully
accounted for in the current theoretical framework available in Translation
Studies” (ibid., 40). The professional practice of game localization “could
3 Realia and Irrealia in Game Translation 125
et al. 2016, 206). Spatial representation can range from two-dimensional
to three-dimensional, from open to very restrictive landscapes, and from
indoor corridors to space travel. The gamespace is a powerful tool to engage
players and make them feel they are inhabiting a world and not just per-
ceiving space representation. Geography, story, and gameplay are strongly
interrelated (ibid., 129), since the geographical dimension of a game world
depends on its entertainment value, which in this book lies in ludic war
experiences set between realism and fictionality.
In Medal of Honor Warfighter, military operations take place in real
world hotspots central to the War on Terror and the geographical extent
of this game world translates into toponyms which appear on-screen in two
text types. First, as example (4.17) illustrates, the information regarding
every mission’s geographical setting is displayed on the bottom left of the
screen at the beginning of each level. The names of cities, regions, areas, and
countries are written in capital letters and occur together with their latitude
and longitude coordinates. Although these geographical references are made
in a text type other than dialog lines, and consequently are not included in
the analysis, they are worth briefly mentioning because they are peculiar to
MoHW texts, especially in view of geographical realism. Secondly, a wide
number of toponyms are mentioned in dialogs between characters, includ-
ing vast regions like East Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, or the Arabian Sea,
cities and countries like Washington in the USA, Islamabad, Karachi, and
Chitral in Pakistan, Mogadishu in Somalia, Manila and Isabela City in the
Philippines, Sarajevo in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Dubai in the United Arab
Emirates, and Damascus in Syria.
(4.17) CHITRAL, PAKISTAN
35°50’ N 71°47’ E – Inspired by Actual Events
Also, in Battlefield 4 the close geographical relationship between the game
world and the real world becomes immediately clear in action, since missions
are named after the locations where they take place: Baku in Azerbaijan,
Shanghai, South China Sea and Kashgar in China, Singapore, the Kunlun
Mountains in southern Central Asia, and Suez in Egypt. Accordingly, geo-
graphical references occurring in game dialogs correspond to these places.
As a short digression, although no occurrence is found in this book cor-
pus, it seems relevant to mention that in the BF4 database two toponyms
are mentioned with a humorous purpose: “Sweden” and “Carolina”. These
are references to locations which are not connected to the story but repre-
sent, on the one hand, the culture of the game developer and, on the other,
a specific aspect of US culture.
DICE, Battlefield 4 developer, is a Swedish company based in Stockholm
and this self-reference is playfully used as a guarantee of quality. Indeed,
“Sweden” occurs in a dialog line uttered by the Chinese character Hannah
126 Realia and Irrealia in Game Translation
in order to reassure the US marine Irish that the C4 charges they are going
to plant on the blind spot of Admiral Chang’s warship in the game final mis-
sion are secure. In the relevant scene, Hannah explicitly says: “They’re made
in Sweden”. As regards “Carolina”, this toponym is mentioned by Irish dur-
ing the conversation with Hannah which can be heard at the very end of the
game while closing credits roll on the screen. Irish makes a reference to his
uncle Jay and calls him “Carolina boy”, a countryman who knows the back
country very well, as opposed to Irish who defines himself as a city boy. In
this sense, “Carolina” seems to be a reference to the rural culture of that
area of the USA and to the city-country dichotomy.
Consistent with its science-fiction narrative genre, the geographi-
cal setting of Mass Effect 3 war players’ fight against alien invasion is
the real-world Milky Way galaxy, which is fictionally reinterpreted as
a large spiral system consisting of several star clusters linked together
by the huge network of mass relays which allow interstellar travel.
Interestingly, as Mitchell (2012, online) from NASA Blueshift project
remarks, “the geography of Mass Effect is an interesting mix of realism
and fiction”. In other words, geographical references in ME3 exemplify
both realia and irrealia.
According to Mitchell (2012, online), some of the places players can visit
are “real astronomical objects”, and “the game’s developers may have had
some serious NASA-based inspiration” for their design. Indeed, as ME3
executive producer Casey Hudson explains (cit. in Mitchell 2012, online),
BioWare designers “tried to include real-life locations wherever possible,
such as famous nebulae, stars, the moon etc.” After all,
part of the goal with the Mass Effect universe was to set it in the real
world, so that even as we created storylines of epic scale and exotic
science-fiction themes, it would all appear to be an extension of the
astronomy that you can read about today.
(Hudson cit. in Mitchell 2012, online)
Geographical realia in ME3 include planets like Earth and Mars, satellites
like the Moon, stars like the Sun, countries like Australia and the United
Kingdom, cities like London and Vancouver, and “geographical objects”
(Díaz-Cintas and Remael 2014, 201) like the Big Ben of London. The
majority of these existing referents are expressed through their conventional
toponyms, except for two cases: Sol and Luna. These geographical realia
refer to the Sun and the Moon, respectively, but both forms are high-register
Latinisms normally used as the names of the Roman god and goddess repre-
senting the Sun and the Moon, respectively (Merriam Webster Dictionary,
online). In this light, it is possible to speculate that these two unusual forms
are used as proper names aimed at producing a foreignizing stylistic effect in
English, which is inevitably neutralized in both target Romance languages,
where Latin-based equivalent toponyms are the norm.
4 Introduction
conceivably result in a change in the perception of translation in the 21st
century with regards to traditional views on equivalence, creativity, author-
ship” (Bernal-Merino 2015, 2–3) and “in certain aspects, may challenge to
traditional theoretical models in translation because of the implications of
their [video games’] interactivity and the international simultaneous ship-
ment model the game industry employs” (ibid., 11).
In this light, the main objective of this book is to contribute to the ongo-
ing scholarly debate on game localization and translation by outlining cor-
pus-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 devel-
oped 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 translators’ decision-making
process from a descriptive viewpoint.
The aim to sustain a descriptive work theoretically should not be inter-
preted 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 pur-
poses 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 selec-
tion 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 fic-
tionality 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 translators’ approach to the translation of game texts,
which is the major research hypothesis of this book. While the notion of
“real world” 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 “game world” is “an imaginary world”, “an
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 where” s/he pretends to be (Adams 2014, 137).
 Introduction 5 Realia and Irrealia in Game Translation
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 Huizinga’s
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 “all the surroundings and places experienced by a fic-
tional character […] that together constitute a unified sense of place which is
ontologically different from the actual, material, and so-called ‘real’ world”
(Wolf 2014, 461). So, in this sense, “game world” 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 con-
tinuously 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 phenom-
ena from an academic perspective. To my knowledge, this subject is still
unexplored in game localization, although, with reference to slightly dif-
ferent 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 soft-
ware 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 asso-
ciations and, at the same time, appeal directly to people’s knowledge and
127
Lastly, as regards geographical realia and culture-specificity, it seems rel-
evant to mention that a purposeful geographical reference to Vancouver,
and therefore to Canadianness (Kuling 2014), is made visually at the begin-
ning of the game. As Sapieha (2012) reports, this is a deliberate and expres-
sive choice of the Canadian game designers, since ME3 is the first episode
of the trilogy which offers players a real-world geographical background.
As art director Derek Watts himself admits (cit. in Sapieha 2012, online),
to choose a suitable setting for the beginning of the Reapers’ invasion, the
developers’ Canadian origin was the reason for selecting a Canadian city
and Vancouver, which had just finished the 2010 Winter Olympics, and
particularly Canada Place, Vancouver’s most iconic landmark, were ideal
candidates.
The science-fictional extension of the Milky Way galaxy envisioned by
ME3 developers is pure astronomical imagery which presents, however,
as Mitchell observes (2012, online), “an impressive level of realism. You
can explore nebulae and star systems, collect data about exoplanets […]
and so much of the imagery looks like something straight from a NASA
press release”. This rich and varied galaxy includes numerous geographical
locations, each with very precise position and distinctive characteristics in
terms of length, width, weight, orbital distance, pressure, temperature, lay-
out, population, history, etc. In this regard, ME3 executive producer Casey
Hudson argues that the design was based on some basic astronomical and
mathematical principles that provided reasonably believable results (cit. in
Mitchell 2012). Conversely, but more relevantly for the purposes of this
study, the naming process of ME3 geographical irrealia was completely ran-
dom and meant the concatenation of several lists of word segments which
created strange names which “worked surprisingly well” (Hudson cit. in
Mitchell 2012, online).
The analysis of geographical irrealia in the corpus shows several rand-
omized toponyms which include, among others, planets representing the
homeworlds or colonies of alien cultures (Tuchanka, Palaven, Thessia,
Rannoch, Haestrom, Sur’Kesh, Kahje, and Taetrus), human colonies like
Benning and Ferris Fields, space stations like the Citadel and Omega, a
small moon named Torfan, a huge nebula called Perseus Veil, a place for
the afterlife called the Void and, on a much smaller scale, other toponyms
referring to nightclubs like the Purgatory and the Flux, one hospital called
Huerta Memorial, and one complex of offices, shops, embassies, restau-
rants, etc., called the Presidium, all situated on the Citadel space station.
As Figure 4.3 shows, in translation, the geographical dimension of the
three game worlds expressed in realia does not create any referential vacu-
ums: real toponyms are all directly translated into equivalent toponyms, the
conventional forms established by competent authorities, the ones we find on
atlases. Conversely, the referential gaps behind geographical irrealia might
represent a challenge for translators, but the above-mentioned arbitrary
naming process for the majority of ME3 fictional toponyms may explain the
128 Realia and Irrealia in Game Translation
100% 100%
100%
80%
60% 60%
60%
40% 40%
40%
20%
0%
Italian Spanish Italian Spanish
Retention Direct translation
Realia Irrealia
Figure 4.3 Translation Strategies for Geographical References.
tendency toward retention in both target languages, which represents 60%
of instances. Indeed, the strategy of direct translation is adopted to transfer
few geographical irrealia which carry some sort of meaning, like the Citadel,
the Perseus Veil, and the Void.
The Citadel is the most frequently occurring fictional place name,
accounting for 30% of references within irrealia. It is a “colossal deep-
space station” which “serves as the capital of the Citadel Council”, the
latter can be defined as the galaxy governing body (Mass Effect Wiki,
online). The Citadel is one of the most iconic features of the Mass Effect
trilogy and, according to game fans (ibid.), it seems to pay homage to the
science-fictional space station Babylon 5 of the namesake television series (J.
Michael Straczynski, 1993–1998). This proper name is directly translated
into Cittadella and Ciudadela in Italian and Spanish, respectively and the
original meaning of city fortress or stronghold that the English language
has borrowed from Middle French [citadelle] and Old Italian [cittadella] is
maintained. Similarly, the motivation behind “Perseus Veil” which might
be named after the real Perseus Arm of the Milky Way (Mass Effect Wiki,
online) is transferred with a direct translation into Velo di Perseo and Velo
de Perseo, and also the concept behind a semantically transparent name like
the “Void” for an afterlife place is made clear in its direct equivalent ver-
sions in Italian and Spanish, Vuoto and Vacío, respectively.
4.7 Ethnic References
The ethnic dimension is another important means of structuring the three
game worlds in this book. Deeply dependent on their geographical extent, it
6 Introduction
emotions as they can evoke images and feelings that are familiar to the
audience.
As O’Hagan and Mangiron (2013, 103) point out, in video games “cul-
tural issues both at micro and macro levels loom large, especially for major
titles, as the industry seeks finely tuned cultural adaptation to appeal to tar-
get users”. This delicate negotiation can in turn call for translators’ creativ-
ity 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 it’s not by chance that the “founding father” 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 O’Hagan 2006).
More specifically, video games offer interactive fun and interactivity is
arguably the most accurate defining characteristic of gaming. The “reader”
of the videoludic text, namely the player, is not a passive user but rather a
co-author. “Players co-author games by playing them, since if the player
doesn’t interact with the game and make choices about what will happen,
nothing will happen” (Gee 2007, 8). In this sense, it is easy to understand
how detrimental a translation that misdirects the player and interferes in
his/her gameplay and, thus, with his/her fun can be. For example, a ren-
dition which is unclear, or which does not replicate the original function
can have severe consequences in video games and these consequences, e.g.
denied access to further content, or abrupt and frustrating end of players’
engagement, seem bigger and more dangerous in games than in other media.
Culture-specificity between realism and fictionality may be especially
challenging in game translation, and inappropriate renditions may be dis-
ruptive in players’ immersion into the game experience. After all, “modern
video games are technically complex cultural artefacts designed to engross
the end user, where the nature of engagement is more than merely functional
and encroaches into the affective dimensions” (O’Hagan and Mangiron
2013, 103).
As already mentioned, the main hypothesis of this book is that the
relationship between the fictional game world and the real word, i.e. the
degree of realism or fictionality of game contents, may influence transla-
tors’ approach to the linguistic and cultural localization of video games.
Accordingly, this study aims to map out the strategies activated by transla-
tors in response to cultural constraints within a realism-fictionalism1 spec-
trum of video games (Dietz 2006), and to detect the tendencies and patterns,
if any, that are prevalent in the case of game translation from English into
Italian and Spanish.
The specific lens through which the translational analysis is carried out
is that of realia and irrealia: realia refer to real entities existing in the real
world in contrast to “irrealia” (Loponen 2009, 167) which are “non-exist-
ing realia tied to a fictional setting, whose effect is to define and determine
 Introduction 7 Realia and Irrealia in Game Translation
the fictional cultural, geographical and historical settings” (original empha-
sis). Therefore, since realia is a problematic term when applied to fictional
texts which describe fictional worlds (Leppihalme 2011, 126), in this study
it is reinterpreted in opposition to irrealia to indicate all references to the
actual world.
In Translation Studies, realia represent items which have been referred
to with a vast array of terms by scholars,2 but all of them agree upon their
cultural specificity. As Palumbo (2009, 33) suggests, they are “expres-
sions referring to elements or concepts that are closely associated with a
certain language and culture” and, one might add, with a certain reality.
Consequently, in this study, realia represent references to real cultures while
irrealia represent references to fictional cultures, although the very concept
of culture related to video games is extremely complex, as will be discussed
in Chapters 2 and 3, from the perspectives of game localization and of game
translation research, respectively.
In conclusion, the theoretical foundation of this book is primarily
Game Localization (O’Hagan and Mangiron 2013, Bernal-Merino 2015),
which has been referred to as “the periphery” of Audiovisual Translation
Studies (Bogucki 2013, 30), while subscribing to the broader descriptive
framework. The primacy given to Game Localization (GL hereafter) as
theoretical background is based on the belief that, by adapting Romero-
Fresco’s claim (2012, 183) concerning Audiovisual Translation (AVT),
“the most fruitful studies on” GL should “include or assume to some
extent two basic notions: the independence of” GL “as an autonomous
discipline and its dependence on other related disciplines”. “Although
apparently contradictory, these notions are perfectly compatible. The
first one may be regarded as a starting point. As an autonomous dis-
cipline within Translation Studies”, GL “is an entity in its own right,
rather than a subgroup or a lesser manifestation of” AVT and software
localization (ibid.). In my opinion, scholars should not only “resort to
extended versions of” TS models, but create, if and whenever possible,
GL “own models focusing on the specificity of this area. And here is
where the second notion comes in, given that an important part of this
specificity lies in its interdisciplinary nature. In this sense, if the auton-
omy of” GL “is the starting point for research, its interdisciplinarity is
the way forward […] as it is drawing on other disciplines that” GL “finds
new and fruitful avenues of research” (ibid.).
Going into the overall structure of this book, Chapters 2 and 3 describe
the theoretical and methodological framework of the research, respectively,
while Chapters 4 and 5 are devoted to the linguistic and translational analy-
sis. The three games representing the realism-fictionalism spectrum of video
games that the corpus of this study aims to simulate are examined on the
basis of the degree of realism and fictionality of their game worlds, which
has been assessed according to the set of criteria described in Chapter 3. The
analysis of the translation of realia and irrealia found in game dialogs – the
129
represents a framework which gives additional meaning to players’ experi-
ence. As typically happens in imaginary worlds, the “clash between cultures
provides much of the narrative conflict” (Wolf 2018, 32), since it justifies
and defines the wars players fight, while the degree of realism and/or fic-
tionality affects the cultures at war, which serve as referents to the linguistic
expressions falling into ethnic realia and irrelia.
In Medal of Honor Warfighter ethnic references belong to realia, as the
peoples inhabiting the game world represent real-world cultures which either
actively take part in the game events such as the US American, the Arab, the
Pakistani, the Filipino, and the Bosnian peoples, or are simply mentioned due
to the global scope of the war represented, such as the German, the Russian,
and the Serb peoples. Within the dichotomy between source and target cul-
ture and/or other cultures, Medal of Honor Warfighter is the only game of the
corpus in which the source culture of its developers is the same as the game’s
protagonists, namely the US culture. The MoHW world is indeed a virtual stage
where the US military elite soldiers lead and win the war on terror. In this light,
it comes as no surprise that in game dialogs 50% of references are made to the
USA. Similarly, given the America-versus-Islam perspective, references to “the
evil” Muslim peoples were to be expected, mainly affecting the Pakistani and
the Filipino ones. In sum, ethnic realia in MoHW are expressed through nation-
ality nouns and adjectives which do not pose any issues in localization, and they
are all directly translated in both target languages.
Ethnic references in Battlefield 4 fall into realia too. The inhabitants of
this game world belong to the real-world cultures connected to the story,
such as the US American, the Chinese, the Russian, and the Azerbaijani
peoples, that is to say the cultures fighting the political-fiction war of 2020.
Like in MoHW, these references, which are expressed through nationality
nouns and adjectives, do not pose any problems for language professionals,
who tend to opt for direct translation.
However, unlike MoHW, some ethnic references in BF4 are used or
transferred with a loaded meaning, which seems to motivate the use of
another translation strategy in both languages, namely transcreation. In
Spanish, a loaded solution replaces “American” when disparagingly used by
the Russian character Dima to address Irish, as in example (4.18). Yanqui
is indeed a colloquial and derogatory expression to name US people, which
makes the ongoing ethnic conflict between the two characters explicit,
and thus between the two countries and cultures. In Italian, as in example
(4.19), transcreation affects “ruski”’, a variant spelling of “russki” which
represents an English offensive form for “Russian”, seemingly deriving
from the transliteration of the adjective “Russian” in the Russian language
(Merriam Webster Dictionary, online). In translation, while Spanish profes-
sionals toned down the register and opted for the neutral ruso [Russian], in
Italian it is transcreated into compagno [comrade], which carries a politi-
cally loaded meaning, based on the common and stereotypical association
between Russia and Soviet communism.
130 Realia and Irrealia in Game Translation
(4.18) DIMA: Another American.
DIMA: Un altro americano.
DIMA: Otro yanqui.
(4.19) IRISH: Okay, ruski. Get that gate open!
IRISH: OK, compagno. Apri quel cancello!
IRISH: Venga, ruso. ¡Abre esa puerta!
The galactic scale of the Mass Effect 3 game world remarkably broadens the
quantity and quality of ethnic references, which consequently may fall into
either realia or irrealia. Moreover, culture-specificity within realia quickly
fades in ME3 in comparison with the geographical dimensions associated
with real-world cultures in MoHW and BF4. Indeed, in the ME3 galaxy,
the only real-world species is human, and the science-fictional genre of this
game narrative inevitably impacts the representation of this macro culture
which pivots on the opposition to alien cultures. Human characters in ME3
are numerous and prominent in the game’s narrative and the humanity of
the playable protagonist was a deliberate and strategic choice made by the
developers to give players a foothold in the setting, a frame of reference to
experience a universe through human eyes. In the words of ME3 creative
director Mac Walters (cit. in Farokhmanesh 2016, online), “Mass Effect
has always been a very human-centric story” which “gives the players […]
something they can relate back to”, since “ultimately we’re all humans”.
All ethnic realia in ME3 are nouns and adjectives, like “human”,
“humans”, and “humanity”, all expectedly rendered into equivalent coun-
terparts. Thus, within realia, ethnic references do not present any special
elements to be discussed, except for the Italian non-standard use of an ini-
tial capital letter for Umani [humans], which exemplifies a typographical
tendency affecting all nouns which refer to species in Italian, also within
irrealia.
In sum, as Figure 4.4 illustrates, the overall tendency when dealing with
ethnic realia is direct translation, accounting for 98% of references, with
very few interesting exceptions representing the use of transcreation as
a strategy to creatively reinterpret the contextual meaning of nationality
nouns and adjectives.
Going back to the wide range of cultures populating the ME3 universe,
it is within irrealia that the majority of ethnic references can be observed.
Players interact with numerous invented alien species which cooperate with
each other and with real-world humans to stop the Reapers’ invasion. All
imaginary races have their own unique features, with specific biological, cul-
tural, economic, governmental, and military traits which demonstrate how
accurately developed the “environmental dimension” of the ME galaxy-size
world is, in terms of “cultural context” (Rollings and Adams 2003, 69).
More importantly, all fictional alien cultures in ME3 have a name
including, among others, the Geth, the Krogan, the Turian, the Asari, the
8 Introduction
latter is the text type this research focuses on – is supported by the discus-
sion of the games’ most relevant features as representational and narrative
media from a cultural perspective. Given these preliminary clarifications,
this book will be structured as follows:
Chapter 2 details the theoretical context in which the study is situated.
It illustrates and provides an overview of the contemporary debates around
fundamental background notions like translation, localization, internation-
alization, and culturalization. Moreover, the chapter is intended to equip
readers with a basic grounding in the issues and key aspects which distinc-
tively characterize the translation of video games, i.e. textual non-linearity,
multitextuality, and playability, since they inform the subsequent linguistic
analysis.
Chapter 3 deals with the methodological stand of the study. It outlines the
research questions, the theoretical model of the realism-fictionalism spec-
trum which serves as the background to the research hypothesis, it describes
the corpus which has been purposefully created, the analytical procedure
followed, the objects under examination, namely realia and irrealia, and the
working taxonomies used to perform the analysis reported in the following
chapters.
Chapter 4 presents the linguistic and translation analysis of the research.
The realia and irrealia found in the three games are explored in light of the
classifications described in the previous chapter. Data are quantitatively and
qualitatively examined in order to illustrate the nature and role of realia and
irrealia in the corpus and to discuss the strategies translators used in the two
localizations.
Chapter 5 focuses on a special phenomenon within realia, namely mili-
tary language in war-themed videogames. After an introductory discussion
concerning the nature of this complex language for specific purposes, the
wide range of phenomena it includes are defined, i.e. military titles, clock
code, phonetic alphabet, etc., and investigated in the corpus.
Lastly, Chapter 6 illustrates the most relevant conclusions of the study
and suggests future directions for research. The main findings of the analysis
are summarized and critically discussed, the variety of realia and irrealia is
examined and the consequent diversity of translational approaches is the-
matically interpreted, on the basis of the areas of interface between reality
and fictionality of the game worlds’ dimensions. This chapter also includes
comparative evaluations of the three games in respect of the different cat-
egories realia and irrealia fall into, in order to highlight similarities and
differences and finally evince regularities. Despite the limitations of this
work, which are also outlined in this chapter, the reading of quantitative
and qualitative data presents the theoretical and practical implications of
the research and puts forward several possible avenues for more in-depth
studies which might better describe the role of culture-specificity in game
localization.
 Introduction
1.3 Summary
This chapter has presented the rationale behind this book research. First,
it has offered an overview of the commercial and cultural status of video
games to foreground the role localization and translation play in the inter-
national success of the multimedia interactive entertainment industry. The
global games market has been briefly outlined in order to show the impact
of gaming in today’s society, with special attention to the leading US mar-
ket and to the Italian and Spanish target locales. Moreover, this chapter
explains the aims and scope of this book research, which descriptively
investigates the translation of culture-specificity and, particularly, of realia
and irrealia in a corpus of three war video games, namely Medal of Honor
Warfighter (Electronic Arts 2012), Battlefield 4 (Electronic Arts 2013), and
Mass Effect 3 (Electronic Arts 2012), purposefully selected to represent a
realism-fictionalism spectrum and to explore whether and to what extent
the relationship between the real world and the game world may influence
the linguistic and cultural dimension of video games, and consequently their
localization and translation.
Notes
1 Fictionalism is meant only as a high degree of fictionality and represents a work-
ing term which relates to realism, the other end of a continuum, with no refer-
ence to philosophical notions of the same name, and together with realism it
represents one of the two sides of the same coin, namely the game world, as will
be discussed in Chapter 3.
2 See, for example, Ranzato’s literature review (2015, 53–59).
9 Realia and Irrealia in Game Translation 131
98% 98%
100%
80%
60% 53% 53%
45%
39%
40%
20%
8%
2% 2% 2%
0%
Italian Spanish Italian Spanish Italian Spanish
Retention Direct translation Transcreation
Realia Irrealia
Figure 4.4 Translation Strategies for Ethnic References.
Prothean, the Quarian, the Salarian, the Rachni, the Batarian, and the
Hanar. However, nothing is known about the naming process of these
races, and very few of them seem to have a meaning. The significance of
“Geth”, for example, lies in a diegetic intercultural relationship: the Geth
are a race of networked artificial intelligences that were created by another
alien species, the Quarians, as laborers and tools of war. Indeed, in Khelish
(Quarians’ language) “Geth” means “servant of the people” (Mass Effect
Wiki, online). Another meaningful name is “Prothean”, probably based on
the mythological Titan Prometheus, who gave mortals the gift of fire and
enabled them to learn the arts of civilization (ibid.). The Protheans are the
founding fathers of the Mass Effect universe, they are an extinct alien race
which created the Mass Effect field technology forming the basis of galac-
tic evolution (ibid.). This is the reason why the Protheans are also called
the “Enkindlers” by other races, which metaphorically alludes to light and
knowledge, meaning those who enlighten with their wisdom. In localiza-
tions, this nickname is transcreated into Illuminati [the enlightened] in
Italian and dómines [schoolmasters] in Spanish, both representing creative
interpretations of this evocative name.
Figure 4.4 illustrates the translation strategies used in the transfer of
ethnic irrealia in ME3 and shows a general tendency toward retention in
both target languages, which affects the above-mentioned fictional and
mostly meaningless names and accounts for more than 50% of instances.1
However, while Italian translators completely retained names and, above
all, capitalized them when they serve as a noun referring to the whole
race, even if standard Italian does not capitalize either adjectives or nouns
denoting nationality or affiliation with a place, in Spanish most names are
slightly adapted into a local version made of the consonant-ending root
132 Realia and Irrealia in Game Translation
of the species’ name plus the suffixes -o and -a. For example, “Quarian”,
“Turian”, “Batarian” become quariano/a, turiano/a, batariano/a, respec-
tively. Moreover, findings demonstrate a remarkable use of other strate-
gies: transcreation in Italian and direct translation in Spanish, which affect
the transfer of meaningful names referring to evil alien creatures like the
Reapers, husks, and thresher maws. This points to translators’ willingness
to make the meaning of these names clear, in the case of direct transla-
tion, or to creatively deviate from a literal equivalent to make names sound
more enjoyable to target players with respect to the narrative role these alien
monsters perform in action, in the case of transcreation.
Expectedly enough, the most frequently occurring ethnic references
(36%) are to Commander Shepard’s enemies par excellence: The Reapers.
They are “a highly-advanced machine race of synthetic-organic starships”,
which “reside in dark space” where they hibernate, “dormant for fifty thou-
sand years at a time, before returning to the galaxy” in order to commit
their cyclical genocide (Mass Effect Wiki, online). In this sense, the source of
inspiration may have literary origin: the idea of a terrifying and incompre-
hensible alien intelligence waiting in the depths of space is a feature of hor-
ror works by American author Howard Phillips Lovecraft (ibid.). As regards
their name, from a linguistic and translational perspective, “Reaper” repre-
sents an interesting phenomenon: in English, the meaning of this agentive
noun alludes to this race’s mission to cyclically reap all organic life in the
galaxy. After all, the word “reaper” presents a steady figurative use, espe-
cially in literary works, which refers to war, famine, epidemic, and death.
As regards the latter, indeed, “the Grim Reaper” actually means death,
especially when personified as a man or skeleton with a scythe (Merriam
Webster Dictionary, online). In other words, this race name perfectly serves
its evocative function in English. In localizations, the relationship between
the agricultural image of reaping and the ideas of death and devastation are
transferred with different strategies. As in example (4.20), while in Spanish
“Reapers” is directly translated into segadores, the Italian translator tran-
screated the name into Razziatori [raiders], an agentive noun deriving from
the verb razziare [raid]. A direct translation in Italian would have been mie-
titori since the equivalent verb for “reap” is mietere but Razziatori, possibly
thanks to its double-zed sound and the idea of annihilation associated to
raiding, sounds more frightening.
(4.20) The Reapers are more advanced than we are.
I Razziatori sono più avanzati di noi.
Los segadores son más avanzados que nosotros.
Mietitori, with capital letter, is instead the Italian version of “harvester”, one
of the Reapers’ subtypes, whose name represents another agentive noun which
might be interpreted as a synonym of “reaper” and which is directly translated
into both target languages, being cosechadores the Spanish counterpart.
2 Game Localization
and Translation
2.1 Introduction
The study of video games has seen a surge of interdisciplinary academic
interest since the late 1990s and the areas involved are many and diverse.
Nowadays, the “new medium” and the related cultural, social, and eco-
nomic phenomenon identified as gaming are self-sustained research
topics in Game Studies, “an interdisciplinary domain, with scholars ana-
lyzing games from diverse perspectives, such as anthropology, sociology,
psychology, narratology, semiotics, cultural studies, genre studies, media
studies, and computer studies, to name but a few” (Mangiron 2017,
76). Fundamental readings in this sense are, for example, the works by
Aarseth (1997, 2001), Egenfeldt-Nielsen et al. (2016), Jenkins (2006a,
2006b), Juul (2005), Kerr (2006), Newman (2008, 2013), Rutter and
Bryce (2006), Wolf (2001, 2008, 2012), and Wolf and Perron (2009a,
2014). Video games and gaming are also explored with a focus on lan-
guage in disciplines like Education and Language Learning in particu-
lar (see Gee 2003, 2004, 2007, Gee and Hayes 2011, Lombardi 2013,
Peterson 2013, Prensky 2001, 2006, Reinders 2012, Thomas 2011),
and Linguistics (see Ensslin 2012, 2014, Ensslin and Balteiro 2019, Iaia
2016a), among others.
As regards Translation Studies, the game localization practice went
mainly unobserved until the late 1990s and early 2000s, when the first
papers on this new phenomenon were published by professionals working
in the field. In the last decade, as Mangiron (2017) demonstrates, research
on game localization has gained impetus and the number of books, journal
articles, book chapters, undergraduate, masters, and doctoral dissertations
aiming to shed light on this relatively young area of study has increased
considerably.
The following paragraphs mention only some of the many authors
who have published their works on game localization and contributed
to consolidating it as an established research domain. However, it seems
important to underline that the following list may hardly be considered as
truly representative of the existing and/or potentially available literature
DOI: 10.4324/9781003001935-2
 Game Localization and Translation 11
on game translation and localization, due to a number of reasons: first,
the difficulty in accessing unpublished works, like conference presenta-
tions, undergraduate, masters, and even doctoral theses (see, for example,
O’Hagan and Mangiron 2013, 26–39); secondly, the limitations in read-
ing works written in languages other than English, Spanish, and Italian,
i.e. this book author’s working languages; the awareness that research
might be, but possibly will never be, published due to the obstacles in
accessing materials and information on localization practice in general.
As pointed out by Bernal-Merino (2008b, 2015), Muñoz-Sánchez (2011),
Mangiron (2017), and O’Hagan and Mangiron (2013), most localization
vendors and most mainstream game developers and publishers are unwill-
ing or unable to provide scholars with access to authentic game texts
or localization-related data, which are necessary in Translation Studies.
This means that researchers must resort to other very time-consuming,
and somehow limited activities to study video games. In this sense, as
Mangiron advocates (2017, 86), “academia-industry partnerships would
be beneficial to overcome this hurdle” and, more importantly, would be
advantageous to both.
Going back into the existing literature on the topic, first, special atten-
tion must be paid to three comprehensive and ground-breaking books,
which have paved the way to systematic research within what might be
labeled as Game Localization Studies: Maxwell-Chandler and O’Malley-
Deming’s The Game Localization Handbook (2012), written by two
professionals who adopt an industry-oriented perspective; O’Hagan
and Mangiron’s Game Localization: Translating for the Global Digital
Entertainment Industry (2013) and Bernal-Merino’s Translation and
Localization in Video Games: Making Entertainment Software Global
(2015), which conceptualize the subject as a translational phenomenon.
Moreover, there are other recent monographs which contribute to enrich
the landscape, since they offer a more language-specific approach to the
subject, as happens with publications in Spanish like Localización de
videojuegos: Fundamentos traductológicos innovadores para nuevas
prácticas profesionales by Méndez-González (2015a), Localización de
videojuegos by Muñoz-Sánchez (2017), and La traducción de videojue-
gos by Granell, Mangiron, and Vidal (2017), or because they explore the
phenomenon from or in connection with another scientific perspective,
as in the case of Video Game Translation and Cognitive Semantics by
Sajna (2016).
However, before discussing the literature in detail, it is worth highlight-
ing that many sources can be found online, because game localization is a
young and dynamic field that is driven by technology, led by market forces,
and influenced by popular discourses on video games and the Internet con-
tinuously offers fresh evidence of the lively interest surrounding games as
translatable content for global entertainment. On the contrary, academia
has been slow in giving due attention to translational issues concerning
Realia and Irrealia in Game Translation 133
Associated with the main narrative threat, the cyclical genocide which
destroys all organic life in the galaxy, are the alien races of “husks” and
“thresher maws”. Like the Reapers, these ethnic irrealia have been trans-
ferred with strategies other than retention. Husks are zombies created from
the bodies of organic beings which are used as ground troops by the Reapers
(Mass Effect Wiki, online). Thus, in English, the meaning of this noun,
which refers to the outer covering of seeds and fruits (Merriam Webster
Dictionary, online), is clearly figurative. In localization, this image is tran-
screated into mutante [mutants] in Italian, since direct equivalent words like
buccia, guscio, and pula are not appropriate to refer to cruel alien enemies,
and directly translated into cascarón [eggshell] in Spanish. Thresher maws
are enormous and violent subterranean carnivores, whose name is a noun
phrase which, like the Reapers and harvesters, relates to the domain of agri-
culture to figuratively express a meaning. In ME3 target versions, the link to
agriculture is kept by means of a calque into the Spanish fauces trilladoras,
while in Italian the reference to farming is lost and “thresher maw” is tran-
screated into divoratore [devourer], an agentive noun which conveys the
ideas of eating up greedily, and, by extension, of destroying.
Another important aspect of the ethnic dimension of game worlds is the
properly linguistic representation of other cultures, meaning the representa-
tion of languages other than US American English, which produces a for-
eignizing effect which serves characterization purposes between realism and
fictionality in terms of multilingualism.
In Medal of Honor Warfighter, some “foreign” characters speak
their own languages throughout the game and as mentioned in the clos-
ing credits, for the sake of realism, the audio localization of this game
involved native speaker dialect coaches to record the related dialog lines,
together with native speaker translators to render them into the sub-
titles of the US English version, which later served as the original for
the Italian and Spanish subtitles. In other words, MoHW players may
hear “foreign” languages and read subtitles in US English, Italian, and
Spanish. Characters speaking their own language include a Pakistani
soldier (Urdu), the Cleric (Arabic), a Filipino soldier (Tagalog), and
Bosnian soldiers (Bosnian). However, while the Urdu, Tagalog, and
Bosnian dialog lines are simple military instructions, the Cleric’s mono-
logue when training the playable character Argyrus is a culturally loaded
text containing some key words which apparently belong to the typical
jihadi verbal repertoire, such as “infidels” and “infidel lands”, “cause”,
“worthy”, “jihad” itself, “brothers”, and first-person plural adjectival
and pronominal items such as “our” and “us”. This text is too short to
lend itself to critical discourse analysis, but to look at the big picture of
cultural representation in MoHW, especially as regards Muslim cultures,
this brief mention seemed relevant to show how US game developers
characterize the enemy linguistically and, one might add, trivialize their
way of speaking into an automatous discourse (Schulzke 2013, 209).
134 Realia and Irrealia in Game Translation
In Battlefield 4, “foreign” cultures include the Chinese and the Russians.
As regards the former, although players can hear Chinese characters speak-
ing their language in several cutscenes, subtitles are not provided, and no
Chinese words occur in the game texts analyzed. Conversely, the Russian
culture is also expressed through language and, more precisely, by the
Russian words uttered by Dima. The first instance appears in a dialog line
addressed to Irish when he attacks Hannah for her seeming betrayal, as in
example (4.21), and the second Russian expression occurs shortly after-
wards when Dima rebukes Irish and Hannah for fighting, as in example
(4.22). The third instance occurs in another dialog line uttered by Dima
when he escapes from the Chinese prison where he has been confined for
six years, as in example (4.23). In all cases, these Russian phrases appear in
their Romanized version, that is transliterated into the Latin alphabet.
(4.21) DIMA: You want to kill this Kitayetz zhenshchina? […]
DIMA: Vuoi uccidere questa zhenshchina Kitayetz? […]
DIMA: ¿Quieres matar a esa Kitayetz zhenshchina? […]
(4.22) DIMA:Maltshite, children. Unless you all want to die here. […]
DIMA: Calma, figlioli. O volete morire tutti qui? […]
DIMA: Callaos, niños. A menos que queráis morir aquí. […]
(4.23) DIMA: Freedom. Slava Bogu.
DIMA: Libertà! Slava Bogu.
DIMA: Libertad… Slava Bogu.
In (4.21), “Kitayetz zhenshchina” means “Chinese woman” and indeed
refers to Hannah. In (4.22) “maltshite” means “be quiet” and “Slava Bogu”
in (4.23) means “thank God”. Only the second instance is domesticated,
since calma [keep calm, calm down] and callaos [be quiet] are the two trans-
lations in Italian and Spanish. Conversely, the other two Russian expres-
sions are retained in both target languages, although in Italian the noun
phrase word order is inverted in (4.21), and the noun is placed before the
adjective. However, even if players can understand their meaning only if
they know Russian or do some research, retention is a suitable strategy to
produce the same foreignizing effect of the original.
Within realia in Mass Effect 3, a traditional value of culture-specificity
is conveyed through James Vega, a human character whose Latin-American
origin manifests itself in dialogs. For example, Vega addresses and refers
to another character named Steve as “Esteban” which is just Spanish for
“Steve” and he usually nicknames male Shepard as “Loco” and female
Shepard as “Lola”. In the dialogs analyzed, the only instance of this Latino
talk can be found in the way Vega reacts to Commander Shepard’s decision
to go to Mars by saying “This is loco!”. In localizations, “loco” has been
translated into assurdo [absurd] in Italian and de locos [of crazy people]
12 Game Localization and Translation
game localization. Indeed, according to O’Hagan and Mangiron (2013,
102):
While there has been a lack of interest in theoretical arguments about
translation in the localization industry, it is also true that Translation
Studies as a whole has not been fully engaged with the localization phe-
nomenon to the extent of integrating it wholeheartedly into the main
conceptualization of the discipline.
Broadly speaking, this has probably been due to the lack of respectability
that video games have always suffered from, because of a number of fac-
tors such as the general perception of games as entertainment of little or
no importance, or the debate about their presumed detrimental impact. As
Newman (2013, 5) explains:
First, video games are (still) very often seen as being a children’s medium.
This means that they are easily and readily denigrated as trivial – some-
thing that will be “grown out of” – and demanding no investigation.
Second, video games have been considered as mere trifles – low art – car-
rying none of the weight, gravitas, or credibility of more traditional media.
2.2 Definition and Terminological Issues
In emergent fields of study, especially when driven by technology and sus-
ceptible to popular discourses, terminological issues arise when concepts
need definitions, thus resulting in predictable heterogeneity. In Game
Studies, there is a variety of terms and spellings referring to the object under
investigation: computer games, video games, videogames, digital games,
and others. The same happens when dealing with game genres and sub-
genres since classifications may considerably vary. Moreover, the industry
shows an increasing tendency to combine elements belonging to differ-
ent genres within the same title, thus creating the so-called “mixed genre
games” (Scholand 2002, 2) and this inevitably affects research.
As regards game translation, the very definition of this domain has been
debated with reference to its belonging to Translation Studies: game locali-
zation, game translation, linguistic and cultural game localization, among
others. The argument concerns the relationship between localization and
translation, and this goes beyond terminology, because the boundary seems
debatable and so far, unclear (see Cronin 2003, Pym 2004, 2010). Moreover,
the tension may stem from the somewhat reductionist view of translation
prevalent in the localization industry, on the one hand, and the lack of full
recognition of localization as a phenomenon of epistemic significance within
the academic community on the other (O’Hagan and Mangiron 2013, 103).
The ambiguity is manifest in many respects. For example, the game indus-
try professionals Maxwell-Chandler and O’Malley-Deming (2012, 8) define
 Game Localization and Translation 13
localization as “the process of translating the game into other languages”
(emphasis added). The software localizer Esselink (2000, 1) describes locali-
zation as “the translation and adaptation of a software or web product”
(emphasis added) and explains that it “involves taking a product and mak-
ing it linguistically and culturally appropriate to the target locale (country/
region and language) where it will be used and sold” (ibid., 3). The pro-
fessional translator Gouadec (2007, 37) considers localization as a “spe-
cialized translation” (emphasis added), or more in detail, an “instrumental
translation” meaning “translation that literally produces instruments”
(ibid., 38). It is also worth mentioning the definition of the Localization
Industry Standards Association (LISA), operational from 1990 to 2011, as
“the process of modifying products or services to account for differences in
distinct markets” (cit. in O’Hagan and Mangiron 2013, 88).
Facing the challenges posed by the emergence of further new areas of local-
ization such as game localization, along with rapid developments in an
increasing range of new media facing the need for globalization, the disci-
pline of translation urgently needs to address the current gap between indus-
try and academia in the conceptualization of localization and translation.
(ibid., 102)
More importantly, the development of this conceptualization and the con-
clusion of this terminological discussion might be fundamental with a view
to framing this emergent domain into Translation Studies, especially in rela-
tion to the global digital era.
According to Munday (2016, 287–288), “in the digital age, translation has
become big business and in industry (especially the software industry) the term
is often subsumed into the acronym GILT” (Globalization, Internationalization,
Localization, Translation), where “localization (L10n) refers to the adaptation
of the product to the target locale”, the latter meaning “the combination of
a sociocultural region and a language in industrial setting” (Jiménez-Crespo
2013, 12). Although “the difference between localization and translation is
blurred”, in general nowadays localization refers to the whole process which
covers technical, cultural, and linguistic operations; localization is therefore
“a superordinate term which encompasses translation” (Munday 2016, 288),
but translation is “the core of localization” because “localization cannot stand
alone without translation” (O’Hagan 2006a, 39).
Translation is thus a narrower component of the whole operation of
localization which “actually involves more than translating text or contents”
(Gouadec 2007, 38). As argued by Dunne (2006, 1), the superordinate term
localization itself is difficult to be defined, there is “no consensus as to what
precisely constitutes localization”, maybe because it “simply does not lend
itself well to being perceived globally” (ibid., 3, original emphasis).
The boundaries between translation and localization are far from clear-
cut and there is no agreement in academia on whether the latter term is
Realia and Irrealia in Game Translation 135
in Spanish, thus losing the original effect in both languages for different
reasons. In Italian, “loco” is neutralized into an equivalent adjective, even
if the Spanish word is likely to be familiar to Italian players. Conversely, in
Spanish, the “foreign” expression is inevitably domesticated, unless transla-
tors decide to reproduce the foreignizing effect through different linguistic
resources such as, for example, Spanish regional varieties or special idiolects.
Within irrealia in ME3, the representation of alien cultures through invented
language concerns the Quarians, a nomadic species of humanoid aliens who
have been living in exile for centuries (Mass Effect Wiki, online). For this rea-
son, they have created a common language named “Khelish” and some words
occur in the dialog lines involving the main Quarian character Tali’Zorah. For
example, the expression “Keelah se’lai” means “by the homeworld I hope to
see someday”, as Tali herself explains in (4.24), where the homeworld refers to
the Quarians’ original homeland planet Rannoch, and may also be abbreviated
into “keelah”, as in (4.25), to express shock or surprise. Khelish occurrences are
retained in both target versions and this contributes to the overall depiction of
the Quarians who express feelings in their own (foreign) language.
(4.24) You’ve heard me say, “Keelah se’lai”? The best translation I can
come up with is, “By the homeworld I hope to see someday”.
Mi hai mai sentita dire “Keelah se’lai”? Più o meno, si traduce con:
“Per il pianeta natale, che spero un giorno di rivedere”.
¿Me has oído decir “Keelah se’lai”? La mejor traducción que se me
ocurre sería “Por el mundo de origen que espero ver algún día”.
(4.25) Keelah, it’s huge!
Keelah, è enorme!
¡Keelah, es enorme!
4.8 Sociopolitical References
The sociopolitical dimension is another cultural manifestation of a game
world designed to engage players in a narrative conflict between cultures,
since it shapes their social and political systems and provides a further con-
ceptual ground of realities and irrealities to interpret the scope of the war
they are simulating.
Given the global nature of the real-world war scenario of Medal of Honor
Warfighter, sociopolitical realia are references to existing institutions expressed
through common nouns like mayor, authorities, diplomats, embassy, visa, navy,
capitol and security officials, and proper nouns, mostly in the form of acronyms
and initialisms, like “OGA”, “CIA”, “ISI”, “ASG”, “NATO”, and “Langley”.
Culture-specificity manifests itself in the variety of “extralinguistic” referents
these nouns denote, which are deeply linked to the real-word cultures and geo-
graphical areas of this game world. However, while the sociopolitical refer-
ents of common nouns are accessible only thanks to co-textual and contextual
136 Realia and Irrealia in Game Translation 14 Game Localization and Translation
information, since they relate to institutions which are generic enough to be suitable to describe the phenomenon, because localization is considered too
shared by most communities, proper nouns refer to definite international and broad a term involving several non-linguistic activities to be used within
national realities which can be easily associated with terrorism and counterter- Translation Studies. O’Hagan and Mangiron (2013, 104), however, adhere
rorism. These include the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the to the recognized industry term “game localization”, because it is well
Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the US Central Intelligence Agency defined by industry practice and it is already a well-established field within
(CIA), and the Filipino Islamist separatist organization Abu Sayyaf Group Translation Studies (TS). On the contrary, in order to provide a path through
(ASG). The only exception is “Langley” which, in game dialogs, represents what he calls “a terminological maze” (2015, 91), Bernal-Merino analyzes
a metonymy used to refer to the CIA, as Langley is the site of its headquar- the terms used to refer to language transfer, i.e. “localization”, “game local-
ters in Virginia (USA). Similarly, OGA stands for Other Government Agency ization”, “transcreation”, “rewriting”, “adaptation”, “transadaptation”,
and can be used as a euphemism for the CIA in secret operations (CIA 2013, and “audiovisual translation” (ibid., 92–107) and finally proposes his own
181). OGAs are indeed those agents which work uncover for the CIA, such as term for research in Translation Studies, namely “TMIES, the Translation
Argyrus in Medal of Honor Warfighter. of Multimedia Interactive Entertainment Software” (ibid., 107).
In Battlefield 4, the culture-specificity of sociopolitical realia revolves
around the USA and references are made to institutions of the US Navy and TMIES is an accurate term with which to describe the purely linguistic
intelligence via their proper names: “marine” and the “CIA”. and cultural issues involved in the translation of video games. […] It
In sum, the linguistic representation of sociopolitical realia translates into incorporates all the key concepts that set this professional practice and
names which are mostly transcultural in form; since they are shared across research apart from other areas in TS, namely that video games are
linguistic communities, language professionals can easily substitute the origi- multichannel and multitextual creations belonging to a complex enter-
nal items with equivalent forms which correspond to the official counterparts tainment product that places emphasis on the type of interactivity that
in the target language. In the case of Italian and Spanish, these forms mostly forces players to influence the virtual world they are playing in.
result from retention, which is used for all proper nouns and accounts for more (ibid., 108)
than 70% of instances, as shown in Figure 4.5. Direct translation, as an alter-
native, affects all common nouns and one language-specific acronym OTAN In this book, which deals with the translation of culture-specificity in game
(Organización del Tratado del Atlántico Norte) for NATO in Spanish. localization, translation is meant as the process and the result of the interlin-
In the Mass Effect 3 universe, the galactic community is an ensemble of guistic and intercultural transfer of game texts from one original language/
races whose equilibrium depends on interplanetary relationships ruled by a culture into other languages/cultures, that is the process and the result of
the linguistic and cultural mediation of video games as texts. Thus, transla-
tion is interpreted as one of the fundamental phases of the whole localiza-
tion process which also affects many and diverse extralinguistic contents.
100% However, video games are very complex digital artifacts, whose nature is
simultaneously software and audiovisual, and these qualities profoundly
80% 75% influence their design, their production, and their global distribution, and
70%
consequently their translation. Therefore, game translation cannot but be
59%
60% 55% examined in view of localization and must necessarily interact with aspects
41% 41% other than language(s), culture(s), and text(s), because of the multilayered
40%
30% and multifaceted phenomenon video games represent.
25%
20%
4% 2.3 The Theory of Game Localization and Translation
0%
Italian Spanish Italian Spanish Italian Spanish
Nowadays game localization in translation research is gathering momen-
tum, as testified by the number of both industry and academic workshops,
Retention Direct translation Transcreation
seminars, and conferences devoted to it at the international level. A prime
Realia Irrealia example of these meetings is Fun for All: International Conference on Video
Game Translation and Accessibility, held by the TransMedia Catalonia
Figure 4.5 Translation Strategies for Sociopolitical References. research group at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, which has been
 Game Localization and Translation 15
attended by scholars and professionals since 2010. Other important inter-
national conferences which usually include presentations about the topic
in their programs are Media for All and Languages and the Media, which
provide a platform for all stakeholders, from researchers and developers to
analysts, audiences, and business leaders to discuss findings, developments,
ideas, and experiences from the multifaceted world of audiovisual transla-
tion and media accessibility.
In academia, as O’Hagan and Mangiron (2013, 39) anticipated, doc-
toral research has been in the pipeline since the 2010s and this has shown
a growing scholarly engagement (see, for example, Bernal-Merino 2013,
Dong forthcoming, Jaén-Diego forthcoming, Lepre 2015, Mandiberg 2015,
Méndez-González 2012, Pérez-Fernández 2010, Pettini 2017a, Pujol 2015,
Strong 2018, Zhang 2015). In this light, this book intends to provide a
contribution to enhance investigation within this domain, to outline a theo-
retical framework based on empirical research, and finally to provide new
inputs into TS progress. For these purposes, in this section, it seems useful
to summarize the most important stages in the development of this subdis-
cipline with a brief literature review which follows Mangiron’s approach
(2017).
In her diachronic analysis, Mangiron identifies four research stages (ibid.,
76–82): from 1999 to 2005, the so-called “early days”; 2006 as the “year
one” in game localization research within Translation Studies; the stage
from 2007 to 2012 as the development phase; and, finally, the consolida-
tion phase from 2013 to date.
Discussing the early days of game localization and translation research
means, first and foremost, acknowledging that video games have been con-
sidered as a childish pastime deserving little or no scholarly attention for
a long time. This prejudice obviously affected academia and, as a result,
the first articles were written by industry practitioners including, for exam-
ple, the English-German game translator Dietz (1999), the Eidos-Interactive
localization professional Timiani-Grant (2001), the English-German
game translator Scholand (2002), the English/Japanese-Spanish translator
Mangiron (2004), the Square-Enix localization professional Darolle (2004),
and finally Maxwell-Chandler (2005), who published the first industry-ori-
ented monograph on game localization.
“The year 2006 is an important landmark in game localization research”
(Mangiron 2017, 77) since it indicates the beginning of academic approaches.
Out of a total of six papers issued, only one was written by profession-
als, namely two localizers from Vivendi Universal Games, and published in
one industry magazine (Kehoe and Hickey 2006), whereas five studies were
either written by scholars and/or published in academic volumes or journals
(Bernal-Merino 2006, Dietz 2006, Heimburg 2006, Mangiron 2006/2007,1
Mangiron and O’Hagan 2006). In particular, the paper published by Bernal-
Merino and the one published by Mangiron and O’Hagan, both available
on an online open-access journal like JoSTrans, have become seminal works
Realia and Irrealia in Game Translation 137
complex system of interspecies organizations. Moreover, each race presents
steady forms of government with a unique history, structure, and roles in
their societies. Consequently, dozens of sociopolitical irrealia occur in ME3
dialogs and express themselves in the nouns naming fictional institutions.
These include some original and meaningful expressions like Cerberus,
Spectre, and C-Sec but also common lexical forms which are proper nouns
only inside the game world, like alliance, council, councilor, navy, defense
committee and admiralty board. This means that the nature of these com-
mon nouns as irrealia lies only in the fictional nature of their referents,
which are designed in the image of existing counterparts. For example, the
‘Alliance’ in ME3 is the representative body of the most powerful human
nations, a sort of supranational parliamentary system with its own mili-
tary corps. The Alliance Navy is a prime example: it is one of the greatest
armed forces at galactic level and possesses a specialized branch of opera-
tives known as Alliance Marines, apparently named after the well-known
and culture-specific real-word sociopolitical entity. Another example is the
Council, the actual governing body of the galaxy, composed of one repre-
sentative from each of the member species, namely the Councilors. In this
view, the Council in ME3 seems to be a fictional and galaxy-sized copy
of real-world international organizations such as the European Union and
the United Nations Organization. All these common nouns in sociopoliti-
cal irrealia motivate the tendency toward direct translation in Italian and
Spanish, representing almost 60% of instances, as shown in Figure 4.5.
As regards the Italian direct translation of “councilor”, a short digres-
sion is useful, since it exemplifies a language-specific gendered-biased
approach which represents a moot point inside and outside academia (see
Gheno 2019). Some instances of this sociopolitical noun in the corpus
refer to the councilor of the Asari race, which is (feminine) monogender.
While the Spanish translator correctly used the definite article la and the
feminine form consejera to render the noun, in Italian, the translation is
always masculine, i.e. il consigliere, that refers to a male councilor, since
the feminine form would be la consigliera. This example is in line with
other masculine-only forms found in the corpus, which points to the sex-
ism behind the use of masculine generics to refer to both genders in stand-
ard Italian, especially concerning professional names or titles. However,
over the last decades, especially thanks to the increasing number of women
in politics, feminine forms of originally masculine titles have emerged and
consigliera, often associated to female political representatives, is one of
them. Since ME3 translators could access background information such as
the gender of speakers and listeners of dialog strings (see Section 2.6.4),
as clearly displayed in the game’s spreadsheet or database, the Italian
solution seems to be inadequate and gender-unfair and provides another
example of the scant attention Italian localizers paid to linguistic and cul-
tural gender-equality, at least as opposed to their Spanish colleagues (see
Pettini 2018, 2020, 2021a).
138 Realia and Irrealia in Game Translation
Another strategy used in the two localizations is retention, which affects
two proper names in both target languages: “marine” and, more importantly,
“Cerberus”, which is the most frequently occurring sociopolitical reference
in the corpus and thus represents the majority of instances behind retention.
Cerberus relates to the enemy paramilitary terrorist group led by the enig-
matic Illusive Man, whose core belief is that humans deserve a greater role
in the galactic community (Mass Effect Wiki, online). As regards the name,
Cerberus clearly refers to the well-known three-headed dog which guards
the gates of Hades in Greek mythology and this imaginary monster was the
source of inspiration for ME3 game designers: this name comes from the
Illusive Man’s manifesto detailing the need for humanity to have a Cerberus
to guard Earth from the aliens beyond the so-called Charon Relay, the latter
is the point of access between Earth and the rest of the galaxy (Mass Effect
Wiki, online). In this light, it is not by chance that this name refers directly to
the ferryman who takes the dead across the rivers Styx or Acheron to Hades.
Given the world popularity of Greek mythological characters, especially if
we consider Dante Alighieri’s borrowings in the Divine Comedy, it comes as
no surprise that this sociopolitical reference has been retained in both target
versions. Although both Italian and Spanish possess a local form, Cerbero in
both target languages, this Latinism sounds more engaging.
From a crosslinguistic point of view, Spectre and C-Sec are interesting
sociopolitical irrealia, since they simulate the widespread practice of abbre-
viation concerning this category of names. “Spectre” is a title conferred to
the agents of the Council’s intelligence, an elite multiracial group whose
primary responsibility is to preserve galactic stability (Mass Effect Wiki,
online). This name derives from a creative word-formation process, the
blending of the following words: Special Tactics and Reconnaissance (ibid.).
As an English common noun, however, “spectre” has a meaning and this
might be the reason for the strategy of direct translation applied to this
name in Italian and Spanish, which opt for Spettro and espectro [both spec-
tre], respectively, which completely disregard the original blend.
“C-Sec” is the abbreviation for “Citadel Security Services”, an interspe-
cies volunteer police force of the Council. The form of this name is based
on the Canadian government’s national cryptologic agency (Mass Effect
Wiki, online), formerly called Communications Security Establishment
Canada (CSEC) and, since the ME3 developer is Canadian, this might be
interpreted as another example of the Canadianness the game pays homage
to (Kuling 2014). In localizations, “C-Sec” becomes the initialism SSC in
Italian, which stands for “Servizio di Sicurezza della Cittadella” [Citadel
Security Service], while in Spanish the original form is retained but the com-
ponents derive from a direct translation: Seg-C meaning “Seguridad de la
Ciudadela” [Citadel Security]. The Italian choice is interpreted as transcrea-
tion, as it represents a creative solution which appropriately conforms to the
conventional tendency to abbreviate names of organizations with acronyms
or initialisms.
16 Game Localization and Translation
of reference in the field, recording hundreds of citations in the course of
time (Google Scholar). Moreover, 2006 is also a very important year for this
book, because the paper by Dietz and the one by Mangiron and O’Hagan,
together with the paper by Game Studies scholar Consalvo (2006), contrib-
uted greatly in laying the foundations of this research hypothesis, aims, and
design, as will be discussed in Chapter 3.
The third stage identified by Mangiron (2017, 78–80) is the 2007–
2012 development phase, where academic interest flourished consider-
ably. In 2007, the first special issue of a journal was devoted to the topic:
“Localització de videojocs”, Catalan for game localization, of Tradumàtica,
edited by Mangiron and Torres-Hostench (2007), containing nine papers
by both scholars and industry practitioners and covering an array of top-
ics. This special issue includes works by Bernal-Merino (2007), Di Marco
(2007), Dietz (2007), Fernández-Torné (2007), Loureiro-Pernas (2007),
Muñoz-Sánchez (2007), O’Hagan (2007b), O’Riada (2007), and Torres-
Molina (2007). Publications in the following years had a twofold impact:
first, they improved and supported academic visibility of game localization
in general but, simultaneously, they started to define the lines of future
research, narrowing down the scope of studies and focusing on single
aspects or phenomena, such as text types (Bernal-Merino 2008a), training
(Bernal-Merino 2008b), creativity (Bernal-Merino 2008c), intertextuality
(Bernal-Merino 2009), players’ game experience (O’Hagan 2009a), rom-
hacking and fan translation (Muñoz-Sánchez 2008, 2009, O’Hagan 2008,
2009b), or language and culture-specific case studies, the latter mostly con-
verging on Japanese games (Jayemanne 2009, Mangiron 2010, O’Hagan
2007a, 2009c). In this development stage, 2011 was another important
landmark in game localization research (Mangiron 2017, 79), due to the
publication of the second special issue of a journal, namely TRANS. Revista
de Traductología, edited by Bernal-Merino (2011b). Once again, TS schol-
ars and localization practitioners jointly worked on a fundamental piece
of literature, with papers investigating many and diverse topics: the his-
tory of game localization (Bernal-Merino 2011a), culturalization (Edwards
2011), whose relevance to this book is explored in Chapter 3, the localiza-
tion and translation of specific game genres or even franchises (Christou et
al. 2011, Crosignani and Ravetto 2011, Serón-Ordóñez 2011), fan transla-
tion (Díaz-Montón 2011), training (Vela-Valido 2011), game localization
management (Bartelt-Krantz 2011), and accessibility (Mangiron 2011). In
2011 and 2012, papers continued spreading knowledge, with both general
and subject-specific foci: the challenges of this practice, the role and the
specificities of translation for entertainment software remain the main con-
cern (Bernal-Merino 2012a, Fernández-Costales 2012, Mangiron 2012a,
O’Hagan 2012b, Zhou 2011), audiovisual translation modalities like sub-
titling start being descriptively analyzed (Mangiron 2012c, 2012f), and
related aspects like accessibility (Mangiron 2012d, 2012e, Mangiron and
Orero 2012), censorship (Zhang 2012), humor (Fernández-Costales 2011),
 Game Localization and Translation 17 Realia and Irrealia in Game Translation 139
and training (Granell 2011) are further developed. Studies devoted to lan- 4.9 Artifactual References
guage and culture-specific issues in game localization advance and, again,
In the anthropological sense, every result of human action is an artifact in
mostly concern Japanese titles (Mangiron 2012b, O’Hagan 2012a, Schules
the real world. The concept is broad enough to be used as an umbrella term
2012), although some contributions begin broadening the array of target
to refer to any material objects made by human beings, typically items of
languages, such as Brazilian Portuguese (Da Silva 2014, De Souza 2012,
cultural or historical interest. In this view, a key aspect of artifacts is the
2014), Lithuanian (Šiaučiūnė and Liubinienė 2011), and Polish (Czech
culture to which they are linked, the context in which they are made and
2013). Furthermore, it seems important to mention that 2012 was also the
where they mediate human-world relations, mostly enabling and facilitating
year when the second edition of a monograph on game localization came
human actions.
into being (Maxwell-Chandler and O’Malley-Deming 2012), representing
By extension, in this book artifacts represent a working concept to inter-
an updated version which not only reflects the continuous development of
pret material objects which mediate the relation between the real or fictional
industry practices, but also introduces the perspectives of game translation
cultures inhabiting the game world and the game world itself, in the specific
(Bernal-Merino 2012b) and culturalization (Edwards 2012) into the set of
context of the war represented. The degree of realism and/or fictionality of
localization guidelines it aims to provide developers with.
each story-driven conflict influences the artifactual material players experi-
The “consolidation phase” of research in game localization started in
ence and, consequently, the analysis of war-related artifactual references
2013 (Mangiron 2017, 80–82) and is still in progress, thanks to the con-
which, in order to make a balanced comparison between realia and irrealia,
stant work of scholars in Translation Studies. First, as already mentioned,
have been divided into three main categories: vehicles, weapons, and equip-
in this stage monographs and edited volumes are published in the follow-
ment. The more realistic the game war is, the higher the number of artifacts
ing chronological order: O’Hagan and Mangiron (2013), Mangiron, Orero,
whose referents are real-world objects which fall into the realia phenom-
and O’Hagan (2014), Bernal-Merino (2015), Méndez-González (2015a),
enon of military language, due to the military and existing nature of their
Sajna (2016), Granell, Mangiron, and Vidal (2017), and Muñoz-Sánchez
referents. Conversely, the more fictional the game war is, the larger the
(2017). As regards research contents, numerous avenues are pursued: game
number of invented artifacts which can be either designed in the image of,
accessibility (Fernández-Costales 2014a, Grammenos 2014, Mairena 2014,
and even named after, real world artifacts, or completely imaginary, also
Torrente et al. 2014), training (Carreira and Arrés 2014, Odacıoğlu et al.
in their naming. Indeed, from left to right on the realism-fictionalism con-
2016), fan translation (Müller-Galhardi 2014), culturalization (Edwards
tinuum, all artifactual references in Medal of Honor Warfighter belong to
2014), audio description (Mangiron and Zhang 2016), auteurism and inter-
realia, in Battlefield 4 they mostly fall into realia but there are also instances
textuality (Pettini 2015), reception (Fernández-Costales 2016, Mangiron
of artifactual irrealia, while in Mass Effect 3 they all belong to irrealia.
2016a, Méndez-Gonzáles 2015b, O’Hagan 2016), terminology (Pettini
However, if examined as a whole, the linguistic nature of many artifacts
2016), humor (Iaia 2014a, 2014b, Lepre 2014a), but most studies still aim
oscillates between realism and fictionality, since the same signifier may relate
at conceptualizing the special features of game localization and transla-
to either game-world specific entities, meaning known signifiers for new signi-
tion for global entertainment, that aims at achieving a deeper insight into
fied, or real-word artifacts proper. Vehicles like cruiser, frigate, drone, and
this subfield, and thus, with different approaches and methods, and focus-
dreadnought, or weapons like grenade, missile, and cannon, for example, can
ing on diverse games and linguistic combinations, converge on the analy-
be either realia or irrealia, and the difference lies in the diegetic nature and
sis of challenges and issues (Alonso 2014, Bernal-Merino 2016a, 2016b,
characteristics of their referents which, as irrealia, means that they are fic-
Fernández-Costales 2014b, Iaia 2016b, Lepre 2014b, Mangiron 2016b,
tional only inside the game world, since a counterpart exists in reality. This
2016c, Méndez-Gonzáles 2013, 2014a, 2014b, 2014c, 2015a, 2015c, 2016,
phenomenon depends on the high number of artifactual references as com-
Muñoz-Sánchez and López-Sánchez 2016, O’Hagan 2015, O’Hagan and
mon nouns which, from a translational perspective, although they present
Maxwell-Chandler 2016, Tarquini 2014a, 2014b, Van Oers 2014, Zhang
dozens of instances, pose little, if any, difficulty in localization since they
2014).
require a simple direct translation. Examples include incrociatore and cru-
The year 2017 represents another milestone for research in Game
cero for “cruiser”, fregata and fragata for “frigate”, granata and granada for
Localization Studies, since the third special issue of a journal is published.
“grenade”, cannone and cañón for “cannon”, among many others. For this
Edited and introduced by Zhang and Strong (2017a, 2017b), this vol-
reason, they have been excluded from the analysis and, given the focus of this
ume includes works by Fernández-Costales (2017), Mandiberg (2017),
chapter on proper nouns, in the following paragraphs special attention is paid
Mangiron (2017), O’Hagan (2017), Pettini (2017b), and Ranford (2017).
to those war-related artifacts whose names in the source language may be
Other important studies issued in the period from 2017 onward continued to
challenging for translators because of their meaning and/or form.
refine the research lines and develop the analysis of game localization (Altice
140 Realia and Irrealia in Game Translation 18 Game Localization and Translation
4.9.1 Artifactual Realia 2020, Mangiron 2018a), with special emphasis on game translatable ele-
ments (Mejías-Climent 2017, Strong 2017), game dubbing (Mejías-Climent
Artifactual realia include hundreds of existing vehicles, weapons, and
2018a, 2018b, 2018c), Japanese titles (Casado-Valenzuela 2018, Mangiron
pieces of equipment whose names, as mentioned above, are common nouns
2021a), Chinese titles (Dong and Mangiron 2018), indie games (Toftedahl
which are all directly translated in both Italian and Spanish. Vehicles com-
2018), training (Dias-Esqueda and Nogueira de Andrade-Stupiello 2018,
prise several types of manned means of transport such as “attack boat”,
Mangiron 2021b), gender issues (Pettini 2018, 2020, 2021a), the relationship
“patrol boat”, “lifeboat”, “container ship”, “warship”, and its hyponym
with audiovisual translation (O’Hagan 2018), reception studies (Mangiron
“destroyer”, “helicopter” with its informal versions “chopper”, “helo” or
2018b), creativity and playability (Bernal-Merino 2018), transtextuality
metaphorical form “bird”, or unmanned and remote-controlled vehicles
(Purnama and Purnomo 2019), game localization quality (Bernal-Merino
such as “drone” and “robot”, the latter frequently abbreviated into “bot”.
2020), humor (Iaia 2019), and the translation of personality in real-life
Weapons include hypernyms such as “arm”, “gun”, and “weapon” itself,
simulation games (Pettini 2021b). Moreover, the publication of two special
and common terms such as “ammunition”, which is often informally abbre-
issues of The Journal of Internationalization and Localization (O’Hagan
viated into “ammo”, “artillery”, “bomb”, “charge”, “explosive”, “gre-
and McDonough-Dolmaya 2020), which includes the analysis of the locali-
nade” “missile”, and “shotgun”. Also, the category of equipment covers a
zation of history-based games (Hsu 2020), Chinese games (Wu and Chen
wide variety of common terms related to real tools and devices such as “bin-
2020), and also the publication of a special issue of Arts (Thomas 2021)
oculars”, also abbreviated into “binos”, “detonator”, and “torch”, as a US
clearly suggest that research is entering a new crucial stage of development.
English abbreviation for “blowtorch”, “voyage recorder”, “radar”, “scan-
This brief diachronic overview on game localization research from the
ner”, and “sonar”. From a linguistic perspective, the frequency of abbrevia-
late 1990s to 2020 clearly shows that multimedia interactive entertainment
tions clearly shows the designers’ intent to simulate the need for brevity in
has been capturing the attention of a growing number of scholars across
military communication in war-themed video games, as explored in Chapter
an increasing number of countries, who have either adopted theoretical
5, based on the widespread use of informal or even slang expressions which,
and methodological approaches from other disciplines and/or created new
in translation, are often neutralized: the register becomes higher and the
models to study video games as texts moving cross-linguistically and cross-
form becomes longer. Examples of this tendency include: elicottero and heli-
culturally. To date, research has been mainly empirical and descriptive,
cóptero [both helicopter] for “helo”, “chopper”, and “bird”, munizione
which means devised to account for the special segment of the “real world”
and munición [both ammunition] for “ammo”, among others.
known as game localization and translation and based on quantitative and
More relevantly, artifactual realia contain several proper nouns whose
qualitative methods aimed at observing and describing data, to finally facili-
level of specialization as military language expressions might represent a
tate a better understanding of that section of reality. Another important
challenge and require translators’ research skills.
quality of research in this subdomain is interdisciplinarity: to study games
Vehicles include one initialism and one acronym: “UAV” and “RHIB”.
as texts, the tools provided by Translation Studies, which is itself an inter-
The former stands for “unmanned aerial vehicle’ and is “another name for
discipline, must be complemented by other theoretical and methodological
a drone” (Bowyer 2004, 251), while RHIB indicates a “rigid hull inflatable
instruments. Video games and gaming are extremely complex, and a holistic
boat” (DOD 2020, 334).
approach is necessary.
As regards weapons, artifactual realia contain acronyms, initialisms, and
To recapitulate the most productive research lines, as already discussed,
proper nouns, as follows: “AK”, which is the shorter form of “AK-47”,
it can be said that especially in the first stages, the majority of scholars and
“a Soviet-designed 7.62mm assault weapon” also known as “Kalashnikov”
practitioners have examined the phenomenon, i.e. the main features, chal-
(Bowyer 2004, 10); the belt-fed automatic firearm “MG” which stands
lenges, issues, constraints, the main agents involved in the reality observed.
for “machine gun” (ibid., 149) and the hyponym “light machine gun”
Some researchers have started exploring games as texts in their relation to
known as “LMG” (ibid., 143); the shoulder-fired, anti-tank weapon sys-
other texts, where the concept of text includes a variety of materials. Texts
tem known as “RPG” and meaning “rocket propelled grenade”; the deadly
can be either fiction or nonfiction, either purely verbal or non-verbal in
chemical weapon “P.E.T.N.” which signifies “pentaerythritol tetranitrate”
nature, also called unimodal texts, they can involve both verbal and non-
(Sudweeks et al. 2007, 1756); the plastic explosive “C4”, which stands for
verbal elements, also known as bimodal texts, they can combine multiple
“Composition C-4” (Ledgard 2007, 498); the “home-made bomb or mine”
semiotic systems, the so-called multimedia texts, such as image, sound, and
known as “IED” meaning “improvised explosive device” (Bowyer 2004,
interactivity of various kinds which are possible today through technology.
123); the directional anti-personnel mine called “Claymore” (ibid., 47); the
With a focus on text, in game localization and translation research, some
man-portable shoulder-fired ground-to-air missile called “Stinger” (ibid.,
case studies have examined game assets, text types, and paratexts. In terms
 Game Localization and Translation 19 Realia and Irrealia in Game Translation 141
of translation directionality, it seems apparent that scholarly interest, which
originally recorded the predominance of Japanese games as source texts and 100%
89%
English localizations as target texts, is changing and evolving in line with
the market trends described in the Introduction. Another important feature 80%
of research in this field, which stems from a diachronic perspective, is the 62%
development toward specialization. Nowadays, scholars tend to investigate 60%
single aspects or phenomena, e.g. terminology, gender representation, cul-
tural adaptation, etc., by carrying out more and more in-depth and solid 40% 31%
studies. The advanced stage research has reached is also demonstrated by
the fact that some scholars have begun reflecting upon the topic of research 20%
itself (O’Hagan 2007b, Muñoz-Sánchez 2011, O’Hagan and Mangiron 5% 2% 5% 4% 2%
2013, 277–324, O’Hagan and Maxwell-Chandler 2016), which signifi- 0%
cantly supports its consolidation. Retention Explicitation Generalization Omission
In conclusion, game localization and translation as research topics have Italian Spanish
come a long way since the early days in the 1990s and are steadily gaining
ground in Translation Studies. Nevertheless, the reality to which research Figure 4.6 Translation Strategies for Artifactual Realia.
refers and which it aims to describe is deeply context-dependent and fast-
paced. Consequently, any scientific effort to fully understand this reality
152), and, lastly, the 40-mm belt-fed automatic grenade launcher known as
cannot but be made in context. For this reason, the following sections pro-
“Mark-19” (Zabechi 2011, 431).
vide a background analysis of the game localization industry, that is the set
Similarly, equipment includes tools and devices whose names are encoded
of circumstances in which game translation and localization take place.
in acronyms and initialisms, namely the “forward-looking infrared” sys-
tem known as “FLIR” (DOD 2020, 88), the “night observation [or optical]
2.4 The Practice of Game Localization and Translation device” known as “NOD”, also generally called “night vision device” (Stahl
and Landen 2001, 733), the “target acquisition designation sight” device
Since the development of the first video game called Spacewar! in 1961
known as “TADS” (Yenne 2005, 104), the “laser target locator module”
by Professor Steve Russel at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,2
known as “LTLM” (DOD 2020, 128), and the “American-produced indi-
“the video games industry has evolved dramatically to become a worldwide
vidual ration for food” called “MRE” (Bowyer 2004, 162).
phenomenon worth billions” (Bernal-Merino 2006, 22). Moreover, from
In translation, as Figure 4.6 illustrates, retention is the major translation
the simple mechanics and poor graphics of early popular titles like Space
strategy used to deal with artifactual realia, due to the status of English as
Invaders (Taito 1978) and Pac-Man (Namco 1980), which are considered
the lingua franca of military communication in the international geopoliti-
to have set the subsequent course of video games as a cultural phenomenon
cal scenario realistic war video games aim to simulate, as explored in more
(Egenfeldt-Nielsen et al. 2016, 157–198), today’s products have turned into
detail in Chapter 5. The influence of English in military target languages
extraordinarily complex and impressive movie-like entertaining experiences
is particularly strong in Italian (see Furiassi and Fiano 2017), where the
enjoyed by a diverse audience across the globe.
use of non-adapted Anglicisms in localization represents 89% of instances,
Much of this growth can be attributed to game localization, which is
with borrowings officially recorded as headwords of an Italian military
essential for the industry nowadays. According to Maxwell-Chandler and
dictionary (Busetto 2004). The tendency toward retention in Italian nearly
O’Malley-Deming (2012, xiii), roughly 50% of the revenue of the global
equals two strategies in Spanish, namely retention (62%) and explicitation
market for video games depends on localization. Not surprisingly, game
(31%), where the latter is used to disambiguate and explain the meaning of
companies usually rely on publishing multiple language versions of their
acronyms and initialisms like “NOD” into visión nocturna [night vision]
games in order to maximize profits. Indeed, major game publishers cite the
and “RPG” into lanzacohetes. Likewise, explicitation is adopted in Italian
international market as a key strategic focus and regularly distribute local-
to translate “MG” into mitragliatrice and, incorrectly, “LMG” into mitra
ized games into a variety of regions, including the United States, Europe,
[sub-machine gun], since the equivalent full-form expression is mitraglia-
Asia, and the Middle East.
trice leggera [light machine gun]. Generalization involves the use of super-
Accordingly, it comes as no surprise to learn how strong the links are
ordinate terms like lancha [launch] in Spanish for “RHIB”, as the equivalent
between game translation and the industry. These links shape a relationship
142 Realia and Irrealia in Game Translation
term is the calqued acronym RIB (Delgado-Lállemand 2010, 577) and, in
both languages, esplosivo rudimentale [rudimentary explosive] and explo-
sivos [explosives] for “IED”, even though the Italian adjective rudimentale
suggests an idea similar to “improvised”.
Omission is another minor strategy in the translation of artifactual realia,
but it affects, in both languages, an interesting and culture-specific piece of
equipment, namely “MRE”. This initialism, which stands for “meal ready-
to-eat” and refers to the typical pre-cooked and pre-packaged individual food
ration used by US military personnel (Bowyer 2004, 162), occurs in an in-flight
conversation between Hannah and Irish in Battlefield 4, when Irish starts to get
a little airsick. As the dialog lines below (4.26) exemplify, “MRE” is omitted
in both localizations and translators paraphrased the sentence uttered by Irish
into “I have an upset stomach. But I can make it” in Italian and “After what
I have eaten? I could be better” in Spanish. Italian military language has an
equivalent expression for the English initialism, “razione di combattimento”
[combat ration] also known as “razione K” [K ration] (Busetto 2004, 727),
which is actually the ration of ready-to-eat food, generally of high nutritional
value, which is distributed to frontline troops. Similarly, in Spanish this concept
is named “ración de combate” (Villarejo 2012, online). Given the existence of
equivalent terms, and given the absence of space-time constraints, the omission
of “MRE” is a questionable choice which determines the disappearance of a
cross-cultural military term in localization.
(4.26) HANNAH: You gonna be okay?
IRISH: Raw rabbit and MREs. Testing my steel.
HANNAH: Va tutto bene?
IRISH: Ho lo stomaco sottosopra. Ma ce la posso fare.
HANNAH: ¿Estás bien, Irish?
IRISH: ¿Después de lo que he comido? Podría estar mejor.
4.9.2 Artifactual Irrealia
As discussed above, the degree of fictionality of the games’ virtual conflicts
directly influences the number and nature of artifactual irrealia which, refer-
ring to invented vehicles, weapons, and pieces of equipment, can be either
designed in the image of, and even named after real world artifacts, or com-
pletely imaginary, also in their naming. On the one hand, thus, artifactual
irrealia include common nouns whose referents are fictional counterparts of
existing artifacts and whose characteristics, in the case of Mass Effect 3, are
closely linked to the sci-fi interstellar war players fight against alien inva-
sion. For example, although they are termed after existing vehicles, in ME3
cruisers, frigates, drones, and dreadnoughts allow space travel by achieving
faster-than-light speed. On the other hand, more relevantly for this research,
artifactual irrealia comprise many proper names whose meaning and role
deserve special attention.
20 Game Localization and Translation
of interdependence since translation is driven by the skopos of the indus-
try and the latter is conditional upon translation. After all, game localiza-
tion – referred to as a specialized translation area combining elements of
audiovisual translation and software localization – arose exactly from the
industry’s needs.
It seems therefore worth exploring, although briefly, some basic concepts
related to game localization as a sectorial and dynamic area of professional
practice in order to show where translation is positioned in respect to the
whole process, and to understand how the nature of its business affects the
interlinguistic and intercultural transfer. Given the influence and control
the industry exerts in the production and international distribution of mul-
timedia interactive entertainment, “academic research into games becomes
more inclusive – and more valuable – when it shows an understanding of the
market”, as Egenfeldt-Nielsen et al. (2016, 16) assert. In Bernal-Merino’s
words (2015, 155), “a study of the business environment occupied by the
translation profession is de rigueur if we are fully to understand the moti-
vations, errors, and challenges that translators face in their daily routine”
(original emphasis).
Given these premises, the key notions to bear in mind when approach-
ing the translation of video games are localization and internationalization
(2.4.1), localization levels, phases, steps, and staff (2.4.2), localization mod-
els (2.4.3), and localization assets (2.4.4). Moreover, this chapter provides
an overview of the history of game localization (2.5) in order to show how
technological progress has been affecting game design, localization, and
translation since the 1970s to date. Finally, game translation proper (2.6)
and culturalization (2.7) are explored, and their distinctive features and
issues are scrutinized in order to paint a representative picture of the reality
this book is about.
2.4.1 Localization and Internationalization
In the 21st century, any practice in the realm of interlinguistic and inter-
cultural mediation cannot but be accounted for in the light of GILT
(Globalization, Internationalization, Localization, Translation). As many
authors explain (see, for example, Dunne 2006, 4–6, Jiménez-Crespo 2013,
24–39, Munday 2016, 287–288), this acronym refers to a complex set of
interdependent processes concerning any product or service designed to
address the global market. “The acronym is used to stress how the globali-
zation of modern technological platforms needs to be considered from the
beginning with localization in mind, which in turn will be determined by
companies’ overall globalization strategies” (O’Hagan and Mangiron 2013,
89), and this has been particularly evident in videogaming.
The practice of localization emerged in response to the globalization of
the computer industry, especially the US Information and Communication
Technology industry, but rapidly incorporated other products such as
 Game Localization and Translation 21
websites, since the distribution of electronic content worldwide is an essen-
tial component of the global market society (Dunne 2014). The term “local-
ization” dates back to the 1980s when software developers needed to define
“the introduction of linguistic-cultural elements considered foreign to the
initial source code, content and display in US/American English” (Folaron
2006, 198). Although video games are software, and although software
localization can be considered as the precursor of the area under investiga-
tion, an examination of its characteristics is beyond the scope of this book.
Accordingly, it seems more reasonable to refer to it only when functional to
the purposes of this monograph.
To understand the localization phenomenon, the notion of “locale” is
fundamental (Esselink 2000, 1), with reference to a geographical area with
distinguishing features such as language, units of currency, and charac-
ter encoding, among others, which, however, do not exactly correspond
to single countries or single languages. As Dunne (2014) explains, local
market requirements are referred to using the hypernym “locale”, which
is expressed as language-country pair: thus, French-Canada is one locale,
while French-France is another, Portuguese-Portugal is one locale, while
Portuguese-Brazil is another. In this regard, the locales covered in this book
are Italian-Italy and Spanish-Spain.
In order to capitalize on international markets and maximize their sales
abroad, game companies “need to develop a global mindset toward game
development” and understand the meaning of localizing games for specific
markets (Maxwell-Chandler and O’Malley-Deming 2012, 1), i.e. publish-
ing quality international versions of their games to be translated into several
languages (ibid., 3).
Internationalization is the pre-localization process and means creating a
product which “can be easily adapted for release in other countries without
having to change the design of the product”, it means designing “a project
that can be easily localized with a minimum amount of work on the devel-
oper’s part – the same game features, functionality, and game experiences”
(Maxwell-Chandler and O’Malley-Deming 2012, 4). According to Esselink
(2000, 2), “internationalization is the process of generalizing a product so
that it can handle multiple languages and cultural conventions without the
need for re-design. It takes place at the level of program design and docu-
ment development”. The definition of the Localization Industry Standards
Association is also worth mentioning, since internationalization is described
as “the process of enabling a product at a technical level for localization”,
and “primarily consists of abstracting the functionality of a product away
from any particular language so that language support can be added back in
simply, without worrying that language-specific features will pose a prob-
lem when the product is localized” (LISA cit. in Jiménez-Crespo 2013, 25).
A game can be localization-friendly if, and only if, internationaliza-
tion is planned for properly during pre-production; otherwise, retrofit-
ting a game after development involves more time, money, and resources.
Realia and Irrealia in Game Translation 143
Vehicles include the US Navy amphibious assault ship named “Valkyrie”
and the US Navy aircraft carrier called “Titan” in Battlefield 4. In Mass
Effect 3, the variety of vehicles is wider, including the “Normandy”, the
human-led massive and highly technological spaceship which “acts as the
mobile command center of Commander Shepard’s efforts to unite the galaxy
against the Reapers” (Mass Effect Wiki, online), the gigantic and extremely
powerful Turian flagship known as “Sovereign”, the enormous vessel called
“liveship” which provides food for the Quarian Migrant Fleet (ibid.),
another starship called “Konesh” belonging to the Quarian Migrant Fleet,
the most powerful capital ship of the galaxy known as the “Harbinger”,
which is actually a Reaper, and a group of infantry vehicles called ”M-44
Hammerhead”, “M-29 Grizzly”, and “M-35 Mako”.
As opposed to vehicles, properly fictional weapons and equipment are
found only in Mass Effect 3. Weaponry includes the highly technological
superweapon called the “Crucible”, the horrific biological weapon named
“genophage”, developed by the Salarians to reduce the Krogans’ popula-
tion growth, the ground-based missile called “Thanix”, and the massive
anti-aircraft cannon named “Hades”. As regards equipment, artifactual
irrealia comprise the “all-purpose medicinal salve” called “medi-gel”, the
multipurpose handheld device “used for a variety of civilian and battle-
field tasks” called “omni-tool” (Mass Effect Wiki, online), and the artificial
intelligence known as the “Catalyst”.
From a linguistic perspective, as the list above shows, it seems interesting
to highlight that artifactual irrealia include examples of those neologisms
which “are paramount in the vocabulary of science fiction” and whose crea-
tion commonly follows “derivational patterns known to the audience, in
order to facilitate the viewers’ task of surmising what these new words refer
to and also, even more importantly, to create the impression of plausibility
and establish the ‘realism’ of a term” (Wozniak 2014, online). “One of the
frequent strategies is to use affixes typical to a given category of the words,
often combined with a phonetic association that should lead the audience to
the desired semantic association” (ibid.). Affixes
confer to these words an air of precision and scientific credibility, but
also let the viewer guess (more or less) what their denotation is. This
type of neologism does not create particular difficulties in translation,
provided that similar derivational elements exist in the target language.
(Wozniak 2014, online)
A prime example in this sense is “genophage”, where the credibility of this
fictional infection is based on affixation, the prefix “geno” meaning “to
become or produce” and also coming from the Greek “genos” which means
“birth” plus the suffix “phage” meaning “to eat or consume” (O’Toole
2016, 753; 1379). Since similar derivational elements exist in both target
languages, “genophage” is directly translated into genofagia which, despite
144 Realia and Irrealia in Game Translation
100%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
40%
20%
20%
10% 10%
0%
Retention Direct translation Transcreation
Italian Spanish
Figure 4.7 Translation Strategies for Artifactual Irrealia.
phonological differences, presents the same equivalent affixes in Italian and
Spanish.
Another common pattern in the creation of neologisms in science fiction
is compounding, here represented by “medi-gel”, “omni-tool”, and “live-
ship”. In translation, “medi-gel” has been retained in both localizations
since target players easily understand the compound: “medi” can be the
abbreviation of the equivalent adjectives for “medical” and the noun “gel”
exists in both Italian and Spanish. Conversely, transcreation is the strategy
used in both languages to translate “omni-tool” and “liveship”, thus repre-
senting 10% of the instances (Figure 4.7).
“Omni-tool” is, like medi-gel, a hyphenated compound which com-
bines the Latin prefix “omni” and the noun “tool” to create a neologism
whose meaning is easily accessible through the signifier (Wozniak 2014).
As in example (4.27), the name of this multifunctional device is transcre-
ated into Factotum with a capital letter in Italian and omniherramienta in
Spanish, both representing creative solutions which, although in different
ways, enhance the original form and meaning. Indeed, while in Spanish,
translators reproduced the derivational pattern and created a compound by
retaining the prefix “omni” and adding the Spanish equivalent of “tool”, in
Italian, transcreation is based on the borrowing of a single and well-known
Latin word meaning someone or something which does all kinds of work.
(4.27) There. Now we can talk by omni-tool. Go!
Ecco... Ora comunichiamo col Factotum. Vai!
Ya está. Ahora podemos hablar por la omniherramienta. ¡Vamos!
22 Game Localization and Translation
If internationalized, the user interface (UI), control scheme, game content,
etc. are designed to accommodate the specificities of each target locale,
including:
•• both European text, which is read from left to right, and Arabic text,
which is read from right to left;
•• various formats of dates, numbers, times, and currencies;
•• characters and diacritics across languages; this means that the game
code should support at least the Unicode system which can display
more than 65,000 unique characters (Asian ones included);
•• international keyboard layouts;
•• different ethnicities and nationalities to customize the player’s avatar;
•• video standards, i.e. both National Television Standards Committee
(NTSC) and Phase Alternating Line (PAL), if the game is for consoles,
in order to be properly displayed on monitors;
•• cultural content, i.e. culture-specific references like the name of a popu-
lar movie star or TV shows should be limited, unless they are essential
to the story or gameplay. “If the game remains as culturally neutral as
possible, it is less noticeable to an international gamer that the game was
developed primarily for a specific demographic” (Maxwell-Chandler
and O’Malley-Deming 2012, 7).
As regards the user interface (UI) in particular, for example, since the trans-
lated text is about 20 to 30% larger than the source text (Maxwell-Chandler
and O’Malley-Deming 2012, 5), it is important that it is designed to avoid
text display problems such as overlapping and truncated text, which can
be really misleading. This is possible by using icons with universal meaning
or by designing UIs to be scaled up or down according to the size and the
length of the text.
In summary, the objective of internationalization is to make users “feel
that the game was made specifically for them, and that they are getting the
same gaming experience as the source language users” (ibid., 4).
Moreover, it seems worth underlining that internationalization does not
affect only technical issues, but also involves sociocultural and sociopoliti-
cal considerations in preparing the source game. In particular, the “cultural
content” point listed above could be read as an example of the tendency
toward generalization and cultural flattening in internationalization, which
provoked some translation scholars’ criticism based on the ideas of “global
sameness” and “death of cultural difference” (Pym 2004, 37). This question
is particularly relevant here because of three reasons. First, contrary to what
one might think, video games “are cultural products often imbued with spe-
cific cultural traits, even at the level of the conceptualization of game design
itself” (O’Hagan and Mangiron 2013, 91). Second, “cultural peculiarities
may turn out to be the very attraction of the product even in international
markets” (ibid.), as usually happens for Japanese titles. Lastly, but more
 Game Localization and Translation 23
importantly, culture-specificity expressed by realia and irrealia is the focus
of this book and so the cultural dimension of video games, of their locali-
zation, and the process of culturalization proper will be explored in-depth
further in this chapter and the following.
2.4.2 Localization Levels, Phases, Steps, and Staff
The nature of the game industry as a global highly lucrative business influ-
ences the degree of linguistic accessibility worldwide. The extent to which
game contents are localized can vary from project to project, mainly depend-
ing on cost and revenue analysis, namely a profit and loss statement for each
localization (Maxwell-Chandler and O’Malley-Deming 2012, 47), based on
two major factors: money and time. It is a trade-off between the uncertain
additional sales that localized versions can generate and the additional costs
and risks associated with a longer and more complex process. In short, as
for money, publishers compare the development, marketing, packaging, and
distribution costs for each localized version against the projected sales. As
for time, ideally aiming at simultaneously releasing the game worldwide,
publishers evaluate the timing of the localization steps. On the one hand,
game publishers’ decisions depend on the resources available to invest in the
localization process and the likely return on investment. On the other, the
time factor also has substantial relevance because video games are governed
by critical release dates (typically the beginning of each holiday season),
namely Christmas and Easter, and missing them does have repercussions on
the revenue.
In summary, localization tends to be scaled “according to the needs
and expectations of the game” (Maxwell-Chandler and O’Malley-Deming
2012, 8). The following are the four localization levels used in the industry
and they are increasingly riskier, expensive, and time-consuming, but also
progressively immersive for the player, thus they are reserved to products
ranging from small to big-budget games:
•• no localization: the original language version is shipped directly to
international markets;
•• box and docs: only the game’s packaging and manual are localized;
•• partial localization: the in-game text, the packaging, and the manual are
translated, not the voice-over, which is usually subtitled;
•• full localization: all game assets are translated, voice-over included.
For translation analysis purposes, partial and full localization are evidently
the most interesting areas since the first level (no localization) does not
provide phenomena to be investigated and the second one (box and docs)
only involves the translation of paratext such as packaging and manuals.
In contrast, partial and full localization offer TS scholars plenty of room
for investigation concerning, for example, subtitling and dubbing. On the
Realia and Irrealia in Game Translation 145
Liveships are the heart of the Quarian Migrant Fleet, given their role in
food supply and, therefore, for Quarians’ subsistence (Mass Effect Wiki,
online). As a neologism, “liveship” is not new in the realm of fictional
worlds and, although speculating some sort of intertextuality has no
foundation, a brief mention is useful in order to compare approaches
to the translation of fictional entities. The US writer Robin Hobb uses
this word in her fantasy fiction trilogy “Ship of Magic. The Liveship
Traders” and in the Italian and Spanish titles of the novels, “liveship”
becomes nave vivente and barco viviente, respectively [both living ship].
Going back to the ME universe, both translators deviated from the
source-adjective meaning and focused on the vehicle’s main function:
as in example (4.28), “liveship” becomes nave-serra [greenhouse ship]
in Italian, based on the idea of cultivation, and econave [ecoship] in
Spanish, which relates to ecology. Formally, both are compounds, and
semantically they creatively transfer the essence of this fictional artifac-
tual reference, thanks to translators’ imaginative skills.
(4.28) While liveships have firepower comparable to a dreadnought, their
primary purpose is food cultivation.
Sebbene le navi-serra abbiano una potenza di fuoco paragonabile
a quella delle corazzate, il loro scopo primario è la coltivazione
di cibo.
Aunque las econaves tienen una potencia de fuego comparable a la
de un acorazado, su objetivo principal es el cultivo de alimentos.
As Figure 4.7 shows, transcreation is not the only strategy in the locali-
zation of artifactual irrealia which presents two major tendencies, namely
retention and direct translation, with language-specific differences. Indeed,
if the use of these two strategies nearly corresponds in Italian, accounting
for 50% and 40%, respectively, in Spanish only 20% of fictional artifacts’
names are left unaltered and 70% are directly translated.
Retention is used in both languages to transfer proper nouns like
“Valkyrie”, “Titan”, “Konesh”, “M-44 Hammerhead”, “M-29 Grizzly”,
and “M-35 Mako” as regards vehicles, “Thanix” and “Hades” as for weap-
ons and, as discussed above, “medi-gel” as concerns equipment. Moreover,
retention is used in Italian to translate one narratively crucial name which,
conversely, is directly translated in Spanish, which justifies the above-men-
tioned quantitative difference since it represents, alone, 29% of instances.
This language-specific approach affects the most iconic vehicle of the Mass
Effect universe: the massive, super technological, human-led space frigate
called “Normandy”, which is named after the 1944 Battle of Normandy of
the Second World War (Mass Effect Wiki, online), whose Spanish transla-
tion is indeed Normandía. Lastly, direct translation is adopted in both lan-
guages for the transfer of artifacts whose proper nouns are more meaningful
for narrative and/or linguistic reasons. Across the categories examined, this
146 Realia and Irrealia in Game Translation
is the case of “Harbinger” as vehicle, “Crucible” and “genophage” as weap-
ons, and “Catalyst” as equipment.
The Harbinger is the most powerful capital ship of the Reaper fleet which
leads the final attack on Earth to be eventually destroyed by Shepard when
s/he activates the Crucible. In English, “harbinger” means “something that
foreshadows a future event: something that gives an anticipatory sign of
what is to come” (Merriam Webster Dictionary, online). In the ME3 uni-
verse, the Harbinger carries out exactly this function: it speaks through the
beings it indoctrinates, commands troops, and delivers threatening messages
to Shepard. In this light, the strategy of directly translating “harbinger” into
high-register and literary equivalents such as Araldo and Heraldo [both her-
ald] is very effective. Other equivalent words like messaggero and mensajero
[messenger], annunciatore and anunciador [announcer], for example, are
also correct but they do not convey that air of mystery and old-fashioned
flavor ME3 Harbinger has.
The Crucible plays an essential role in the war against the Reapers. It
is an ancient and complex superweapon constructed by the extinct alien
Prothean species, but never successfully implemented because, in order to
be activated, all galaxy races must collaborate to find one final component,
named the Catalyst (Mass Effect Wiki, online). Indeed, the implementation
of this power source is compared “with the human biblical story of the
Tower of Babel, as a metaphor for the co-operation between multiple spe-
cies toward a single goal” and defined as “a test of galactic unity” (ibid.). As
regards this name, “crucible” means
1. a vessel of a very refractory material used for melting and calcining a
substance that requires a high degree of heat; 2. a severe test; 3. a place
or situation in which concentrated forces interact to cause or influence
change or development.
(Merriam Webster Dictionary, online)
In Italian and Spanish “Crucible” is directly translated into Crucibolo and
Crisol, respectively but, while in Italian Crucibolo does not exist and is a
neologism calqued from the source term, the Spanish Crisol is the direct
equivalent of “crucible” in meaning (1).
The Catalyst is an artificial intelligence “that resides within the Citadel
and manifests as a young human boy” (Mass Effect Wiki, online), which
serves to implement the Crucible, destroy the Reapers, and save the gal-
axy. “Catalyst” is a chemistry term which refers to a substance enabling
and increasing the rate of a chemical reaction and, by extension, an agent
that provokes or speeds up significant change or action (Merriam Webster
Dictionary, online). In localization, its meaning and diegetic function moti-
vate direct translation in both target languages: Catalizzatore in Italian and
Catalizador in Spanish.
24 Game Localization and Translation
basis of the levels above, it comes as no surprise to learn that dubbing is
part of full localization only, since this costly and time-consuming trans-
lation modality implies setting up recording sessions, hiring professional
voice actors, often celebrities, matching facial animations with lip-syncing,
processing the sound files, etc., in order to deliver a quality target ver-
sion. Indeed, full localization is mainly reserved for flagship titles, known
as “AAA games”, like the games included in the corpus that this book
examines.
In particular, it seems worth specifying that in game localization, the
re-voicing in the form of dubbing is commonly referred to as “voice-over”
(O’Hagan and Mangiron 2013, 163). Although this represents a clear point
of contact between audiovisual translation and game localization, it must
be said that the use of dubbing and subtitling modes in this field “is gen-
erally not well informed by the body of knowledge available” thanks to
Audiovisual Translation Studies scholars, “and AVT norms are clearly not
adhered to”, as O’Hagan and Mangiron complain (ibid., 163–164). An in-
depth contrastive analysis of dubbing, subtitling, and voice-over in video
games and in other audiovisual products is beyond the scope of this work
but represents a very significant area for future research (see, for example
Mejías-Climent 2018a, 2018b, 2018c).
To conclude the discussion about localization levels, it seems worth
briefly mentioning here some details about the three games in the corpus.
As regards the scope of their international distribution, which refers to the
number of target languages each game was translated into, where European
FIGS are default (meaning French, Italian, German and Spanish), they are
nine for Medal of Honor Warfighter (FIGS plus Japanese, Korean, Polish,
Russian, and Turkish), 11 for Battlefield 4 (FIGS plus Chinese, Czech,
Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, and Russian), and seven for Mass
Effect 3 (FIGS plus Japanese, Polish, and Russian), but localization levels
vary. As far as Italian and Spanish are concerned, they all present full locali-
zations except for Mass Effect 3, which has been partially localized into
Spanish. Since Battlefield 4 is the most recent game for release, the higher
number of target languages seems to confirm US publisher Electronic Arts’
and, by extension, the game industry’s tendency to expand the borders of
their localization practice.
The whole process of localization generally includes three phases: plan-
ning, production, and post-production (Maxwell-Chandler and O’Malley-
Deming 2012, 10–12). During the planning phase, based on historical sales
data, the company determines which level of localization is appropriate
for each target locale and performs internationalization, thus making next
phases smoother. Localization usually starts in the production phase and it
means translating, integrating, and testing all contents, generally referred to
as “assets” in the industry. Once the game code has been localized, in the
post-production phase the process affects other localization items such as
manuals, packaging, and demos with the final aim of creating a localization
 Game Localization and Translation 25 Realia and Irrealia in Game Translation 147
kit which contains relevant information about the project, as well as the files 4.10 Summary
and contents to be translated.
This chapter has presented the linguistic and translational analysis of this
In more detail, the stages of the localization process are linked to four
book research. In the light of the taxonomies developed for this study,
major steps: the game assets’ organization, translation, integration, and test-
described in Chapter 3, the sections above have explored the nature of and
ing (ibid., 68–69) and each of them involves specific roles (ibid., 87–89).
the role that realia and irrealia play in the original English dialogs of the
First, all the assets are organized so that the text and context are clear
three games of this book corpus as well as a quantitative and qualitative
for all translations. This means creating a glossary, adding time codes to
study of the strategies used in localization by the Italian and Spanish trans-
the voice-over script, and creating a master sheet with all the in-game text,
lators. As textual representations of the ways in which each game world
in order to ensure linguistic consistency in the game. A proper organization
and the real world interact through language, and as expressions of culture-
of game assets is essential for the whole process: they can be placed in a
specificity, the different categories of realia and irrealia have been exam-
centralized language-specific directory in the game code and each can then
ined in this chapter to show how the degree of realism or fictionality of the
contain subdirectory folders for asset types, i.e. audio, art, cinematics, and
dimensions of the game world influences video games textual material and
text. Three members of the localization staff are usually in charge of organi-
therefore their linguistic and cultural localization.
zation tasks: (1) the associate or assistant producer, often called localization
manager, who is involved in all aspects of localization and represents the
main point of contact between the development team and the localization Note
staff since s/he provides all task, budget, and staff estimates, s/he organ- 1 As regards the use of retention in the transfer of ethnic irrealia, although this
izes all the materials to be sent to translators, s/he manages all functional- research focuses on the translation into Italian and Spanish, it seems interesting
ity testers and engineers, etc. The localization manager works with the (2) to mention that in French some names of fictional races have been slightly altered
localization coordinator, who in turn serves as liaison between translators due to linguacultural reasons. Indeed, according to Mass Effect Wiki (online),
and linguistic testers, s/he helps to develop the localized versions, organizes “Salarian” is replaced with galarien and “Batarian” with butarien because the
pronunciation of the original names might evoke negative associations, which
translations, and manages the linguistic testers. Finally, there is an optional are “sale aryen” meaning “dirty Aryan” and “bâtard” meaning “bastard”.
resource called (3) production coordinator who may be needed to assist the
localization manager.
The second step in localization is translation: all assets need to be trans-
lated, and also proofread and edited. The length of the translation process is
usually estimated on word count, which can range from 30,000 to 500,000,
and even more than one million in the case of some massive multiplayer
online role-playing games (Bernal-Merino 2015, 171). This step requires
at least one translator per language, be they in-house or freelance, for the
whole duration of the project, although big games actually call for the work
of a translation team per language. Additionally, other staff members may
include a casting director, voice actors, and a sound engineer to record
and process the localized voice-over files, if full localization is performed.
Sometimes, translators are also in charge of integrating the assets and assist-
ing linguistic testers.
Once translated, all assets need to be integrated into the game builds
and the third step begins. This means replacing the source assets with the
target ones. The task can be manual or automated, the former is more time-
consuming, error-conducive, and bug-provoking, and performed by either
the development team, namely an engineer, or by the external localization
vendor. As far as text assets are concerned, original strings are usually sent
to translators in Excel spreadsheets with separate columns per language and
tags assigned to each row of text. This way, a simple parser created by the
developer can integrate translated strings into the game engine files, thus

5 Military Language between
Realism and Fictionality
5.1 Introduction
“War is tragically a widespread phenomenon, both historically and geo-
graphically” (Footitt 2012, 1). From the eighteenth century, to the First
and Second World Wars, and on to the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan
today, “armed conflict has marked our histories” (Footitt 2012, 1) and,
more relevantly for this book, has inspired generations of game designers.
Indeed, war has been an integral theme of multimedia interactive entertain-
ment since the very beginning and war video games have been a global
commercial and cultural phenomenon for decades. In particular, no video
game genre has been more popular or more lucrative than the military
shooter. According to Voorhees (2014, 251), the shooting genre is “one
of the most notorious, and certainly the oldest, type of video games”; after
all, “Spacewar!, developed in 1961 by Steve Russell et al. […], was the first
[shooting] video game” (ibid.).
Moreover, shooters feature prominently among the most controversial
areas of gaming, generating much discussion in both public and scholarly
circles concerned with the medium’s impact on society (ibid., 253). As vehi-
cles of militarism, war video games have attracted considerable interdiscipli-
nary academic attention.1 Of special interest is the way their content affects
an audience of “virtual citizen-soldier[s]” (Stahl 2010, 21), the militaristic
messages players internalize, and the extent to which these games impact
on social values and relations of power, such as race, ethnicity, and gender
(Robinson 2016, 271). As Payne (2016, 5) explains, military-themed video
games may represent real, near-real, or fantasy conflicts but they are all
overly militarized worlds: players eliminate human threats on behalf of their
country, usually the USA, or alien foes in an imaginary world and “these
are not mere cosmetic distinctions. Rather, these differences determine how
games are understood as relating to reality or not”. Indeed, according to
Payne (ibid., 46), these differences affect players’ expectations concerning
the relationship between war game experiences and the reality of war, or
between games’ representations of war and players’ understanding of it,
because they determine whether and how players can make connections
DOI: 10.4324/9781003001935-5
26 Game Localization and Translation
avoiding dangerous cutting and pasting (Maxwell-Chandler and O’Malley-
Deming 2012, 200). The game engine then determines the correct text to be
displayed based on what the game tag indicates. Accordingly, as regards the
overall method, a two-way process exports the source text into a multilin-
gual spreadsheet and then imports the strings in the target language back
into the game. Automated integration is preferable to manual work because
“the longer it takes to integrate assets and create localized builds, the longer
testing is delayed” and this “will negatively impact the overall localization
schedule” (ibid., 202).
Finally, localizations need to be tested and enter Quality Assurance (QA),
since the QA department is involved. This fourth step can be one of the
most time-consuming because it must be performed on two concurrent
levels: functionality and linguistic testing, each consisting of several test-
ing rounds. Moreover, testing time increases with the number of languages
involved, game size, gameplay mechanics, etc. Functionality testers notify
all design, art, or engineering bugs in the game code, while linguistic test-
ers check all the language assets in the game to make sure that there are no
incorrect translations, grammatical errors, typos, and incorrectly displayed
text, namely overlapping, misspelling, truncations, etc. “Every piece of text
in the game has to be checked, along with all the voice-over and cinematics”
(ibid., 237). Obviously enough, as regards staff, in addition to functionality
and linguistic testers, this phase requires engineers and production people
to fix both types of bugs (ibid., 87). As for linguistic testers in particular, as
also Maxwell-Chandler and O’Malley-Deming (ibid., 237) point out, they
should be native speakers of the target language who can best understand
the co-text and context of the translations and comment on whether the
target text fits with the look and feel of the game. They are often part of the
same group of translators, so that they are already familiar with the “lan-
guage” and tone of the game they are testing.
2.4.3 Localization Models
The game industry mainly shows two different procedures as regards locali-
zation agents, i.e. who performs the localization process, and when, depend-
ing on games’ international launch. First, as regards time models, the release
of the localized versions can follow either a simultaneous shipping model
or a post-gold one. Second, as to actors involved, publishers may carry out
in-house localization or they may outsource it to a professional language
service provider. Nevertheless, sometimes in-house localization and out-
sourcing co-exist in major publishing houses, which opt for either one or
the other depending on single games or franchises.
If the original game and localizations are distributed on the same date
in different territories, the process follows the so-called “sim-ship” model,
which means that localization runs in parallel to game development, thus
posing a number of issues for translators who work on an incomplete and
 Game Localization and Translation 27
unstable text. Obviously enough, simultaneous shipment is the goal of most
developers and publishers and is indeed becoming more and more com-
mon. This is mainly due to marketing reasons: the short shelf-life of video
games, the possibility of avoiding gray market imports and pirate copies
from other countries, the benefit of building a sense of community among
gamers, allowing them to discuss the game on specialized forums or play
online internationally, if online playing is included, and the advantage of
exploiting a single but usually massive global marketing campaign to gener-
ate more publicity and engagement, especially for big-budget games.
In contrast, a post-gold model means that localized versions are shipped
after the original game, the time lag ranging from a few months to a year.
As regards the process, localization is performed on a finished game and this
means better working conditions for translators.
Generally, as Maxwell-Chandler and O’Malley-Deming (2012, 47)
explain, “the publisher ships the European versions with the English version
and staggers the ship dates of the Japanese, Korean, Russian, and Hebrew
versions”. This way, since English and FIGS languages cover most of the
USA, Europe, and South America, publishers make sure that these versions
are simultaneously available on the game’s international launch date. As
regards the other regions, such as Russia, Korea, and Japan, localized ver-
sions tend to appear a few months later because third-party licensors, who
are in charge of translation, integration, and testing, work on the final prod-
uct. According to O’Hagan and Mangiron (2013, 60), the ideal simultane-
ous shipment is already a standard for most Western companies. On the
contrary, although the approach is changing, Japanese publishers usually
release the original game first on the domestic market, a North American
localization some time later, and finally European versions thus using US
English as a pivot language.3
With the in-house model, localization is performed “under the super-
vision of the developer or the publisher in their premises” (O’Hagan and
Mangiron 2013, 116). It means that the developer, who has got a localiza-
tion department and a steady group of in-house or freelance translators, is
also responsible for localization into different languages and coordinates the
project from beginning to end. Translators work under the direction of the
localization coordinator, who serves as a trait d’union between them and
the developers. More importantly, since localization usually starts when the
original game is finished, translators have full access to the product: they
can play it, familiarize themselves with the storyline, characters, and game-
play. It is a longer process on the whole, as opposed to outsourced localiza-
tion, but it results in better quality because translators can rely on a solid
knowledge of the game. Thus, the QA process turns out to be smoother for
specialized game testing vendors.
On the contrary, when localization is outsourced, an external specialized
localization vendor is commissioned to perform the process. Outsourcing,
although costlier, is currently the most widely used model in the industry.
Realism and Fictionality in Military Language 149
between the game world and the real world to meaningfully interpret the
political, social, and cultural content that war video games implicitly or
explicitly transmit through procedural representations (Bogost 2007).
The linguistic dimension of war video games, i.e. the way language con-
tributes to war representation and simulated militarism, is a neglected area
of investigation and, more generally, very little scholarly attention has been
given to military language from a translational viewpoint. In Translation
Studies, research on the interface between language, translation, and the
military realm has been mainly practice-oriented and has predominantly
focused on the role that language intermediaries, interpreters, and trans-
lators play in conflict zones or in war-related official institutions such as
national armies, international coalitions, or tribunals.2 However, this is only
one element in the overall linguistic landscape which can be produced by
war, be it real or simulated. The focus on translation professionals in war
zones is also testified to by the efforts aimed at defining military translation,
interpreted as “a special type of mediated intercultural communication, car-
ried out for the linguistic support of the armed forces” (Balabin 2018a,
45) whose principal actor is the military interpreter or translator (Balabin
2018b, 24). According to Xu (2019), indeed, most contributions in this
field originate in military institutions, due to the greater ease of access to
authentic materials for military professionals or scholars, which however
tend to offer subjective perspectives on professional experience, generally
lacking any theoretical framework and adopting a prescriptive approach.
Thus, research into translation and simulated war lags far behind that of
its real counterpart: despite the considerable number of war-themed docu-
mentaries, movies, television series, and video games, especially of US ori-
gin, the transfer of military English is still an underexplored area. To my
knowledge, very few publications deal with the phenomenon in Audiovisual
Translation (Gordo-Peleato 2007, Ardi 2013, Pirus 2015, Imre 2018) for
example, while in game localization no studies have been conducted so far.3
The realism-fictionality corpus of this book consists of three war video
games which specifically belong to the genre of military shooters. Indeed,
as discussed in Chapter 3, the war theme and the shooting genre were fun-
damental criteria for the selection of the games to be included in the corpus
and for the analysis of realia and irrealia in the original and translated dia-
logs. Given the military embeddedness of the three game worlds, it comes
as no surprise that military language plays a fundamental role in game texts
and represents a remarkable and varied source of linguistic phenomena. As
Patterson (2015, 212) explains, “the lingo used during combat, like ‘hos-
tiles,’ ‘extraction point,’ and ‘LZ’ (landing zone) as well as the types of
weaponry (pistols, SMGs, rifles, snipers, shotguns, and grenades)” are typi-
cal elements of the military gameplay of shooters and, accordingly, textual
and linguistic features of this subgenre. After all, most in-game dialogs take
place during military operations and involve soldiers who speak to other
soldiers about warfare. As regards science-fiction in particular, since “the
150 Realism and Fictionality in Military Language
naval language of the space ships and the language of the star troopers […]
do not differ from the present patterns of military language in American
armed forces”, the issues related to military language and translation are
very similar to those present in all audiovisual products set in a military
context (Wozniak 2014, online).
As regards culture, US English is the means of expression of such special-
ized language and, needless to say, most game characters are US marines
proper, as in Medal of Honor Warfighter and Battlefield 4, or marines
belonging to a fictional Navy which is designed in the image of the actual US
Navy, as in Mass Effect 3. In this light, the games’ military lingo may be con-
sidered as language and culture-specific. Nevertheless, English is also “the
vehicular language for the Military, in an international geo-political sce-
nario marked by the globalization of conflicts beyond national borders and
consequently by the integration of armies in multinational and multicultural
coalition forces” (Orna-Montesinos 2013, 87–88), like those simulated in
the games of this book corpus. In other words, the growing internaliza-
tion process undergone by real armed forces has been paired with the use
of English as the lingua franca of international communication in this real
professional context and, as such, as in many other specialized domains,
“seems to have monopolized military language worldwide” (Furiassi and
Fiano 2017, 149), which explains the significant presence of Anglicisms in
national military languages.
As regards the USA and their leading role in international contemporary
war settings, the importance of military communication is testified to by the
direct commitment of the US government. The Joint Education and Doctrine
Division of the US Department of Defense (DOD) compiles and periodically
updates the “DOD Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms”, which
contains all the military and associated terms, together with their defini-
tions, which have been approved as “DOD terminology”.4 As in the analysis
of artifactual realia in Chapter 4, given the specialization of the data dis-
cussed in this chapter, the above-mentioned dictionary (DOD 2020) and the
“Dictionary of Military Terms” by Bowyer (2004) have been adopted as the
main references to investigate the nature of military language expressions
as terms, i.e. they are lemmas of subject-specific specialized dictionaries.
In Italian and Spanish, “Il Dizionario militare” [The Military Dictionary]
by Busetto (2004) and the “Diccionario de terminología y argot military”
[Dictionary of Military Terminology and Slang] by Rodríguez-González
(2005) have been selected to compare translators’ choices with specialized
dictionaries of Italian and Spanish military languages,5 together with other
resources which will be relevantly mentioned throughout the chapter.6
Based on these premises, the following paragraphs explore the original
and translated representation of military language between realism and
fictionality and complete the analysis of war-related artifactual realia in
Chapter 4. Aimed at complementing the study of the terms referring to real
military vehicles, weapons, and equipment in Section 4.9.1, this chapter
28 Game Localization and Translation
The vendor selects the translators and arranges all necessary phases accord-
ing to the game’s localization level, such as voice-over for example, if full
localization is selected, and sometimes they are also in charge of QA.
From the point of view of translators, since the outsourcing model is
often linked to simultaneous shipment, the job is much more complicated.
They work on incomplete and unstable texts, subject to last-minute changes,
because the product is still under development. They are not allowed to
play or even see the game and they generally translate a spreadsheet with a
series of unconnected text strings belonging to different parts of the game
with little or no co-textual and contextual information. Unfortunately, this
may influence the quality of translation especially if we consider that video
games are multimedia texts based on the simultaneous use of different semi-
otic channels, where the synchronization between text (written, subtitled,
voiced-over), images, and sound is paramount. For this reason, game trans-
lation is often described as “blind” (Dietz 2006, 2007): it requires language
professionals to rely on their intuitions and game literacy to provide “the
most flexible” solutions possible, so that they can be suitable for different
contexts (O’Hagan and Mangiron 2013, 119).
In terms of localization models, the international distribution of the three
games included in the corpus followed the sim-ship model: Medal of Honor
Warfighter (2012) was released on October 23 in North America and on
October 25 in Europe; Battlefield 4 (2013) was released on October 29 in
North America and on October 31 in Europe; Mass Effect 3 (2012) was
released on March 6 in North America and on March 9 in Europe.
Moreover, as regards localization agents, Medal of Honor Warfighter
was translated by a small localization vendor into Italian and by a freelancer
into Spanish, while audio localization was performed by another company
in both languages. Battlefield 4 was translated and voiced-over by a mul-
tinational localization vendor in Italian, while in Spanish it was translated
by a freelancer and audio-localized by another company. Mass Effect 3 was
translated in both Italian and Spanish by a multinational localization agency
which also performed the audio localization in Italian.
2.4.4 Localization Assets
The scope of localization, which generally depends on the game type and
size, is another important factor in publishers’ decision-making process.
This means to determine the quantity of the game assets to be localized
in the project: the number of words to be translated, the number of voice-
over lines to be recorded, the number of art and graphic assets to be modi-
fied, etc. According to Maxwell-Chandler and O’Malley-Deming (2012,
53), game assets can be classified into five groups, namely (1) text assets
in-game, which represent the bulk of translatable elements and include all
texts displayed in-game like narration, tutorials, installer strings, help files,
and error messages; (2) art assets, also including game logo and in-game
 Game Localization and Translation 29
language embedded textures; (3) audio assets in-game, which basically
refer to voice‑over files; (4) cinematic assets, representing all movie-like
sequences, both pre-rendered and created in-game, and (5) printed mate-
rials, such as the packaging and the manual. This subject will be further
discussed in Section 2.6 with special attention to the consequent multitextu-
ality translators deal with in game localization.
2.5 The History of Game Localization and Translation
Although the processes used in the game localization industry are still
being improved and it is too early for a definitive retrospective account,
an all-encompassing look at its origins and evolution over the past dec-
ades may serve to elucidate the role it has played in the advent of video
games as contenders for a place within the audiovisual entertainment
industry.
(Bernal-Merino 2015, 157)
Game-enthusiast scholars and journalists have been investigating the history
of video games extensively (see Donovan 2010, Hertz 1997, Kent 2001,
Wolf 2008, among others), but the process through which multimedia inter-
active entertainment became a global phenomenon went largely ignored. As
a result, mapping out the evolution of game localization since the early days
of the industry turns out to be difficult. Yet, it seems very useful in order to
paint a comprehensive picture of the topic under investigation.
Broadly speaking, by tracing the development of game platforms, it is
easy to understand how technological capacities and limitations can shape
video games in terms of graphics and sound, consequently affecting design,
gameplay, localization, and lastly translation.
According to Bernal-Merino (2015), perceptible stages have taken place
over the last four decades in the continuous progression that has led the
game industry to become a multibillion-dollar sector. These stages are (1)
the birth of digital entertainment in the 1970s; (2) the establishment of the
game industry in the 1980s; (3) the fight for the markets in the 1990s; (4) the
professionalization of game localization in the 2000s and, one might add,
(5) the era of enhanced localization and new developments in the 2010s.
Similarly, O’Hagan and Mangiron (2013, 46–63) divide the phases of game
localization progress into the following: (1) early phase (prior to the mid-
1980s); (2) growth phase (from mid-1980s to mid-1990s); (3) development
phase (from mid-1990s to late-1990s); (4) maturing phase (from 2000 to
2005), and (5) advancing phase (2005 to date).
The video games developed in the 1970s and early 1980s, mostly arcade
titles, included a few or no elements to be translated, being the first products
“almost purely mechanical, i.e. simple and intuitive gameplay with very lit-
tle in the form of instructions, storylines, or voices” (Bernal-Merino 2015,
158). During the 1970s, most games were normally distributed in their
Realism and Fictionality in Military Language 151
describes other phenomena which linguistically characterize the experience
of war video games in general, and of military shooters in particular.
5.2 Military Language
Language is “an integral part of the whole economy of war” (Footitt 2012,
2). The military, like every occupation, has developed “its own specialized
language to designate people, objects, processes, and situations that are spe-
cific to the field but unfamiliar to people outside it” (Boggs-Cory 2013, 759).
Indeed, the highly technical nature of military language “generally cannot
be understood by outsiders without advanced knowledge of military mat-
ters” (Saber 2018, 1), translators included. Military language “facilitates
communication in the complex, unpredictable, and emotionally stressful
military environment”, it “reinforces social hierarchies within the service”,
it “helps create a sense of shared identity among military personnel”, it
“allows soldiers and sailors to describe shared experiences with specificity
and detail […] and to clearly and directly communicate specific, and some-
times disturbing, information with a minimum of emotion” (Boggs-Cory
2013, 759). In order to serve these purposes, namely military personnel
communicative goals, military language is the result of many and varied
linguistic phenomena which range “from highly rationalized bureaucratic
jargon to colorful military slang” (ibid.).
In this light, official terminology and informal military speech seem to
be the two extremes of a multifaceted spectrum of linguistic events occur-
ring in military language. For example, the need for precision and brevity
in military communication gives rise to a wide number of abbreviations:
many of them are official terms for frequently used words or phrases that
might otherwise become unwieldly because of their length or complexity;
other abbreviations, on the contrary, are informal expressions of military
slang, a linguistic phenomenon which reflects the group identity and sense
of unity shared by military personnel and presents a very creative linguistic
code soldiers use to describe their social reality (Dauber 1999a). According
to Saber (2018, 2), military slang is indeed spontaneously created by the
members of military units and, as opposed to the official technolect, which
is created, sponsored, and approved by senior authorities in the military,
slang is used in non-official and informal contexts, transmitted and spread
through oral tradition within military units, and generally mobilized in
ordinary everyday conversations. Moreover, new military slang may appear
whenever troops participate in a conflict or are deployed abroad and may
remain part of their lexical capital over a long time in later years (ibid., 3).
Conversely, official terminology is “a sanitized form of language” which
“emphasizes the expertise of those who use it” (Dauber 1999b, 380) to
describe tactics, techniques, and procedures as well as weapons, vehicles,
and equipment with highly specialized nomenclatures. Official terminol-
ogy “functions to narrow the potential meaning of particular words” and
152 Realism and Fictionality in Military Language
“attempts to foreclose as many interpretative options as possible in order to
reduce the likelihood of error or misjudgment” (ibid.), since misunderstand-
ing in war can be extremely dangerous. Indeed, soldiers commonly resort
to standardized brevity codes and procedure words or “prowords” (Weik
2012, 760), “which enable them to exchange tactical information in an eco-
nomical, swift, efficient, and unambiguous fashion, in training or combat
situations” (Saber 2018, 1).
According to Cabré’s seminal work (1999), terminology is the set of
terms in a special subject field, and terms, in their basic terminological sense,
are words within the specialized domain. As Depecker (2015) recapitulates,
a term is a unit described by a set of linguistic features similar to those of
a word but, while a word is easily isolable in a language, its sense may be
vague, multiple, or changing, and it refers to an element in reality generi-
cally, a term refers to technical or scientific reality, its definition is precise
and validated by the description of the concept or of the object it is con-
cerned with. However, “in some cases, it is not easy to distinguish between
‘word’ and ‘term’” since many ordinary words may be terms in specific
domains (Depecker 2015, 37). Therefore, what delimits the boundaries
between them “is the idea, or rather ‘the concept’, i.e. the unit of thought
expressed by language” through that homograph and homophone linguis-
tic item, which may be both a word and a term at the same time (ibid.).
The lexicalization of these conceptual units may differ across languages and
terms may not map the same extralinguistic reality in the same way or may
not share the same conceptualization of the lexical units belonging to a
specific semantic field.
In this book corpus, this borderline category includes many of the terms
found during the analysis since, as Wilson (2008, online) remarks, “the lan-
guage of the military and of warfare in particular has greatly impacted the
English language” and “the ubiquity of military discourse” has had a clear
influence “on the development of English vocabulary” and, one might add,
on the vocabulary of languages other than English too.7
As far as the relationship between words and terms is concerned, Medal
of Honor Warfighter provides an interesting example of polysemy and
wordplay in dialogs. The verb “fight”, which is, needless to say, funda-
mental in this context, has multiple senses in English, among which, liter-
ally (a) to oppose or struggle against an enemy in battle and, by extension,
(b) to oppose or struggle against a person, thing, cause, etc. in any man-
ner (Merriam Webster Dictionary, online), the latter may be considered
as a synonym of the verbs “argue” or “quarrel”. This double meaning is
exploited in Medal of Honor Warfighter (MoHW) texts in a phone argu-
ment between the protagonist Preacher and his wife Lena at the beginning
of the game. In the relevant scene, Preacher apologies for his aggressive
manner and says, “I don’t want to fight” and Lena bitterly retorts “You live
for it”. The English ambiguity of the verb “fight”, used by Lena to express
her pain for Preacher’s frequent deployments, is completely lost in Italian,
30 Game Localization and Translation
original version to a few foreign markets, and trade took place mainly in
English between the USA, Japan, and the United Kingdom. Consequently,
Anglicisms such as “arcade”, “joystick”, “score”, and “game over” were
introduced into most languages during this early period (ibid., 159).
Nevertheless, even if games posed little or no language barriers, their inter-
national shipping already required some sort of localization, especially for
Japanese titles, thus offering a preview of what the phenomenon would
mean for the industry in years to come. Actually, in order to make their
games immediately available to the enormous US market, it could be argued
that Japanese developers and publishers were the ones who started thinking
about localization earlier (Bernal-Merino 2011a, 12).
Pac-Man (Namco 1980) is an internationally well-known classic exam-
ple. According to Kohler (2005), the original name of this Japanese title
“Puck-Man” needed to be transliterated for sociolinguistic reasons. The
name was “inspired by the Japanese onomatopoeic ‘/paku paku taberu/’, a
phrase normally used to indicate that someone is eating greedily, in imita-
tion of a fish-like opening and closing of the mouth” (Bernal-Merino 2015,
160). With the US audience in mind, marketers thought that “Puck” would
likely sound too close to the offensive four-letter word and opted for a simi-
lar but less rude spelling: Pac-Man. This not only proved successful but,
unintentionally, it also turned out to be “the first game translation gem,
encapsulating one of the principles of good practice in the adaptation of
games, i.e. respect for the language and the culture of the players of each
importing country” (ibid.). “This led to changes in the cabinet art and the
title screen of the game in arcade machines” (O’Hagan and Mangiron 2013,
49). In addition, the original Japanese names and nicknames of the four
ghost characters, which were based mainly on their colors or behaviors, e.g.
Chaser “red guy”, Ambusher “pink guy”, Fickle “blue guy”, and Stupid
“slow guy” became Shadow “Blinky”, Speedy “Pinky”, Bashful “Inky”, and
Pokey “Clyde” in the official US English translation in order to entertain the
corresponding audience. Pac-Man’s US publisher “decided to give a certain
American touch to the game in order to make it more appealing to US play-
ers”, and “adopted a didactic and humorous approach, using euphonic and
catchy names” (Bernal-Merino 2015, 161). “This rather ‘creative’ way of
dealing with the translation of video games for foreign markets is com-
pletely in line with the essence of games as customizable entertainment, to
which changes can be made in an attempt to boost their sales” (ibid.).
Likewise, the two main characters of the arcade title Donkey Kong
(Nintendo 1981), originally named Jamp-Man and The Lady in Japanese,
turned into Mario and Polly for the US market. These two names were
supposedly inspired by those of the landlord of the Nintendo of America
building and of an employee’s wife (Kohler 2005, 212), this latter example
testifies to how arbitrary some translation decisions were.4 In this period,
some computer-based American games were also localized into Japanese,
but the process was limited to user manuals (Hasegawa cit. in O’Hagan and
 Game Localization and Translation 31
Mangiron 2013, 51). On the whole, the early phase of game localization is
a trial-and-error era, in which developers had little, if any, knowledge about
localization and there was also little control over the quality of transla-
tions, usually performed by friends of developers or other non-profession-
als, meaning that there were no real game localization agencies at that time
and localization was a pretty amateurish business (O’Hagan and Mangiron
2013, 51).
Even after the 1982–1984 great game industry crash (see Wolf 2012),
partly caused by a lack of creativity and the clumsy repetition of ideas and
gameplay mechanics, by the end of the decade the game industry was mak-
ing healthy profits (Bernal-Merino 2015, 162). Yet, at the beginning of the
mid-1980s, although many Japanese console games were exported to the
US market, localization was still an afterthought (Corliss 2007). Moreover,
due to the technical limitations of early platforms, the translation from
Japanese into European languages usually required more screen space to
convey the same ideas. This was also due to the fact that Japanese text
used to be stored in picture format, also posing “the inherent problem of
using too much of the little memory available” (Bernal-Merino 2015, 161),
and therefore the original game even had to be reprogrammed to fit the
translated English text (Kohler 2005, 221). Problems regarding characters’
display were overcome only in 1991, when the first version of Unicode was
implemented.
However, in this period many of the most internationally popular games,
like Super Mario Bros. (Nintendo 1985), were shipped by means of “box
and docs” localization from English into FIGS and Dutch (Bernal-Merino
2015, 163). The translation of packaging and documentation became stand-
ard practice among those publishers who understood that this small invest-
ment could easily increase their revenues simply by making their product
slightly more accessible to foreign consumers (ibid., 164). Nevertheless,
at least in the beginning, target languages were the dominant languages in
Western Europe, that is the languages of the countries presenting a certain
maturity of their national markets in terms of computer users, availability
per capita income, demand for new forms of entertainment, and growth
potential. Thus, the “E-FIGS” approach “quickly became the de facto mini-
mum localization standard” (ibid.).
The increase of game consoles capacity produced a proportional expan-
sion of translatable assets and other factors, e.g. culture and religion, began
to be taken into account. Some developers started to use cinematic sequences
in the game storyline, with narration provided through subtitle-like running
text. There was no voice track, the only sound was computer-generated
background music and some sound effects, while the texts scrolled from
left to right in the lower half of the screen, synchronized with the graph-
ics (O’Hagan and Mangiron 2013, 52). From a TS perspective, it seems
interesting to note that subtitling conventions and typographic norms were
completely ignored. For example, in the US version of Ninja Gaiden (Tecmo
Realism and Fictionality in Military Language 153
which makes the wordplay impossible. Litigare, the equivalent of “fight”
meaning “argue”, and combattere, the equivalent of “fight” meaning “bat-
tle”, are two separate verbs. On the contrary, given the same double sense
of the verb pelear, the Spanish translator could effectively render Lena’s
caustic remark.
Another example of overlapping between a word and a military term used
for amusing purposes is offered in Battlefield 4, in a dialog line uttered by
Irish who plays with the compound term “safe house” and the repetition of
the adjective “safe”. According to the DOD Dictionary (DOD 2020, 189), a
“safe house” is “an innocent-appearing house or premises established by an
organization for the purpose of conducting clandestine or covert activity in
relative security”. As in example (5.1), this term has been directly translated
into rifugio and refugio [shelter] in Italian and Spanish, respectively, and the
ironic effect of the utterance is lost.
(5.1) IRISH: Fuck, man. Guess this safe house ain’t so safe.
IRISH: Cazzo. Questo rifugio non mi sembra molto sicuro.
IRISH: Joder, tío. Creo que este refugio no es muy seguro.
Going back to terminology proper, from a linguistic perspective, findings
show that military terms in game dialogs are mostly nouns and verbs which
can be grouped according to numerous semantic fields. A really fascinat-
ing macrocategory including countless examples is military action. After
all, war is military action and it is not by chance that soldiers’ fatalities are
referred to as killed in action and also that this expression has become a
term and even an acronym, namely “KIA”, in military language. Although
this semantic group is beyond the reach of this book, since the study of
military terminology has focused on vehicles, weapons, and equipment, dis-
cussed as artifactual realia in Chapter 4, a brief mention is useful to show
how potentially compelling this area of linguistic and translational analysis
within military language is.
Several English military terms may be both noun and verb and the same
terms may combine or co-occur with other terms to create specialized con-
ceptual units which have their own equivalent expressions in other lan-
guages. The latter, however, present formal and semantic relations with
English counterparts which clearly show the outcomes of language contact
and, one might speculate, of English linguistic invasion. For example, the
noun “fire” means “the discharge of a gun or missile” and “the effect of
bullets or other projectiles hitting a target and its vicinity” (Bowyer 2004,
94) and its corresponding terms are fuoco and fuego in Italian and Spanish,
respectively. As a verb, however, “fire” means “to discharge a gun or missile
or to detonate an explosive device” (ibid., 95) and thus means fare fuoco
and hacer fuego, that is sparare and disparar [shoot] which are also the
renditions of “take fire” in a passive form and (to be) “under fire”, both
meaning “being shot at” (ibid., 94–95).
154 Realism and Fictionality in Military Language
Moreover, “fire” appears in a variety of compound terms, like “fire-
arm” which is “a hand-held gun (such as a pistol, rifle or assault weapon)”
(Bowyer 2004, 95) and becomes arma da fuoco and arma de fuego, “fire-
power” which signifies “the destructive capacity of guns, missiles and other
weapons” whose counterparts are volume di fuoco and potencia de fuego,
and “crossfire” designating “fire directed at a target from two or more dif-
ferent locations” and translated into fuoco incrociato and fuego cruzado.
In addition, many collocations serve as terminological noun phrases, such
as “covering fire” which means “fire designed to neutralize the enemy so
that another person or unit can move” (ibid., 61–62) and which is directly
translated into fuoco di copertura and fuego de cobertura, “direct fire”
which means “fire from weapons which are pointed directly at their targets
(e.g. rifle, anti-tank gun, guided missile)” (ibid., 74) and which is calqued
into fuoco diretto and fuego directo, “friendly-fire” which means “an inci-
dent where friendly forces fire on their own troops or vehicles by mistake”
(ibid., 103) which becomes fuoco amico and fuego amico, or “heavy fire” in
which “heavy” refers to intensity and large caliber weapons (ibid., 117) and
which is also calqued into fuoco pesante and fuego pesado in Italian and
Spanish, respectively. In addition, there are related phraseological expres-
sions, which mostly serve fire control orders, such as “open fire” which
means “start shooting” and corresponds to aprire il fuoco and romper el
fuego, and “cease fire” meaning “stop shooting” (ibid., 95), whose equiva-
lent expressions are cessare il fuoco and cesar el fuego. In sum, semantic
fields in military terminology represent fertile grounds for studies on this
specialized language, thus offering ample opportunities for future research.
5.3 Military Titles
Military ranks represent a system of hierarchical relationships in the armed
forces, which define power, dominance and authority, as well as roles and
responsibility in the military chain of command (Mattila et al. 2017, 359).
As central conveyors of meaning, the military hierarchy behind ranks is
expressed in the words describing the web of relations in a military organi-
zation, that is rank titles (ibid., 361). Each member of the military has a
grade which, once attained, becomes his/her military title by force of regula-
tion and custom. In written communication, titles must always accompany
the soldier’s surname, but they are also almost obligatorily used in conver-
sations involving military personnel in military and non-military contexts
(Bonn 2005, 16–18).
Military rank titles represent a significant group of realia in the corpus
of this book, regardless of the degree of realism or fictionality of the armed
forces represented in the three games, be they real and existing as in Medal
of Honor Warfighter and Battlefield 4, or fictional and futuristic as in Mass
Effect 3. Specifically, military titles include “commander”, which refers to
the “rank of an officer in the British or US Navy (sometimes in command of
32 Game Localization and Translation
1989) the text occupies four lines not marked in italics with what seems to
be an arbitrary use of ellipsis markers with two dots (ibid.).
As regards the practice, in this phase, “translations were either done in-
house or organized directly by the developing team with the help of free-
lance translators and bilingual players. There were still no game localization
specialists as such” (Bernal-Merino 2015, 164).
In the 1990s, the game industry started to become more and more profes-
sional. As Bernal-Merino (ibid., 164–165) explains, there was a shift from
minimal “box and docs” translation to the so-called “partial localization”
for most big titles; games were becoming more and more sophisticated, and
their translation was now a conditio sine qua non. Finally, European gam-
ers outside the UK could enjoy games in their own languages. Moreover,
subtitling increased accessibility since video games started to be enjoyable
for the deaf and the hard-of-hearing gamer community too. Nevertheless,
because of technical limitations of consoles platforms to store text, trans-
lations usually needed to be reduced to make the target text fit within the
available capacity of the system.
During this decade, many poor translations were produced and publi-
cized online more recently by the so-called “retro-gaming” fan communities
(Newman 2013, 59). One of the most frequently cited examples is from the
Japanese shooter game Zero Wing (Toaplam 1991). The original Japanese
line uttered by the alien character called CATS, “CATS has taken over all
your base stations”, translated as “All your base are belong to us” first
appeared in the European English version for the Sega console (O’Hagan
and Mangiron 2013, 56). The translation became a popular Internet meme,
“All Your Base spread from office to office via e-mail like a benign virus”
(emphasis added), the syntax-mangling phrase incorporated everywhere
on earth, “cropping up everywhere from George W. Bush billboards to
Budweiser ads to the cover of TIME” (Taylor 2001, online).
Other examples of blatant translation errors during this era included
major Japanese role-playing game (RPG) titles like Final Fantasy VII (Square
1997), where one character soon after the beginning says “That man are
sick”, and also a yes/no answer option was phrased as “Off course!/No,
way!” (O’Hagan and Mangiron 2013, 56). Another instance of poor locali-
zation during this period was that of Metal Gear Solid (Konami 1998).
“The original game consisted of some 150 Japanese messages, of which just
over half were translated into English of substandard quality” (ibid.).
The quantity of poor translations produced in this phase depended on
technological and financial limitations, the emergent nature of the industry,
but also resulted in “not involving competent translators as well as from a
lack of proper localization processes” (ibid., 57). Moreover, from the gam-
ers’ point of view, the localization of audio files was still an Achilles heel.
Voice-over assets are the most expensive and time-consuming part to be
localized, only very big budget titles with healthy expected revenues could
aim for full localization at the time. In this regard, a good practice example
 Game Localization and Translation 33
is Baldur’s Gate (Interplay 1998), a fantasy RPG which was one of the earli-
est games to be fully localized into Spanish.
It was especially meaningful from the localization point of view because,
like most RPGs, it contained thousands of translatable strings stored in
different files and formats. The strings were part of the manual, item
descriptions, in-game history books, magic parchments, a complex user
interface, maps […], and several hundred voice-over files that had to
be recorded for each of the language versions in which the game was
commercialized.
(Bernal-Merino 2015, 166)
Full localization was the first move toward treating international players
in the same way as local ones, a step that established the game localization
industry as a necessary partner to the game industry (Sioli et al. 2007 cit. in
Bernal-Merino 2015, 171).
In the early 2000s, game consoles moved from CD-ROM to DVD-
ROM and text strings could be stored in the American Standard Code for
Information Interchange (ASCII) instead of picture format. These advances
made the localization process much more efficient while allowing for a
much bigger storage capacity for text, also in audio and video formats. This
meant significant implications for translation, since bigger audio capacities
allowed dialog voice-over by means of human voices. For example, in the
Grand Theft Auto series (Rockstar Games 1997–Present), game characters
have been voiced by film and music veterans, including Ray Liotta in Grand
Theft Auto: Vice City (2002), Samuel L. Jackson in Grand Theft Auto: San
Andreas (2004), and Phil Collins in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories
(2006), among others.
As regards videos, the use of cutscenes or cinematics, which are non-
interactive sequences mostly aimed at storytelling, unveils the nature of
game localization as an AVT-specialized subdomain, since these tools
need subtitling and dubbing techniques, as far as translation is concerned.
Moreover, the more technology progresses, the more localization and trans-
lation are affected. According to Hasegawa (cit. in O’Hagan and Mangiron
2013, 59), for example, increasingly sophisticated graphic technologies
portraying game characters’ facial expressions required more accurate lip-
synching in voice-over. This meant engaging professional voice actors and
AVT-specialized translators on the one hand, and programmers able to
work on multiple language game versions and to efficiently code localiza-
tion functions on the other.
If the impact that technology has on game design and localization is
clear, it is easy to understand how immersive the game experience can
be thanks to the latest generations of consoles. Nowadays, online con-
nectivity, huge storage capacity for text, picture, music, etc., and motion-
sensing controllers, greatly enhance the experience whose linguistic and
Realism and Fictionality in Military Language 155
a small warship)” (Bowyer 2004, 54); “admiral” which is “a senior officer
in the British and US navies (usually in command of a fleet)” (ibid., 5); “cap-
tain”, which represents “an officer in the army or marines above the rank of
lieutenant and below a major” (ibid., 40); “sergeant” which means “a non-
commissioned officer […] in the US and British army, marines or air force.
Abbr Sgt.” (ibid., 218), and the related “staff sergeant”, which refers to “US
a senior non-commissioned officer […] in the army, marines or air force”
(ibid., 230). Military titles also comprise “lieutenant” which indicates “US
[…] a junior officer in the army or marines (the equivalent of a first lieuten-
ant in the US Army; usually in command of a platoon or equivalent sized
grouping)” and the related ‘lieutenant-commander’ representing “an officer
in the navy above lieutenant and below commander” (ibid., 142); “general”
which refers to “a senior rank” in the army or marines (ibid., 107); the “jun-
ior non-commissioned officer […] in the army, marines or air force” known
as “corporal” (ibid., 59); and the “officer in the army or marines, below
lieutenant-colonel and above captain […]” known as “major” (ibid., 151).
As Wozniak explains (2014, online), “in almost all European languages
it is difficult to adequately recreate the American chain of command in the
navy, given that the system of military rank differs considerably in vari-
ous countries”. However, “in military/war films translators usually tend to
replace the English terms with equivalent military ranks in the target cul-
ture” (ibid.).
Figure 5.1 shows a clear tendency toward direct translation in both Italian
and Spanish in the localization of military titles. This strategy accounts
for 89% and 90%, respectively, and is used to render “commander” into
comandante in both languages, “admiral” into ammiraglio in Italian and
almirante in Spanish, “captain” into capitano and capitán, “sergeant” into
100%
89% 90%
80%
60%
40%
20% 10% 9%
1% 1%
0%
Direct Explicitation Generalization Omission
translation
Italian Spanish
Figure 5.1 Translation Strategies for Military Titles.
156 Realism and Fictionality in Military Language
sergente and sargento, “general” into generale and general, “corporal” into
caporale and cabo, and “major” into maggiore and mayor, respectively.
Generalization is another strategy which can be observed in the transla-
tion of military titles, representing 10% and 9% of instances in the two
localizations. Hypernyms are used in both languages to render “lieuten-
ant” and “lieutenant-commander” into tenente for both in Italian and
teniente and the calque teniente comandante in Spanish, as showed in
examples (5.2) and (5.3). Conversely, the equivalent military titles in the
Italian and Spanish Navies are “tenente di vascello” and “teniente de navío”
for “lieutenant” and “capitano di corvetta” and “capitán de corbeta” for
“lieutenant-commander”, according to Busetto (2004, 862 and 178) and
Rodríguez-González (2005, 277 and 66). Nevertheless, as Wozniak (2014,
online) argues, the substitution with equivalent military ranks in science-fic-
tion “is not always recommended: despite all the parallels between the Navy
and the Starfleet, ‘capitano di corvetta’ does not seem an appropriate rank
for an officer on the bridge of a spaceship”. According to Wozniak (ibid.),
this motivates the tendency to simplify the original rank system in the Italian
translation of sci-fi audiovisual products, not without some confusing effects
concerning hierarchical interaction. Generalization is also adopted in Italian
to translate “staff sergeant” into sergente, while the equivalent rank is “ser-
gente maggiore” (Busetto 2004, 791), which corresponds to the Spanish
direct translation sargento de primera (Rodríguez-González 2005, 261).
(5.2) This is Lieutenant Tarquin Victus of the Ninth Platoon.
Qui è il tenente Tarquin Victus del Nono Plotone.
Aquí el teniente Tarquin Victus, del Noveno Pelotón.
(5.3)  Lieutenant-Commander Williams was critically wounded. We’re
taking her to the Citadel.
Il tenente Williams è stato ferito gravemente. La stiamo portando
alla Cittadella.
La teniente comandante Williams ha recibido heridas de mucha
gravedad. La estamos llevando a la Ciudadela.
Explicitation and omission are the strategies used in Spanish and Italian,
respectively, to deal with abbreviated titles, namely the informal version
“cap’n” for “captain” (Partridge 2006, 181), and the official form “sgt.”
for “sergeant” (Bowyer 2004, 218), both occurring in MoHW. While the
addressee of the dialog line in example (5.4) is the captain US Navy SEALs
have just rescued and the informal register may be interpreted as an attempt
to relieve tension and reassure him after detention, the dialog line in (5.5)
is uttered during military operations proper and the Italian omission seems
less appropriate, given the obligatory use of titles before surnames (Bonn
2005, 16–18).
34 Game Localization and Translation
cultural dimension is tailored to the needs of specific audiences thanks to
localization.
In this light, one of the major changes to localization, and to the game
industry in general, was the great success of games in the online arena,
mostly massively multiplayer online games (MMOG), such as Ultima
Online (Electronic Arts 1997–Present) and World of Warcraft (Blizzard
Entertainment 2004–Present), with thousands or even millions of sub-
scribers who can play and interact online with real people, both locally
and internationally. As regards localization, since subscription and online
MMOG-dedicated forums allow developers to collect very detailed data
about players, the former can make informed decisions about specific locales
or targets. For instance, the design of the Brazilian server of Club Penguin
(Disney Interactive 2005), an MMOG title for children, considerably took
into account players’ claims on the official public forum of this title (Bernal-
Merino 2015, 170).
The more complex and sophisticated video games are, the greater the
challenges localization involves. Modern projects may involve several hun-
dred experts, each specializing in different aspects of the game such as
sound, programming, animation, graphics, marketing, design, and produc-
tion. As for localization alone, Maxwell-Chandler and O’Malley-Deming
(2012, 317) exemplify the complexity of the process by mentioning the case
of Fable II (Microsoft Game Studios 2008), which required a pool of 270
actors and a team of 130 people to deal with five full localizations and three
partial localizations. In order to take on all the challenges this task poses
and standardize best practices, the industry’s current objective seems to be
professionalization. As a matter of fact, the success of the game industry
paved the way for companies to specialize in game localization during the
first decade of the new millennium, which is evidence of the constant vol-
ume of demand for their services over the years (Bernal-Merino 2015, 245).
They are the so-called language service providers or localization vendors,
such as the multinational group Keywords Studios, now leading the sector.
A highly qualified workforce, together with better tools and coopera-
tive strategies for team-working via web-enabled applications, is now
increasing the speed and quality of the game localization industry which
has grown enormously, although rather haphazardly, over the past
decades.
(ibid., 157)
In the 2000s, with few exceptions, and despite the time and financial
resources required, full localization became standard in more and more lan-
guages for “AAA games”. After all, for gamers this is the minimum that
may be expected from such highly priced titles (ibid., 171).
Nowadays, the industry’s objective should be even more ambitious and
imply “enhanced” localization.
 Game Localization and Translation 35
This adjective is used to indicate an enhancement of the game in rela-
tion to consumer expectation in a given locale. In other words, any
amendment that does not run counter to the game-world itself, and
is capable of increasing the immersion of players through familiarity
with gameplay features and specific story preferences, can be considered
and accepted as the right way to approach a particular community or
market. […] Deep or enhanced localization staves off competition from
other top games by presenting a product that caters directly to local
tastes and sensitivities in a systematized way.
(ibid., 173)
This new approach requires the integration of localization within each con-
tent-creating department in the process of game development. Consequently,
it entails the radical move of localization from the post-production stage,
which usually takes place at the very end of development, to the early crea-
tive and planning stages. More professionals are thus required to determine
and advise on how game contents, such as the stories and the sociocul-
tural features, are likely to be perceived from target locales’ audiences. In
other words, developers, publishers, and localizers re-create or remove all
those game assets which could have an adverse effect on, or which could be
misinterpreted by, target players. In this sense, localization becomes closely
involved with the creation of a game that takes into account the target mar-
kets’ preferences from the beginning.
As regards translators, they may play a creative and even somehow
authorial role in the process, “a role that inevitably clashes with some of the
traditionally accepted views of translation as a ‘true’ copy of the original”
(ibid., 173). This relates to the concept of authorship, a controversial topic
in both Game Studies and Translation Studies.
Enhanced localization means prioritizing the target audiences’ expecta-
tions and, although this may imply significant changes to the original game,
this approach “should not be perceived as a mandate to modify everything,
but rather as an awareness of the sensitivities and preferences of other cul-
tures” (ibid., 174).
To conclude this historical overview, it seems worth highlighting that
deep or enhanced localization “is the goal towards which the most experi-
enced game developers and publishers are starting to work, because it guar-
antees consumer satisfaction and loyalty to a particular brand, an approach
which, in turn, ultimately becomes more profitable” (ibid., 174–175) and,
above all, turns out to be beneficial for all involved.
2.6 Game Translation
Given the international distribution of video games, as already dis-
cussed, translation is a key phase within the whole localization cycle.
Video games reach every corner of the world and “go global” thanks to
Realism and Fictionality in Military Language 157
(5.4) Cap’n?! You okay?
Va tutto bene?
¡¿Capitán?! ¿Está bien?
(5.5) Sgt. Wright, are we clear?
Wright, via libera?
Sargento Wright, ¿despejado?
Lastly, as regards the translation of military ranks, it is worth discussing a
linguistic and cultural aspect which concerns the transfer of gender. Indeed,
some of the above-mentioned titles may or do refer to female characters in
Mass Effect 3, like the gender-customizable protagonist Commander Shepard
and the lieutenant-commander Ashley Williams. As already highlighted when
examining the translation of “doctor” in Section 4.2.2, and of “councilor”
in Section 4.8, and as investigated more in-depth by Pettini (2018, 2020,
2021a), Italian translators and dubbing professionals tend to adopt gender-
unfair solutions based on the use of masculine forms for female referents. As
examples (5.6) and (5.7) demonstrate, although the word-ending letter “e”
in comandante makes this title gender-neutral, meaning that it can be used
for both, gender-marked satellite elements appear only in Spanish, thanks to
the use of variables, whereas il is masculine in Italian. Similar wording can be
observed in example (5.3), where masculine forms include the definite article
il preceding tenente and the passive voice è stato ferito [was wounded], which
contrasts with the correct feminine pronoun la for “her” in the second sen-
tence, thus producing nonsense.
(5.6) Commander Shepard isn’t going to let anything happen to us!
Il comandante Shepard ci terrà sempre al sicuro!
¡[{M}El][{F}La] comandante Shepard no dejará que nos pase nada!
(5.7) I’m Commander Shepard with the Alliance. […]
Sono il comandante Shepard dell’Alleanza. […]
Soy [{M}el][{F}la] comandante Shepard, de la Alianza. […]
5.4 Clock Code
As Bowyer (2004, 48) explains, the clock code is “a system used to indicate
other aircraft in relation to your own aircraft; 12 o’clock is straight ahead;
6 o’clock is directly behind you; 3 o’clock is to your right, 9 o’clock is to
your left”. Originated in aviation, this code is commonly used to indicate
the position and the relative direction of an object in military language,
described using the analogy of a 12-hour clock to designate angles and
directions. Although the focus of this study is on names and name-related
expressions, since this code is widely used in war-themed game dialogs, it
deserves a brief qualitative analysis.
158 Realism and Fictionality in Military Language 36 Game Localization and Translation
Specifically, the transfer of the clock code requires translators to adopt the process of negotiation between texts and cultures, during which all
equivalent formulaic expressions in the target language or, when possible, kinds of transactions take place mediated by the figure of the translator
paraphrase the code in order to make the meaning clear. Given the rapidity (Bassnett 2014, 6).
of communications during military operations, it comes as no surprise that In this sense, the linguistic and cultural transfer of video games is
clock code formulae are also shortened in the original dialogs. Indeed, while mediation and negotiation too. The assumption underlying the need
many occurrences report the full form, namely the number plus the formula for game translation is exactly that entertainment is not amusing to the
“o’clock”, others don’t and numbers may be both letters and figures, as in global village as a whole. What is enjoyable in one country may not
the following examples (5.8)–(5.14). be equally agreeable in another, “since the concept of what constitutes
fun is deeply rooted in culture, tradition, and history” (Bernal-Merino
(5.8) Two o’clock! 2015, 41).
A ore due! Regardless of all factors resulting from the industry business needs, as
¡A las dos! explored in the first part of this chapter, the localization of video games
is influenced by considerations about the nature of the title to be interna-
(5.9) Stump, get on our six, we’ll get you out of there! tionally distributed and about the expectations of the target audience. For
Stump, resta a ore sei, ti portiamo via da qui! example, in a racing game the soundtrack must include the radio stations
¡Stump, colócate a nuestras seis y te sacaremos! with locally popular DJs. Similarly, in a sports game there must be locally
well-known sportsmen, or those belonging to national teams, together
(5.10) Aggressor on your 6. with sports commentators from local radios and television programs (see
Aggressore a ore 6. Fernández-Costales 2012 and Pettini 2016). Localization also affects spe-
Agresor a tus 6. cific game contents, namely violence, blood and gore, sexual content, and/
or strong language, when dealing with age ratings, which can vary accord-
(5.11) Our six is cut off! […] ing to the target territory. Age rating labels are particularly relevant for
Dietro bloccato! […] translation because they can outline the prospective target audience and
¡Nos han cortado la retirada! […] consequently influence translators’ overall approach or single strategies (see
Bernal-Merino 2015, 182–187).
(5.12) I got your six. The paragraphs which follow illustrate the theories holding the research
Ti copro le spalle. in this book. Given the difficulty of providing an exhaustive account of all
Te cubro. concepts, contributions, and points of view, and also of their numerous
implications, this section explores the most relevant parts of these mod-
(5.13) PAC: On your six. els, which represent useful tools for the analysis. In more detail, the fol-
PAC: Ti seguo. lowing sections explore the distinctive characteristics of game translation,
PAC: A tus seis. while outlining the influence exerted on the translators’ task by the unique
dimensions of game media. First, the relationship between game transla-
(5.14) PAC: On your six, Reck! tion and AVT is explored (2.6.1); the nature of the former as a type of
PAC: Alle tue spalle, Reck! constrained translation and the unique constraints game translators deal
PAC: ¡A tus seis, Recker! with are discussed (2.6.2), namely space constraints and platform-specific
terminology. Secondly, the distinguishing traits of video games as complex
As regards localizations, it seems worth underlining that in Italian the multimedial and multimodal interactive texts, i.e. interactivity and ludonar-
clock code almost always includes the preposition a [at] and the word ore rative (2.6.3), textual non-linearity (2.6.4), and multitextuality (2.6.5), are
[hours] to indicate the position. Similarly, in Spanish the formulaic expres- brought to light to show typical translation challenges. Finally, on the basis
sion includes the preposition a [at] plus the definite feminine plural article of the skopos-driven nature of game translation, the concept of playability
las or possessive adjective plus the number. Accordingly, direct translation is explored (2.6.6). The conclusion of this chapter is devoted to the process
is the strategy used to transfer the clock code in the two target languages. of culturalization, a fundamental step in game localization, and a concept
However, as already mentioned, it can also be rendered differently and sub- directly relevant to the interaction between the real world and the game
stituted by what the clock position means and/or implies. For example, as in world this book scrutinizes.
 Game Localization and Translation 37 Realism and Fictionality in Military Language 159
2.6.1 The “Periphery” of Audiovisual Translation Studies the dialog lines (5.11)–(5.14), the position “six o’clock” may also become
dietro [the position behind (us)] in Italian and retirada [pullback] in Spanish
As mentioned in the Introduction, game translation has been defined as
for “our six”, ti copro le spalle and te cubro [I cover/shield you] for “I got
“the periphery” (Bogucki 2013, 30) of “the emergent field of what can
your six”, and “on your six” can be paraphrased into ti seguo [I follow you]
loosely be termed Audiovisual Translation Studies” (Bassnett 2014, 142,
and alle tue spalle [behind you] in Italian.
Pérez-González 2019). Video games are one of the new screen-based tex-
tual manifestations that have extended the boundaries of this area of study
(Pérez-González 2009, 13). By drawing parallels with AVT, some features 5.5 Military Phonetic Alphabet
of game translation can be examined because this is arguably “the most
One of the aspects of the military’s lingua franca is the use of a phonetic
complex example of audiovisual translation, due to their [video games’]
alphabet, a list of code words to identify letters in radio or telephone com-
multimedia and interactive characteristics” (Bernal-Merino 2015, 46).
munication, in order to ensure brevity and clarity and avoid any ambiguity
Games can probably be considered as the most multifaceted and challenging
or confusion which may result from excessive noise or radio interference,
form of audiovisual texts as well as the most extreme form of multimedia
or also from spelling mistakes or miscommunication, especially when peo-
interactive software (ibid., 47).
ple from different countries with different accents and pronunciations work
As Pérez-González contends (2009, 13), AVT is a branch of TS con-
together. Officially adopted in 1956, this code system is indeed universal and
cerned with the transfer of multimodal and multimedial texts into another
commonly referred to as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
language and/or culture. According to the author, audiovisual texts are
phonetic alphabet. Letters are arbitrarily assigned code words acrophoni-
multimodal inasmuch as their production and interpretation relies on the
cally, so that single code words are uttered to identify letters which refer to
combined deployment of a wide range of semiotic resources or meaning-
military terms, and combinations of code words are pronounced in order to
making modes, such as language, image, music, color, and perspective.
spell out military terms.
Audiovisual texts are multimedial insofar as this panoply of semiotic
In this book corpus, the code words mentioned in dialogs include “Able”,
modes is delivered to the viewer through various media in a synchronized
“Alpha”, “Bravo”, “Charlie”, “Delta”, “Echo”, “Foxtrot”, “Golf”,
manner, with the screen playing a coordinating role in the presentation
“India”, “Kilo”, “Lima”, “Mike”, “November”, and “Tango”. Except
process.
for “Able”, which is the ancestor of the “Alpha” code word, according to
The simultaneous use of different sign systems to communicate infor-
NATO website (2016, online), all letters belong to the current internation-
mation, which is peculiar to audiovisual texts, is a key concept in AVT
ally agreed phonetic alphabet, but their role varies across the three games.
Studies. Like comic books, films, TV programs, and websites do with their
While in Mass Effect 3 (ME3), they are the names of the special forces units
respective recipients, video games naturally and imaginatively interweave
of the human Systems Alliance’s Navy, in MoHW and Battlefield 4 (BF4)
the linguistic system with the other semiotic systems to immerse players in
the meaning of phonetic alphabet letters better exemplifies the purposes of
their imaginary worlds. Therefore, translation, meant as textual transfer
brevity and clarity they serve in military operations and, more importantly,
essentially, cannot ignore the content and value of semiotic systems other
this difference affects translation.
than language. “Translating only the written word can lead to error and,
As Figure 5.2 illustrates, retention is the major strategy used to transfer
therefore, a disruption of the continuum and coherence that exists amongst
code words in Italian and Spanish, meaning that 92% and 68% of them are
the various sign systems in the source text” (Bernal-Merino 2015, 46–47).
correctly kept in their original form, with very few orthographical adapta-
Today there is general consensus among scholars regarding Audiovisual
tions in Spanish like Alfa for “Alpha” and Eco for “Echo”. However, unless
Translation Studies as the right framework and disciplinary context where
players are familiar with the NATO phonetic alphabet, it is possible to spec-
the translation of video games can be positioned, and the AVT umbrella
ulate that the meaning of code words, if retained, may only be understood
label is a valid one to encapsulate professional practices and translation
in context, in other words, when playing.
modes such as subtitling and dubbing which video games share with other
Another strategy is direct translation, which is adopted only in Spanish
audiovisual products. Nevertheless, also because they are software, the way
(10%) to render code words which name ME3 special forces, like Noviembre
game interactivity and immersion through the maxim of playability severely
for “November”. In this case, translators may not have recognized the
affect translators’ tasks results in video game translation falling somewhat
domain-specific nature of those names as universal code words, but since
outside of the realm of AVT (ibid., 97). This is the reason why, as argued in
they are proper nouns, players may not perceive the inaccuracy.
the Introduction, game localization might also be considered as an interdis-
More interestingly, as mentioned above, MoHW and BF4 dialogs provide
ciplinary autonomous discipline within Translation Studies.
a more faithful picture of the phenomenon and of its functions in military
160 Realism and Fictionality in Military Language 38 Game Localization and Translation
Furthermore, it seems worth underlining that localization and audiovis-
100% 92% ual translation “face a constant erosion of their mutual boundaries due to
technological advances” (O’Hagan and Mangiron 2013, 1). As O’Hagan
80% (2006b, 1) seminally anticipated:
68%

60% The dynamic development of digital content and rapid changes in peo-
ple’s communication and entertainment habits are creating a new type
40% of translation content. The shift from print to electronic media is chal-
lenging the established translation procedure and provoking new ways
22%
20% of translating, in turn calling for new theoretical frameworks and new
10% 8% research methodologies in translation studies (TS). Given the increas-
0%
ingly indispensable role played by technology in the modern transla-
Retention Direct translation Explicitation
tion practice, the need for technology-oriented translation research has
never been greater.
Italian Spanish
Localization “is the most technology-driven and technology-dependent sec-
Figure 5.2 Translation Strategies for Military Phonetic Alphabet.
tor of the translation industry, as it deals with electronic content which is
not ‘translatable’ without using technology because of the very nature of the
communication. For example, “Alpha” and “Bravo” refer to the first and medium” (O’Hagan 2006b, 5). Therefore, the difference between localiza-
second rally points soldiers must proceed to in order to be extracted dur- tion, of which game translation is part, and conventional translation “lies
ing operations, as in (5.15) and (5.16), but they are also used as triage in the nature of the (predominantly digital) content it deals with” (O’Hagan
codes for casualty evacuation, meaning “urgent” and “priority”, respec- 2006a, 39).
tively (Falzone et al. 2017, 48), and following the abbreviation “cat” for “Such a blurring of borders [between localization and audiovisual trans-
“category” (Millbrooke 2008, 128), as in (5.17). lation] is also detectable in the emergence of the many different terms used
to refer to the field of AVT” (O’Hagan and Mangiron 2013, 106), such as
(5.15) Proceeding to Rally Point Alpha. “media translation”, “multimedia translation”, “multimodal translation”,
Andiamo al Punto di raccolta Alpha. and “screen translation” (see Chiaro 2009, 141, Orero 2004, vii–viii). The
Vamos al punto de encuentro Alfa. spread of new media resulting from the convergence of technologies is see-
ing the previously separate domains of localization and AVT come together
(5.16) Mother, Alpha is blown! Proceed to Rally Point Bravo! to deal with the need for global distribution of these new types of product
Mother, la copertura di Alpha è saltata! Procedere al punto di rac- (O’Hagan and Mangiron 2013, 106), of which video games are a prime
colta Bravo! example.
¡Mother, Alfa ha estallado! ¡Avanza hacia el punto de reunión In this sense, as previously discussed in this chapter, a dedicated term
Bravo! would be highly desirable in order to properly define all game translation
paradigms, according to Bernal-Merino (2015, 251) who claims:
(5.17) […] We have one CAT Alpha and at least two CAT Bravos with us.
Have medical ready. The translation and localization of video games show that a more
[…] Abbiamo un ferito Alpha e almeno due feriti Bravo. Preparate comprehensive theory of translation is needed from TS if it is to
il soccorso medico. accommodate and explain current translation practices in the MIES
[…] Tenemos un CAT Alfa y dos CAT Bravos con nosotros. [Multimedia Interactive Entertainment Software] industry. While lin-
Asistencia médica lista. guistic-based theories, process-oriented, descriptive and functionalist
approaches, postcolonial, gender-based and corpus linguistics perspec-
“Charlie” and “Lima” occur together in “Lima Charlie”, standing for “loud tives on translation all do contribute to explain some of the chal-
and clear” (Dickson 2011, 383). “Related to radio voice communication, lenges encountered in TMIES [Translation of Multimedia Interactive
loud and clear is the quality of reception, as compared to communications Entertainment Software], it seems necessary that a harmonization of
 Game Localization and Translation 39
theories is achieved so that current professional practice can be fully
explained and placed within TS.
2.6.2 Constrained Translation
Since video games are multimodal and multimedial texts, their linguistic
and cultural localization must be interpreted as a type of constrained trans-
lation. This term was first used by Titford (1982, 113) and later adopted
by scholars such as Rabadán-Álvarez (1991, 72), Díaz-Cintas (1998), and
Lorenzo-García and Pereira-Rodríguez (2000, 2001) to acknowledge a
translation conditioned by both verbal and non-verbal communication pur-
poses. According to Mayoral, Kelly, and Gallardo (1988, 356), when trans-
lation is required not only of written texts alone, but of texts in association
with other communication media (image, music, oral sources, etc.), the
translator’s task is complicated and at the same constrained by the latter.
In other words, although not specific objects of the translation process, the
non-linguistic systems or channels an original text relies on to convey infor-
mation at a given moment must be considered by the translator (Mayoral
et al. 1988, 358).
The relationship between all the systems involved is based on a funda-
mental concept: synchrony, referred to as “the agreement between signals
emitted for the purpose of communicating the same message” (ibid., 359)
and which can be of time, space, content, sound, and character. Accordingly,
the message must be seen as “a whole created as a result of the concurrence
of different signals” and not as the sum of meanings transmitted by the sum
of signals (ibid., 360). This does not imply that “the different parts of the
message should mean the same thing but rather they should not contradict
one another unless this has been the intention of the original” (ibid., 363).
Translation is not possible without understanding how the other non-lin-
guistic communicative elements add to or modify the meaning and some-
times even impose their own laws and conditions on the text. Synchrony is
therefore paramount for the sake of the overall communicative function,
that is to say to avoid a failure of the communication act or additional dif-
ficulty in decoding.
As regards video games, the synchronous effect resulting from the rela-
tionship among all the layers of linguistic and non-linguistic information
found in these products enhances the player’s experience. This is the reason
why when translating games, all semiotic systems should be analyzed by
translators, localizers, coordinators, and editors, if they are to guarantee
the recreation of the same fun experience for receivers in different locales
around the world.
Game translation shares a number of constraints with other audiovis-
ual products, for the reasons discussed above. Besides the issues related
to the transfer of messages conveyed by means of different semiotic chan-
nels, the process presents challenges concerning time and space constraints
Realism and Fictionality in Military Language 161
that are weak and distorted” (Taylor 2010, 207, original emphasis). As in
example (5.18), while this procedure expression is left unaltered in Spanish,
in Italian it is rendered by explicitation into the equivalent procedure expres-
sion forte e chiaro [loud and clear].
(5.18) Lima Charlie. We’re sending the bot. Over.
Forte e chiaro. Mandiamo il bot. Passo.
Lima Charlie. Enviamos robot. Cambio.
“Mike” occurs in two procedure expressions: “mike” and “mike mike”.
Both belong to military jargon: the former stands for “minute”, while
“mike mike” means “millimeter”, and generally refers to weapon calib-
ers (Dalzell 2009, 660). In translation, “mike” is always made explicit in
Spanish, whereas Italian presents two quantitatively equivalent strategies:
retention and explicitation, as in examples (5.19) and (5.20). Conversely,
“mike mike” is transferred by explicitation in both languages, but in Italian
it is always abbreviated into mm. In more detail, in (5.21), “forty mike
mike” and “7.62” (millimeters) refer to the calibers of the Mark-19 grenade
launcher and of the M240 machine gun a robot is equipped with in MoHW
(Medal of Honor Wiki, online).
(5.19) Solid Copy, we’re moving. Five mikes.
Ricevuto, ci muoviamo. Cinque mike.
Recibido, avanzamos. Cinco minutos.
(5.20) Roger. Three mikes. Then we’re coming after you.
Roger. Tre minuti, poi vi seguiamo.
Recibido. Tres minutos. Después, iremos detrás.
(5.21) You got forty mike mike and 7.62. Good to go.
Avete 40 mm e 7.62. Via.
Tienes cuarenta milímetros y 7,62. Listos.
Finally, “tango” stands for “target” and refers to enemies. In localizations,
as illustrated in examples (5.22) and (5.23), retention and explicitation are
respectively used in Italian and Spanish. In English “tango” is both singular
and plural, in Italian it is always singular thus conveying the idea of ene-
mies’ movement, while the Spanish rendition enemigos [enemies] is always
plural even if “tango” may generically refer to one single enemy during
combat sessions.
(5.22) Watch your movement. Tangos in the buildings!
Occhio ai movimenti. Tango all’interno!
Cuidad los movimientos. ¡Enemigos en los edificios!
162 Realism and Fictionality in Military Language
(5.23) Tango on the bridge!
Tango sul ponte!
¡Enemigos en el puente!
5.6 Radio Communication Procedures
In order to transmit messages, orders, instructions, reports, and all pieces
of information during military operations, like real-life soldiers, the charac-
ters in the games of this book corpus codedly interconnect via radio chan-
nels thanks to a set of formulae and prowords (Weik 2012, 760) which are
typical of military radio communication, including “this is”, “over”, “out”,
“roger”, “check”, “copy”, “negative”, and “20”. These formulaic and pro-
cedural expressions in radio communication are used to prevent voices over
radios and other communication systems from being distorted, unclear, or
misinterpreted.
According to the standard message format (Department of the Army
2009, 232–233), radio communication must report heading, text, and end-
ing. First, soldiers identify the addressee with his/her code name or call sign,
and afterwards self by means of the formula “this is” plus the speaker’s call
sign or code name, as shown in examples (5.24)–(5.26). “This is”, which
may also be omitted for brevity, means “this transmission is from the sta-
tion whose designator immediately follows” (ibid., 235).
(5.24) Mako One, this is Grizzly Six. […]
Mako 1, qui Grizzly 6. […]
Mako Uno, aquí Grizzly Seis. […]
(5.25) GARRISON: Gatekeeper, this is Fortress. Say again! […]
GARRISON: Gatekeeper, qui Fortress. Ripetete! […]
GARRISON: Gatekeeper, aquí Fortress. ¡Repetid, […]!
(5.26) Normandy, this is Anderson […] do you read?
Normandy, qui Anderson. Mi sentite?
Normandía, aquí Anderson […] ¿Me recibes?
In both localizations, “this is” is mostly translated into the equivalent for-
mulae qui and aquí [here], both being adverbs of place which introduce the
speaker’s call sign or code name, but there are some alternative formulaic
expressions like qui parla or simply parla and al habla [speaking] in both
languages, and less specialized solutions like soy [I am] or este es [this is] in
Spanish, as in examples (5.27)–(5.30).
(5.27) IRISH: Fortress, this is Tombstone three, […]
IRISH: Fortress, qui parla Tombstone 3. […].
IRISH: Fortress, aquí Tombstone tres, […].
40 Game Localization and Translation
when dealing with subtitling, the synchronous display of subtitles onscreen,
whether verbatim or edited, the voice recording of the different characters,
often requiring good performance and lip-synchronization. Moreover, there
are some constraints which are pertinent to game localization and specifi-
cally affect translation decisions in terms of space limitations, especially
affecting the UI, the use of terminology prescribed by platform holders, the
textual non-linearity resulting from the concatenation of text strings and
linguistic variables which allow the game engine to customize players’ expe-
rience through interactivity. While space limitations and platform-specific
terminology will be discussed in the following paragraphs, the textual con-
straints posed by interactivity will be dealt with in Sections 2.6.3 and 2.6.4.
2.6.2.1 Space Constraints
Space restrictions may be very rigid in game translation. This is particu-
larly true for the transfer into Romance languages (O’Hagan and Mangiron
2013, 131). “Traditionally, translated text is about 20 to 30% larger than
source language text” (Maxwell-Chandler and O’Malley-Deming 2012, 5).
User interface text such as menus, lists, help and system messages, or tex-
tual graphics (maps, signs, and notices including text), have pre-allocated
space with a restricted number of characters or pixels. Yet, they require an
“unobtrusive and fully functional” translation because they represent the
player’s access into the game world (Dietz 2006, 126). “The UI text needs to
be short, clear, and precise in terms of the information displayed, because its
main purpose is to facilitate play without interrupting immersion or break-
ing the suspension of disbelief” (Bernal-Merino 2015, 112). To deal with
such an issue, especially to avoid text display problems such as overlapping,
truncations, or excessive abbreviations, which can be very misleading, it is
important that the design of menus, lists, text boxes, etc. allows space to
be scaled up or down according to the size and the length of the text. In
contrast, redesign “is rarely an option because it impinges on engineering
time”, and “a reduction in the font size, […] affects the legibility of the text
displayed” (ibid.).
As regards the three games included in the corpus of this study, constraints
are usually indicated in a specific column of each title database spreadsheet,
but they do not really affect dialog lines, the text type under investigation.
In particular, in the database spreadsheet of Medal of Honor Warfighter,
space constraints are specified in a column named “MaxLength” which
includes limitations ranging from 1 to 4000 characters per text string, the
latter concerns dialog lines. In Battlefield 4, the pertinent column is also
called “MaxLength” and ranges from 0 to 4000, the former is the limita-
tion concerning dialog strings which are termed “BF4_Subtitles”. In Mass
Effect 3, there are no indications on space constraints, there is a column
called “audio restriction” with no values. As the audio localization manager
(Ravaglia, personal communication, February 5, 2016) clarifies, voice-over
 Game Localization and Translation
actors were not pressured by time constraints thanks to the automatic syn-
chronization performed by the game engine, as explored by Pettini (2018).
2.6.2.2 Platform-Specific Terminology
Platforms are electronic systems, the hardware devices used to play video
games. According to Bernal-Merino (2015, 107), “they can be broadly grouped
into two categories: desktop devices (PCs, PS3, PS4 Xbox 360, Xbox One,
Nintendo Wii, Wii U), and portable devices (PlayStation Portable, Nintendo
3DS, mobile phones, smart phones, and tablet computers)”. Accordingly,
multimedia interactive entertainment software can be categorized into con-
sole games, computer games, handheld console games, and mobile games.
Platform developers “have specific technical requirements, since their
game standards differ in Asia, Europe and the United States” (Maxwell-
Chandler and O’Malley-Deming 2012, 7). Localizations “must fulfil these
requirements and adhere to the platform-specific terminology” (O’Hagan
and Mangiron 2013, 132), whose transfer represents “one of the main
areas of interaction between terminology and game translation” (Pettini
2016, 68).
Many game text types require translators to strictly use an approved
body of specialized terms which relate to a particular platform, official
terminology, and trademarks that do not allow for translation errors or
variations. The content and wording of these messages must follow style,
formatting, and terminology guidelines within each language and across all
localized versions. No variation is permitted unless it has been formally vali-
dated by the platform holders. In detail, as Bernal-Merino (2015, 110–114)
illustrates, platform-specific terminology constrains the following textual
components:
•• the user interface, which is used to control the hardware preferences
as well as the many aspects of gameplay, thus requiring terminological
appropriateness and accuracy;
•• system messages, which contain technical information in the form of
official error reporting messages, as well as promotional information
that the game publishers, the console manufacturers, or any of the
stakeholders, wish to promote;
•• game installers, which contain technical information and system dialog
strings which have been approved by platform manufacturers and must
always be expressed and displayed in the same manner. These texts are
short and syntactically simple, but it is precisely this succinctness cou-
pled with the need for specific terminology that makes the task difficult
for translators.
Moreover, platform-specific terminology constraints are particularly severe
when the title is multiplatform, that is designed to be released simultaneously
41 Realism and Fictionality in Military Language 163
(5.28) Hammer. This is Admiral Anderson.
Hammer. Parla l’ammiraglio Anderson.
Martillo. Soy el almirante Anderson.
(5.29) GARRISON: Any station this net, this is Fortress. […]
GARRISON: A tutte le unità in ascolto, qui Fortress. […]
GARRISON: A todas las estaciones, Fortress al habla. […]
(5.30) Everyone, this is Voodoo. […]
Ascoltatemi tutti, qui Voodoo. […]
Gente, este es Voodoo. […]
After uttering the actual message, soldiers end the transmission with
final instructions such as “stand by”, “wait”, “execute”, among oth-
ers (Department of the Army 2009, 233) and, more relevantly, “over”
or “out”. As regards these two ending prowords, according to the
Department of the Army (ibid., 235), a specification is in order: the term
“over” means “this is the end of my transmission to you and a response
is necessary. Go ahead: transmit” while “out” means “this is the end of
my trasmission to you and no answer is expected”. These prowords in
game dialogs are exemplified in (5.31)–(5.35) and, as regards their trans-
fer, both are directly translated into the equivalent prowords, namely
passo and cambio for “over” and chiudo and fuera or corto for “out” in
Italian and Spanish, respectively.
(5.31) Stump, Mother. Give status. Over.
Stump, Mother. Rapporto. Passo.
Stump, Mother. Estado. Cambio.
(5.32) IRISH: […] We’re close to our target point. Over.
IRISH: […] Siamo vicini all’obiettivo. Passo.
IRISH: […] Estamos cerca de nuestro objetivo. Cambio.
(5.33) Solid copy, Mako out.
Ricevuto, Mako chiude.
Recibido, Mako fuera.
(5.34) IRISH: Copy that, Fortress. Out.
IRISH: Ricevuto, Fortress. Chiudo.
IRISH: Entendido, Fortress. Corto.
(5.35) Roger that. Cortez out.
Ricevuto. Cortez, chiudo.
Recibido. Cortez fuera.
164 Realism and Fictionality in Military Language
Nevertheless, in both localizations there are a few instances of mistransla-
tions: in Italian, for example, passo [over] is omitted once but occurs as a
rendition of “do you copy?” in (5.36), which is a different radio communi-
cation expression as discussed below, while in Spanish cambio [over] is used
to render “out”, as in (5.37). Moreover, it seems interesting to mention that,
given the blurred boundaries between languages for special purposes and
everyday language, passo e chiudo in Italian and cambio y fuera or cambio
y corto in Spanish have become playful parting formulae.
(5.36) IRISH: Fortress, this is Tombstone, […]. Need another way out. Do
you copy?
IRISH: Fortress, qui Tombstone, […]. C’è un’altra via di fuga? Passo.
IRISH: Fortress, aquí Tombstone. […], necesitamos otra salida.
 (Bernal-Merino 2015, 180)
¿Recibido?
(5.37) GARRISON: […] Helo is inbound. Get your squad in position. Out.
GARRISON: […] Elicottero in arrivo, portatevi in posizione. Chiudo.
GARRISON: […] Helicóptero de camino. Ten a la patrulla en
 correct terms translators must use in game texts of each localized platform-
posición, cambio.
“Roger”, which means “I have received your last transmission satisfac-
tory, radio check is loud and clear” (Department of the Army 2009, 235),
belongs to the so-called “radio checks”, aimed at “rating signal strength
and readability” (ibid., 234). According to the NATO website (online), the
origin of “roger” lies in the previous phonetic alphabet letter for “R”, which
is now coded into “Romeo”.
As the examples below show (5.38)–(5.42), “roger” may also co-occur
with ”that” in “roger that”. From a translational perspective, in Italian
“roger” is always retained in MoHW, thus producing a remarkable for-
eignizing effect as in examples (5.38), (5.39), and (5.42), and directly
translated into the equivalent expression ricevuto in BF4 and ME3 as in
examples (5.40) and (5.41), with two instances of informal alternatives like
OK and sì [yes]. Conversely, in Spanish “roger” is almost always directly
translated (96%) into recibido, the correct equivalent proword (García de
la Cuesta 2003, 349) with only a few occurrences of synonyms like enten-
dido or comprendido [both meaning understood], as in examples (5.41)
and (5.42).
(5.38) Roger. Preacher, on the door.
Roger. Preacher, la porta.
Recibido. Preacher, la puerta.
(5.39) Roger that, Mako.
Roger, Mako.
Recibido, Mako.
42 Game Localization and Translation
on several platforms, since the whole number of requirements and terms
may grow considerably.
In professional practice, official terminology lists or databases are usually
compiled and updated internally by a dedicated team of either the localiza-
tion vendor or of the localization department, depending on whether trans-
lation is outsourced or performed in-house. The importance of this issue is
testified to by the fact that platform holders
reserve the right to ban the release of a game for their system if it does
not comply with […] the correct use of their trademark and their copy-
righted terminology, which must remain consistent across the whole
product line in all the languages covered.
The three games included in the corpus of this book are all multiplatform
titles and the publisher’s localization department has compiled a spread-
sheet covering terminology for all languages. This database contains all the
specific game version. However, as demonstrated by the above-mentioned
list of text types, dialog strings do not contain platform-specific terminol-
ogy. Indeed, no occurrence of such terms is found in the corpus and, conse-
quently, they are not included in the analysis.
2.6.3 Interactivity and Ludonarrative
Interactivity can be seen as a basic characteristic of any technology or
computer-based activity, and it is often interpreted as the feature that sets
video games apart from other forms of entertainment. However, as Bernal-
Merino claims (2015), the concept is not new or exclusive to digital media:
all types of entertainment can arguably be defined as interactive, since they
rely on some kind of interaction between the author and the recipient, there
are examples of interactivity in drama, reality TV shows, literature, etc., not
to mention the increasing tendency to introduce game-like interactivity in
audiovisual storytelling, a sort of gamification of television (see Stold 2019).
The main differences lie in the level of authorship granted to the recipient,
the reader, the spectator, or the player in the case of video games. Indeed,
multimedia interactive entertainment intrinsically implies players’ active
participation to unfold. Players’ agency is the conditio sine qua non for
video games to function and, especially, for the game storyline to develop.
Interactivity “empowers users and encourages them to become active agents
in direct control of an adventure to an extreme never seen before in any
medium” (Bernal-Merino 2015, 38).
As happens in Game Studies,5 also for translational analysis, video games’
most relevant dimensions are play and narrative. Therefore, they must be
analyzed as both play (ludology) and story (narratology). Ludologists focus
 Game Localization and Translation 43 Realism and Fictionality in Military Language 165
on the play action, the experience of playing games, and acknowledge them (5.40) DUNN: Roger. We’ll be there.
as simulation, a highly structured world governed by pre-determined rules DUNN: Ricevuto. Ci saremo.
according to which players can choose among different paths to finally DUNN: Recibido. Allí estaremos.
reach different scenarios, thanks to regulated interactivity (O’Hagan and
Mangiron 2013, 76). In contrast, narratologists focus on games as narra- (5.41) Roger that, EDI.
tives and representations, as texts decoded by players, and this latter inter- Ricevuto, IDA.
pretation is particularly relevant for game translation research. Entendido, SID.
According to Fulco (2004, 58), the external structure of a video game can
be represented as two intersecting levels: the ludic and the narrative. Game (5.42) Roger. Looks like you’re clear.
contents belong to either the first or the second according to their function. Roger. Sembra che la via sia libera.
The ludic level includes all the elements related to interactivity while the Comprendido. Parece despejado.
narrative contains those of storytelling (dialogs, texts, and characters), the
latter being partly fixed in cinematics (Bissell 2010, 37). Multifunctional Other procedure words used to confirm reception are “check” and
game contents are part of both, and place themselves in the intersection “copy”. “Check” is an informal expression which may co-occur with
area, the “ludonarrative” level where game mechanics and story fluidly “that” in “check that” (Bowyer 2004, 44). “Copy” may also co-occur
interact and direct gameplay development by means of the player’s actions. with that in “copy that”, and with the adjective “solid”. As a verb,
Ludonarrative is therefore unscripted and gamer-determined (ibid.) and “copy” is “US to receive a radio transmission (radio terminology)”
results in game texts’ non-linearity. In summary, ludonarrative is the dimen- and “copy” or “copy that” means “I have received (and understood)
sion which allows game analysis concerning both ludic and narrative ele- your message” (ibid., 59). As shown in examples (5.43)–(5.49), unlike
ments, and “attempts to bridge the narrative and the play dimensions as two “roger”, these prowords are always directly translated into equivalent
sides of a coin” (O’Hagan and Mangiron 2013, 151). expressions like ricevuto in Italian and recibido in Spanish, or equivalent
This twofold dimension seems to depend on video games’ “half-real” verb forms like ricevere and recibir, or into a few other synonymous
nature (Juul 2005): “video games are rules and fiction” (ibid., 12, original expressions which, however, are not specific to radio communication
emphasis), “to play a video game is therefore to interact with real rules such as OK and confermato [confirmed] in Italian, entendido [under-
while imagining a fictional world, and a video game is a set of rules as stood] and escuchar [hear] in Spanish.
well as a fictional world” (ibid., 1, emphasis added). This argument about
games’ real-fictional duality is a particularly relevant viewpoint for the pur- (5.43) Check. Preacher, on me.
poses of this book, as discussed in Chapter 3. Ricevuto. Preacher, con me.
As regards storytelling, players go through a fictional game world which Recibido. Preacher, sígueme.
progressively unfolds and they are told the story they are determining, a
“played out” narrative (Bateman 2006, xxvi) within the main pre-deter- (5.44) Check that. Let’s back ’em into a corner, then.
mined narrative. Ricevuto! Chiudiamoli in un angolo, allora.
In this sense, if we consider games as the result of the interaction of the Recibido. Arrinconémosles entonces.
two dimensions, it is worth noting that, in Dovey and Kennedy’s words
(2006, 102), “to play is to generate meaning, to express it through play. Play (5.45) IRISH: Copy Fortress. En route. […]
allows us to actively express meaning” and “play is always about action and IRISH: Ricevuto Fortress, in marcia. […]
reaction” (Bernal-Merino 2015, 39), namely interactivity. The relationship IRISH: Recibido, Fortress. Allá vamos. […]
between text and receiver considerably changes and this inevitably affects
translation. (5.46) Solid copy. Holding position.
Ricevuto. Resistiamo.
Action takes place in the first person and, most often, through a com- Recibido. Mantenemos posición.
puter-generated avatar. Players assume the persona of the characters
they play, and inhabit that virtual body and world for as long as they (5.47) FIREBIRD: Copy that. Engaging.
want. […] The game must adapt to the players’ responses, achieving FIREBIRD: Confermato. Ingaggio.
this in two ways: programmatically, through well-designed gameplay, FIREBIRD: Recibido, atacando.
166 Realism and Fictionality in Military Language
(5.48) Normandy. We’re going to to reroute. Do you copy?
Normandy, dovremo fare una deviazione. Mi ricevete?
Normandía, vamos a cambiar de ruta. ¿Me recibes?
(5.49) IRISH: […] I say again Fortress, this is Tombstone three, how copy?
Over.
IRISH: […] Ripeto: Fortress, qui Tombstone 3, mi ricevete? Passo.
IRISH: […] Repito: Fortress, aquí Tombstone tres, ¿me recibís?
Cambio.
Example (5.49) contains another procedural expression “I say again”
(Department of the Army 2009, 236) which means “I am repeating trans-
mission or part indicated” (ibid., 338) and is correctly rendered into direct
equivalents such as ripeto and repito [repeat].
“Negative” is another common proword in radio communication, sim-
ply meaning “incorrect” (Bowyer 2004, 166). Given the transparency of
this term, translators could easily adopt direct equivalents in both target
languages, being negativo in Italian and Spanish.
Finally, in BF4 dialogs a very interesting example of radio talk, namely
“20”, can be observed. This slang term belongs to the so-called “ten-codes”
or “ten-signals” (Jackson and Amvela 2000, 137), which represent com-
mon phrases in radio transmissions also in a military context. To be precise,
“20” is part of “10–20” meaning “location” and, as in examples below,
this code is rendered by explicitation in both languages due to the opacity
of this US culture-specific expression for which a simple direct translation is
very likely to be unintelligible. In Italian, backtranslation reads as “where
did Irish end up?” in (5.50) and “(what’s your) position?” in (5.51), while
in Spanish it is explained and rendered into “do you know where Irish is?”
in (5.50) and “where are you?” in (5.51).
(5.50) DUNN: You got a 20 on Irish?
DUNN: Dove si è cacciato Irish?
DUNN: ¿Sabes dónde está Irish?
(5.51) DUNN: […] Tombstone three, what’s your 20?
DUNN: […] Tombstone 3, posizione?
DUNN: […] Tombstone tres, ¿dónde estás?
Thus, all in all, as discussed in the analysis above and as Figure 5.3 illus-
trates, in both localizations there is a clear tendency toward direct trans-
lation to reproduce the set of formulae and prowords which characterize
military radio communication. Retention is indeed used only in Italian to
transfer “roger” only in Medal of Honor Warfighter, which, however, is
a very frequently occurring proword in the game’s realistic war scenario,
accounting for 80% of the total instances of “roger” across the corpus.
44 Game Localization and Translation
and linguistically, through the correct flow of relevant information in
meaningful text format exchanges.
(ibid.)
Since “a significant proportion of the communication taking part between
players and games is provided by language, whether in text, audio, or video
format”, the game engine must present a considerable linguistic flexibility
and “game programming must take into account syntactical and morpho-
logical rules in order to phrase exchanges with players correctly”, especially
as regards gender and number agreement, modes of address, etc. (ibid.).
Cross-linguistic syntactical and morphological issues complicate game
translation, especially if we consider the usual lack of co-text and context
of localization practice. Therefore, it is easy to understand how interactiv-
ity may influence the translators’ task whose objective is to maintain play-
ers’ suspension of disbelief, to offer an immersive experience into the game
world or, better said, guarantee playability. This latter concept is worth
further exploration since it can be referred to as the skopos of game transla-
tion. Consequently, Section 2.6.6 will be entirely dedicated to it.
Going back to ludonarrative, since either voiced-over and subtitled dialog
strings uttered during both interactive and non-interactive sequences are the
focus of this book’s research, it is worth noting that monologues and dia-
logs are among the major tools used for game narrative development. Video
games’ interactive storytelling is paramount in the overall game experience.
After all, as maintained by Adams (cit. in O’Hagan and Mangiron 2013,
151), “without a story a game is just an abstraction”. Moreover, story-
driven games, as opposed to action-driven ones, best satisfy translational
analysis purposes. For all these reasons, narrative and its devices in video
games, especially in the form of audiovisual interactive storytelling, would
deserve greater attention and further examination by taking advantage of
Game Studies scholars’ contributions.6 Nevertheless, it is beyond the scope
of this research and relevant references will be made only when pertinent to
the analysis of realia and irrealia, especially when investigating the narra-
tives of the story-driven games included in the corpus.
2.6.4 Textual Non-Linearity
The interactive nature of games gives players authorial agency, in so far as
their decisions and skills move the story to a certain direction, they become
an agent in the storytelling process. Players can influence the pace and flow
of the game, their actions affect what textual content is displayed and when:
the order of certain events can be changed, lines of dialog may or may not be
heard and shown, instructions from the game may or may not be triggered
by the player, etc.
More relevantly, as far as texts are concerned, this kind of customiza-
tion is possible thanks to their non-linearity. In other words, game texts are
 Game Localization and Translation 45
non-linear because they are made of separate and decontextualized inde-
pendent strings or text fragments, which are displayed in different locations
of the product in obedience to players’ actions and which often do not have
a clear meaning outside the context of the game.
The non-linearity of game text composition exacerbates the challenge of
dealing with isolated text fragments (O’Hagan and Mangiron 2013, 130),
because they are combined according to the user’s decisions by way of con-
catenation. This refers to a technique “whereby text stored in different parts
of the game code is put together in a sentence or paragraph by means of
linguistic variables and formulae” (Bernal-Merino 2015, 280). Linguistic
variables are parameters replaceable with different values when certain con-
ditions are met (O’Hagan and Mangiron 2013, 11) and generally stand for
proper names, numerals, and objects. They are directly relevant to game
interactivity because they allow the display of a wide number of attributes
for players’ characters such as name, gender, sexuality, profession, national-
ity, and religion (Bernal-Merino 2015, 147). This method “works relatively
well for analytic languages such as English” (ibid., 149) but, when transla-
tion is concerned, special attention must be paid. In the shift from English
into Romance languages, such as Italian and Spanish for example, due to
the degree of concordance required between variable word classes like arti-
cles, pronouns, nouns, adjectives, and verbs in a sentence, this method is
likely to give rise to linguistic issues because it can lead to inconsistencies
and incorrect wording. Moreover, translators also must take into account
different languages’ syntax to relocate the variable or foresee potential mor-
phology changes. Text fragmentation reveals itself in the Excel spreadsheets
translators usually work on, with little or no contextual information and,
above all, without the possibility to see the game before the release.
The corpus used for this research, which includes the three products
selected as representative of the realism-fictionalism spectrum of video
games this study aims to simulate, and which will be described in more
detail in Chapter 3, was compiled exactly on the basis of the three titles’
database spreadsheets. Despite remarkable differences concerning the over-
all number of words, of text strings, and of text types, all games’ databases
are Excel spreadsheets which organize text in typical table style format with
several columns and tens, or even hundreds, or thousands of rows. The col-
umns the three titles have in common include, for example: the “identifier”
or “string ID”; the “source text” or “English text”; the “language text”
or the target language name, e.g. “Italian”, “Spanish”, etc.; and the “cat-
egory” or “parent string” which categorizes string types. Other data con-
tained in the spreadsheet columns may concern platform, space constraints,
and audio restrictions, if any, translation “status”, i.e. “translation done”
and “LT [Language Text] modified”, among others. In more detail, it seems
worth underlining that a comparison between the three spreadsheets of the
corpus clearly show better working conditions for Mass Effect 3 translators.
Indeed, as regards Battlefield 4, the localization project manager (Anselmi,
Realism and Fictionality in Military Language 167
99%
100%
80%
67%
60%
40% 32%
20%
1% 1%
0%
Retention Direct translation Explicitation
Italian Spanish
Figure 5.3 Translation Strategies for Radio Communication Procedures.
5.7 Abbreviations
Accuracy, brevity, and clarity are paramount in military communication.
Indeed, as emerges in the previous paragraphs and in the examination of arti-
factual realia in Chapter 4, the simulated language of virtual soldiers is full of
military abbreviations, more or less standardized shortened terms used to be
as accurate, clear, and concise as possible at the same time. This phenomenon
includes several types and forms of abbreviations, whose register, structure,
degree of specialization, and consequent opacity may considerably vary, thus
posing a variety of translational challenges to language professionals.
The first group of abbreviations occurring in this book corpus includes
informal or slang terms, mostly of US origin, such as “air” which means
“relating to the use of aircraft” and stands for aircraft itself or air sup-
port (Bowyer 2004, 7), “click” for “kilometer” (ibid., 47), “id” for “iden-
tification” (ibid., 123) designating “the process of determining the friendly
or hostile character of an unknown detected contact” (DOD 2020, 101),
“intel” for “intelligence” which means both “any information which may
be useful (especially information about the enemy)” and the “people and
equipment involved in the gathering, analysis and dissemination of intel-
ligence” (Bowyer 2004, 128), “medical” for medical assistance or person-
nel and also “med” for “medical” itself (ibid., 155), “op” for “operation”
(ibid., 172) and the related term “Spec-ops” for “special operations” (DOD
2020, 199), and “evac” for “evacuation” (Bowyer 2004, 88) which refers to
the clearance of personnel or materiel from a given locality in an organized
way (DOD 2020, 76).
Another set of military shortenings contains blends such as “medevac” for
“medical evacuation” (Bowyer 2004, 155), “SIGINT” for “signals intelli-
gence” which means “intelligence derived from communications, electronic,
and foreign instrumentation signals” (DOD 2020, 196) and “SITREP” for
168 Realism and Fictionality in Military Language
“situation report” signifying “a report giving the situation in the area of a
reporting unit or formation” (ibid., 197).
The third group of abbreviations which deserve special attention includes
acronyms and initialisms such as “CAS” which stands for “close air sup-
port” and means “attack by aircraft on a target which is close to friendly
ground forces” (Bowyer 2004, 48), “KIA” for “killed in action”, that is to
say a soldier “killed during an engagement” (ibid., 136), “MIA” for “miss-
ing in action” (ibid., 157) and referring “to a service-man who has gone
missing during a battle” (ibid., 159), “ROE” for “rules of engagement”
(ibid., 208) which are “a set of rules governing the firing of weapons and use
of force by soldiers” (ibid., 210), “TOT” which stands for “time on target”
and introduces the actual time at which the target is attacked (DOD 2020,
218), “DZ” for “drop zone” representing “a specific area upon which air-
borne troops, equipment, or supplies are airdropped” (ibid., 68), “LZ”
which indicates the “landing zone” and means “any specified zone used for
the landing of aircraft” (ibid., 128), “FOB”, whose full form is “forward
operating base” and denotes “a supply dump (especially of ammunition
and fuel) which is located in the battle area” (Bowyer 2004, 99), “ETA”
which stands for “estimated time of arrival” and means “the time when a
vehicle, group of soldiers, etc., is expected to arrive” (ibid., 88), “OP” for
“observation post”, which designates “a covert position from which an area
of ground may be observed” (ibid., 170), and the widely popular “SOS”
used as “an international distress signal, signifying an urgent request for
assistance” (ibid., 226).
As Figure 5.4 shows, despite quantitative difference, explicitation is the
main strategy translators used to transfer abbreviations in both Italian (59%)
and Spanish (75%). As defined in Chapter 3 and as discussed in the previous
100%
80% 75%
60%
59%
40%
30%
18%
20%
5% 5% 2% 4% 2%
0%
Retention Explicitation Generalization Specification Omission
Italian Spanish
Figure 5.4 Translation Strategies for Military Abbreviations.
46 Game Localization and Translation
personal communication, May 5, 2016) explains that the translation team
was provided with (only) some extratextual background information con-
cerning characters and story, although they could contact the publisher and
ask for explanations whenever they deemed this necessary for the purposes
of translation quality. Conversely, the database of Mass Effect 3 provides
language professionals with many pieces of contextual information which
may prove very useful, such as the speaker character’s name and his/her
gender, the listener character’s name and his/her gender, some descriptions
of the string location in the game code, a brief synopsis of the context in
which dialog strings are uttered, and instructions for voice-over actors. As
to localization, for the sake of translation quality, Mass Effect 3 developers
at BioWare commit themselves to provide as much contextual information
as possible to translators (Christou et al. 2011).
Moreover, as regards dialog strings especially, in BioWare games interac-
tivity and textual non-linearity translate into conversations which “contain
many branching options, and are best represented by a tree structure” (ibid.,
48), since it is the player who is in control of dialogs with non-playable
characters. BioWare’s “dialogue tree” consists “of a list of all dialogue
options which branch off into further options. The latter account for every
single possibility that can arise from selecting a given dialogue option”
(O’Hagan and Mangiron 2013, 144). In order to help translators to deal
with it, BioWare developed its own proprietary tool which orders conversa-
tion strings in a tree structure, showing the preceding and following lines,
so that translators can cross-reference adjacent lines of dialog (Christou et
al. 2011, 48). It is the so-called “Conversation Previewer”, which “presents
the English source text, and its available translations and localized VO files,
as an accurate representation of how translated content will be experienced
in-game, as well as how the English source text flows” (ibid., 49).
BioWare’s commitment to high-quality translation is also testified to by
what they call “character bible” (ibid., 42), which “contains information
that is not a part of in-game data, so it does not appear in dialogues or
menus” and concerns “the virtual characters experienced in-game” in terms
of “pertinent background information such as name, gender, species, age,
character archetype, importance (major/minor character), speech patterns,
accent, demeanor, etc.”. Provided to both the English voice-over team and
the localization team,
the character bible contains any information that an actor will need in
order to accurately portray the character, as envisioned by the writers
[…]. This information is not just useful to the VO recording teams, but
it is also essential for translators as reference text.
(Christou et al. 2011, 42)
In practice, given the remarkable number of BioWare games’ characters,
BioWare designed a database which allowed all this information to be
 Game Localization and Translation 47
tracked, displayed, and sifted in an informative and smooth manner and
which was readable by the ubiquitous and functional Microsoft Excel
spreadsheet.
As O’Hagan and Mangiron (2013, 144) underline,
this type of meta-data is not only useful for maintaining consistency in
the development of the game, but also for the localization process, as
it provides background and contextual information for the translators,
allowing them to provide a more accurate and consistent translation.
Going back to textual non-linearity, video games scripts consist of sentences
and paragraphs which result from the concatenation of independent text
strings, which in turn are combined by means of formulae, algorithms, and,
more interestingly, linguistic variables. In the dialog strings of the three
video games included in this study corpus, the only variable found concerns
gender in the role-playing game developed by BioWare. Mass Effect 3 is a
gender-customizable videogame and, in the transfer from English into Italian
and Spanish, in order to allow the game engine to display gender-specific
strings correctly, strings have been gender-tagged by translators thanks to
the computing mechanism of “meta-language” (Heimburg 2006). Although
variables represent a very interesting topic for investigation in game locali-
zation, given the unique challenges they pose in translation, and although
gender may be interpreted as a reality, thus being pertinent to the analysis
of the relationship between the real world and the game world, due to the
complexity and the scope of the analysis of gender-related issues in video
games (see Pettini 2018, 2020, 2021a), it seems necessary not to include this
area in the present book. Nevertheless, in Chapter 4 and 5, gender issues in
Mass Effect 3 localization into Italian and Spanish will be briefly discussed
when relevant in the examples provided.
2.6.5 Multitextuality
The nature of video games as texts is very complex. As interactive audio-
visual software, translatable assets can significantly vary. As a result, they
present wide-ranging translational challenges and require very different
translational skills.
Game localization affects different game elements, broadly classified into
text, art, audio, cinematic assets, and printed materials (Maxwell-Chandler
and O’Malley-Deming 2012, 53). What really matters in translation is text,
and more precisely its genres and types in terms of conventions and func-
tions because “all of them have their own textual characteristics and com-
municative purpose” (Bernal-Merino 2015, 108). A first distinction must
be made between diegetic and non-diegetic elements in relation to the game
world, or between in-game text and paratext (promotional material, box
cover, manual, etc.). Secondly, a taxonomy of textual typologies is needed
Realism and Fictionality in Military Language 169
paragraphs, explicitation disambiguates the meaning and form of abbrevia-
tions by explaining or defining them in context, e.g. acronyms and initialisms
are spelled out and substituted with full forms, informal and slang abbrevia-
tions are replaced with standard full forms, with a change in register, and
implicit elements, if any, are added to favor clarity. Generalization is another
frequently used strategy in the translation of abbreviations, especially in
Italian (30%), which, like explicitation, clarifies the meaning of shortened
forms but substitutes them with superordinate and generic expressions,
mostly hypernyms and paraphrases. The remaining strategies observed, as
shown in Figure 5.4, are less quantitatively significant and affect specific
items in one or both languages or some occurrences of one item in one or
both languages.
For example, retention is used in both localizations to render the inter-
national code signal of extreme distress “SOS”, but only in Italian to trans-
late “ID” in “ID your targets” into Id dei bersagli [Identification or identity
of your targets], which in Spanish is made explicit into Identificad objetivos
[Identify targets], while retention is adopted only in Spanish to transfer the
blending “SIGINT” for “signals intelligence” into señales de SIGINT [signals
of SIGINT], as in example (5.52), which is conversely generalized in Italian
[signals]. According to Busetto (2004, 800), the equivalent Italian definition
is “informazioni delle emissioni elettromagnetiche” [intelligence derived from
the interpretation of electromagnetic signals] while in Spanish it is the calque
“inteligencia de señales” [signals intelligence] (García de la Cuesta 2003, 369).
(5.52) SIGINT hits are lighting up from Manila to East Africa.
Rileviamo segnali da Manila all’Africa orientale.
Se encienden señales de SIGINT desde Manila a África Oriental.
Specification occurs in Italian only, and affects the transfer of the informal
abbreviation “evac” for “evacuation”. Interestingly, as opposed to Spanish
which adopts the equivalent full form, in Italian “evac” is expanded into
mezzo per il rientro [means of return] which details the type of evacuation
soldiers have lost, as in (5.53).
(5.53) IRISH: Fortress, this is Tombstone, our evac is gone. Need another
way out.
IRISH: Fortress, qui Tombstone, il mezzo per il rientro è andato. C’è
un’altra via di fuga?
IRISH: Fortress, aquí Tombstone. Hemos perdido la evacuación,
necesitamos otra salida.
Lastly, as regards minor strategies, omission is used in one or both lan-
guages to deal with some instances of some abbreviations, which otherwise
tend to be translated by either explicitation or generalization. The infor-
mal expression “click” for “kilometer” is a good example. As shown in
170 Realism and Fictionality in Military Language
(5.54), explicitation is largely used to substitute “click” with the equivalent
standard forms chilometro and kilómetro, generalization replaces “a few
clicks” with vicino [near] in Italian, as in (5.55), while omission affects all
the instances of “click” in Mass Effect 3, as (5.56) exemplifies, as if the
information it conveys concerning metric distance or speed measurement
were completely irrelevant in a science-fictional galaxy-sized game world.
(5.54) GARRISON: Follow the road three clicks west.
GARRISON: Seguite la strada, tre chilometri a ovest.
GARRISON: Por la carretera, 3 kilómetros al oeste.
(5.55) In the air. A few clicks south of the capitol.
In volo. Vicino all’edificio governativo.
En el aire. Unos kilómetros al sur del Capitolio.
(5.56) I was organizing construction at a remote station a few clicks south
of the main colony.
Organizzavo la costruzione di una stazione remota Ø a sud della
colonia principale.
Yo estaba organizando unas obras en una estación lejana, Ø al sur de
la colonia principal.
Similarly, while in Spanish explicitation always replaces “intel” with the
standard equivalent form información, as in (5.57), in Italian it can also be
paraphrased and generalized as in (5.58), or completely omitted as in (5.59).
(5.57) GARRISON: Tombstone retrieved the intel.
GARRISON: Tombstone ha recuperato le informazioni.
GARRISON: Tombstone ha conseguido la información.
(5.58) […] Recent intel points to our old friend Stovan Bosic as our P.E.T.N.
supplier.
[…] Abbiamo scoperto che il fornitore di P.E.T.N. è il nostro vecchio
amico Stovan Bosic.
[…] Información reciente señala a nuestro viejo amigo Stovan Bosic
como nuestro proveedor de P.E.T.N.
(5.59) Our intel says Primarch Fedorian is on Palaven’s largest moon.
Ø Il Primarca Fedorian sta sulla luna maggiore di Palaven.
La información que tenemos dice que el primarca Fedorian está en la
luna más grande de Palaven.
Going back to the two major tendencies in the translation of abbreviations,
when comparing the two languages, some instances of correspondence in the
use of strategies can be observed. For example, explicitation is adopted in
48 Game Localization and Translation
for these two broad categories so that translation approaches and strate-
gies can be investigated accordingly. In TS, game texts must be examined
from a functionalist perspective, which shifts the focus away from equiva-
lence-based thinking tied to the source text to that based on the target text
function (O’Hagan and Mangiron 2013, 150). Alternatively, borrowing
Toury’s concept of “equivalence” as norm-determined, it could even be
said that game translation is another example of the shift “from an ahis-
torical, largely prescriptive concept to a historically-oriented notion with a
descriptive potential” (Toury 2012, 85). Equivalence, then, should not be
meant as an abstract tertium comparationis between the original and the
translated text, but as a historically bound changing concept which reflects
a particular relationship between the two texts, which in turn should be
described according to the norms that govern translation in a given time
and space which, in the case of video games, might be defined as global
market driven.
Drawing on O’Hagan and Mangiron’s approach (2013, 155–158), game
texts can be classified according to their functional characteristics (Reiss
[1971] 2000, 24–47) from a Skopos Theory perspective (Reiss and Vermeer
2014, Vermeer [1989] 2000), because one of the major purposes of game
translation is to maintain the functions of the source game assets while
adhering to the target locale’s conventions.
Major text functions can be divided into the following: (1) informative,
(2) expressive, and (3) persuasive (O’Hagan and Mangiron 2013, 153–154).
Content-focused texts with informative function may include the UI texts,
system messages, tutorials, textual graphics, voice-over and cinematics’
texts, manuals, and strategy books, for example. Form-focused texts with
expressive function may include narrative texts, especially literary passages,
textual graphics, voice-over and cinematics’ texts, audio assets (songs and
ambient sound), among others. Appeal-focused texts with persuasive func-
tion may include textual graphics, advertising texts, and the game’s official
website and box cover. Each specific function of source game texts must
be maintained in the target ones and this requires translators to deal with
a wide range of constraints and needs with regards to time, space, style,
translation mode, etc.
Bernal-Merino (2015, 108) offers a comprehensive examination of game
translatable assets and points out that the most common ones can be found
in:
•• the game itself, made of a variety of texts encoded in a variety of for-
mats, such as packaging and manual documentation (word processor
files), installer programs (XML format or binary code), readme files
and end user agreements (.txt format), the UI and pop-up help captions
(XML format or binary code), audio files (.wav, .mp3, or other audio
formats), video files (.avi, .mov, .mp4, or other video formats);
•• the game official website (XML format);
 Game Localization and Translation 49
•• promotional articles and merchandising in general (analog, electronic,
or paper formats), such as television commercials, interactive banners,
and game magazines;
•• game patches, i.e. small downloadable programs which fix existing
bugs missed in the testing process;
•• game updates, like periodical downloadable content-related game chap-
ters, map-packs, features, storylines, and characters.
Moreover, as the list above clearly shows, translators must work on texts in
different file formats, which require them to own and familiarize themselves
with many different software programs.
More importantly, as already mentioned, all translatable assets present
their own textual features and purpose. In this light, the concept of text
genres and text types is particularly significant because translators are usu-
ally expected to adhere to linguistic and cultural conventions specific to
the target locale, as regards the given text genre or type. According to their
communicative function, game text types fall into seven main categories
(Bernal-Merino 2006, 2007, 2015, Vela-Valido 2011):
1. narrative texts: heard or displayed, they convey information about the
game world and its characters;
2. oral/dialogic texts: heard or displayed, they represent the transcription
of characters speaking to themselves or others in the game world;
3. technical texts: displayed or printed, they contain detailed information
about the software and hardware required to play the game;
4. functional texts: displayed as part of the menus, they enable players to
choose between different game options;
5. didactic texts: displayed, printed, or heard, they train players to use the
game application;
6. promotional texts: printed or displayed, they encourage users to buy
more products;
7. legal texts: printed or displayed, they advise buyers of their rights and
duties as owners of the game product.
For example, while the macrocategory of in-game texts can include all the
types above, voice-over and cinematics assets consist of texts with narrative,
oral/diegetic, functional, and didactic functions, art assets have functional
and promotional purposes only, glossaries and translation memories simply
contain technical or legal texts, etc.
“Linguistically speaking, software products are multi-textual, i.e. they
contain different types of texts: technical, pedagogical, and specific (to the
purpose of the application)” (Bernal-Merino 2006, 29), they can be “tech-
nical messages, witty dialogues, songs and literary passages, which have to
be translated differently” (Mangiron 2006/2007, 316). Different types of
games require different translation strategies (Bernal-Merino 2007, 2) and
Realism and Fictionality in Military Language 171
both Italian and Spanish to translate “ROE” for “rules of engagement” into
the equivalent counterparts, that are regole di ingaggio in Italian (Busetto
2004, 751) and reglas de enfrentamiento in Spanish (Alía-Plana 2015).
“Air”, the abbreviation for “air support”, is also made explicit in both lan-
guages into the context-dependent full forms supporto aereo (Busetto 2004,
842) and apoyo aéreo (Forero-Calderón 2008, 51). Similarly, “medical” is
substituted with equivalent expressions depending on the context-specific
(medical) referent, which makes the addition of nouns, left implicit in the
original, necessary: soccorso and asistencia for medical assistance, personale
medico and médicos for medical personnel. Explicitation is also used in both
localizations to render “LZ” for “landing zone” into zona d’atterraggio
and zona de aterrizaje, although the official counterparts are “zona atter-
raggio elicotteri (ZAE)” (Busetto 2004, 927) and “zona de aterrizaje de
paracaidistas” (García de la Cuesta 2003, 907), but since this term occurs
in Mass Effect 3, the omission of details related to helicopters in Italian and
paratroopers in Spanish is consistent with the science-fictional setting of the
conflict. Disperso in azione and desaparecido en combate also result from
explicitation and are the equivalent full form expressions for “missing in
action” which in game dialogs appears in the acronym “MIA”. “SITREP” is
another term made explicit in both languages, it refers to “situation report”
and corresponds to “rapporto situazione” in Italian (Busetto 2004, 804)
and “informe de situación” in Spanish (García de la Cuesta 2003, 372),
although the full dictionary form is used only in Spanish, while in Italian it
is mostly abbreviated into rapporto.
Lastly, as regards the use of explicitation, it is interesting to observe how
the polysemy of some abbreviations, as Kočotea and Smirnova explain
(2016, 109–110), may lead to different renditions due to translators’ inter-
pretation and, possibly, research skills. As mentioned in the list above, and as
Bowyer (2004, 172) explains, “op” is both an informal abbreviation which
means “operation” and also an acronym which stands for “observation
post”, which designates “a covert position from which an area of ground
may be observed” or “troops occupying an observation post” (ibid., 170),
or also “outpost”, which signifies “a small detachment of troops placed at a
distance from the main force, in order to provide warning of an approach-
ing enemy” (ibid., 176). The difference between the two dictionary entries is
typographic, since the informal “op” is written in lower-case letters whereas
the acronym, as usually happens, is capitalized. In this book corpus, most
instances occur in Medal of Honor Warfighter and, as examples below illus-
trate, are capitalized, but co-textual and contextual information clarify the
referents of the abbreviations in dialogs. In (5.60) “OP” refers to the obser-
vation post occupied by some US marines near an explosive-carrying truck at
which the player is warned against shooting and which later detonates dur-
ing combat, as in (5.61). Conversely, in (5.62), “OP” refers to the operation
which introduces the final campaign mission, when one CIA agent joins US
Navy SEALs, which motivates the ironic use of “frogmen” to define marines.
172 Realism and Fictionality in Military Language
(5.60) Don’t shoot the guard or the OP is blown.
Non sparare alla guardia se no salta tutto.
No dispares al guardia o fastidiarás el PO.
(5.61) Mother, Dusty. What the hell just happened with your OP?
Mother, Dusty. Che è successo alla tua operazione?
Mother, Dusty. ¿Qué ha pasado con vuestro puesto de observación?
(5.62) This OP’s too important to leave up to a bunch of frogmen.
Operazione troppo importante per degli uomini rana.
Esta operación es demasiado importante para dejársela a hombres
rana.
In localizations, “observation post” is identified only in Spanish and trans-
lated into the equivalent acronym PO in (5.60) and into the full form
puesto de observación in (5.61), as recorded by Forero-Calderón (2008,
358), whereas in Italian omission is used in (5.60), since se no salta tutto
[otherwise everything will blow up] does not mention the observation post,
and the latter is interpreted as operazione [operation] in (5.61), as correctly
happens in both languages in example (5.62).
Another instance of polysemy concerns the informal abbreviation “air”
which is used to signify “air support”, as explored above, but also “air-
craft”. In particular, in game dialogs, “air” co-occurs with the adjective
“hostile” as in example (5.63) and different strategies are adopted to trans-
fer this informal shortening in localizations: velivolo nemico [hostile air-
craft] is the result of explicitation in Italian, whereas generalization is used
in Spanish to paraphrase “hostile air” into enemigos en el aire [enemies in
the air].
(5.63) FIREBIRD: Tombstone, radar’s lighting up. You got hostile air.
FIREBIRD: Caposquadra Tombstone, segnale sul radar. Velivolo
 work with different file formats and software packages, as well as to
nemico.
FIREBIRD: Oficial Tombstone, alerta en el radar. Hay enemigos en
el aire.
Some instances of correspondence are also found in the use of generaliza-
tion in both languages. For example, superordinate expressions are chosen
to transfer “CAS” into supporto aereo and apoyo aéreo [air support].
Indeed, this acronym stands for “close air support”, it signifies “air action
by aircraft against hostile targets that are in close proximity to friendly
forces” (DOD 2020, 35, emphasis added) and the equivalent expressions
are “appoggio aereo ravvicinato” (Busetto 2014, 193) in Italian and “apoyo
aéreo cercano” (García de la Cuesta 2003, 72) in Spanish. Likewise, in
both languages “ETA” for “estimated time of arrival” is translated into
more generic but military-like neutral and concise expressions such as
50 Game Localization and Translation
since no one project is like another (Bartelt-Krantz 2011, 86), it is quite
difficult to adopt a systematic modus operandi. In other words, the stream-
lined standardization approach common in software localization is often
unworkable in game translation (Darolle 2004). Each title requires a dif-
ferent translational approach in relation to the unique features of the game
(Maxwell-Chandler 2008, 37). Moreover,
factors such as the audience, the client, the media, and the component
of the game (asset) where the text is going to appear will inevitably
influence the translation approach and the decision making about the
methods, strategies and techniques to be employed.
(Granell 2011, 194)
“A wide range of text types, from literary to technical with the use of liter-
ary narrative devices, legal text and contemporary dialogue scripts full of
street-speak, can be present within one game” (O’Hagan and Mangiron
2013, 154). “Most texts that are part of video games share a number of
characteristics with texts that belong to other translation modalities, such as
literary, technical, legal, or marketing translation, software and web locali-
zation or other audiovisual translation modalities” (Granell 2011, 187).
More relevantly, “this combination of texts within the same product could
be one of the characteristics that sets the translation of [multimedia] inter-
active entertainment software apart from other audiovisual products” since
“it is the first time that one single product requires all types of language
transfer specializations” (Bernal-Merino 2006, 29).
With regards to language specialists, the video game industry requires
a translation professional with an array of skills rather different from
other areas of the established language transfer profession. The trans-
lator of video games needs to have good computer skills in order to
be able to translate a wide variety of textual types ranging from the
promotional to the technical, the creative, the didactic and the liter-
ary. Although these skills may not be in themselves new to the field of
translation, their convergence is unusual, and it deserves to be studied
separately and on its own merits.
(Bernal-Merino 2015, 2)
As already discussed, the text type on which this study focuses is dialog, i.e.
dialog strings which are uttered by both playable and non-playable game
characters during both interactive and non-interactive sequences. According
to the classification above, dialog falls into “narrative” and “oral/dialogic”
text; indeed, it has been selected as the most suitable text type to be investi-
gated for the purposes of this book, due to its narrative role in story-driven
games. In the original game, dialog strings “tend to be the transcription
 Game Localization and Translation 51
of the dialog exchanges” (Bernal-Merino 2015, 72), i.e. verbatim intralin-
gual subtitles. In localized versions, dialog strings “tend often to follow the
verbatim written rendition of the voices (dialog and narration) that can be
heard in the audio track” (Bernal-Merino 2015, 124), i.e. verbatim interlin-
gual subtitles. Accordingly, it seems reasonable to speculate that game writ-
ers compose dialogs in the source text, they become (optional) intralingual
subtitles which are then voiced-over in the source language if game audio
is included. Similarly, intralingual subtitles are translated into the target
language and they become interlingual subtitles which, in full localizations,
are voiced-over by professional actors, thus becoming optional. Obviously
enough, these features considerably distance subtitling and voice-over in
game localization from subtitling and dubbing in audiovisual translation
proper (O’Hagan and Mangiron 2013, 163–164) but, as already men-
tioned, a description of their features, especially if compared to the use of
these modes in the translation of other audiovisual products, is beyond the
reach of this book.
2.6.6 Playability
Game translation is primarily driven by its purpose (skopos), which is
ultimately to entertain the player of the translated game (O’Hagan and
Mangiron 2013, 150).
In this light, video games’ linguistic conversion may require a function-
alist approach where the skopos is keeping the same look and feel of the
original and preserving the game experience (Mangiron and O’Hagan 2006,
Bernal-Merino 2009). When studying video games as source texts and local-
izations as target texts, as previously discussed, the analysis tends to draw
on Skopos Theory. This means that the focus of translation is no longer
equivalence to the original, but rather to the function of the target text
(O’Hagan and Mangiron 2013, 150). Accordingly, “with games, fidelity
takes a different meaning whereby the translator does not have to be loyal to
the original text, but rather to the overall game experience” (Mangiron and
O’Hagan 2006, 15). The experience offered by a video game is extremely
complex and multifaceted; moreover, different video games offer different
game experiences. Translating the game experience means both guarantee-
ing functionality and enhancing players’ immersion into the game world,
it means allowing players to both use the product and enjoy the artifact,
since “a video game is both a product designed for mass consumption and
an artistic creation at the same time” (Bernal-Merino 2015, 103) with both
utility and expressive purposes.
Since entertainment is the skopos of game translation, the approach and
the strategies of the linguistic and cultural mediation vary according to the
type of entertaining experience offered by the game itself. In this regard,
due to the difficulty in defining a game experience objectively, to meet the
objectives of this book, it seems reasonable to rely on what developers and
Realism and Fictionality in Military Language 173
tempo previsto [expected time] or arrivo previsto [expected arrival] in
Italian, and paraphrased into statements like llegamos en [we arrive in]
or questions like ¿cuánto os falta? [how long will it take you to arrive?]
in Spanish, which instead are phrased in layman’s terms, especially given
the existence, as opposed to Italian, of a specialized definition reading
as “hora estimada de llegada” (García de la Cuesta 2003, 139). This
approach is similar to the use of generalization when translating “TOT”
for “time on target”: in Spanish it is replaced with the military-like com-
pound tiempo objetivo, which resembles a standardized expression, while
the Italian impatto [impact] means the result of the action implied, i.e.
attacking the target, and generalization conceals the specialized nature
of the original term, whose equivalent expression is “ora sull’obiettivo”
(Busetto 2004, 617).
As Figure 5.4 demonstrates, generalization is more frequently used in
Italian to transfer abbreviations which are alternatively translated by
explicitation in Spanish. This difference affects, for example, the treat-
ment of “DZ” for “drop zone”, which is “an area of ground selected for
the landing of troops by parachute” (Bowyer 2004, 80), whose equivalent
definitions are “zona di lancio” (Busetto 2004, 303) and “zona de lanzami-
ento” (García de la Cuesta 2003, 125). The latter is indeed the translation
of “DZ” in Spanish, whereas in Italian it is generalized into area [area].
As in example (5.64), the blending “medevac” is another term which is
substituted with the standard full form in Spanish, while in Italian tras-
porto [transport] is a broader synonym for evacuation, thus representing a
generalization.
(5.64) One KIA one CAT Bravo. Request immediate medevac.
Una perdita, un Bravo. Richiedo trasporto immediato.
Un muerto, un CAT Bravo. Solicito evacuación médica.
This strategy is also used in the same dialog line to replace “KIA” for “killed
in action” with perdita [loss] in Italian, since “ucciso in azione” or “caduto”
are the proper terms to define fatalities according to Busetto (ibid., 163,
464). In Spanish, on the contrary, muerto seems to represent an abbreviation
for “muerto en combate”, the standard full expression for “KIA” (Forero-
Calderón 2008, 280). The use of generalization in Italian and explicitation
in Spanish also affects the transfer of another abbreviation, namely “FOB”
which stands for “forward operating base”. The equivalent counterparts
are “base operativa avanzata” in Italian (Busetto 2004, 952) and “base de
operaciones avanzada” or “base operativa avanzada” in Spanish (Forero-
Calderón 2008, 202). As in example (5.65), the Italian base operativa [oper-
ating base] is thus a superordinate term, while the Spanish base avanzada
[forward base] represents an abbreviation of the official equivalent, which
more clearly identifies the “FOB” and, as such, has been interpreted as an
instance of explicitation.
174 Realism and Fictionality in Military Language
(5.65) There’s the FOB!
La base operativa!
¡Ahí está la base avanzada!
5.8 Summary
The objective of this chapter was to investigate the original and translated
representation of military language in the three video games of this book
corpus. First, in order to provide the background for the analysis, the com-
mercial and cultural phenomenon of war video games has been described,
with special attention to military shooters, and the scholarly work on the
translation of military language has been reviewed briefly. Moreover, this
chapter has outlined some methodological aspects concerning the study of
this specialized domain in video games. Secondly, this chapter has explored
the complex nature of the military language events within realia observed
in the corpus, ranging from official terminology to colorful military slang,
to finally examine the translation of the phenomena which linguistically
characterize the interactive experience of virtual soldiers, including military
titles, the clock code, the phonetic alphabet, and military abbreviations. In
sum, findings show that the translation of military language in war video
games requires localization professionals more than language skills: special-
ized subject knowledge concerning the reality of war in either the source
and the target languages and cultures is extremely important, which also
highlights the need for advanced research and dictionary-use skills in order
to properly recreate the original linguistic dimension of the virtual conflict
players fight between realism and fictionality.
Notes
1 Many works have highlighted the role of video games in conveying militaristic
messages. For an overview on the topic, see Halter (2006), Huntemann and
Payne (2010), Mead (2013), Voorhees et al. (2012), among others.
2 Scholarly work in this research line includes, for example, Apter (2006), Baker
(2006), Bielsa and Hughes (2009), Footitt and Kelly (2012a, 2012b), Kelly,
Footitt, and Salama-Carr (2019), Footitt (2020), Rafael (2007), Salama-Carr
(2007).
3 The reasons for the small quantity of works examining military language in
video games lie, first, in the difficulty in accessing authentic game texts or local-
ization-related data, as discussed in Chapter 2, and, secondly, in consulting
proper reference works concerning military language. Indeed, both fields, yet
for very different reasons, are almost inaccessible to unauthorized personnel,
since data, especially in the military sector, are usually classified or subject to
non-disclosure agreements. This also explains why official reference works, such
as dictionaries of military languages, terminological databases, or glossaries, do
not abound, which makes research on this linguistic phenomenon in war video
games extremely challenging. For this book study, the researcher has consulted
some Italian military professionals who generously offered access to official glos-
52 Game Localization and Translation
publishers place emphasis on for marketing purposes. Indeed, games’ offi-
cial websites and dedicated pages on publishers’ websites prove to be very
useful in understanding what experience they aim to offer players world-
wide. The wide range of game experiences determines a wide array of lin-
guistic and translational challenges, and very different skills are required
on the translators’ part, sometimes even calling for such a high degree of
creativity, and shared-authorship, that the resulting target versions “can
(apparently) depart vastly from the original in an attempt to enhance play-
ability, engage players and maintain their immersion” in the game world
(ibid., 250). This approach seems “practically unheard-of in the transla-
tion of other texts where (literal) faithfulness to the ST [source text] tends
to be considered sacrosanct, often in a rather simplistic manner” (ibid.,
250–251).
Therefore, playability, meant as players’ interaction with the game,
becomes “a crucial concept for the translation and localization of video
games because it affects, not only the final feel of the product, but more
importantly the players’ actual enjoyment of the game experience” (ibid.,
40). In other words, the quality of localization and translation can either
greatly enhance or considerably diminish playability. As Bernal-Merino
contends (ibid.):
The translation of video games requires ‘playability’, so that game
immersion can be achieved and maintained successfully by taking the
suspension of disbelief a step further and creating a convincingly per-
sonal experience for players each time they enter the game world.
Playability may imply that any technical, cultural, and linguistic transfor-
mation is allowed in order to bring the product closer to the local taste and
expectations of the target locale. Playability should be read as a principle,
according to which “almost everything in a video game is open to change in
order to meet the needs of specific territories if a potential increase in sales
is at stake” and, consequently, “games may be played differently and look
(slightly) different depending on the country where they are purchased”
(ibid., 106–107). They are designed to go global and adapted to be local.
The priority given to local tastes, expectations, preferences, and sensitivities
may involve very creative decisions in game translation, but the parameters
and limitations of creativity are defined by games themselves. Game worlds
and experiences, together with players’ expectations of and interaction with
those worlds and experiences, shape the level of creativity, if any. In other
words, “it is only by applying the concept of playability that the creativity
required for the translation and localization of video games can be fully
understood” (ibid., 42). In this sense, also the interface between the real
world and the game world of a video game can help to better outline the
features of its playability, as will emerge in Chapter 3.
 Game Localization and Translation 53
2.7 Game Culturalization
“Content carries culture; it’s a reflection of the culture in which it is created
and it evokes reaction from the cultures to which it’s distributed” (Edwards
2011, 22, original emphasis). Accordingly, given the global distribution of
video games, cultural issues may arise and, to investigate the topic dealt
with in this book, they deserve special attention.
In the words of Kate Edwards (ibid., 19), CEO and principal consultant
of Geogrify company, culturalization is the process by which video game
“content is further adapted for a broader, diverse audience” and, unlike
localization which usually takes place after development, “culturalization is
a holistic modus operandi for global game design, development and distri-
bution” which theoretically “starts at the beginning of the project” due to
the need to “account for the multicultural and politically volatile markets”
video games get into globally, the need to acknowledge “the reality of global
exposure on the first day of release” (ibid., 21, original emphasis).
Localization and translation allow players to overcome linguistic barri-
ers, they make game content intelligible, while culturalization goes “a step
further […] as it takes a deeper look into a game’s fundamental assumptions
and content choices, and then gauges their viability in both the broad, mul-
ticultural marketplace as well as in specific geographic locales” (Edwards
2011, 20).
Realism and Fictionality in Military Language 175
saries. Nevertheless, due to confidentiality reasons, these documents cannot be
mentioned.
4 As the US Department of Defence itself explains (DOD 2020, i), their purpose is
to supplement standard English-language dictionaries and standardize military
and associated terminology to improve communication and mutual understand-
ing within the DOD, with other federal agencies, and between the United States
and its allies. In this sense, this dictionary represents an invaluable reference
work for researchers in US English military language.
5 It is important to highlight that the selection of dictionaries has been constrained
by the limited number of works available and accessible, while their adoption
has been based on comparability criteria, in terms of purposes, aims, and time of
release.
6 The need for consulting different reference works in Spanish depends on the fact
that the dictionary compiled by Rodríguez-González (2005) focuses on soldier
speak and does not cover official terminology across the languages of the armed
forces, like Bowyer (2004) for English and Busetto (2004) for Italian. For this
reason, other dictionaries have been used to provide foundation for the analysis
in Spanish. For example, as regards the language of the Navy, which abounds
in the corpus, the work by Delgado-Lállemand (2010) proved more suitable.
Similarly, the dictionary by García de la Cuesta (2003) was consulted to examine
the language of aviation.
7 See, for example, Biffi (2011), as regards Italian military language, and Gómez-
Capuz and Rodríguez-González (2002) for Spanish.

Culturalization helps gamers to potentially engage with the game’s con-

tent at a much deeper, more meaningful level. Or conversely, culturali-
zation ensures that gamers will not be disengaged from the game by a
piece of content that is considered incongruent or even offensive
(ibid., 20–21, original emphasis).

In order to perform effective culturalization and proactively reduce the

potential for issues, two main factors affecting content must be taken into
account (ibid., 21–23): (1) the “context”, namely players’ religion, ethnic-
ity, location, social connections, economic status, educational background,
political environment, etc.; (2) the “geopolitical and cultural forces at play”,
representing the four “broad categories of cultural aspects that most often
generate conflict between the game’s context and local cultures”. They are
“history, religion, intercultural conflict and geopolitical friction – these are
the ‘big four’ topics that can affect game design and development and usu-
ally the places where problems may occur” (ibid., 27).
From a geographic and sociological perspective, in video games “cul-
ture” means “the accumulated, managed content of a specific context”
where “content” is “anything a player will see, hear or read” and “con-
text” means “the circumstances or events that form a unique environment
in space and time, within which information is created and managed” (ibid.,
22). Accordingly, any culture can be seen as “a combined set of ‘content

6 Conclusions and
Further Research
6.1 Introduction
The following paragraphs summarize the most relevant aspects of the analy-
sis of realia and irrealia present in the corpus purposefully compiled for this
book research, whose objective was to investigate whether and how the
relationship between the real world and the game world, i.e. the degree of
realism or fictionality of game contents, affects the nature of game texts and
their translation.
The discussion has offered a comparative overview of the different cat-
egories of realia and irrealia and of the strategies used by language pro-
fessionals to translate them in the three war video games included in the
corpus, namely Medal of Honor Warfighter, Battlefield 4, and Mass Effect
3, which, as discussed in Chapter 3, have been selected in order to simu-
late a realism-fictionalism spectrum. The analysis has also highlighted the
most important features of the corpus as a whole and of the subcorpus
each game represents. Although several aspects of the results of the study
have been evaluated in the previous chapters, the following paragraphs aim
to highlight the main contributions of this research to the field of Game
Localization from the perspective of Translation Studies.
For these purposes, given the variety of realia and irrealia examined, and
given the diversity of translational approaches and strategies used to cope
with them, it seems more appropriate and useful to read data and inter-
pret findings thematically. In other words, conclusions will be drawn with
respect to the areas of interface between reality and fictionality of the game
worlds’ dimensions, as borrowed and adapted from Rollings and Adams
(2003, 60–80) and as classified in the categories presented in Section 3.6.
Nevertheless, although the main findings of the analysis support this
research hypothesis as put forward in Chapter 3, their interpretation should
not neglect the limitations and the delimitations of the present work, which
are mainly due to its experimental approach. Indeed, the objectives and the
scope of this research have constrained, on the one hand, the purposeful
selection of the games to include in the corpus and, on the other hand, the
size and the nature of the corpus itself. For example, as regards the text type
DOI: 10.4324/9781003001935-6
54 Game Localization and Translation
assets’ that clearly define the look, feel, sound, taste and general nature
of the culture” which generates “expectations for what will or will not fit
within the norms of that culture” (ibid.). Therefore, “the content assets of
a game’s world might conflict with the expectations for what fits in the
content assets of a specific culture” and cultural issues may emerge (ibid.).
Interestingly enough, since players’ main concern is on the game fun factor,
“most cultural backlash around video game content doesn’t originate with
gamers; rather it comes from the unintended audience surrounding those
gamers” (ibid., original emphasis): “people who don’t play games, who
don’t understand the content-context relationship between the game world
and real world, and who often have a negative predisposition towards
games”, like players’ parents, the clergy, local lawmakers, and “ironically,
the more backlash the unintended audience creates, the more interest gam-
ers seem to take in the ‘controversial’ game title” (ibid.).
As mentioned above, there are four culture-related aspects whose repre-
sentation in game content may turn into a moot point or face public criticism:
history, religion, intercultural conflict, and geopolitical friction. The follow-
ing paragraphs outline the reasons and give examples of their significance.
History is a very popular theme in video games but often, for the sake
of gameplay, generalization is necessary (Edwards 2011, 24). Especially in
terms of historical accuracy, this cultural aspect may turn into a sensitive
issue for those local cultures which are particularly protective of their his-
torical legacy, origins, and events which shape their nationality and are inte-
gral to their identity: “any alternate or re-imagined history can often yield
strong, emotional reactions” (ibid.). For example, in 2007, a PC game titled
Sombras de Guerra (Planeta DeAgostini Interactive), which allowed players
to fight the 1936–1939 Spanish Civil War on both sides, either as Francisco
Franco’s forces and as Republicans, was released in Spain and caused wide-
spread outrage due to the Spanish struggle “to reconcile with the deep, long-
lasting legacy of the conflict” (Edwards 2011, 24; Díez 2007). Moreover, as
Edwards suggests (2012, 23), “it’s not just more distant history that can be
problematic. Recent history can be a very sensitive topic as the memory of
events and outcome are very fresh in people’s mind”. For instance, in 2009,
the announced release of the multiplatform game titled Six Days in Fallujah
(Konami), which reenacted the events of the second battle of Fallujah of late
2004 in Iraq, provoked such a backlash that the publisher was forced not to
release the title (Kee 2009).
Religion is another culture-related aspect which deserves careful
consideration.
If a specific culture has a more sacred basis for their daily activities and
social administration, meaning they might follow a specific religious
faith, then the rules pertaining to sensitivity and acceptability will be
quite different from a culture based on a more secular outlook.
(Edwards 2011, 23)
 Game Localization and Translation 55
Thus, “a piece of content that challenges the tenets of a religion or belief
system is one of the most potentially volatile issues in game design” (ibid.).
In 2002, for example, a brief audio track including a chanted portion of
the Qur’an was included in the Xbox title Kakuto Chojin (Microsoft Game
Studios) and, although it was initially distributed to the USA only to limit
exposure, the issue became widely known also in the Middle East and this
caused the game to be banned in Saudi Arabia and in other Muslim coun-
tries (Edwards 2012, 19).
Besides the more volatile issues of history and religion, there is a host
of issues that fit under a broad category that addresses various forms
of disagreement, misperception, attitude, and ongoing friction between
cultural groups. Chief among the intercultural issues is the perceived
inequitable treatment of a specific culture, ethnicity and/or nationality.
[…] A specific group feels that they are being included or excluded with
a negative intent. The majority of such perceptions are typically focused
on ethnicity, i.e. being singled out on the basis of race.
(Edwards 2011, 25)
One of the most controversial series in this sense is Grand Theft Auto
(Rockstar Games 1997–Present), which is criticized for exploiting racial
stereotypes, especially concerning Hispanics who are usually depicted
as gang members, drug dealers, and involved in various other crimes
(Edwards 2011, 25). Another representative case is Resident Evil 5
(Capcom 2009), which was charged with conveying racist notions and
post-colonial stereotypes such as the “great white hunter” and the “dark
continent of Africa” since the player’s avatar was a white Caucasian man
fighting against unarmed and zombie-like sub-Saharan African villagers
(Edwards 2012, 25).
The fourth group of potential cultural issues in game content is con-
nected to geopolitics and concerns the geographic and political representa-
tion of single nations and/or single governments. For example, the 1982 war
between the UK and Argentina has been reinterpreted in several video games
from both perspectives, which accordingly represent the Islas Malvinas or
the Falkland Islands, i.e. the bone of contention, depending on the design-
ers’ perspective as either British or Argentine territories (Edwards 2011,
26), despite Argentina having lost control of them 30 years ago. Another
instance is that of Mercenaries 2: World in Flames (Electronic Arts 2008)
which faced harsh criticism from Venezuela’s president Hugo Chavez due
to his depiction as a tyrannical leader and the representation of his country
as being on the verge of political and social chaos.
Cultural issues
prove to be costly for companies on many levels – not just the quanti-
tative loss of potential revenue from a specific market but the greater
Conclusions and Further Research 177
chosen for the study, the linguistic and translational features of game dia-
logs, and the characteristics of subtitling and dubbing in game translation,
have been deliberately excluded from the analysis, partly because of the
existence of extensive literature especially on the latter topic, and partly in
order not to extend the boundaries of the analysis beyond its purposes. To
my knowledge, in this regard, very little scholarly attention has been paid
to the prefabricated orality of game dialogs which provides ample oppor-
tunities for corpus-assisted research in the field of Audiovisual Translation.
Going back to the limitations and delimitations of this book study, the mini-
mal number of prior studies on the subject of culture-specificity in Game
Localization has required the researcher to adopt the interdisciplinary meth-
odological approach described in Chapter 3, whose exploratory nature has
disclosed a heterogeneity of linguistic phenomena, each suggesting several
avenues for more in-depth research on every single category of realia and
irrealia.
Before discussing the main results of the analysis, however, it seems rel-
evant to make some concluding remarks concerning the non-verbal aspects
of the interface between reality and fictionality in the corpus, which evi-
dence other manifestations of culture(s) in game worlds.
From the perspective of culturalization, discussed in Chapter 2, these
research findings support Edward’s (2012) concept of “contextual proxim-
ity” and underline its connection to reality, even when the latter is extended
in science-fiction games. The two first-person shooters included in the
corpus, namely Medal of Honor Warfighter and Battlefield 4, have raised
cultural issues and aroused national and international controversy to the
point of being banned in different locales because of their verisimilar and
believable war settings, which place their game worlds in close contextual
proximity with the real world. This exemplifies how cultural sensitivity may
have a direct impact on the international distribution of video games and,
consequently, on sales at a global level, given the market-driven nature of
the game industry and, especially, the economic contribution of localization
to total revenues.
In the case of Medal of Honor Warfighter, as illustrated in Section 3.5.1,
it was the developers’ strive for realism and authenticity that caused the
great backlash against this title. The US Navy SEALs who were hired as
consultants by Danger Close to contribute to the development of the game’s
storyline were charged with violation of orders, misuse of command gear,
dereliction of duty, and disclosure of classified material. After very harsh
criticism, the game’s publisher had to disable the links to the websites of
the manufacturers of the weapons and equipment featured in the game and
promoted on the Medal of Honor Warfighter (MoHW) website. Moreover,
the Pakistani government banned the game for portraying their country and
their people as terrorists supporting Al Qaeda.
Battlefield 4, as explored in Section 3.5.2, despite its fictional geopolitical
scenario, due to its (quite stereotypical) Americans-versus-communists plot,
178 Conclusions and Further Research
faced a considerable backlash and censure from the Chinese government
and, given the extent of the Chinese game market (see NewZoo 2020b), this
presumably caused heavy profit losses for the game’s publisher.
Even Mass Effect 3, whose science-fiction imaginary universe is not in
close proximity to the real world, at least as compared to MoHW and
Battlefield 4 (BF4) game worlds, as discussed in Section 3.5.3, has raised
cultural issues due to its humano-centric perspective, when interpreted as a
virtual laboratory to experiment with reality, as usually happens to science-
fiction products. Indeed, backlash against this title was mostly concerned
with gender and racial issues, but no game contents turned out to be conten-
tious to the point of causing a local boycott or ban. However, the cultural
and sociopolitical representation of fictional races has drawn the attention
of several scholars who, beyond the seemingly apolitical futuristic scenario,
have read Mass Effect 3 (ME3) contents as vehicles of ideologies such as rac-
ist, patriarchalist, and imperialist American multiculturalism. This, through
rule-based representations and interactions, may have had a unique persua-
sive power over players.
Although non-verbal references are only mentioned in this book and no
illustrations have been provided due to copyright reasons, it seems worth
discussing, albeit briefly, how the interaction between the real world and the
game world expresses itself in non-verbal content, especially in terms of the
conclusions which can be drawn with respect to the non-verbal relationship
between realism and fictionality.
As multimodal and multimedial audiovisual products, non-verbal refer-
ences in video games are countless: every piece of content might be inter-
preted as a reference. As a matter of fact, contents relate to either reality or
fictionality continuously, and through every kind of meaning-making mode.
Throughout this book, this study has briefly outlined the most pertinent ref-
erences made via semiotic channels other than language in game texts and, in
more detail, the non-verbal items which are linked to the categories of realia
and irrealia under scrutiny. A wider examination of all areas of interface
of a visual and acoustic nature would have required analytical tools which
are beyond the realm of Translation Studies. Nevertheless, the corpus has
shown many and diverse points of contact between non-verbal and verbal
references within the realism-fictionalism continuum of war video games.
In Medal of Honor Warfighter, non-verbal references to reality are made
visually through the physical design of some characters: the game’s protago-
nist Thomas Walker, codenamed Preacher, for example, is based on his voice
actor. Non-verbal references may also be culture-specific: the non-playable
character codenamed Dusty wears a backward cap which reads “FDNY”
(Fire Department City of New York), and the main antagonist nicknamed
the Cleric is a fictional stand-in for Osama bin Laden. Moreover, reality
serves as a conceptual source of inspiration for characterization: Voodoo
and Dusty are based on two of the Special Forces operators who worked
as consultants for MoHW developers. The non-verbal relationship between
56 Game Localization and Translation
qualitative effects of negative public relations, damage to the company’s
image, and a strained relationship with the local government.
(Edwards 2011, 20)
“In the worst-case scenario, a local government may not only ban the
product but take more direct action against the company’s subsidiary
personnel, including detainment for questioning and even incarceration”
(ibid.). Conversely, “well-executed culturalization within a game develop-
ment cycle” means “content quality, improved government relations, and
respected image amongst local consumers” which “can prove to be an inval-
uable return on investment” (ibid., 27).
For this reason, Edwards (2012, 28–32) outlines a culturalization
method of four steps: “awareness, identification, assessment, and imple-
mentation”. First, content developers must attain sufficient awareness of
potential cultural issues. Second, they must be able to identify them at
all stages of content creation and for this purpose, content creators can
make use of several reference tools, like Cultural Studies research findings,
country-specific guides, symbol dictionaries, encyclopedias of religions, offi-
cial governments’ or non-governmental organizations’ websites, and even
subject-matter experts and local people knowledge (ibid., 30). However, to
identify cultural issues two concepts may be particularly useful: contextual
proximity and contextual independence (ibid., 29), whose examination also
proves to be suitable for the purposes of this book. The former means that
“the closer a content element approaches the original context in person,
place, time, and/or form, the greater the potential for cultural sensitivity”
(ibid.). Consequently, content which “mimics real-world locations, build-
ings, people, events, religions, nationalities, ethnicities, and so on” must
be evaluated in terms of “the degree to which the content resembles its
real-word inspiration” (ibid.). Two games analyzed in this research corpus,
namely Medal of Honor Warfighter and Battlefield 4 will provide interest-
ing examples in this regard, as explored in Chapter 3.
The other related concept which helps content developers to detect poten-
tial cultural issues is that of “contextual independence” which “essentially
means that content elements become more independent the less they require
their original context for meaning” (ibid.). “Any content’s meaning is typi-
cally dependent on a specific context of origin, but the more independent
an element might be from that original context, the greater the potential for
sensitivity” (ibid.).
“After identifying potential cultural issues” (Edwards 2012, 30–31), con-
tent creators must “effectively triage” them, draw a line of acceptability and
assign severity codes to potential cultural bugs and later fix them as any
other type of bug. Cultural severity is relative, it “often depends on each
specific piece of content, its context within a product” and the target local
market: consequently, cultural issues may range from “reasonable risks” to
“overt offenses” (ibid., 31). Lastly, implementing culturalization is “a very
 Game Localization and Translation 57
precise, surgical operation” in which “one of the most important principles
is to make the most minimal changes to the least amount of content”, it
means changing only “what really must be changed in order to ensure dis-
tribution to the game’s target market, while also being mindful of the effects
on surrounding locales” (ibid., 32).
Going even further, one might argue that also the opposite of Edward’s
two notions above is true and may be used, instead, to identify what is
not or what should not be a potential cultural issue in target locales, from
the perspective of the relationship between the game world and the real
world. In other words, one might suggest the use of a “contextual distance”
concept and speculate that the farther a content element distances itself
from the original context in person, place, time, and/or form, the lesser the
potential for cultural sensitivity. Similarly, one might advocate the use of
a “contextual dependence” concept and claim that the more a content ele-
ment’s meaning depends on its original context, the lesser the potential for
sensitivity.
The opposite interpretation of both Edwards’ notions (2012) seems to
represent a suitable lens through which to analyze culture-specificity in video
games which do not re-create or mimic the real world but, instead, create
their own fictional worlds, like science-fiction Mass Effect 3. Nevertheless,
the analytical framework of culturalization does not exhaust the relation-
ship between video games and culture or rather, the meaning and the role
of culture in game worlds and the scope of culture-specificity in game locali-
zation as a research topic. Other aspects require discussion to provide a
deeper understanding of this subject which is of special interest for this
book. Consequently, further speculations will be developed in Chapter 3
especially in relation to culture-related issues emerging in research when the
perspective is Translation Studies.
2.8 Summary
This chapter has illustrated the theoretical framework of this book’s study.
For this purpose, an overview of localization as a research domain, from the
early phase in the late 1990s to the current consolidation stage of the 2020s,
has been presented and fundamental background concepts like translation,
localization, and internationalization have been discussed. This chapter has
also described the professional field of localization to show how the indus-
try models affect translation practice. In the literature review presented, spe-
cial attention is thus given to game translation in order to explore the key
aspects and issues which distinctively characterize the linguistic and cultural
transfer of video games as texts, i.e. space constraints, platform-specific ter-
minology, interactivity and ludonarrative, textual non-linearity, multitextu-
ality, and playability, to finally examine the notion of culturalization, which
foregrounds the role culture plays at the interface between the real world
and the game world.
Conclusions and Further Research 179
the real world and the MoHW game world is also expressed in the game’s
audio assets through a special type of intertextuality: the warrior-inspired
theme song of the soundtrack derives from the collaboration between the
developer and the US rock band Linkin Park, whose official video features
a sort of synopsis of the MoHW story.
In Battlefield 4, non-verbal references include the intertextual relation-
ship between some characters’ design, namely William Dunn and Roland
Garrison, and war film actors in terms of both physical appearance and
personality.
In Mass Effect 3, non-verbal references to the real world are made visu-
ally by the physical design of major characters like Commander Shepard,
Liara T’Soni, Miranda Lawson, and Jeff Moreau, but other characters are
conceptually inspired by other types of realities. For example, the antagonist
Illusive man intertextually refers to the concept of The X-Files’ Cigarette
Smoking Man. Non-verbal references in ME3 also include culture-specific
areas of interface with Canada, the homeland of the game’s developers.
As argued by Kuling (2014), references to Canadian identity, ranging from
images of Canadian cities to Canadian actors’ vocal performances, purpose-
fully made when the series had reached global popularity, are interpreted as
connections aimed to represent Canadianness as a model for cosmopolitan
worldviews in video games which are generally overtly US American. In
other words, the intricate web of relations between the world of a video
game and the real world manifests itself in a lot of non-verbal content, whose
contribution to the overall meaning of the gaming experience deserves more
scholarly interdisciplinary attention, which is desirable for future work.
6.2 Individual References
Given the role of the player as both protagonist and story-teller in game
narratives, individual references in game localization are very important,
since characters’ names, code names, and nicknames are the linguistic
means which express the complex network of interrelationships between
the player’s avatar and non-playable characters. Moreover, naming in game
design may serve many purposes, especially related to characterization and
narrative, when names are created to convey meaning. As mentioned in
Section 3.7, since characters’ names belong to game-world-specific termi-
nology, they are usually kept unaltered in translation. Moreover, the general
tendency toward retention seems to perpetuate itself due to the constraints
posed by the status of many video games, like those composing the corpus,
as titles of long-running game series: a body of terms establishes itself as spe-
cific to game franchises and terminological consistency is de rigueur across
all episodes of the series. This is the reason why localization professionals
compile and constantly update game-specific glossaries which, however, do
not seem to provide a faithful picture of the challenges which translators
face, especially in terms of the relationship between realism and fictionality.
180 Conclusions and Further Research 58 Game Localization and Translation
As discussed in Section 4.2, individual references are proper names, Notes
code names, and nicknames of game characters and findings show a strong 1 The first available printed copy of this paper is dated 2006 but it may also
tendency toward retention in both Italian and Spanish, with percentages appear as 2007 since the journal issue was published across 2006–2007.
accounting for 95% in Medal of Honor Warfighter, 98% in Battlefield 4, 2 According to Nowak (2008, online), the very beginning of videogaming could
and 92% in Mass Effect 3. Moreover, as regards retention, it must be high- even date back to the 1950s when Oxo (Alexander S. Douglas 1952) and Tennis
lighted that this strategy respects the nature of many proper names in the for Two (William Higinbotham 1958) came into being.
3 To give an example of the length of the localization process, although each pro-
corpus as “culture markers” (Nord 2003), regardless of the realism or fic- ject has a different schedule, if properly planned in advance and run according
tionality of game worlds. This testifies to the varied origin of game charac- to timetable, approximately two or three months can be spent to fully localize
ters in war video games and, especially in MoHW and BF4, the use of code a game with an average number of assets, i.e. around 10,000 words of in-game
names to simulate the military’s need for secrecy and the creation of nick- text and about 3,000 words of voice-over (Maxwell-Chandler and O’Malley-
names to ease tension and pressure in military environments, or to serve as Deming 2012, 67).
4 See Kent (2001) and Kohler (2005) for further similar anecdotes.
narrative indicators. Direct translation, which represents the second strat- 5 See, for example, Dovey and Kennedy (2006), Egenfeldt-Nielsen et al. (2016),
egy used by translators to deal with these irrealia, is adopted in a few cases, Frasca (2001a, 2001b, 2001c), Juul (2005), and Kerr (2006).
ranging from 2% in BF4 to 8% in ME3, in order to make sense of some 6 In this regard, interesting readings are, among others, Bateman (2006), Miller
code names and nicknames explicit. (2014), Newman (2013), Tavinor (2009), and Thabet (2015).
In MoHW, for example, direct translation affects “the Cleric” and “the
Engineer” in both languages and, only in Spanish, the code name of a minor
non-playable character, which motivates the slight difference in percent-
ages. Nevertheless, the use of retention in MoHW exemplifies how the
implicit meaning of characters’ names may be lost in translation. Indeed,
for instance, “Preacher” and “Mother” refer to some aspects of the per-
sonality of these soldiers, and analogous sardonic allusions may lie behind
“Voodoo” and “Dingo”. While English-speaking players can perceive and
enjoy the irony behind these code names quite easily, it seems very unlikely
for target players to appreciate the original wordplay.
In Battlefield 4, individual references include names, surnames, and nick-
names, the latter mostly result from abbreviations of characters’ surnames.
Moreover, as mentioned above, many names in this game are culture mark-
ers which highlight the multicultural nature of the BF4 game world popula-
tion: “Pakowski” relates to Pac’s Polish origin and there are many Chinese
names and surnames, such as “Huang”, “Chang”, “Jin Jié”, etc., together
with Eastern European names and surnames like “Laszlo”, “Dimitri”,
“Kovic”, and “Mayakovsky”. Direct translation in BF4 (2%) is used only
to transfer category names of speaker characters which are not proper
names. Moreover, it is interesting to observe that names may serve humor
purposes and be creatively reinterpreted to be hilarious in the source text
and/or in the target text. In BF4, as discussed in Section 4.2.2, the humor
of the character nicknamed Irish gives rise to a pun based on the surname
of Laszlo Kovic, wittily renamed “Kobitch”. While this pun is consistently
translated into Cogliovic into Italian, which is also a blend, merging the first
part of the Italian offensive expression coglione [asshole] and the final part
of “Kovic”, in Spanish “Kobitch” is kept unaltered and the wordplay is lost
because retention does not allow players to understand the joke, thus simply
suggesting a misspelling. Although there are few instances of witty names,
their relevance points to the need for further research on the relationship

3 Culture-Specificity in
Video Games
The Interface between
Realism and Fictionality
3.1 Introduction
Video games can be approached from a wide range of academic perspec-
tives and by employing a number of different methodologies to the study
of the varied array of aspects related to games and gaming, one of which is
culture, representing the larger contexts engaged with and inhabited by the
game (Egenfeldt-Nielsen et al. 2016, 10−11). Investigating culture and video
games may mean examining the wider modern popular culture that games
are part of, how games and gaming interact with wider cultural patterns,
games as cultural objects and artifacts of the media ecology, the subcul-
tures that evolve around gaming or in the discourses surrounding gaming,
to name but a few. Consequently, any analytical approach to the intersec-
tion between culture and video games from the perspective of Translation
Studies, and with an empirical and descriptive standpoint as in the book,
should begin with preliminary considerations on the cultural position of
video games. Games are reflections of culture, games are producers of mean-
ing, both for society in general and for players in particular, games are part
of a complex cultural system and also generators of a specific player culture.
In Chapter 1, the reach of this study has been introduced by speculating
upon one major hypothesis: the ways in which the game world and the real
world interact, and the resulting degree of realism or fictionality of game
contents, influence game translation. The interlinguistic and intercultural
treatment of realia and irrealia, as textual representations of this interaction,
can be examined to show the effects of such influence. In fact, however, this
is only one side of the complex relationship between games and culture on
the realism-fictionality continuum. Nowadays games cannot be confined
within the magic circle of play (Huizinga [1938] 2000), “they are a contex-
tual, meaning-making process” (Consalvo 2009, 413), based on continu-
ous fluid movements between the two worlds, where the game world is an
interactive experiential realm affecting the real world in many ways: games
require players’ time, they may change players’ moods and even affect their
behavior, games communicate ideas and values, etc. Moreover, if games
are communication, they are also representational media in which players
DOI: 10.4324/9781003001935-3
Conclusions and Further Research 181
between names, humor, and culture in video games. In BF4, additionally,
the strong tendency toward retention in the transfer of individual references
offers other examples of translation loss concerning appellations. Like
“Preacher” and “Mother” in MoHW, “Irish” is a meaningful nickname
which contains a culture-specific reference. With no compensation strate-
gies, it is very unlikely that players can access the popular belief about the
legendary luck of Irish people which is implicit in this nickname.
In Mass Effect 3, individual references mostly include names, sur-
names, and nicknames and, in line with the results concerning MoHW
and BF4, they are almost always translated by retention. Direct transla-
tion is used to transfer “Illusive Man” which is the meaningful nickname
of the main antagonist, and to maintain the acronym nature of the artifi-
cial intelligence character’s name “EDI”. As regards retention, however,
it seems important to underline that this strategy in ME3 does not neces-
sarily limit the transfer of meaningful proper names. On the contrary, it
allows translators to be faithful to messages authors aim to convey by
means of allusions in characters’ names: the protagonist’s last name is a
homage to the astronaut Alan Shepard; the nickname of the Normandy’s
pilot Jeff “Joker” Moreau refers to his wisecracking character and pos-
sibly to the Batman franchise fictional supervillain of the same name;
Ashley Williams’ first name refers to a horror film character of the same
name and her middle name to the title of a poem, which represent two
intertextual references; the surnames of James Vega and Steve Cortez are
culture markers (Nord 2003) which identify the Hispanic-American cul-
ture these characters represent; in addition, fictional cultures can mark
proper names, as testified to by the alien Quarian character Tali’Zorah
vas Neema.
6.3 Collective References
In war video games, collective references are another special type of irrealia
which may be either military language-related designations or inventive
names for groups belonging to fictional races. As discussed in Section 4.3,
the names of task forces in Medal of Honor Warfighter, and consequently
soldiers’ call signs, have been retained in 100% and 97% of instances in
Italian and Spanish, respectively. Similarly, collective references in Battlefield
4, expressed in the team name “Tombstone” and also in related call signs
for US soldiers, have always been retained in Italian and Spanish (100%).
On the realism edge of the spectrum, that is in MoHW, direct translation
only affects one task force, namely “Blackbird”, which has been substituted
with its literal equivalent in Spanish only. On the contrary, on the fiction-
ality extreme of the spectrum, translational approaches vary considerably
in the two target languages. Indeed, in Mass Effect 3 the proper names of
race-specific or multiracial gangs, clans, and mercenary groups are mostly
retained in Italian (80%) and directly translated in Spanish (83%). In both
182 Conclusions and Further Research
languages, direct translation explains the meaning of collective appellations,
which may refer to a specific feature of the design of fictional groups, as in
the case of the tattoo of the “Blue Suns”, or to their aggressive nature, as in
the case of the “Blood Pack”. In addition, only in Spanish, direct transla-
tion is adopted to transfer other narratively prominent and thus frequently
occurring names of fictional military squads, like “Hammer” and “Sword”.
6.4 Intertextual and Intratextual Metaludic References
Another group of references analyzed in this study concerns the relation-
ships between texts, that is to say the links game texts establish with other
texts, namely intratextual metaludic references, which are interpreted as
irrealia, dealt with in Section 4.4, and intertextual references, which are
interpreted as realia and discussed in Section 4.5.
Intratextuality in Medal of Honor Warfighter contributes to the rhetor-
ical tribute paid by game developers to US Special Forces operators and
exemplifies the strong sense of camaraderie between soldiers. The only
instance found in MoHW is the nickname of a game character in the Medal
of Honour (MoH) franchise, which is transferred by means of retention,
given the constraint posed by the official terminology of the series. However,
from a linguistic perspective, “Rabbit” carries an implicit ironic meaning,
specifically a sexual innuendo, which might not be perceived and enjoyed
by target players as easily as by English-speaking gamers. In Battlefield 4,
the scope of intratextual metaludic references is broadened, since they are
gaming-related expressions which testify to how the language of gaming
currently belongs to English vocabulary or, vice versa, how English expres-
sions can be purposefully used to allude to gaming. The translation of these
language-specific items can be very challenging, if the objective is to keep
the idiomatic value and the allusion to gaming at the same time; indeed, as
findings have shown, the intratextual nature of these references is not trans-
ferred in localizations.
In Mass Effect 3, intratextual metaludic references include the proper
names of two sociopolitical institutions of the ME universe, namely
“Grissom Academy” and “Treaty of Farixen”, which occur in noun phrases
containing a proper noun and a common noun. As usually happens in these
cases, the common noun is directly translated and this disambiguates the
whole expression, while the proper name is retained, since it belongs to the
game world-specific terminology.
Like intratextuality, intertextual references in Medal of Honor Warfighter
are used as a rhetorical device to enhance the tribute to the US Special Forces
deployed overseas. Intertextuality translates into two very meaningful quo-
tations made at the beginning and at the end of the game experience. The
first quotation belongs to a speech given by John F. Kennedy and, out of
its original context, it is used to contribute to the images of sacrifice, hero-
ism, and patriotism US warfighters represent. The second quotation is from
60 Culture-Specificity in Video Games
accept fiction as meaningful in context. Games are representation as they
subjectively represent a subset of reality, they model external situations,
but they are not actually part of these situations. Simultaneously, games
are representation even if they do not represent any objective phenomenon,
they nevertheless represent something to the player, who can perceive the
game action as meaningful even though it makes no reference to the outside
world. In addition, the representational audiovisual value of games shapes
them into means for creative expression, with functions and intentions, side
by side with entertainment, of artistic, political, and social natures, linking
games to wider cultural issues (Flanagan 2009, 1–2). Yet, as already men-
tioned, games are not only representation but action and process through
which players find meaning. In other words, it is not only how games look,
but also what players can do in and with games that produces meaning, and
the line between what is within the game world and what is outside in the
real world blurs.
The aspects of games covered in this book’s research, however, are con-
tent and story as expressed in texts via language within the game world,
where world is as much an experiential as a spatial term, defined by culture,
customs, and events as well as by space. Culture is indeed a prime factor in
any type of world; after all, by the loosest definition, culture includes every-
thing made by the beings inhabiting that world, as opposed to nature, which
is what exists without interference. Thus, culture is any artifact, concept,
belief, and value system, but also behavior, that is the actual practice of
concepts or beliefs, which in turn usually determine the design of artifacts in
a world. However, in world-building, it seems that the real world is some-
how always in the background, as Wolf (2018, 67) contends: “practically
all imaginary worlds begin with the template of” the world we all know,
“the world we live in, gradually replacing its default assumptions and struc-
tures with invented material”. This is necessary if the new world, the game
world, “is to be recognized as a world, and it also allows us to naturally fill
in parts of the world that are neither seen nor described, through assump-
tions based on” the real-world features (ibid.). Minor to major or drastic
changes to these default elements are a starting point to begin the design of
a world, which not only makes it increasingly distinct from the real world,
but gives it its particular identity, its look and feel. “Typically, a world is
designed as the backdrop for a story, so the design of the world develops
out of the needs of the story and its audience” (ibid.). Nevertheless, many
game worlds go well beyond the contents needed for the story or stories set
in the world, providing a great degree of detail about the world and its loca-
tions, time, inhabitants, technologies, languages, belief and value systems,
flora, fauna, and so forth. As a result, they shape the culture-specificity of
the game world, which players accept as meaningful also in relation to the
world they know.
These preliminary reflections, together with the concepts outlined in
Chapter 2, represent the background to the set-up of the main research
 Culture-Specificity in Video Games 61
questions of this monograph: does the relationship between the game world
and the real world shape the challenges translators must face? Does the
degree of realism or fictionality of game contents quantitatively and quali-
tatively affect linguistic and textual material? Does it influence translation
approach and strategies to transfer the look and feel of the original game,
offer an experience just as entertaining as the original and finally enhance
playability? If so, does it constrain or loosen translators’ agency for the sake
of players’ immersion?
3.2 Realism and Fictionality in Game Translation
Nowadays, the realm of video gaming covers an enormous spectrum of
products which differ from one another in terms of genre, subgenre, theme,
volume of text, difficulty, platform, playtime, etc. They range “from almost
completely visual puzzle games to complex role-playing games containing
hundreds of thousands of words, from quick coffee-break entertainment
to huge sagas lasting hundreds of hours of playing time” (Dietz 2008, 8).
Moreover, “besides the enormous range in size and complexity between
casual and hardcore games, there is also a major difference between
mimetic and imaginative games” (ibid.), that is to say, video games differ
from one another according to their relationship with the real world. In
this sense, a lively and interesting debate among scholars has taken place
about the potential distinguishing features of translational approaches to
video games, which proves particularly meaningful for the purposes of this
book.
According to Dietz (2006, 122), “games create alternate worlds whose
relationship to the real world can range from extreme realism to utter fan-
tasy”. On the one hand, simulations and military strategy games represent
the highest degree of verisimilitude, the closest approximation of the outside
world. On the other hand, science fiction and fantasy titles create, rather
than recreate, worlds of magic. As Dietz (ibid., 123) argues, “the realism-
magic spectrum” does affect translation, as “it demands very different skills
from the translator”: specialized subject knowledge and terminological
mastery are required when transferring verisimilar content, since this is a
technical translation; on the contrary, “the localization of science fiction or
fantasy titles is more akin to literary translation” (ibid., 124) and creativ-
ity is of paramount importance. In Skladanowski’s words (cit. in Serón-
Ordóñez 2011, 107), “generally, the more liberties the creators of the game
took while writing the text, the more leeway the translator has in rendering
it in the target language”. Indeed, according to Bernal-Merino (2007, 3),
from the point of view of translation, we could say that there are only
two types of games, based on the degree of freedom translators are
given. Effectively, some games require more research than creativity,
and others require more creativity than research.
Conclusions and Further Research 183
Stacey Freiwald, the widow of a Navy SEAL killed in action in Afghanistan.
She represents the personal and gendered perspective on the consequences
military service has for families in the homeland. The objective of the trans-
lation of these passages, which might require the use of translators’ research
skills, is to recreate the original stylistic effect and render the mythical rep-
resentation of US soldiers in the target language. The US culture values and
beliefs related to the heroic military role and the extraordinary nature of US
soldiers must be conveyed by paying special attention to some key words;
thus, rhetorical and literary writing skills are paramount. In Battlefield 4,
intertextuality emerges when references are made to pieces of music: the
first one is part of the game’s soundtrack and is simply referred to in dia-
logs as “song”, which determines its predominantly non-verbal nature. The
second one is, instead, made to a US culture-specific marching song, namely
“Dixie”, the de facto national anthem of the Confederate States of America
during the American Civil War. Although this reference is correctly retained
in both localizations, the translation of co-text in Italian does not help play-
ers to easily access the referent.
In Mass Effect 3, intertextual references are made through the human
female character Ashley Williams. First, her name and nickname “Ash”, as
already mentioned, refer to the famous namesake character of the American
film horror franchise Evil Dead (1981–Present), while her middle name
“Madeline” refers to Alfred Tennyson’s 1830 namesake poem. Secondly,
in a conversation with Commander Shephard (the player), she quotes one
stanza of William Ernest Henley’s 1888 poem titled “Invictus”, which helps
her and Commander Shepard to hearten themselves before the final fight
against the Reapers. Moreover, in order to please his/her beloved Ashley,
Commander Shepard quotes the final four lines of the third stanza of Alfred
Tennyson’s 1854 poem titled “The Charge of the Light Brigade”. In trans-
lation, while her name, nickname, and middle name are all retained, it is
possible to speculate that translators had to resort to their research skills to
transfer the literary quotations and, if an official version was not accessible,
to their literary writing skills. However, it seems that in Italian, the trans-
lator decided to rely on the ready-made solution provided by the poem’s
translation, as quoted in a famous movie.
6.5 Geographical References
As explored in Section 4.6, what Rollings and Adams (2003, 60–65) label as
the physical or spatial dimension of video games seems to be the one which
best represents the relationship between the real world and the game world,
since the degree of realism or fictionality of video games’ geographical set-
ting is immediately accessible, especially non-verbally.
As realia, geographical references in Medal of Honor Warfighter, and
Battlefield 4 dialogs do not provide remarkable phenomena either quanti-
tatively or qualitatively. All the instances are directly translated into their
184 Conclusions and Further Research
conventional counterparts, representing 100% of instances in both locali-
zations. Most real-world toponyms are indeed well-known place names of
cities, countries, geographical areas, among others, and it is possible to spec-
ulate that their transfer is almost automatic from English into Italian and
Spanish, which requires translators to exercise minimum research skills in
the use of reference works such as atlases and encyclopedias. Nevertheless,
from a cultural perspective, some geographical references in BF4, which
do not occur in the corpus and were thus excluded from the analysis, have
shown that meaning may hide behind some place names when they are used
with a humorous effect, as in the case of “Sweden”, as a reference to BF4
developers, or in the case of “Carolina boy”, as an allusion to the city–coun-
try dichotomy within US culture.
Going back to the geographical references examined, as opposed to
geographical realia, the places within irrealia referred to in dialogs do not
exist and fictional toponyms are completely imaginative. In Mass Effect 3
geographical references are mostly retained: 60% of instances in both tar-
get languages. The second strategy is a direct translation, used in 40% of
instances in both Italian and Spanish. As discussed in Section 4.6, fictional
toponyms in ME3 resulted from a completely random naming process.
Quite a few of them are meaningful. The sense a source item aims to convey
may be explained only through direct translation, as in the cases of the space
stronghold “Citadel”, the “Perseus Veil” nebula, and the Krogans’ afterlife
destination named “the Void”. Other toponyms of metaludic origin, such
as the “Huerta Memorial Hospital”, are instead retained due to constraint
posed by the proper name contained in the noun phrase which is specific to
ME game-world terminology.
6.6 Ethnic References
The environmental dimension of game worlds (Rollings and Adams 2003,
69–74) is one of the most fascinating facets of these multifaceted represen-
tational artifacts known as video games. The hybrid nature of the multime-
dia interactive entertainment industry (Consalvo 2006) is mirrored in the
multicultural game worlds distributed globally thanks to localization. Given
the complex nature, role, and meaning of culture in video games, this study
has focused only on the linguistic elements in dialogs which serve as refer-
ences to the cultures inhabiting the game world. The translation of nation-
ality adjectives and nouns might be interpreted as a trivial issue. Indeed, as
realia, ethnic references usually pose little, if any, translation challenges.
Nevertheless, as findings in Section 4.7 have shown, nationality adjectives
and nouns provide interesting phenomena to be analyzed from the perspec-
tive of Game Localization, given their close connection to real cultures.
As realia, almost all ethnic references are replaced with equivalent
nationality adjectives or nouns in the target language, meaning that direct
translation represents 98% of occurrences in the corpus. Interestingly, the
62 Culture-Specificity in Video Games
Analyzing the magical edge of the spectrum, namely the fantasy genre, on
the basis of examples from the Final Fantasy series (Square Enix 1987–
Present), Mangiron and O’Hagan (2006, 11) suggest that “the translation
issues arising from this domain call for a new model that we call ‘transcrea-
tion’ to explain the freedom granted to the translator, albeit within severe
space limitations” and highlight that (ibid., 20):
Game localizers are granted quasi absolute freedom to modify, omit,
and even add any elements which they deem necessary to bring the game
closer to the players and to convey the original feel of gameplay. And, in
so doing, the traditional concept of fidelity to the original is discarded. In
game localization, transcreation, rather than just translation, takes place.
As Bernal-Merino (2011a, 17) points out, “in a way, game localization can
at times take a creative role that traditional views on translation would sanc-
tion as being beyond the scope of language experts’ duties”. Transcreation
is therefore considered one of the distinctive traits of game localization:
The difference between multimedia and other types of translations is
most remarkable in the level of creativity that is given to – and also
expected from – the translator. Unless working on a book or movie
license, the translator is asked to “transcreate” the text freely, for exam-
ple giving proper names to characters and places that replicate the user
experience in the target language. […] While some translators may rel-
ish this creative freedom, this always has to be balanced with research
activities for text parts with realistic background.
(Bartelt-Krantz 2011, 85–86)
In order to debate this topic, it is also worth exploring the products whose
translation requires more research than creativity (Bernal-Merino 2007, 3),
since they provide examples of the realism edge of the spectrum.
“Video game renderings of popular books do not seem to enjoy the same
carte blanche as other games, as far as the translation process is concerned”
(Bernal-Merino 2009, 244). The lesser extent of freedom that is granted to
the translators of games based on children’s books depends on two basic
reasons:
First of all, if the deviations are too pronounced, it could be interpreted
as an infringement of the licensee contract. But, most importantly, com-
munities of fans around the world would be most disappointed and
they could boycott the game by not buying it.
(ibid.)
Localizers must follow the official copyrighted translation, prepare, and
use glossaries, do meticulous research, apply similar lexical and syntactic
 Culture-Specificity in Video Games 63
choices, maintain the internal cohesion of the text. “It is a balancing act”
which “relies on the artistry of good translators, and, quite often, on their
research skills” (ibid., 245).
As far as the relationship between video games and literature is concerned,
remarkable constraints also influence the localization of those games which
result from intersemiotic translations within the wider process of “remedia-
tion” (Bolter and Grusin 2000). In other words, as Pettini (2017b) argues,
be it part of a franchise or not, in order to transfer the look and feel of a
video game based on literature, translators have to be faithful and loyal to
the literary source of inspiration, because the skopos, entertainment, is the
players’ immersion in that (interactive) literary universe. For example, in
the case of Dante’s Inferno (Electronic Arts 2010), translators successfully
decided to deviate from the game source text, which is a loose adaptation
from the 1867 translation of the Inferno by US poet Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow, and they produced a digital imitative Dantesque experience
both literally and literarily (Pettini 2017b). First, by means of research,
translators borrowed integral or partial quotations from the poem; secondly,
they boasted their writing skills to create a literary-like style making pho-
nological, morphological, syntactical, and semantic choices, which turned
the Italian game definitely more Dantesque. According to Pettini (ibid.), this
approach may also depend on the game’s mature target audience: 18-year-
old Italian players. Since The Divine Comedy is a pillar of the Italian high
school curricula, the players’ previous knowledge may have required trans-
lators to engage intertextually with the poem in order to enhance immersion
into Dante’s Inferno, the game. Players’ expectations are a variable to be
seriously taken into account in game translation, especially in the localiza-
tion for a specific target audience. Since Dante’s work is so deeply rooted in
Italian culture, and his memorable lines are so vivid in Italians’ memory, the
translation quality of the game’s intertextual references to the poem results
from the tribute paid to “one of the most beloved, imaginative and influen-
tial works of Western civilization” (Jonathan Knight cit. in Electronic Arts
and Visceral Games 2010, ix).
Within the varied sector of video games, also those with historical con-
tent “could help refine the claim made by Mangiron and O’Hagan (2006)
that video games give the translator a particularly high degree of freedom to
stray from the source text” (Serón-Ordóñez 2011, 103). In her case study
on the US game Age of Empires III (Microsoft Game Studios 2005), Serón-
Ordóñez (ibid.) explains that “this type of game may generally require more
research than creativity, due to the game’s realism”, thus placing “games
with historical content alongside those based on children’s books, where
the translator’s freedom is limited by the fact that translation is conditioned
by the official translation of the literary works the products are based on”.
Another prime example of realistic video games which constrain transla-
tors’ work is the sports simulator, “a genre which aims to virtually imitate
a real-world sport, whose verisimilitude also depends on the language used
Conclusions and Further Research 185
remaining 2% include instances of transcreation, a strategy adopted to trans-
fer some ethnic references which are culturally loaded and which, in BF4,
are used, similarly to some culture-related proper nouns, as humor devices.
In Spanish, thanks to transcreation, translators recreate the ironic and
somehow derogatory effect of “American” when used by the Russian char-
acter Dima to disparagingly address the US marine Irish: yanqui is indeed
a colloquial and derogatory expression to name US people, which makes
the ongoing ethnic conflict between the two characters and, by extension,
between the two countries, explicit. In Italian, transcreation affects “ruski”,
a variant spelling of “russki” which represents an offensive English form
for “Russian”, seemingly deriving from the transliteration of the adjective
“Russian” in the Russian language (Merriam Webster Dictionary, online).
In translation, Italian language professionals creatively opted for compagno
[comrade], which carries a politically loaded meaning, based on the com-
mon and stereotypical association between Russia and Soviet communism.
Furthermore, within ethnic realia, the representation of real-world cul-
tures is also more strictly speaking “linguistic”: cultures are given voices,
which means that game texts contain instances of languages other than
English, and this serves a characterization purpose in the design of “for-
eign” characters, that are characters whose culture does not belong to the
mainstream English-speaking cultures usually inhabiting war video games,
especially US culture.
In Medal of Honor Warfighter, for the sake of realism, as mentioned
in the closing credits, audio localization involved native speaker dialect
coaches to record dialog lines in languages other than English (Pakistani
Urdu, standard Arabic, Filipino Tagalog, and Bosnian) and native speaker
translators to render them into the subtitles of the game’s English original
texts. Indeed, foreign languages in MoHW are represented only in audio
assets and very few words of foreign origin occur in dialogs. In Battlefield
4, on the contrary, findings show some Russian words occurring in dialogs
which contribute to linguistically portray Dimitri “Dima” Mayakovsky, the
main Russian character. The representation of multilingualism and mul-
ticulturalism, especially when related to existing cultures, provides a rich
source of areas for further research in Game Localization, especially if we
consider the increasingly multicultural game worlds offered to multicultural
players by multicultural game design teams.
When they belong to irrealia, ethnic references are the proper names
of the fictional races inhabiting the Mass Effect 3 galaxy-sized world, as
covered in Section 4.7, and they are translated with different strategies.
Retention represents the main tendency in both languages, used in 53%
of instances in both localizations, but while Italian translators completely
retained names and, above all, capitalized them when they serve as a noun
referring to the whole race, even if standard Italian does not capitalize
either adjectives or nouns denoting nationality or affiliation with a place,
in Spanish most names are slightly adapted into a local version made up
186 Conclusions and Further Research
of the consonant-ending root of the race name plus the gender-related suf-
fixes -o and -a. For example, “Quarian”, “Turian”, and “Batarian” become
quariano/a, turiano/a, and batariano/a, respectively. As regards other strat-
egies, findings show a considerable use of transcreation in Italian and direct
translation in Spanish, which, as language-specific approaches, affect the
transfer of meaningful names referring to evil alien creatures. This points
at translators’ willingness to make the meaning of these names clear, in
the case of direct translation, or, in the case of transcreation, to creatively
deviate from a literal equivalent to make names sound more entertaining
to target players with respect to the narrative role these alien monsters per-
form in action. Nevertheless, while direct translation is commonly used in
Spanish (45%), in Italian this strategy represents only 8% of all instances
due to a very creative approach of Italian translators in the transfer of the
names of narratively prominent fictional races. Indeed, although original
interpretations are also found in Spanish, as in the case of dómines [school-
masters] for “Enkindlers”, transcreation represents 39% of Italian solu-
tions for ethnic irrealia, since great creativity is used to translate “Reapers”,
which are Commander Shepard’s enemies par excellence, and also “husks”
and “thresher maws”, which are conversely replaced with a literal equiva-
lent in Spanish.
6.7 Sociopolitical References
As emerges in the analysis presented in Section 4.8, the peoples who inhabit
the game worlds of this book corpus are organized in highly structured soci-
eties. As sociopolitical realia, the names of the entities mentioned in Medal
of Honor Warfighter and Battlefield 4 dialogs refer to many institutions
specific to real-world cultures. These include the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO), the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the US
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Filipino Islamist separatist organiza-
tion Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG), Langley as a metonymy used to refer to the
CIA, Other Government Agency (OGA) used as a euphemism for the CIA
in secret operations, the US Navy, and the US Marines. Accordingly, the
linguistic representation of sociopolitical realia translates into names which
are mostly transcultural in form, frequently expressed by acronyms and
initialisms, since they are shared across linguistic communities at an inter-
national level, and this allows language professionals to easily substitute
the original items with equivalent forms which correspond to the official
counterparts in the target language. In the case of Italian and Spanish, these
forms mostly result from retention, which is used for most proper nouns
and accounts for 75% and 70% of instances, respectively. Direct transla-
tion, as an alternative which represents 25% and 30% of instances in Italian
and Spanish, respectively, affects all common nouns and the language-spe-
cific acronym OTAN (Organización del Tratado del Atlántico Norte) for
NATO in Spanish.
64 Culture-Specificity in Video Games
and whose transfer is akin to technical and specialized translation” (Pettini
2016, 64). For example, the games of the famed football simulation series
FIFA (Electronic Arts 1993–Present), in order to be realistic, imitate foot-
ball language and are rich in football specialized vocabulary. Accordingly,
to localize the experience offered by FIFA titles, domestication turns out
to be the key translational approach in order to satisfy players’ expecta-
tions and allow virtual footballers to be immersed in “the beautiful game”
(Pettini 2016).
Furthermore, it is worth considering that, as Bernal-Merino (2011a,
17) suggests, “some games require only a straightforward translation of
texts, because the concepts explored and the gameplay put forward is per-
haps part of the common shared knowledge”. Sometimes, games partly
and occasionally draw on elements of literature, cinema, comic books, TV
series, etc., and show a different kind of relationship with the reality they
refer to, thus posing translational challenges related to intertextuality, for
example. In her research on the Metal Gear series (Konami 1987–Present),
Pettini (2015) demonstrates how the intertextual engagement of this series’
“author” or auteur, namely the cinephile game designer Hideo Kojima, with
pop culture and the American cinematic tradition influences the translation
of the meaningful film quotations Kojima makes to pay tribute to cinema
and communicate with movie-cultured players.
Video games may also present different degrees of realism or fictionality
within the same game world, and within the above-mentioned spectrum the
boundaries are not unambiguous. All video games offer players fictional
spaces to be immersed in, even the most realistic simulator title is actually
fictional, as well as many of the contents of several fantasy titles are not
placed in a vacuum. Moreover, it seems that the very nature of video games
is on the borderline between real rules and fictional worlds (Juul 2005), so
the interface between the two worlds may represent a tool to understand the
meaning(s) conveyed by games and the genre of the interactive experiences
offered.
In the light of the discussion above, the analysis of the three games
included in the corpus of this study aims to clarify whether and how the
relationship between the two worlds affects game contents, texts, and their
localization, giving prominence to the cultural dimension of this connection,
to finally conceptualize a new reading of culture in the translation of global
mass consumption products.
3.3 Methodological Issues in Game Translation
As has emerged in the previous chapters, “the video game is really a com-
plex object of study” (Wolf and Perron 2009b, 11). This is the reason why
any research on the interlinguistic and intercultural localization of video
games requires an interdisciplinary macro approach which combines dif-
ferent viewpoints in order to examine and understand this “multilayered
 Culture-Specificity in Video Games 65
phenomenon” (ibid.). Consequently, also in this research, references to
studies and theories from different game-related perspectives, such as Game
Studies, will be made when relevant throughout the book.
In order of importance, consistently with the nature and title of this
monograph, the following paragraphs offer the reader some methodologi-
cal considerations concerning the main implications of investigating the
translation of video games. The central point in this paragraph is placed
on translation and on the related working principles affecting this research
methodology, whereas notions like culture with respect to game worlds,
and realia and irrealia as linguistic and translational phenomena conveying
culture-specificity in game texts will be scrutinized in the following sections.
First, as already pointed out, here translation means the process and the
result of the interlinguistic and intercultural transfer of game texts from one
original language/culture (US English) into other languages/cultures (Italian
and Spanish), that is, the process and the result of the linguistic and cultural
mediation of video games as texts. Since the analytical approach is descrip-
tive, a parallel corpus of the selected games has been compiled with the
English version representing the original or source text, and the Italian and
Spanish localizations, representing the target texts. The specific features of
this parallel corpus will be illustrated later in this chapter, together with
the other methodological issues related to games’ selection. All in all, how-
ever, the empirical stand means that parallel units of game texts have been
observed, examined, and compared in their original and translated versions.
The focus is on diegetic textual content, and particularly on in-game texts,
those physically located inside the game world, directly related to the sto-
rytelling of the game and displayed on-screen. These texts, especially when
diegetic and including narrative and descriptive texts, written and voiced-
over dialogs, are to be preferred in translation analysis because they provide
a loyal picture of the variety of typical challenges in interlinguistic and inter-
cultural game localization in the frame of audiovisual translation.
With respect to methodology, as Schmierbach (2009) notes, the interac-
tive nature of video games introduces several challenges to the analyses of
their content. This is particularly true in game translation research because,
as explored in Chapter 2, in order to give players authorial agency in the
storytelling process, game texts are non-linear. Text fragmentation repre-
sents a challenge not only for game translators but also for researchers,
especially when dealing with story-driven games and examining dialogs
as text type, as in this book. Consequently, to create the corpus, it was
deemed necessary to select three walkthroughs of the games: one per game,
played by three different Italian gamers and uploaded as videos on their
personal YouTube channels.1 Since the players remained independent of
the research, this technique also involved avoiding bias in content capture
(ibid.). Moreover, due to the very interactive nature of video games, unless
gamers are commissioned by the researcher and asked to play the game by
performing exactly the same actions throughout the experience, it is highly
Conclusions and Further Research 187
Sociopolitical references which fall into the category of irrealia are found
in Mass Effect 3 only, and they are mostly transferred by means of direct
translation: 55% in Italian, 59% in Spanish. This depends on the possibil-
ity of relying on target counterparts whose meaning clarifies the function of
fictional institutions, especially if we consider that most names of fictional
sociopolitical entities are proper names only in the game world. Indeed, as
discussed in Section 4.8, in the real world, “alliance”, “council”, “coun-
cilor”, “defense committee”, and others are common nouns, and as such,
they can be easily made accessible by direct translation. Conversely, reten-
tion is used in 41% of instances in both languages. More specifically, it is
used in order to keep the Latin charm of “Cerberus”, which is the most fre-
quently occurring sociopolitical reference in the corpus and thus represents
the majority of instances behind retention, and in order to adhere to the
internationally known appellation of the US Navy soldier, namely “marine”.
Moreover, one original solution is found in Italian to transfer “C-Sec”, the
abbreviation for “Citadel Security Services”, an interspecies volunteer police
force of the Citadel Council in ME3. The form of this name is based on
the Canadian government’s national cryptologic agency (Mass Effect Wiki,
online), formerly called Communications Security Establishment Canada
(CSEC) and, since the ME3 developer is Canadian, this might be interpreted
as an example of the Canadianness the game pays homage to (Kuling 2014).
In localizations, “C-Sec” becomes the initialism SSC in Italian, which stands
for “Servizio di Sicurezza della Cittadella” [Citadel Security Service], while
in Spanish the original form is retained, but the components derive from
a direct translation: Seg-C meaning “Seguridad de la Ciudadela” [Citadel
Security]. The Italian choice is thus interpreted as transcreation, as it repre-
sents a creative solution which appropriately conforms to the conventional
tendency to abbreviate names of organizations with acronyms or initialisms.
6.8 Artifactual References
The environmental dimension of the game worlds in the corpus also includes
all the artifacts which have been created by the cultures populating them, as
discussed in Section 4.9. First, it seems worth underlining that no instances
of fictional artifacts are found in Medal of Honor Warfighter, only two
instances are found in Battlefield 4, and dozens of instances of imaginary
artifacts are found in Mass Effect 3. This clearly suggests that the increasing
degree of fictionality of war video games influences the quantity, and the
quality, of the objects made by cultures for warfare purposes. Moreover,
this research has focused only on dialogs, while names of artifacts mainly
occur in other text types, especially in the texts displayed in the user inter-
face of a game as selectable items, which represent potential avenues for
future research on this type of realia and irrealia.
As realia, artifactual references provide the first example of the complex
phenomenon of military language, which has been described in depth in
188 Conclusions and Further Research
Chapter 5. As mentioned in Section 3.6.1 when discussing the taxonomy
of realia and irrealia under scrutiny, military terminology has been cate-
gorized according to three semantic fields, namely vehicles, weapons, and
equipment. Within realia, as argued in Section 4.9.1, indeed, hundreds of
artifactual references are made to existing vehicles, weapons, and pieces
of equipment whose names are common nouns, and these are all directly
translated in both Italian and Spanish. From a linguistic perspective, the
frequency of abbreviations in naming artifactual realia visibly shows the
designers’ intent to simulate the need for brevity in military communication
in war video games, also based on the widespread use of informal or even
slang expressions which, in translation, are often neutralized: the register
becomes higher and the form becomes longer. Examples of this tendency
include elicottero and helicóptero [both helicopter] for “helo”, “chopper”
and “bird”, munizione and munición [both ammunition] for “ammo”,
among others. More relevantly, artifactual realia contain several proper
nouns, commonly worded in highly technical acronyms and initialisms,
whose level of specialization as military language expressions may represent
a challenge and require translators’ subject knowledge or research skills.
Retention is the major translation strategy used to deal with artifactual
realia, due to the status of English as the lingua franca of military commu-
nication in the international geopolitical scenario which realistic war video
games aim to simulate. The influence of English on military target languages
is particularly strong in Italian (see Furiassi and Fiano 2017), where the use
of non-adapted Anglicisms in localization represents 89% of instances, with
borrowings officially recorded as headwords of an Italian military diction-
ary (Busetto 2004). The tendency toward retention in Italian (89%) nearly
equals two strategies in Spanish, namely retention (62%) and explicitation
(31%), where the latter is used to disambiguate and explain the meaning
of acronyms and initialisms like “NOD”, meaning “night observation [or
optical] device”, into visión nocturna [night vision] and “RPG”, meaning
“rocket propelled grenade”, into lanzacohetes. Similarly, but to a lesser
extent (5%), in Italian explicitation is adopted to translate “MG”, meaning
“machine gun”, into mitragliatrice and “LMG”, which stands for “light
machine gun”, into mitra [sub-machine gun], although the equivalent full-
form expression is mitragliatrice leggera [light machine gun]. Other strate-
gies employed to transfer artifactual realia include generalization, which
involves the use of superordinate terms like lancha [launch] in Spanish for
“RHIB” (rigid hull inflatable boat), as the equivalent term is the calqued
acronym RIB (Delgado-Lállemand 2010, 577) and, in both languages,
esplosivo rudimentale [rudimentary explosive] and explosivos [explosives]
for “IED” (improvised explosive device), even though the Italian adjective
rudimentale suggests an idea similar to “improvised”. Omission is another
minor strategy in the translation of artifactual realia, but it affects, in both
languages, an interesting and culture-specific piece of equipment, namely
“MRE”, the initialism for “meal ready-to-eat” (Bowyer 2004, 162). Italian
66 Culture-Specificity in Video Games
unlikely to find three identical independent walkthroughs across languages.
For this reason, the Italian localized version was used as a guideline to make
storytelling, and consequently narrative texts in the form of dialogs, linear
and meaningful.
Going back to the empirical and descriptive approach of this corpus-
assisted study (Toury 2012), whose final aim is to describe the strategies
adopted in the translation of culture-specificity, the analysis wants to detect
the tendencies or regularities, if any, in game translators’ decision-making
process. Here the term “tendency” is meant as an intermediate step between
a “strategy” (Hurtado-Albir 2001) and a “norm” (Toury 2012) and is
used as a tool to investigate translation regularities of behavior in recurring
situations. As Martínez-Sierra (2015) suggests, “regularity” is understood
as frequency, which also denotes a quantitative approach. While Toury’s
notion of “norm” does not need any introduction, “strategy” here refers
to the procedure “conscious and unconscious, verbal and non-verbal, inter-
nal (cognitive) and external, used by the translator to resolve problems”
(Hurtado-Albir 2001, 637), that is the mechanism used by the transla-
tor during the translation process to find a solution to a given problem.
Strategies are process or behavior patterns and their nature is procedural.
Thus, the descriptive value of this book lies in accounting for facts and for-
mulating theoretical general patterns of translational behavior starting from
empirical observation and its findings. The concept of tendencies seems to
be more appropriate than that of norms, due to the size of the corpus and
to the nature of its translated texts. In order to identify norms, more exten-
sive and thorough investigations on a larger corpus of translations made
by a higher number of translators seem to be necessary for further research
projects.
Indeed, within Toury’s norm-based translation theory, originally
developed in 1995 and later revised in 2012, the tendencies this study
aims to detect might be defined as only potential norms or, more specifi-
cally potential “operational norms” (Toury 2012, 82), potential “tex-
tual-linguistic norms”, which “govern the selection of linguistic material
for the formulation of the target text, or the replacement of the original
material” (ibid., 83).
Given these premises, a brief explanation seems worthy in order to clarify
the reach of the analysis contained in this book: I speculate that a series
of individual decisions and translation strategies used to deal with simi-
lar cases, under the same sociocultural circumstances, may imply a transla-
tor’s approach, an “initial norm” in Toury’s words (ibid., 79), oriented to
either the source or target language and culture, which basically determines
the target text foreignization or domestication, as originally postulated by
Venuti (1995). These orientations may also imply a translator’s operational
tendency which, if recurrent, may configure a potential translation norm.
In this light, a tendency is “a hypothesis, a suspicion that a norm exists”
(Martínez-Sierra 2015, 50), which allows the researcher to expect that
 Culture-Specificity in Video Games 67
probably, the sighted recurrent behavior will be a norm (weak or possibly
strong), recognizing at the same time (and hence adjusting to the neces-
sary research rigor) that in order to verify the suspicion further research
is necessary (with a larger corpus and over a longer expanse of time).
(Martínez-Sierra 2015, 51)
The quantitative issue in corpus-assisted Descriptive Translation Studies
(DTS), i.e. what can be considered quantitatively sufficient to research
translation norms, also affects the sublevel of tendencies. Even the question
of what is to be understood by sufficient to hypothesize a tendency has no
clear-cut answer. Nevertheless, for the purposes of this book, which is based
on a purposefully selected corpus, the label “tendency” is chosen as the right
candidate to map and catalog the results of the analysis.
In other words, by borrowing from Toury’s (2012) standpoint within
norm-based translation theory or descriptive paradigm, to account for
translational behavior, this book’s research intends to identify tendencies or
potential norms by using textual and, if any, extratextual sources. The for-
mer are target texts themselves, namely “localizations” in the case of video
games, while extratextual sources are statements about the same texts made
by all people involved in the process or phenomenon of localization who,
in video games, include developers, publishers, localization professionals,
especially translators, and gamers. If relevant for the analysis, information
from extratextual sources will be mentioned and/or discussed whenever
appropriate.
3.4 The Realism-Fictionality Corpus
In line with the empirical and descriptive approach of this book, a corpus
of three purposefully selected video games was created to reproduce the
realism-fictionalism spectrum. The objective of the selection lies in repre-
sentativeness, as will emerge in the following paragraphs. Going into more
detail, the corpus has been assembled on the basis of the following three
major selection criteria:
1. local distribution: all games were officially released in Italy and Spain
and they were all translated by localization professionals, as opposed to
fan or amateur translation, a very popular transfer mode that, however,
would deserve a different perspective;
2. time proximity: all games were published in a two-year period (2012–
2013), in order to limit the implications of constant technological
advancement on localization;
3. genre and subgenre-related characteristics with respect to the degree of
realism or fictionalism of game contents. As discussed earlier, games
have been selected so that they can represent different positions on a
realism-fictionalism spectrum.2
Conclusions and Further Research 189
military language presents an equivalent expression, “razione di combat-
timento” [combat ration] also known as “razione K” [K ration] (Busetto
2004, 727), which is actually the ration of ready-to-eat food, generally of
high nutritional value, which is distributed to frontline troops. Similarly, in
Spanish this concept is named “ración de combate” (Villarejo 2012, online).
Given the existence of equivalent terms, and given the absence of space-time
constraints, the omission of “MRE” is a questionable choice which deter-
mines the disappearance of a cross-cultural military term in localization.
Within irrealia, artifactual references are more varied and present lan-
guage-specific translation tendencies: retention in Italian (50% vs 20%
in Spanish) and direct translation in Spanish (70% vs 40% in Italian).
Retention is used in both languages to transfer proper names of vehicles
like “Valkyrie” and “Titan”, both names of mythological inspiration,
“Konesh”, “M-44 Hammerhead”, “M-29 Grizzly” and “M-35 Mako”,
proper names of weapons like “Thanix” missiles and “Hades” cannons,
and original proper names of equipment like “medi-gel”. Moreover, reten-
tion is used in Italian to translate one narratively crucial name which, con-
versely, is directly translated in Spanish, which justifies the above-mentioned
quantitative difference since it represents, alone, 29% of instances. This
language-specific approach marks the most iconic vehicle of the Mass Effect
universe, the human-led massive and supertechnological space frigate called
“Normandy”, which is named after the 1944 Battle of Normandy of the
Second World War (Mass Effect Wiki, online), whose Spanish translation is
indeed Normandía. Lastly, direct translation is adopted in both languages
to transfer proper names of artifacts which are more meaningful for nar-
rative and/or linguistic reasons. Across the categories examined, examples
include “Harbinger” as vehicle, “Crucible” and “genophage” as weapons,
and “Catalyst” as equipment.
Another translation strategy employed to deal with artifactual irrealia
is transcreation, which accounts for 10% of instances in both localizations
and enhances the original form and meaning of artifacts in English. In par-
ticular, transcreation concerns the transfer of meanings related to the func-
tions of artifacts, like “omni-tool”, which has been creatively replaced with
Factotum in Italian and omniherramienta in Spanish, and “liveship”, which
becomes nave-serra [greenhouse ship] in Italian, based on the idea of culti-
vation, and econave [ecoship] in Spanish, which relates to ecology. In the
ME3 universe, indeed, the role of liveships is to supply food to the Quarian
Migrant Fleet, so they are essential for the subsistence of this nomadic race.
In sum, as artifactual irrealia, invented vehicles, weapons, and pieces of
equipment, can be either designed in the image of, and even named after
real-world artifacts, or completely imaginary, also in their naming. On the
one hand, thus, artifactual irrealia include common nouns whose referents
are fictional counterparts of existing artifacts and whose characteristics, in
the case of Mass Effect 3, are closely linked to the sci-fi interstellar war
players fight against alien invasion. For example, although they are termed
190 Conclusions and Further Research
after existing vehicles, in ME3 cruisers, frigates, drones, and dreadnoughts
allow space travel by achieving faster-than-light speed. In this sense, how-
ever, the use of direct equivalents for common nouns allows players to easily
understand the referents of these fictional artifacts, despite their futuristic
nature. On the other hand, more relevantly for this research, artifactual
irrealia comprise many proper names whose meaning and role deserve spe-
cial attention. Of special interest, from a linguistic perspective, are all those
artifactual irrealia which represent neologisms. These “are paramount in
the vocabulary of science fiction” and their creation commonly follows
“derivational patterns known to the audience, in order to facilitate the view-
ers’ task of surmising what these new words refer to and also, even more
importantly, to create the impression of plausibility and establish the ‘real-
ism’ of a term” (Wozniak 2014, online). “One of the frequent strategies is
to use affixes typical to a given category of the words, often combined with
a phonetic association that should lead the audience to the desired semantic
association” (ibid.). Affixes
confer to these words an air of precision and scientific credibility, but
also let the viewer guess (more or less) what their denotation is. This
type of neologism does not create particular difficulties in translation,
provided that similar derivational elements exist in the target language.
(Wozniak 2014, online)
As discussed in Section 4.9.2 and mentioned above, examples of these neol-
ogisms, so typical to imaginary worlds, include “genophage”, “medi-gel”,
“omni-tool” and “liveship”, among others, which represent an interesting
area for future research as far as science-fiction video games are concerned.
6.9 Military Language
Within realia, as mentioned above, artifactual references fall into the com-
plex phenomenon of military language, the specialized language which
allows soldiers to communicate with accuracy, brevity, and clarity, and
which ranges from highly sanitized terminology to informal or even slang
expressions. This study has focused only on some of the manifold linguistic
events occurring in this domain and findings have shown the great extent
of potential topics for further research. Beside military artifacts, e.g. vehi-
cles, weapons, and equipment, other manifestations of military language
analyzed in this book have included military titles, the clock code, the mili-
tary phonetic alphabet, radio communication procedures, and the broad
group of abbreviations. For example, the expressions belonging to military
informal language or even slang, which occur in almost all the categories,
provide countless topics for future studies, especially in terms of transla-
tional challenges, due to the frequent language and culture-specific nature
of informal register.
68 Culture-Specificity in Video Games
The main principle which guided the selection of the material was the
need to compile a sufficiently large corpus, since tendencies or regularities
in translation cannot be detected with clarity by analyzing only one video
game. Not only should the corpus be large, with special reference to the
number of playtime hours and to the volume of in-game text, while involv-
ing different translators so that findings can be considered representative,
but it should also include games presenting contents whose relationship
with the real world varies, games which can be considered as representative
of the realism-fictionalism spectrum, as originally outlined by Dietz (2006).
The degree of realism or fictionalism of their game worlds, whose selection
criteria will be explored in depth below, has therefore been the determinant
for the inclusion of the three games in the corpus. This has been possible
thanks to the following common features these games share, in terms of the
following:
•• genre: they all fall under the macrogenre or “super-genre” of “action”
games (Arsenault 2014), one of the most best-selling genres in vide-
ogaming, as shown by the Entertainment Software Association (ESA)
yearly statistics;
•• subgenre: they are representative of two popular types, and, more pre-
cisely, they are two first-person “shooters” (Voorhees 2014) and one
“role-playing game” (Burn 2014), hereafter abbreviated into FPSs and
RPGs, respectively;
•• theme: they all represent war settings, be they either inspired or based
on actual events or completely fictional. In more detail, the Medal of
Honor Warfighter theme is the (topical) present-day global war on ter-
ror, in Battlefield 4 it is a (political fiction) 2020 war between Russia,
China, and the USA, Mass Effect 3 theme is a (science-fiction) 2186
galactic war to save Earth;
•• seriality: they all belong to popular game franchises, i.e. long-running
series, namely Medal of Honor (1999–2012), Battlefield (2002–Present),
Mass Effect (2007–Present);
•• audience: on the basis of age rating, they are all labeled “Mature”
according to the US Entertainment Software Rating Board and, more
relevantly given the focus on localization, “18” according to the Pan-
European Game Information system, widely known as PEGI;
•• platform: since it has technical implications for game localization,
although all games are multiplatform titles, the focus is on versions
designed for the seventh- and the eighth-generation consoles. The
emphasis on console games is due to the fact that they “most fully
represent the spectrum of characteristics and issues which arise from
translating digital interactive games” (O’Hagan and Mangiron 2013,
40);
•• mode of play: the walkthroughs of the games included are all single-
player (as opposed to multi-player);
 Culture-Specificity in Video Games 69 Conclusions and Further Research 191
•• high production value: i.e. large development budget and strong mar- On the whole, however, it must be underlined that military language rep-
keting campaign; resents the most typical and common feature of texts in war video games,
•• audience reception, reviews and global sales were also taken into it is a constant, a background of linguistic sameness, and given the com-
account, with respect to their year of release; mercial and cultural success of military shooters, opportunities for further
•• publisher: all the games included in the corpus were released by research into the original and translated representation of military language
Electronic Arts, the US publishing giant which provided the researcher in mainstream products are simply endless. Moreover, in terms of cultural
with the three games’ authentic localization databases. relevance, it might be interesting to give interdisciplinary scholarly attention
to the link between language and the militaristic messages war video games
Table 3.1 summarizes the characteristics of the three games included in the more or less overtly convey.
corpus, on the basis of the selection criteria listed above. Going into the conclusions which can be drawn as regards the linguistic
The game worlds of the three titles will be explored in the following categories examined, as discussed in Section 5.3, military rank titles repre-
paragraphs as regards story, backstory, characters, setting, themes, etc. in sent a significant group of realia in the corpus of this book, regardless of
order to illustrate how these narrative features justify their selection and the degree of realism or fictionality of the armed forces represented in the
their position on the realism-fictionalism spectrum axis shown in Figure 3.1. three games, be they real and existing as in Medal of Honor Warfighter
It is important to emphasize how the resulting homogeneity of the corpus and Battlefield 4, or fictional and futuristic as in Mass Effect 3. As argued
calls for the careful evaluation of both the games’ common and distinctive by Wozniak (2014, online), it can be difficult to create the original chain
features, which will be discussed in the analysis. The aim of this research is to of command across languages, because the systems of military ranks may
evince tendencies in the translation of realia and irrealia; however, each game vary considerably. However, as Wozniak observed (ibid.), “in military/war
has other characteristics which challenge the uniform approach adopted in films translators usually tend to replace the English terms with equivalent
this study, while opening new angles and perspectives to the researcher. military ranks in the target culture”, a tendency which is confirmed by
these research findings. Direct translation accounts for 89% and 90% of
instances in Italian and Spanish, respectively, possibly due to the transpar-
Table 3.1 Characteristics of the Games Included in the Corpus. ent form and similar meaning of most rank titles in the corpus, including
“commander”, “admiral”, “captain”, “sergeant”, and “general”, among
MoHW BF4 ME3
others. Generalization is another strategy which can be observed in the
Year of release 2012 2013 2012 translation of military titles, representing 10% and 9% of instances in the
Developer Danger Close DICE BioWare two localizations. Hypernyms are used in both languages to render “lieu-
Publisher Electronic Arts Electronic Arts Electronic Arts tenant” and “lieutenant-commander”, which occur in Mass Effect 3 and,
Genre and subgenre Action FPS Action FPS Action RPG
Theme Present-day global Political fiction Science-fiction as Wozniak (ibid.) argues, given the science-fictional context of this game,
War on Terror 2020 War 2186 Galactic War the simplification of the original rank system is not only reasonable but
Series Medal of Honor Battlefield Mass Effect desirable, notwithstanding potentially confusing effects concerning hier-
Age rating (PEGI) 18 18 18 archical interaction. Other minor strategies in the translation of military
Platform Multiplatform Multiplatform Multiplatform
titles include explicitation and omission, which are adopted to deal with
Localization level Full Full Full (Italian) /
Partial (Spanish) abbreviations, but while the Spanish use of an equivalent full form does not
Global sales in 2.88 13.87 5.69 pose any issues, the omission in Italian seems less appropriate, given the
millions of units obligatory use of titles before surnames (Bonn 2005, 16–18) in the highly
(VGChartz) hierarchical context of military communication.
The clock code is a system which originated in aviation and is currently
used by most armed forces to indicate the position and the relative direction
of an object in military language, described using the analogy of a 12-hour
MoHW BF4 ME3 clock (Bowyer 2004, 48). The qualitative analysis of the instances found
in the corpus, presented in Section 5.4, has shown that translators tend to
realism fictionalism either adopt equivalent formulaic expressions in the target language or to
paraphrase the code in order to make the meaning of the position clear,
Figure 3.1 The Realism-Fictionalism Spectrum Axis. that is by describing what the clock position implies. This phenomenon
192 Conclusions and Further Research 70 Culture-Specificity in Video Games
clearly demonstrates the role of routines in military communication across
languages and the importance of adhering to language-specific conventions Table 3.2 Playtime and Wordcount of the Corpus.
for the sake of realism.
Game Playtime Wordcount
The role of English as the lingua franca of international war settings,
as those simulated in the three games explored in this book, is exempli- English Italian Spanish Total
fied by the notable tendency toward retention in both Italian (92%) and MoHW 84’ 7,372 6,410 6,693 20,475
Spanish (68%) in the transfer of those code words which identify letters BF4 96’ 6,684 6,198 6,052 18,934
of the military phonetic alphabet, which allow soldiers to clearly and ME3 304’ 26,751 24,770 26,610 78,131
directly communicate military conceptual units, as explored in Section 5.5. Total 484’ 40,807 37,378 39,355 117,504
Officially adopted in 1956, this code system is indeed universal and com-
monly referred to as the NATO phonetic alphabet. Code words are thus
correctly kept in their original form, with very few orthographical adapta- Table 3.2 illustrates the corpus’ dimension, that is the three games in terms
tions in Spanish like Alfa for “Alpha” and Eco for “Echo”. However, unless of time and text size. As will be better explained later in this chapter, due to the
players are familiar with the phonetic alphabet, it is possible to speculate usual methodological issues in game localization research, in order to compile
that the meaning of some code words, if retained, may be only understood the corpus, it was deemed necessary to select three walkthroughs, also known
in context, in other words, when playing. In this regard, another important as playthroughs, one per game, played by a gamer and uploaded on the latter’s
strategy used to translate phonetic letters in both target languages is explici- personal YouTube gaming channel. Once identified, the walkthroughs were
tation, although it is more frequently adopted in Spanish (22%) than in divided into four parts, and 40% of each was analyzed.
Italian (8%). This is another example of the strong influence English exerts More precisely, Table 3.2 better illustrates the size of the corpus accord-
on Italian, as opposed to Spanish. ing to two useful units of measurement: (1) playtime and (2) number of
Explicitation replaces code words with equivalent terms related to their words, named “wordcount”.
referential meaning: for example, “Lima Charlie”, which occur together to “Playtime” refers to the time length, expressed in minutes, of the corpus
mean “loud and clear”, is translated into the Italian formulaic procedure (40% of each walkthrough), which corresponds to a total of 484 minutes
expression forte e chiaro [loud and clear]. Similarly, in Spanish “Mike” (08:04:00 in the format hh:mm:ss).
which stands for “M” and means “minute” is translated into minuto [min- “Wordcount” refers to the total number of words in the corpus, namely
ute], while “Tango” which means “target(s)” is made explicit into enemigos 117,504, and also displays the word count of each language version of each
[enemies]. game, so that data can be read both vertically, which allows the reader to
In contrast with the military phonetic alphabet, radio communication is look at the corpus size per language and horizontally, which shows each
a language-specific military phenomenon including a set of formulae and game size as a subcorpus. In both cases, data result from the sum of the
prowords which follow a standard message format. Accordingly, as the number of words uttered by game characters in dialogs in the single parts
analysis of these expressions has demonstrated in Section 5.6, radio commu- selected: the first 10%, the fourth 10%, the seventh 10%, and the final
nication procedural words tend to be substituted with equivalent procedural 10% of the walkthrough and this is due to the objective to include funda-
words in the target language. Direct translation represents 67% and 99% of mental parts of the games’ storytelling process, i.e. the beginning and the
all instances in Italian and Spanish, respectively, and the difference between end, together with middle sections. Furthermore, it is worth mentioning that
the two localizations is only due to the fact that in Italian retention (32%) the total playtime of each single game walkthrough is 03:30:06 (Medal of
is used to transfer “roger” in Medal of Honor Warfighter, which, how- Honor Warfighter), 03:50:53 (Battlefield 4), 13:20:03 (Mass Effect 3), for
ever, is a frequently occurring proword in the game’s realistic war scenario, a total of 20:41:02. However, in order to establish the unit of 10% of the
accounting for 80% of the total instances of “roger” across the corpus. This walkthrough playtime, adjustments were deemed necessary and some parts
creates a strong foreignizing US-flavored effect in this game. like credits in all games, and character customization in the role-playing
Findings in the analysis of military language in this book corpus have game, have been excluded from the calculation due to the total absence of
highlighted a remarkable number of abbreviations occurring in almost all dialogs. As regards playtime, a brief clarification is worthy: the length of the
military linguistic phenomena, since brevity is a key element in communica- walkthroughs selected does not provide a truthful picture of the actual aver-
tions between soldiers, also between virtual ones. As examined in more detail age playtime of the three games in the corpus, since players tend to upload
in Section 5.7, some short forms are standardized, while others are informal their walkthroughs after playing the game several times, for the sake of their
expressions belonging to military slang. In both cases, however, translation web reputation as gamers and youtubers.3
 Culture-Specificity in Video Games 71
Nevertheless, as data in Table 3.2 show, there seems to be a relationship
between the degree of realism or fictionalism of contents and size. Indeed,
the more the game is fictional, the greater the game world, the longer the
gaming experience offered to the player in a specific subgenre-related con-
text. As Bateman (2006, xxvi) explains, science fiction is, together with
fantasy, RPGs’ main setting because role-playing involves the fantastic
and the unreal almost naturally, due to the nature of RPGs in general and
the expectations of this genre’s target audience. On the contrary, although
many FPS games quite naturally involve the verisimilar, given the shooting-
based gameplay, no equally clear-cut connection can be found between this
subgenre narrative gameplay and realistic setting.
Furthermore, although the difference in both playtime and text size
between the two FPSs and Mass Effect 3 point to a difficult comparison
and examination of the corpus as a whole, if subgenre-related aspects must
be taken into account, it is also true that ME3, like all BioWare’s Mass
Effect series titles, “is unique in its canon, as it mixes role-playing conven-
tions with the gameplay elements of ‘military shooters’” (Patterson 2015,
212). As the author explains, “although Mass Effect’s story is science fiction
RPG, much of the action-intensive gameplay is distinctly that of a military
shooter. First, the game’s overhead role-play view zooms-in during battles
to give an over-the-arm ‘shooter’ point of view” and secondly, especially
during combat, ME3 language is the military lingo proper (ibid.), very typi-
cal of the shooting subgenre and since this point is of special interest, it will
be explored in depth in Chapter 5.
Nevertheless, despite its hybrid nature as regards “gameplay genre”
(Bateman 2006), ME3 has narrative and textual features specific to role-
playing games. In particular, the latter is one of the most text-heavy subgen-
res of video games, as highlighted by Christou, McKearney, and Warden
(2011).
From a wider perspective, in order to investigate localization and transla-
tion, it seems pertinent to show the number of the words in each game source
text together with the number of the words in each game target texts, namely
the Italian and Spanish translations, in the whole database (Table 3.3).
The objective is, on the one hand, to demonstrate the different sizes of the
three games as localization projects and, on the other hand, to compare
the size of each game’s original version with the respective localizations.
Moreover, if data in Table 3.3 are contrasted with data in Table 3.2, it is
Table 3.3 Wordcount of the Games’ Databases.
Game English Italian Spanish
MoHW 254,553 250,093 276,242
BF4 122,207 118,916 127,399
ME3 808,875 769,153 833,868
Conclusions and Further Research 193
may be challenging: the most essential feature of these terms, namely brev-
ity, is very difficult, if not impossible, to render and when it combines with
informal jargon, faithfulness to both levels seems to be extremely difficult
to obtain. Indeed, across the linguistic subcategories developed to classify
abbreviations, namely (a) informal or slang terms, (b) blends, and (c) acro-
nyms and initialisms, with several potential overlaps within the subgroups,
the study has shown a strong tendency toward explicitation in the transla-
tion of abbreviations. Explicitation disambiguates the meaning and form
of abbreviations by explaining or defining them in context, e.g. acronyms
and initialisms are spelled out and substituted with full forms, informal and
slang abbreviations are replaced with standard full forms, with a change
in register, and implicit elements, if any, are added to favor clarity. This
strategy accounts for 59% and 75% of instances in Italian and Spanish,
respectively, and it represents the most suitable approach to allow play-
ers to understand such English-specific terms. Moreover, it must be speci-
fied that explicitation somehow represents the basis for other strategies: for
example, generalization and specification are based on explicitation in the
case of abbreviations, because hypernyms or hyponyms represent full forms,
regardless of the sense relation which link them to the original shortened
form.
Examples of explicitation in the corpus include regole di ingaggio in
Italian and reglas de enfrentamiento in Spanish to translate “ROE”, which
means “rules of engagement”. “Air”, the informal abbreviation for “air
support”, is also made explicit in both languages into the context-dependent
full forms supporto aereo and apoyo aéreo. Similarly, “medical” is substi-
tuted with equivalent expressions depending on the context-specific medical
referent, which makes the addition of nouns, left implicit in the original,
necessary: soccorso and asistencia for medical assistance, personale medico
and médicos for medical personnel. Explicitation is also used in both locali-
zations to render “LZ” for “landing zone” into zona d’atterraggio and zona
de aterrizaje.
Another frequently adopted strategy used to transfer abbreviations is
generalization, which accounts for 30% and 18% in Italian and Spanish,
respectively. For example, superordinate expressions are chosen to trans-
fer “CAS” into supporto aereo and apoyo aéreo [air support], although
this acronym stands for “close air support” and signifies “air action by
aircraft against hostile targets that are in close proximity to friendly forces”
(DOD 2020, 35, emphasis added) and equivalent expressions exist in both
languages. Likewise, “ETA” for “estimated time of arrival” is translated
into more generic but military-like neutral and concise expressions such
as tempo previsto [expected time] or arrivo previsto [expected arrival] in
Italian, and paraphrased into statements like llegamos en [we arrive in] or
questions like ¿cuánto os falta? [how long will it take you to arrive?] in
Spanish, which instead are phrased in layman’s terms, especially given the
194 Conclusions and Further Research
existence, as opposed to in Italian, of a specialized definition reading as
“hora estimada de llegada” (García de la Cuesta 2003, 139).
Polysemic abbreviations may be particularly challenging and it has been
interesting to observe how this phenomenon, as also Kočotea and Smirnova
explain (2016), leads to different renditions due to translators’ interpreta-
tion and, possibly, research skills. “Op” is a prime example: it is both an
informal abbreviation which means “operation”, when written in lower-
case letters, and also an acronym which stands for “observation post”
(see Bowyer 2004), often capitalized. In this book corpus, most instances
occur in Medal of Honor Warfighter and are capitalized, but co-textual and
contextual information clarify the referents. In localizations, while “OP”
meaning “operation” is correctly made explicit in both target languages,
the instances of “OP” meaning “observation post” are identified only in
Spanish and translated into the equivalent acronym PO or into the full form
puesto de observación, whereas in Italian it is either omitted or incorrectly
interpreted as operazione [operation].
In the light of the conclusions above, it is easy to understand how rich and
varied war video games are when the focus of linguistic and translational analy-
sis is military language. Moreover, this research line offers ideal opportuni-
ties for interdisciplinary collaborations with scholars in the field of History,
Political Sciences, International Relations, and Anthropology, among others,
not only because war representation in video games spans across time and
space, but rather because, as typically happens in imaginary worlds, the “clash
between cultures provides much of the narrative conflict” (Wolf 2018, 32) in
video games, since it justifies and defines the wars players fight, while the degree
of realism and/or fictionality affects the cultures at war, and this inevitably con-
nects with the relationship between the game world and the real world, as this
book aimed to demonstrate.
6.10 Translating Realia and Irrealia in Video Games: A Summary
The research reported in this book has explored whether and to what extent
the localization and translation of video games can be influenced by the degree
of realism or fictionality of game contents, that is by the relationship linking a
game world with the real world. The analysis presented in Chapters 4 and 5,
whose main findings have been summarized in the previous sections, clearly
shows that textual material in video games, be it verbal or non-verbal, depends
on the extent to which a game world interfaces with the real world. This aspect
is reminiscent of the realistic–abstract dichotomy described by Rollings and
Adams (2003, 80–81) in terms of the general difference between realistic and
abstract games, as two extremes of a continuum, and also of the seminal claim
made by Bernal-Merino in terms of the general differences between games from
the perspective of translation (2007, 3), based on the level of either creativity or
research skills translators are required.
72 Culture-Specificity in Video Games
possible to understand the partial experience in the game textual world of
a single player in a single walkthrough, as opposed to the overall textual
world the game offers him/her. In the words of Wolf and Perron (2009b,
11), “even when games are finished, portions of them may still go unseen
or not experienced”. This also seems to confirm that one single player’s
experience is only one of the multiple ways a video game can be played and,
consequently, although with remarkable differences between first-person
shooters and role-playing games, it is only one of the possible ways a game
story can unfold.
The information shown in Table 3.3, on the one hand, by adopting a
vertical reading, turns out to be consistent with the different subgenre-
dependent textual size of the three video games which was already evident
in Table 3.2 at corpus level. On the other hand, if read horizontally, Table
3.3 shows an unusual relationship between the source text and the target
texts, especially in the transfer from English into Romance languages, like
Italian and Spanish, and more especially as regards Italian. Indeed, while
the Spanish translation confirms the general tendency of the target text to
be larger than the source text (Maxwell-Chandler and O’Malley-Deming
2012, 5), and percentages range from 3% in Mass Effect 3 to 8% in Medal
of Honor Warfighter (4% in Battlefield 4), Italian target texts are all shorter
than the original. Percentage ranges from 2% in Medal of Honor Warfighter
to 5% in Mass Effect 3 (Battlefield 4 Italian target text is about 3% shorter
than its source text). This seems to be particularly interesting if we consider
that, as will be exemplified in Chapter 4, Mass Effect 3 Italian translators
added gender-specific tags in variables within dialog strings, thus making
those strings longer than their original. Going into more detail is beyond
the reach of this book, since it would require the analysis of all text types
of all games’ databases. However, it is worth remembering that, since the
constraints of audiovisual translation modes are often neglected by game
localization professionals, and the game engine may even allow automatic
synchronization, as far as dialogs are concerned, voice-over constraints do
not seem to influence translation. Pettini (2018) provides an example in this
regard in her analysis of the audio localization of the gender-specific dialog
strings of the ME3 female protagonist “FemShep”.
Going back to the linguistic and translational object of this monograph,
a transverse analysis of the corpus has been carried out in order to identify
and examine realia and irrealia, to detect all culture-related elements in the
original texts and in their localizations. As regards the criteria according to
which elements of interest have been interpreted as belonging to realia and
irrealia categories, besides the researcher’s personal knowledge concerning
the three games, two different sources expressing two different perspectives
on the game worlds under investigation have been used: first, the games’
glossaries, and second, the online multilingual fan wikis of the series each
game title in the corpus belongs to. The former are official in-house termi-
nology databases which contain the body of terms belonging to the game
 Culture-Specificity in Video Games 73
world the series has been creating over the years, i.e. the vocabulary which
refers to fictional and non-fictional entities existing in that world. These
glossaries represent invaluable reference material for translators for the pur-
poses of terminological consistency and they testify to the publisher’s com-
mitment to quality translation (see Pettini 2016). Conversely, fan wikis are
an example of the participatory culture around popular culture products
(see Jenkins 2006a, 2006b) and, while augmenting “fandom”, they serve an
encyclopedic function, “as documentation of their cultural objects” (Mittell
2013, 38, original emphasis). In particular, video games’ wikis go beyond
the documentary impulse “by offering collectively authored walkthroughs,
strategies and guides to popular games”, in as far as they “mirror the game’s
storyworld with comprehensive analysis and discussion of how the game
works” (ibid., 40).
In the case of the three video games of this study corpus, while Medal of
Honor has no glossary as far as the publisher is concerned, since they did
not look after this series’ terminological management, Battlefield franchise
and Mass Effect franchise glossaries are multilingual spreadsheets listing
hundreds or thousands of terms referring to a vast array of contents. As
regards the three games’ wikis, they are Medal of Honor Wiki (online),
Battlefield Wiki (online), and Mass Effect Wiki (online).
However, although both official glossaries and fan game wikis have
turned out to be very useful tools for this research, as will emerge through-
out the analysis, they cannot meet the expectations of the translational per-
spective of this study since they do not fully mirror the variety of realia and
irrealia found in the corpus. This is the reason why this book research can-
not, and does not aim to, adopt the theoretical and methodological frame-
work of Terminology from a descriptive perspective and, consequently, the
culture-related linguistic phenomena expressed by realia and irrealia must
be examined under the magnifying glasses of Translation Studies in general
and of Game Localization in particular.
3.5 Game Worlds between Realism and Fictionality
Before illustrating the concept of realia and irrealia, an explanation of
“game world” is essential since, while it is easy to understand what the
actual or ‘real’ world refers to, for the purposes of this book the virtual
game world needs a clear definition, which is provided by borrowing from
notions developed by game industry professionals.
According to Rollings and Adams (2003, 55), a “game world is an arti-
ficial universe, an imaginary place whose creation begins with the (usually
unspoken) words ‘Let’s pretend […].’ Every game, no matter how small,
takes place in a world” but, as Adams (2014, 137) specifies, “not all games
have a game world”. A football sports simulator, for example, although it
“requires pretending because the players assign an artificial importance to
otherwise trivial actions”, it “doesn’t create a game world” (ibid.). Even if
Conclusions and Further Research 195
With respect to the main hypothesis this research aimed to prove, find-
ings confirm that the different degrees of realism or fictionality of game con-
tents quantitatively and qualitatively influence translatable assets in game
localization and it affects the scope and the types of challenges translators
deal with. Different strategies are thus required to transfer the game expe-
rience as envisioned by developers. In turn, different skills may be needed
for different game worlds and even for different dimensions of the same
game world. Nevertheless, on the one hand, despite the implications due to
the specific characteristics of the shooting genre, texts in war video games
share a number of linguistic aspects which mainly fall into military language
phenomena and highlight the importance of domain-specific knowledge
based on research and terminological management. On the other hand, war
video games present unique linguistic features which are closely connected
to the either verisimilar or imaginary nature of single dimensions of their
game worlds. Consequently, in game localization and translation manifold
challenges and issues may emerge where language meets real or fictional
cultures. In this light, realia and irrealia open up new avenues of research
which will help define the role of culture-related references in game texts
from different angles and perspectives.
In sum, the realism-fictionalism spectrum simulated in this book research
plainly exemplifies how culture and cultures manifest themselves, as long as
the representational value of the games examined can be compared. Indeed,
if it is true that the war theme and the shooting genre of the three games
included in this book represents a common ground on which parallels can
easily be drawn, e.g. similar gameplay experience, similar fun factor, the
multicultural geopolitical scenarios of the either realistic or imaginary con-
flicts simulated, and also the typical military lingo used by virtual soldiers
(Patterson 2015), it is also true that the increasing degree of fictionality of
their game worlds, by looking at the spectrum from left to right, or, vice
versa, the decreasing degree of realism, on the opposite direction, is evi-
dently mirrored in the quantitative and qualitive differences concerning the
nature of textual material, exemplified in the realia and irrealia found in the
corpus. These differences have affected all the dimensions of the three game
worlds and, consequently, all the related categories of realia and irrealia,
namely individual references, collective references, intertextual and intra-
textual metaludic references, geographical references, ethnic references,
sociopolitical references, and artifactual references, which might be used
to replicate the study by examining similar video games along the realism-
fictionalism spectrum, or by examining the translation of the same or simi-
lar games into other languages, or they might also be used to extend the
research to gameplay and narrative genres other than military war-themed
shooters, e.g. simulation games or fantasy games, with a view to contribut-
ing to soundly conceptualize the features of translation for global enter-
tainment, thus consolidating Game Localization as an established academic
domain.
74 Culture-Specificity in Video Games
the simulated real-world football field defines its physical boundaries and
the simulated real-world football match defines its time, “when the clock
runs out, the world ceases to exist; the game is over” in a football sports
game (Rollings and Adams 2003, 55).4 On the contrary, a “game world”
is a “fictional component, the aspect of a game that is fantasy”5 (ibid., 56),
no matter how realistic or irrealistic this may be. The world, also intended
as the setting, is essential to the fantasy; without it, the game “would not
exist, and if it had a different setting, it would be a different game” (ibid.).
Obviously enough, the more a game depends on its gameplay mechanics to
entertain, the less its world matters (ibid.) and, usually, vice versa. In the
latter case, players enter the game world and temporarily make their own
reality, they suspend their disbelief: this illusion is commonly interpreted
as the game immersiveness, “one of the holy grails of game design”, and
its power depends on the game world harmony, meant as “the feeling that
all parts of the game belong to a single, coherent whole” (ibid., 58). This
single coherent whole is “defined by many different variables, each of which
describes one dimension of the world, one of the aspects of the game’s look
and feel” (ibid., 60, emphasis added), whose transfer has been identified as
the skopos of game localization and translation.
According to Rollings and Adams (2003, 60–80), just as the real world,
also the game world presents structural elements, which refer to the follow-
ing five constitutive dimensions: physical dimension, temporal dimension,
environmental dimension, emotional dimension, and ethical dimension.
Since many of their characteristics are related to game design proper or they
belong to aspects which are irrelevant for this book, here only the spatial,
the temporal, and the environmental dimensions are discussed because they
are the properties according to which the degree of realism or fictional-
ity of game contents has been evaluated when selecting the products to be
included in the corpus. The most important dimensions examined here are
the physical and the temporal dimensions, which are interpreted as space
and time; they represent the places where the action unfolds and where
the player moves his/her avatar, and the time when the (story) action takes
place, known as plot time in narratology. These two dimensions are the
starting point to evaluate whether and how a game world differs from the
space and time of the real world. The third fundamental dimension is envi-
ronmental and refers to what inhabits the game world space, including the
cultural context and the physical surrounding. In the notion of “cultural
context” (ibid., 69) lies the core of the present analysis.

When we speak of a cultural context of a game, we’re talking about cul-

ture in the anthropological sense: the beliefs, attitudes, and values that
the people in the game world hold, as well as their political and reli-
gious institutions, social organization, and so on. These characteristics
are reflected in the manufactured items that appear in the game: cloth-
ing, furniture, architecture, landscaping, and every other man-made [or,
 Culture-Specificity in Video Games 75
I would add, human and non-human being-made] object in the world.
The culture influences not only what appears and what doesn’t […], but
also how everything looks. The appearance of objects is affected not
only by their function in the world, but also by the aesthetic sensibilities
of the people who constructed them.
(ibid., original emphasis)
Moreover, the cultural context includes the game’s backstory, which is
another crucial concept for this book research, since, as far as game series
are concerned, as in the case of the corpus games, it provides the back-
ground to the story “played out” (Bateman 2006, xxvi) in the single episode
of the saga.
The back story of a game is the imaginary history, either large-scale
(nations, wars, natural disasters), or small-scale (personal events and
interactions) that preceded the time when the game takes place. The
historical background helps to establish why the culture is the way it is.
A warlike people should have a history of warfare; a mercantile people
should have a history of trading. […] For most game worlds, it’s not
necessary to define their culture in great detail. If the game is set in your
own culture, you can simply use the things you can see around you. […]
But when your game begins to deviate from your own culture, you need
to start thinking about how it deviates and what consequences that has.
(Rollings and Adams 2003, 69)
In particular, if the game is an alternate reality, by paraphrasing Rollings
and Adams (2003, 74), the peoples in the game world may have a com-
plex, highly organized society or a simple, tribal one; they may have their
own forms of government and social structures, classes, guilds or specialized
occupations; they may have their own values, like martial prowess, impe-
rialism, or peace; they may be superstitious or religious, have visible insti-
tutions or religious practices and buildings; they may have flamboyant or
reserved, chaotic or orderly, bright or subtle aesthetic qualities. In sum, they
may be as amazingly complex, varied, and unique as real-world peoples.
Be they about real-world cultures or fictional cultures, this study assumes
that video games can tell stories, they can be storytelling media, and their
texts, especially through some text types like dialogs, can be interpreted as
narrative, basically meant as a text that tells a story (Kücklich 2003, 2006).6
Going further, it might be said that some games are the story of such cul-
tures: they have a detailed, involving, convoluted, and more or less linearly
structured storyline (Rollings and Adams 2003, 89). In terms of genre and
subgenre, Rollings and Adams (ibid., 90) illustrate the concept by means of
a “story spectrum” which, from left to right, shows the increasing impor-
tance story plays in gameplay across subgenres, ranging from the “light
backstory – usually a brief sentence or paragraph that sets the theme for
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76 Culture-Specificity in Video Games
a game” of arcade games (ibid.) to epic-like stories of role-playing games.
This aspect is particularly relevant for this research since it places first-per-
son shooters in the center-right position and role-playing games on the right
edge of the story spectrum, and this also seems to suggest a connection with
the increasingly higher degree of fictionality of story-driven video games. In
sum, most video games which present a game world, as defined above, do
have a more or less developed story which unfolds through interaction and
where the player plays the role of the co-storyteller or co-author (ibid., 92).
Another complex aspect which is worth clarifying in order to better frame
the definitions of realia and irrealia concerns the notion of “cultural” or,
better, “culture-related”. What is culture in video games? Given the well-
established notions of “culture-bound” or “culture-specific” in Translation
Studies, it seems necessary to briefly explore the subject in order to elucidate
its meaning and delineate its scope in this book.
The nature of video games as a global phenomenon and the role of
game translation within Globalization, Internationalization, Localization,
Translation (GILT) processes (see Section 2.4.1) necessarily imply a fresh
approach to the study of culture as part of the practices of interlinguistic
and intercultural mediation that translation belongs to. In video games, the
concepts of source culture, target culture, or other culture are open to ques-
tion. As Consalvo (2006, 120, emphasis added) argues, the contemporary
video game industry is “a hybrid encompassing a mixture of Japanese and
American businesses and (more importantly) cultures to a degree unseen in
other media industries” and its peculiarities “can be recognized in the trans-
national [and multicultural] corporations that contribute to its formation
and development; in the global audience for its products; and in the com-
plex mixing of format, style and content within games”. “Hybrid” precisely
means, from Consalvo’s viewpoint (ibid.), “the melding of business and
culture” which creates “a global media culture” which, however, “avoids
becoming homogenous […] because the demands of the local still shape cul-
tural products as they travel around the world” and “products destined for
global consumption are carefully localized, to ensure that their international
flavor is not too foreign” (original emphasis). Consequently, the analysis of
the relationship between video games and culture requires “an approach
that starts from the macroscopic and continues to the particular” (Consalvo
2006, 123).
The game industry is significant in that it has never been the product of
one particular culture. Even in its “glocal” instances, when translation
will not work and games are country specific, evidence of the transcul-
tural [and multicultural] can be found.
(Consalvo 2006, 123)
“Glocal” means that “the global meets the local, as the games must of neces-
sity be played by real people, in actual locations, using specific hardware”
 Culture-Specificity in Video Games 77
(ibid., 126). “Games are the realization of the ‘glocal,’ as they signify where
the global flow finally arrives at local markets, and how it is understood,
accepted, embraced, or perhaps rejected in that locale” (ibid., 126–127).
In sum, although games are not “produced in a cultural void” (Consalvo
2006, 128), “it is difficult if not impossible to determine a singular national
source for these cultural products (much less gauge their accuracy), given the
transnational [and multicultural] nature of corporations as well as ‘native’
peoples” (ibid., 119). “It is foolish if not dangerous to attempt to determine
with any authority the ‘essential’ or ‘fundamental’ national qualities that
may be found in individual games, and how these qualities are understood
by players” or, if any, whether players “would ‘read’ them as such” (ibid.,
127). Accordingly, the “hybrid global culture [game] industry” poses con-
siderable challenges “to such ideas as national cultures and geographic bor-
ders” (ibid., 123), which have been the main frame of reference for assessing
culture-specificity in Translation Studies. Consistent with these premises, a
new interpretation of the meanings of culture in video games seems essential
and the game world cultural context (Rollings and Adams 2003, 69) might
represent a direction worth moving in.
The dimensions of the game worlds included in the corpus can now be
illustrated. The following paragraphs serve as an introduction to the most
relevant features of the three games as representational and narrative media
from a cultural perspective. In particular, as discussed in Chapter 2, the
relevance of these features is assessed with a focus on game localization
and culturalization: entertainment and playability (see Section 2.6.6) are
the skopos of game translation but the fun factor of games depends on the
experience offered; consequently, due to the difficulty in defining a game
experience objectively, the following introductions foreground and discuss
the aspects emphasized by the developers and publishers of the three games
for marketing purposes. Indeed, games’ official pages, websites, and reviews
seem to be the right sources to understand what type of experience is offered
to players and how this experience relates to culture inside and outside the
game world.
3.5.1 Medal of Honor Warfighter
“Written by active U.S. Tier 1 Operators while deployed overseas and
inspired by real world threats”, namely “the ongoing global terror threat”,
Medal of Honor Warfighter “delivers an aggressive, gritty, and authentic
experience that puts gamers in the boots of today’s most precise and disci-
plined warrior”, namely the US Navy SEAL Tier 1 (Medal of Honor Official
Site, online). “Following on the heels of 2010’s Medal of Honor which took
the game series out of World War II and introduced players to today’s most
elite U.S. warriors” fighting in Afghanistan, Medal of Honor Warfighter
asks players “to continue to experience gameplay missions with a dotted
line to real world incursions”, “from rescuing hostages in Abu Sayyaf’s
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78 Culture-Specificity in Video Games
stronghold in Basilan, Philippines, to assaulting Al-Shabaab’s Pirate Town
on the Somali Coast” (ibid.).
Medal of Honor Warfighter tells the story of U.S. Tier 1 Operator,
“Preacher,” as he returns home from overseas only to find his family
torn apart from years of deployment. Trying to pick up the pieces to
salvage what remains of his marriage, Preacher is reminded of what he’s
fighting for – family. But when an extremely deadly explosive (PETN)
penetrates civilian borders and his two worlds collide, Preacher and his
fellow teammates are sent in to solve the problem. They take the fight
to the enemy and do whatever it takes to protect their loved ones from
harm.
(ibid., emphasis added)
In other words, as the game executive producer Greg Goodrich explains (cit.
in Laughlin 2012, online), Medal of Honor Warfighter (MoHW) is inspired
by “real warriors, real locations and real threats. The ‘dotted line’ simply
means that every mission has a connective tissue to one of these things in
the real world”. The game “is set in the modern day” and “in a world
that we ‘know’” (Campbell 2012, online). The global war on terror events
from September 11, 2001, and places like Spain, Pakistan, the Philippines,
Yemen, Somalia, the United Arab Emirates, and Bosnia (Smith 2012, online)
are the context of MoHW’s 13 missions of the single-player campaign. The
line “inspired by actual events” that appears at the start of most missions is
designed to represent situations directly “ripped from the headlines” (Dyer
2012, online), although a few of those real-world events are recognizable to
civilian people, such as “the 2004 Madrid train bombings, the time Navy
snipers rescuing a ship captain from under three pirates, and a hurricane in
the Philippines” (Thier 2012, online).
MoHW developers have striven for authenticity or realism and offer play-
ers a shooter “with real Operators, real gear and a real terror threat” (as
written on MoHW limited edition back cover, emphasis added). Given the
focus of this book on the realism-fictionalism continuum of video games,
these three aspects deserve special attention.
First, as regards real operators, in order to write the storyline, many
US Navy SEALs, both active and retired, were involved as paid consult-
ants, one of which was supposed to be a member of the team which killed
Osama bin Laden in 2011 (Sarkar 2013, online). As the producer Luke
Thai explains, these real soldiers “worked really closely […] on the mission
objectives, operations, maneuvers and various elements […] like the weap-
onry, the gear, the way these operatives perform door breeches, etc.” (cit. in
Lang 2012, online). Moreover, as Robinson (2016, 262) underlines, during
promotion, the game developer commissioned a series of eight films titled
The Medal of Honor Tier 1 Interview Series, made in collaboration with
the Special Forces community and hosted on the game’s official YouTube
 Culture-Specificity in Video Games 79
channel and other social media platforms. For this reason, some weeks after
the game’s launch, seven members of the secretive Navy Seal Team 6 were
disciplined for revealing secrets to the game developers (Lang 2012). They
received reprimand letters and had half of their pay docked for two months;
they were charged with violation of orders, misuse of command gear, der-
eliction of duty, and disclosure of classified material (Martin 2012).
Secondly, as regards real gear, Danger Close used “real-world brands
[…], be it clothing, tactical equipment or guns” (Meier and Martin 2012,
online) and for this purpose, as one of the game’s creative directors Kristoffer
Bergqvist explains (cit. in Reilly 2012, online), they worked “with weapon
manufacturers and operators to build the most authentic set of tools”. As
Robinson (2016, 262) illustrates, during the six-month-long promotional
campaign, the game developers released a weekly series of brief films
announcing official partnerships with weapons and military equipment
manufacturers.
Each film contained interviews between Greg Goodrich [MoHW execu-
tive producer] and senior personnel within the featured company in
which they described the functionality of their equipment and formally
endorsed their involvement with the game: they were thus key to the
claims for the game’s authenticity.
(ibid., 263)
The publisher went even further and created a game-specific website that pro-
moted the manufacturers of the guns, knives and combat-style gear depicted
in the game world. Links allowed visitors to click on the websites of the
game’s partners and peruse their catalogs. After receiving harsh criticism,
the publisher disabled the links and, in their defense, said that the initiative
was aimed at raising money for charities like the Navy SEAL Foundation
and the Special Operations Warrior Foundation. Notwithstanding the
cause, this clearly exemplifies the link between the war video game industry
and the USA private arms industry (Keeton and Scheckner 2013, 3) which
seem to “have quietly forged a mutually beneficial marketing relationship”
(Meier and Martin 2012, online). In sum, the controversy “resulted from
the explicit exposure and celebration of the military-entertainment com-
plex” (Robinson 2016, 266).
Thirdly, as regards real terror threat, the enemy “Other” in MoHW is,
expectedly enough, Jihadism and its network of terrorist organizations.
From a typical American-versus-Muslim perspective, Islamists are por-
trayed as violent, untrustworthy, and short-tempered. This type of (mis)rep-
resentation is very common in popular audiovisual culture and the resulting
racialized stereotypes and Islamophobia have been widely investigated (see,
for example, Semmerling 2006). In video games, MoHW is only one of the
titles which target Muslims as the world threat: in Conflict Desert Storm II:
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80 Culture-Specificity in Video Games
Back to Baghdad (Sales Curve Interactive 2003), Counter-Strike Condition
Zero (Vivendi Universal 2004), Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (Activision
2007), among others, the enemy is always the stereotypical Arab Muslim
with a turban, long loose clothes, dark skin, and thick beard who mostly
plays as a suicide bomber. As Schulzke (2013, 207–208) remarks, “terror-
ists make perfect video game enemies, as they can be easily characterized
as intrinsically evil and threatening targets” or, he adds, “natural villains”.
Visually, they are dehumanized, simplistic, and homogeneous figures and,
more interestingly, from a linguistic viewpoint, enemies “tend to have very
limited dialogue, only shouting a few insults or commands to each other,
which are repeated endlessly over the course of the game, giving them the
appearance of being automatons” (ibid., 209). In MoHW, this linguis-
tic oversimplification of the enemy is evident, for example, in the Arabic
training instructions provided by the Arab terrorist leader “The Cleric” to
another Arab fighter named Argyrus, in a mission titled “Through the Eyes
of Evil”, as explored in Chapter 4.
In terms of culturalization, the representation of one of the Muslim peo-
ples playing the role of the enemies, namely the Pakistani, provoked Pakistani
backlash against MoHW. In more detail, Pakistan banned the game exactly
for portraying “the south Asian country as a haven for terrorists” and sug-
gesting that “the country’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency supports Al
Qaeda” (Brown 2013, online). Moreover, it was not the first time that the
MoH series had turned out to be contentious for cultural reasons. In 2010,
for example, the multiplayer mode of Medal of Honor created a contro-
versy when it was revealed that gamers could play as Taliban fighters in
multiplayer mode (Alexander 2010). Due to pressure from various military
officials’ and veterans’ organizations, “who cited that it was insensitive to
include such an option, particularly when the United States was still in con-
flict with the Taliban group” (Edwards 2012, 29), the word “Taliban” was
replaced with the general term “Opposing Force” (Frum 2010, online). Such
a backlash clearly exemplifies the concept of “contextual proximity” accord-
ing to which “the closer a content element approaches the original context
in person, place, time, and/or form, the greater the potential for cultural
sensitivity” (Edwards 2012, 29) and, concerning MoHW, means that (ibid.):
The contextual proximity in both time (the present) and situation (U.S.
soldiers fighting and dying) make the potential response much more
volatile. Also, the general public perception that a game is supposed to
be “fun” strongly influences their negative response; in other words,
they perceive that EA [Electronic Arts] was turning the present-day
fight against the Taliban into something fun and enjoyable.
Although set in the contemporary historical context, Medal of Honor
Warfighter is still a fictional story of a soldier codenamed Preacher “toe-
ing the line between family and duty” (Hinkle 2012, online) and, as such,
 Culture-Specificity in Video Games 81
“is a story about a community. A story about the individuals who are
doing things on our behalf overseas and sacrificing” (Greg Goodrich cit.
in Campbell 2012, online). In Dyer’s words (2012, online), “it’s clear
from the first cutscene all the way to the end credits that developer Danger
Close has the utmost respect for the extraordinary skills and bravery of
these soldiers”. After all, as the series’ title itself suggests, the warfight-
ers represented in the game are those being worth awarding the “medal
of honor” which is the foremost US military decoration awarded by the
president to a soldier who “distinguishes himself or herself conspicuously
by gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his or her life above and beyond
the call of duty while engaged in action against an enemy of the United
States” (Taylor 2010, 215, original emphasis). This “tone of uncritical rev-
erence for both its subjects and its subject matter”, however, may sound
rhetorical and be perceived simply as a “celebration not of heroism, but of
violence and killing” (Smith 2012, online), or even as “a piece of propa-
ganda” (Stanton 2012, online), or “strategic communication” (Schulzke
2014, online). MoHW players are “soldiers from liberal democracies fight-
ing insurgents from (and in) countries hostile to what most of us would
recognize as ‘Western Values’” (Campbell 2012, online) and, especially, the
values of “the institutions and culture of Western military forces” (Schulzke
2013, 209) through the “soldier’s eye view” (Robinson 2016, 263). This
way, the political ideology behind these operations easily takes shape and
allows players to become acclimatized to the US military as the globe’s
moral force.
Players of war games become virtual members of armed forces
engaged in simulated combat and they progress through games by
securing victory for their side. This tends to embed players firmly
in a particular perspective, thereby privileging that perspective over
others.
(Schulzke 2014, online)
To conclude, as a cultural artifact and a representational medium, the
setting of MoHW and its connections to the real world, i.e. the relation
with the US arms industry, the use of actual US Navy SEALs as consult-
ants, and many more areas of interface between the real and the game
worlds, which will be discussed in Chapter 4, make this game the most
realistic and culturally loaded title on the left-hand edge of the spec-
trum of realism-fictionalism this book aims to recreate. More relevantly,
Medal of Honor Warfighter may be seen as an example of the popular
culture products serving as “a vehicle for militarism” since it conveys
“strongly militaristic messages” (Robinson 2016, 256), some of which
are expressed through the linguistic and translational challenges locali-
zation professionals deal with when rendering MoHW texts into Italian
and Spanish.
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82 Culture-Specificity in Video Games
3.5.2 Battlefield 4
Battlefield 4 “is the genre-defining action blockbuster made from moments
that blur the line between game and glory” to provide players with “a vis-
ceral, dramatic experience” and immerse them “in the glorious chaos of all-
out war” (Battlefield 4 Official Site, online). “Conflicts are exciting, tense
and […] diverse”: they include both “breakneck infantry fighting and explo-
sive vehicular warfare”, with a variety of “weapons, gadgets and upgrades
tailored to create a wealth of combat roles” (Watters 2013, online). Vehicles
range from land to sea and air means, such as tanks, attack boats, fighter
jets and helicopters and the weapon roster is very varied and realistic, it
includes real assault rifles, carbines, submachine guns, shotguns, and sniper
rifles.
As regards realism, the stress is not placed on story or events, as in Medal
of Honor Warfighter, but on an “unrivaled audio and visual fidelity” which
makes the “game more human, dramatic, and believable” (Battlefield 4
Official Site, online). “Battlefield 4 has all the necessary components for a
good, story-driven shooter campaign” (Gies 2013, online) in a visually and
sonically intense first-person shooter (Lahti 2013, online).
The Battlefield 4 (BF4) single-player campaign requires players to accom-
plish seven missions, which are titled after the geographical setting where
they take place, including Azerbaijan, China, Singapore, and Egypt. As Dyer
(2013) outlines, this campaign presents the common features of the game
genre: tank mission, boat mission, stealth mission, jailbreak, sewers, sud-
den but inevitable betrayal, evil and cruel Others (Russians and Chinese),
defying orders, and, of course, a torture sequence. To some, this may be
viewed as a collection of its genre clichés (Gies 2013). To others, although
“the Battlefield series has built its reputation on memorable moments”,
“Battlefield 4 wants you […] [the player] to experience even more thrilling,
more epic moments than ever before with a beefed-up single-player story”
(Hartup 2013, online).
As a representational medium, the BF4 theme is an approaching world
war the player must prevent. In 2020, six years after the events of Battlefield
3 (2011), the global military situation is more fragile than ever as the world
teeters on the brink of not just another Cold War, but an all-out conflict
between the USA and Russia. While tensions run high between the two
superpowers, China is thrown into a state of turmoil as power-hungry
General Chang ignites a military coup which could see the Chinese gov-
ernment overthrown, and their mighty army standing shoulder to shoul-
der with Russia in the global conflict. In sum, as Schulzke (2014, online)
explains, Battlefield 4 is an example of those video games which “are not
set in or based on real conflicts” but which “tend to create new conflicts that
involve real political actors and that mirror existing international tensions”
which, one might add, may raise cultural issues.
 Culture-Specificity in Video Games 83
These and other simulated conflicts reflect and reinforce conceptions
of hostility and risk. They participate in the persistent analysis of risk
scenarios and of potential future threats, which takes place through-
out popular culture, in news media, and in government. Moreover,
because video games consistently strive to create more dramatic con-
flicts, they take part in the construction of risks and threats by inten-
sifying both.
(ibid.)
Players are in the shoes of a US Marine, named Daniel Recker, leading an
elite team of militarily skilled commandos to infiltrate highly sensitive areas
throughout the world, secure VIP personnel and vital intelligence, and do
whatever it is necessary to stop a global-scale conflict which threatens world
stability (Whitehead 2013). In this sense, the BF4 representation of war may
be read as “the same Americans-versus-communists plot […] we’ve played
plenty of in the past few years” (Lahti 2013, online).
In particular, the game’s narrative takes aim at the Chinese communists:
Battlefield 4’s central plot revolves around a coup in China that throws
them and their Russian allies into a war with the US. You, the American
hero, fight against […] the Chinese army itself. The result? A lot of dead
Chinese soldiers.
(Tassi 2013, online, emphasis added)
Although “the lone figure meant to be able to work out peace between
all sides is also Chinese, and you’re tasked with his protection through-
out the game”, China is overwhelmingly “painted as the bad guy” (ibid.).
This is the reason why the Chinese Ministry of Culture not only banned
Battlefield 4, a game viewed as a “cultural invasion that smears China’s
image” (ibid.), but also
issued a notice prohibiting use of all materials pertaining to the game,
including game downloads, demos, patches, and news reports. The
name of the game itself, ‘ZhanDi4’ in Chinese, has been added to the
vast lexicon of censored words on China’s largest social media site,
Weibo.
(Tassi 2013, online)
Although Battlefield 4 was not officially released in China, such a back-
lash is an example of the Chinese government control and censorship on
gaming (Wirman 2016, 306), which also includes illegal game copying and
downloading.
Such controversies are not really new to the series. In 2011, Battlefield 3
was declared illegal and subsequently banned in Iran due to a fictionalized
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84 Culture-Specificity in Video Games
US assault on Iran’s capital Tehran (Winchester 2011, online). Although the
game was never officially released in Iran, shops used to sell pirated copies
of the game, thus causing police to raid shops and arrest owners (ibid.). An
online petition against the title was also presented by the group “Iranian
youths” who believed that the game was “purposely released at a time when
the US is pushing the international community into fearing Iran” (ibid.).
More relevantly for this study, the above-mentioned controversies exem-
plify the consequences the close relationship between reality and fictionality
may lead to or, more specifically, they show how verisimilar representa-
tion may be considered offensive even if completely fictional. In terms of
“contextual proximity” (Edwards 2012), the BF4 story mimics real-world
political scenarios which closely approach a plausible war context featuring
real-world peoples, places, time, and form, thus increasing the potential for
cultural sensitivity.
3.5.3 Mass Effect 3
“Mass Effect 3 plunges you into an all-out galactic war to take Earth back
from a nearly unstoppable foe […]. You are Commander Shepard, the only
one who can save Earth from annihilation” together with “a team of elite,
battle-hardened soldiers ready for your command” (Mass Effect 3 Official
Site, online). Moreover, “how you fight that war is entirely up to you.
Groundbreaking interactive storytelling drives the heart-pounding action in
which each decision you make could have devastating and deadly conse-
quences” (ibid.). Indeed, gamers can play their way and choose either “a
fast-paced cinematic experience or delve into a deeper, more choice-driven
narrative”, but “either way, intense combat propels the action as you fight
to unite a war-torn galaxy against a common enemy” (ibid.). In compliance
with its gameplay and narrative genres (Bateman 2006, xxvi), Mass Effect 3
offers a “rich, branching story”: “interactive storytelling delivers an experi-
ence unlike any other, with multiple outcomes determined by your choices”
but, at the same time, narrative combines with “adrenaline-pumping game-
play” of “an intense and pulse-pounding action-shooter game” (Mass Effect
3 Official Site, online).
Accordingly, as Patterson (2015) explains, Mass Effect 3 can be con-
sidered a “mixed genre game” (Scholand 2002) which combines the
typical elements of role-playing with those of shooters in a third-person
perspective. This seems to reduce the scope of the implications of the dif-
ferent subgenres of the games composing the corpus of this study, despite
the remarkable difference in playtime and number of words (see Tables
3.2 and 3.3).
As a representational medium, the series has drawn academic attention
from different viewpoints and many scholars focus on the meanings Mass
Effect (ME) world contents convey. For example, its form of storytelling
 Culture-Specificity in Video Games 85
may be defined as “social irrealism”, because, as Shaw and Sharp explain
(2013, 343, original emphasis):
Questions over the future of humanity and its existential place in the
world are told through imaginary landscapes and alien tropes that
refract and reshape the real. Although it is true that video games usually
produce fictional spaces, they do not produce entirely unreal spaces.
Instead, they are much more like virtual laboratories for probing, play-
ing and experimenting with reality.
In brief, “reality can be understood through the impossible and the imag-
ined”, “the human confrontation with the unfamiliar and the hybrid, which
are hallmarks of ‘irreal’ literature, coincide with a political framework for
understanding social existence beyond its actualities towards its possible
futures” (ibid., 345), and this type of social irrealism is typical of science
fiction which may be considered as a “privileged site for critical thought”
based on “a gap: between science and fiction, between the reader’s reality
and the world of fiction, between the possible and the impossible’” (Kneale
and Kitchin 2002, 3–4).
Mass Effect titles “allow players to engage with issues of contemporary
importance” which
reveal what might come to exist in the near and far future, and therefore
the politics located within these games are more of a possibility than a
probability; more of an ambiguity than an actuality – that nonetheless
speaks to our present condition without being reducible to it.
(Shaw and Sharp 2013, 346, original emphasis)
One special aspect of the future that is explored in the ME series “is the nature
of life as synthetic intelligence”: “alien technologies have allowed humans to
make contact with other species in far flung corners of the galaxy”, politics
is raised “to a galactic scale and the game’s ambition sees it drawing on the
themes of control over alien scientific advancement in the context of inter-
galactic power-struggles, biowarfare, and a threat that goes beyond human
perception of space and time” (Shaw and Sharp 2013, 349). In this light,
ME games represent an example of “politico-aesthetic technologies” since
“they are socially irreal and embody political content through fantastical
and futuristic worlds. But they also mobilize, beyond the obviously thinking-
political, a feeling-political” by means of the player’s agency in the interac-
tive gaming experience (ibid., 354, original emphasis). The politico-aesthetic
importance of video games lies “in their ability to imagine possible geogra-
phies and intervene in the anticipation and practice of futures, whether this is
the battle over the role of genetic engineering, the failure of utopian visions,
or critiques aimed at corporations, imperialism, and genocide” which may
create “a socially irreal landscape for creative engagement” (ibid., 355).
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86 Culture-Specificity in Video Games
Ward (2008), among others, has focused on the implications the rela-
tionship between the real world and ME game world may have on players’
experience, since these games play “heavily on the ‘what ifs’ of our society”
(ibid., 291).
What if there really is life out there? What if we stumbled upon some
sort of technology that sped our development as a species that we had
never before conceived of as possible? What if we were faced with the
potential end of life in our entire galaxy? To what end would we go
to prevent total annihilation, and would we try even if we were told it
was unlikely we would succeed? The Mass Effect series, promised by
BioWare, offers one take on answering these questions.
(ibid.)
Moreover, as with many other role-playing games, ME titles have been the
topic of meaningful research on issues concerning power relations, cultural
representation, and gender.
As regards power relations, scholars’ viewpoints are manifold. For exam-
ple, Mass Effect games have been analyzed as a vehicle of philosophical and
sociopolitical ideology. In short, since the ME franchise gives players the
opportunity to decide the fate of the galaxy in its diegetic world, they “can
make decisions, especially in politics, which include or exclude the other
alien races, which is analogous to racism in human history” (Aristidou and
Basallo 2014, 175). Furthermore, ME titles have been defined as systems
which “invoke multiculturalist values and teach liberal tolerance” since
they require the player to assume “the neutral position of a ‘multiculturalist
umpire’”, but the latter ultimately expresses “meanings that value American
multiculturalism as exceptional, thus permitting forms of patriarchal and
imperial violence to continue unabated” (Patterson 2015, 207). The multi-
cultural idea of the distant future and the harmony of different races exhib-
ited in ME games are based on “a particular system of divided labor”: “each
race yields specialized talents, and even the all-inclusive and pan-ethnic gov-
ernment, The Citadel, divides labor by its respective races” (ibid., 209).
Humans, like “Whites” in Western multicultural imaginaries, are rel-
egated to being “Jack-of-all-trades” who can perform any specializa-
tion or a mix of specializations. As a human, the player takes on a
“neutral” role that determines and manages the specializations of their
ethnicized teammates. While appreciating cultural difference, the player
is also positioned toward ethnicized others as a “multicultural umpire”
as one who sets the rules and ethics from a neutral (and thus universal)
position.
(ibid.)
 Culture-Specificity in Video Games 87
This finally sets the player as the one who “casts monocultural others as
villains” (ibid.). The enemies in Mass Effect games (the geth, the collectors,
and the Reapers) “have their own reasons for war, yet their reasons cannot
compare to the sanctity of diversity and tolerance represented through the
player’s squad and the multicultural federation that they fight to protect”
(ibid., 213). From this perspective, ME titles may produce what Bogost calls
“procedural rhetoric” (2007, ix), meaning that “through rule-based repre-
sentations and interactions rather than the spoken word, writing, images,
or moving pictures”, video games may “have a unique persuasive power”
(ibid., 43). As a science fiction series, Mass Effect may easily appear apoliti-
cal. Conversely, according to Patterson (2015), the dynamics and mechanics
of its fictional multiracial military gameplay may be even perceived as impe-
rial, thus making this series be looked at as a form of neo-racism.
As regards gender representation, researchers like Schallegger (2014) and
Lavigne (2015), among others, have investigated the depiction of gender and
sexuality in the ME series. Gender-related issues in video games, especially
if they are gender-customizable like ME titles, are many and diverse but,
given the scope of this topic, which has been on the media radar for decades
as also Pettini (2018, 2020, 2021a) argues, and given the male playable
character of the walkthrough selected, their analysis is beyond the reach of
this study. It seems more workable to deal with gender issues throughout
Chapter 4 when relevant for the analysis.
More importantly, as regards cultural representation and specificity,
attention should be paid to those “instances of Canadian national perfor-
mances occurring in the international video gaming phenomenon known as
BioWare’s Mass Effect trilogy” (Kuling 2014, 43).
“The Mass Effect series, developed by BioWare in Edmonton, Alberta,
does not disguise its clear Canadian identity connections” and the player
“interacts with Canadian characters, settings, and histories throughout
Mass Effect 3. The result is a variety of choice-based one-on-one perfor-
mance scenarios that parallel Canadian histories of intolerance, genocide,
and war” (ibid., 44). In other words,
the Mass Effect trilogy creates an alternate digital space for a compas-
sionate Canadian nationalism to exist and thrive, […] BioWare uses
Canadianness not only as a model for compassion, tolerance, and duty
but also as a stand-in for cosmopolitan, […] identity formation.
(Kuling 2014, 44)
In particular, it is worth remarking that “the first two instalments of Mass
Effect have little nationalized content in their narratives, opting instead
to focus on outer space sequences and denationalized characters” (ibid.).
Significantly, Canadian identities “start to emerge only as this series has
achieved wider global popularity. This popularity allows it to ‘come out’ in
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88 Culture-Specificity in Video Games
two ways: both as a cosmopolitan entity and as something that links that
cosmopolitan openness to a Canadian ethos” (ibid.).
First, Canadianness is expressed vocally by the protagonist’s male and
female voice actors, namely Mark Meer and Jennifer Hale. “While Shepard
never verbally identifies as Canadian in this game, his/her accent strongly
suggests a Canadian national background” (Kuling 2014, 45). On the con-
trary, non-playable characters’ performers are American in ME3. Secondly,
Canadianness reveals itself in geography: “characters discuss Vancouver
rather than New York or Los Angeles, which are typical city settings for North
American movies and games. Interestingly, no American place names or iden-
tity elements are ever brought up in the Mass Effect series”, thus “unapolo-
getically pushing American identities to the margins” (ibid.). Moreover, ME3
“opens with Cmdr. Shepard returning to a futuristic Vancouver – the capital
city of the United North American States – to address members of the Earth
Alliance on the situation concerning the Reapers” (ibid.). As also Melanson
(2012) notes, futuristic Vancouver becomes a site for utopian international
(and interstellar) cooperation. In order to escape the Reapers,
Shepard runs across Vancouver’s rooftops with iconic Stanley Park,
Canada Place, and Vancouver Harbor visible in the background. None
of the urban Vancouver landmarks in this sequence are named, but
Canadian gamers who recognize the city experience an extra layer of
meaning.
(Kuling 2014, 45)
Furthermore, since the Reapers aim at wiping out all organic intelligent life
and since Canada is the first country the Reapers attack, “Mass Effect 3 may
be implying that Canadians effectively represent an evolved cosmopolitan
identity of the future” (ibid.).
Other instances of Canadian identity concern history: Shepard’s star-
ship “Normandy” refers to the 1944 invasion of Normandy, which “looms
large in Canadian military memory”; the final battle for Earth in Reaper-
besieged London evokes “an image of what Canadians and other Allied
forces would have encountered if London had fallen to Nazi Germany”,
according to Kuling (ibid., 45–46). In conclusion, Canadianness becomes
a model for cosmopolitan worldviews in video games that are generally
overtly American and BioWare “uses Mass Effect to willfully demonstrate
the positive impact of Canadian values to the world” (ibid., 47).
3.6 Realia and Irrealia
As put forward in the Introduction, in order to investigate whether and
how the relationship between the real world and the game world or rather,
the degree of realism or fictionality of game contents influences the nature
of the linguistic and translational phenomena occurring in game texts and,
 Culture-Specificity in Video Games 89
consequently, translators’ approaches and strategies in order to localize tar-
get players’ game experience, realia and irrealia seem to be the right linguis-
tic items to be analyzed. In other words, they are the answer to the following
research questions: how does language reflect the relationship between the
two worlds in game texts? How do the two worlds interact through lan-
guage? What linguistic device or phenomenon connects the two worlds? Do
linguistic borders between the two exist?
In view of the discussion in Section 3.5, a definition of realia and irrealia
can be outlined. Given the virtual and fictional nature of game worlds, it
seems reasonable to use the concept of irrealia as the starting point of the
present model and, consequently, to reinterpret the meaning of the concept
of realia in Translation Studies to finally elaborate a simple working defini-
tion suitable to research in game localization and translation. The reason lies
in the fact that, as Leppihalme (2011, 126, original emphasis) argues, realia
prove to be “a problematic term when applied to fictional texts: Loponen
(2009), discussing the translation of fantasy literature and science fiction,
proposes the neologism irrealia for invented items presented as real in the
fictional world but non-existent in our world”. More importantly, Loponen
(ibid., 165) defines “a new concept for studying fictional cultures”. Thus,
irrealia correspond to realia in fictional worlds where the latter are meant,
within the broader philosophical framework of possible-worlds semantics,
as “fictional worlds of literature”, as “a special kind of possible world, they
are aesthetic artifacts constructed, preserved, and circulating in the medium
of fictional texts” (Doležel 1998, 16).
According to Loponen (2009, 167), if regarded as semiotic world con-
structs, when dealing with fictional worlds, translators are presented with
issues similar to realia due to the factual non-existence of the referred
cultures, time periods, and/or geographic locations. Thus, in Translation
Studies, a specific set of fictional realia is necessary. Irrealia are “non-exist-
ing realia tied to a fictional setting, whose effect is to define and determine
the fictional cultural, geographical and historical settings” (ibid.).
In fictional contexts, irrealia can be seen as the cultural anchors of the
fictional culture, creating implicit and explicit references that can define
the fictional culture on multiple simultaneous levels […]. The irrealia
can tie the text into a specific genre or pre-existing fictional world […],
define the fictional world in relation to the real world or other fictional
worlds […], or define explicit breaking points from our world or other
fictional worlds […]. As such, irrealia can be called the signs through
which a fictional world establishes its fictionality, signs through which
it breaks off from the real world and announces its independence as
a fiction – or its belonging, dependency or intertextual relations to
another fictional world.
(ibid., emphasis added)
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Maxwell-Chandler, Heather. 2008. “Practical Skills for Video Game Translators.”
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90 Culture-Specificity in Video Games
In this book, realia and irrealia can be also meant as real-world and game-
world references, respectively, because a reference is, by adapting and para-
phrasing Pedersen (2011, 49), the locus where the real world and the irreal
(game) world interrelate through language, and where the relationship
between a linguistic sign in game texts and reality or irreality lies. They are
linguistic items which link to either the real or the irreal (game) world. This is
possible thanks to the realia and irrealia nature as reference which, in linguis-
tics “is a property of a noun phrase in context (i.e. as used in an utterance)”
or of a noun phrase “in use” which “‘hooks on to’ the world, or the text in
which appears” (ibid.). Therefore, in this model irrealia comprise all refer-
ences to fictional entities related to the fictional cultures of the game world,
whereas realia include all references to real entities related to real cultures
of the real world, the world we all know. “Irreal” and “real” are here used
as synonyms of “non-existing” and “existing”, a simple working distinction
which, however, does not overlook the complexity of the topic. On the one
hand, it might be said that irrealia actually exist as text-internal elements of
the fictional worlds and, through the fictional texts in which they occur, they
exist in the real world and, by means of intertextuality, they exist also in
other texts. On the other hand, it is also true that the entities realia refer to in
game worlds do not really exist, they are fictional representations of the real
world, given the intrinsic fictional nature of all video games.
Taking all the above into account, also in view of the discussion in Section
3.5, in order to determine the referent of the source culture in the analysis of
realia and irrealia in this study, the traditional TS approach does not seem
workable: the identification of the source culture as the culture the source
text is anchored in and also as the author’s culture, not to mention the com-
plexity of the concept of authorship in video games (see Pettini 2015), is
extremely problematic. It seems more appropriate to rely on the notion of
culture in game worlds, as reported above (Rollings and Adams 2003, 69). A
source referent may be located in the main culture of the multicultural world
of each game. A suitable perspective seems to be the player’s one: thus, the
culture of the playable character and, going back to realia and irrealia, this
may be real, since its referent exists in the real world, or completely fictional,
since its referent exists in the game world only. By adapting Pedersen’s view-
point (2011, 49), a wider sense of reference is attributed to realia and irrealia:
they are where language meets real and irreal culture(s). They are linguistic
expressions of the “cultural context” of “game worlds” (Rollings and Adams
2003, 69) and, as in the case of Pedersen’s extralinguistic cultural references
(2011), their referent is accessible and, one might add, really enjoyable or
entertaining, only by means of the target players’ encyclopedic knowledge,
i.e. the knowledge they have about the game world and the real world.
Lastly, once the concepts of realia and irrealia are outlined as the phe-
nomena of linguistic and translational inquiry, with respect to the corpus
composition, it seems worth mentioning the reasons why the fictional edge
of the spectrum does not extend to fantasy proper, in terms of narrative
 Culture-Specificity in Video Games 91
genre. The right-side limit of the realism-fictionality continuum of the cor-
pus, namely Mass Effect 3 as shown in Figure 3.1, is science fiction because
it takes place “in the world of everyday experience extended” (Gunn 2003,
76–77).
Fantasy creates its own world and its own laws; science fiction accepts
the real world and its laws. We could not live in the real world if we
operated by the assumptions of the fantasy world; but the assump-
tions of the science fiction world are compatible with our own. We can
believe in the existence of aliens somewhere else in the universe; or that
[…] faster-than-light spaceships eventually may be developed, and still
function without real-life problems […]. When we read [or, one might
add, play] science fiction, we recognize that it applies to the real world,
and we ask it real questions […]. In science fiction story, […] the real-
istic questions are essential for full understanding and enjoyment; the
reader [or the player] is supposed to compare the fictional world to the
real world and find it not only better or worse, or simply different, but
be able to ascertain what made it better or worse or different.
(ibid., 77)
As Spivack explains (1996, 259–261), the fantasy genre is an intellectual
play transforming an overt violation of what is generally accepted as possi-
ble or realistic into a seeming fact; fantasy reverses the rules of extratextual
reality, and the value of the fantasy genre is indeed often seen in its inher-
ently subversive nature, which may offer an escape from reality as well as an
investigation, an interpretation or a revision of it, i.e. some kind of response
to the reality which fantasy departs from.7
Consequently, in order to investigate whether and how the relationship
between the real world and the game world reflects itself on linguistic con-
tents and, consequently, on translation approaches and strategies, an inter-
relationship must exist and those genres whose gaming experience tends
too much toward either realism, like simulators, or fictionalism, like fan-
tasy games, present phenomena which are beyond the scope of realia and
irrealia, meant as two facets of that multifaceted interrelationship.
3.6.1 Taxonomy of Realia and Irrealia
The potential impact of realism or fictionality on language and texts in
game worlds has never been investigated in Game Localization Studies.
Consequently, in this book, a working taxonomy of realia and irrealia has
been developed on the basis of the definitions provided in the previous sec-
tion, and by drawing from topic-related sources in Audiovisual Translation
Studies, namely Pedersen (2011), Ranzato (2015) and, particularly, Díaz-
Cintas and Remael (2014, 201), while taking into account the game medium
specificity. For this reason, the realia and irrealia classification presented in
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92 Culture-Specificity in Video Games
this section is based on the corpus, that is actual data. Thus, the model is
data-driven: the taxonomy is created on the basis of corpus data analy-
sis and is developed in order to make the categories found in the data fit
the classification, rather than making the data fit a preconceived model.
Overall, the resulting taxonomy contains (a) categories belonging to irrealia
only, (b) similar categories whose dimensions requires different labels, and
(c) categories of both realia and irrealia whose difference lies in either the
real or the fictional, meant as either the existing or the non-existing nature
of the referent.
The first groups of irrealia, namely individual and collective references,
are game-world specific since characters are fictional entities existing only
in the game world. From a linguistic perspective, they are proper names
including first names, surnames, nicknames, code names, and call signs. In
order to analyze the translation of characters’ names, under the macro-cat-
egories of “playable character(s)” and “non-playable characters”, the latter
have been further classified according to the role they play in the game’s
narrative, namely “helpers”, “villains”, and “other characters”, by creat-
ing working labels based on the taxonomies provided by Wolf (2001) and
Newman (2013) concerning characters’ roles in video games.
The second group of categories deals with the textual relationships texts
in each game world can build with other texts. Within irrealia, “metaludic
intratextuality” describes the (textual) relationship between the game world
of the single episode in the game series and other installments of the same
series, other game worlds or the world of video games and gaming in gen-
eral, whose notion of “metaludic” in the present model is “about any aspect
of games or gameplay” (Ensslin 2012, 171). On the contrary, as a type of
realia, references translate into the purposeful use of “intertextuality” in
video games to engage players and convey meaning (see Duret and Pons
2016). This concept concerns how game texts relate to and reference other
texts, including both speeches and pieces of writing of both fictional and
non-fictional origin, through different and more or less overt devices such
as quotations and allusions, and how games meaningfully interweave them
with aspects of their worlds.
As regards intratextual and intertextual references, it seems worth speci-
fying that, in terms of methodology, their analysis is only qualitative. As
opposed to the other categories, quantitative data concerning the instances
of intratextuality and intertextuality are not provided. This is due to the
very nature of these realia and irrealia which present multiple forms, ranging
from single words to full quotations, which make a quantitative approach
difficult to apply. Nevertheless, given the role they play in game worlds,
and given their relevance to the topic under investigation, their inclusion
as objects of the analysis is essential to provide a faithful picture of how
the relationship between a game world and the real world can develop and
diversify.
 Culture-Specificity in Video Games 93
The other four categories include both realia and irrealia: the difference
lies in the either real or irreal nature of their referent. For example, geo-
graphical references may be made to both fictional and game-world-spe-
cific places and locations, and to existing places and locations. In linguistic
terms, they are fictional or real toponyms. Ethnic references concern all the
peoples or “cultures” (Rollings and Adams 2003, 69) in the game worlds,
which may be fictional or real ones. In Medal of Honor Warfighter and
Battlefield 4, they basically include nationality nouns and adjectives, while
in Mass Effect 3, they are races and mostly proper names. Sociopolitical ref-
erences include both fictional and real institutions, functions, organizations,
and forms of government and they usually represent proper names. Lastly,
artifactual references include all artifacts created and used by the peoples
inhabiting the game world. Moreover, given the war setting, the more the
game is realistic, the higher the number of artifacts which fall into the realia
phenomenon of “military language” which deserves a separate discussion in
Chapter 5. Conversely, the more the game focuses on fictionality, the higher
the number of fictional artifacts which can be either realistic, i.e. designed
in the image of, and named after real-world artifacts, or completely imagi-
nary, also in their naming. Instances of military language and terminology
are found also in Mass Effect 3 and, when belonging to realia, they are
discussed in Chapter 5. In all cases, most artifactual references are names
including proper and common nouns. More in detail, for the purposes of
a transverse analysis of military language in the corpus, artifacts in realia
have been divided into groups which fall under different manifestations of
this specialized phenomenon, including military titles, the clock code, the
phonetic alphabet, and radio communication procedures, among others.
Moreover, military terminology has been categorized according to three
semantic fields, namely “vehicles”, “weapons”, and “equipment”. These
subcategories represent the most important artifacts in war settings, and,
from a methodological perspective, they serve the objective to compare arti-
facts which refer to either realia or irrealia in war video games.
Table 3.4 Taxonomy of Realia and Irrealia.
Realia Irrealia
(a) •• individual references
•• collective references
(b) •• intertextual references •• intratextual metaludic
references
(c) •• geographical references
•• ethnic references
•• sociopolitical references
•• artifactual references
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94 Culture-Specificity in Video Games
Table 3.4 illustrates the taxonomy of realia and irrealia developed for
this study.
From a linguistic perspective, as Pedersen (2011, 51) suggests with regard
to extralinguistic cultural references, it comes as no surprise that most realia
and irrealia occurring in the corpus are nouns or “proper names of some
sort, either the name of a person, […] a place, […] or an institution, etc.”
since, as already mentioned, “reference is mainly a property of the noun
phrase”. This is the reason why a brief discussion concerning the translation
of proper names or proper nouns will be offered in Section 3.7.
3.6.2 Translation Strategies for Realia and Irrealia
In order to verify whether and how realism or fictionality influences trans-
lators’ approaches and strategies when localizing the game experience and
transferring the look and feel of the game world, the present study employs
an adapted version of Pedersen’s taxonomy (2011) as a working tool to
classify the instances of translators’ decision-making process when ren-
dering the realia and irrealia found in the corpus. Table 3.5 illustrates the
classification adopted, which presents six strategies ranging from the most
source-language oriented or foreignizing approach, namely retention, to
more target-language oriented or domesticating approaches, like transcrea-
tion or even omission, where foreignization and domestication represent
broad labels covering many translation choices. Indeed, it is important to
highlight that most of the strategies defined in the following paragraphs
may include subcategories and that translators may also use a combination
of different strategies to deal with specific types of references.
Retention occurs when realia and irrealia are kept unchanged in the tar-
get text. It can be complete or slightly adjusted to meet the target language
requirements, for instance, in terms of spelling.
Table 3.5 Taxonomy of Translation Strategies for Realia and Irrealia.
SL-oriented, Retention
foreignizing approach
Direct translation
Explicitation
Generalization or specification
Transcreation
TL-oriented,
domesticating approach Omission
 Culture-Specificity in Video Games 95
Direct translation includes shifts such as calque, literal translation, and
official equivalent. The latter includes expressions resulting from both com-
mon usage and administrative decisions. As regards this concept, the bound-
aries between retention and direct translation in the taxonomy might appear
particularly blurred in the case, for example, of geographical references
belonging to realia, since the official equivalent of a real-world toponym
may be the result of both strategies. An “exonym” or a “conventional place
name” is an official equivalent resulting from a standardization process (see,
among others, Jordan et al. 2007, Kadmon 2006a, 2006b) performed by
competent authorities, during which the toponym may have been retained
or substituted. In this model, place names in realia are interpreted as the
geographical dimension of a linguistic and cultural reality translators should
not deviate from. If necessary, indeed, by means of research, translators
should “check all terms in the most recent atlas or gazetteer” (Newmark
1988, 216) because “language cultures have conventional assimilated or
translated forms” for geographical proper names (Leppihalme 2011, 129).
As regards the combination of translation strategies mentioned above,
for example, retention and direct translation may be used together to deal
with noun phrases including a proper noun and a common noun which
compose a proper name. They might be classified as instances of either par-
tial retention or partial direct translation depending on which of the two
elements the researcher places emphasis on. Given the nature of most realia
and irrealia as proper names, which are usually the modifier of the noun
phrase, the former perspective seems to be more suitable for the analysis:
they are interpreted as cases of partial retention falling into the category of
retention, where the actual proper name is retained while the common name
is translated. The latter is usually a category name which is transferred into
the equivalent common name in the target language and, although this dis-
ambiguates the whole expression, in the corpus it is usually the proper name
of a noun phrase to refer to either reality or irreality and, more importantly,
from the translator’s perspective, what may prove to be challenging is not
the transfer of the common name. Consequently, retention seems to be the
right strategy to interpret this type of combination.
Explicitation refers to a group of strategies including explanation or defi-
nition which aims to disambiguate realia and irrealia. It occurs, for example,
when a translator clarifies or spells out acronyms, initialisms, or abbrevia-
tions, sometimes in combination with other strategies.
Generalization and specification are two sides of the same coin. They
occur when realia and irrealia are translated into a superordinate expres-
sion, mostly a hypernym or a paraphrase, or into a more specific term like
a hyponym.
Transcreation is meant as the strategy which produces a creative transla-
tion aimed at making realia and irrealia more enjoyable to the target player.
It refers to the creative substitution of an expression in the source language
with an expression in the target language for the purposes of players’
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96 Culture-Specificity in Video Games
entertainment. Accordingly, the focus here is on the creativity arising from
the translator’s agency, on the translator’s decision to depart from the orig-
inal item and rely on his/her inventiveness in order to substitute it with
another item which may sound more meaningful and playful and may bet-
ter suit local players’ tastes. The rendering may include both a translation
by invention, namely a neologism, and a translation which makes the most
of existing linguistic material to enhance the intended meaning of the origi-
nal instance of realia or irrealia. Originally coined by Indian and Brazilian
translation scholars (see Lal 1964, 1996, Vieira 1999, Bassnett and Trivedi
1999), transcreation “is a buzzword that is often used by the translation
industry nowadays. It denotes adaptive translation strategies typically asso-
ciated with advertising” (Zanotti 2014, 110) and, as Yunker (2005, 2013)
explains, it is promoted as an added value by those localization agencies
who want to distance their services from more traditional translation ser-
vices, simplistically and misleadingly reduced to literal and word-for-word
translation. In the context of AVT, transcreation has been used, for exam-
ple, “to account for processes of transfer where verbal and visual language
cannot come apart” since images “determine the semantic content and, ulti-
mately, the perception of words”, consequently words and visual references
“form broader cultural units” (Di Giovanni 2008, 40). In AVT, transcrea-
tion has been also used “to denote transformative translation practices that
[…] lead us to reconsider the notions of translator’s agency and authorship”
in dubbing (Zanotti 2014, 110). In Game Localization research, O’Hagan
and Mangiron (2013, 107) use “transcreation” to “highlight the unusually
extensive freedom taken by translators working under constraints specific to
game text and products” and “the role played by a translator or localizer as
a creative agent” (ibid., 109) who often performs deliberate “transformative
operations” (ibid., 199) affecting the verbal and the non-verbal. However,
these multifaceted manipulations are beyond the scope of the mainstream
theories of TS (ibid., 198), especially when they do not affect linguistic
material.
The term “transcreation” in game localization and translation would
deserve an in-depth discussion concerning, for example, interesting topics
such as the debate surrounding it, its origin, and its exemplification,8 but
exploring the extent of this notion goes beyond the reach of this book. Here
the term is adopted as a working label to refer to a particularly creative
target-language-oriented translation strategy, and the analysis focuses only
on verbal expressions of realia and irrealia.
Going back to the taxonomy of translation strategies, the sixth and final
strategy is omission which occurs when the translator decides to not repro-
duce the source text realia and irrealia in the target text. If relevant, the
reasons behind this solution are hypothesized and the issues it may pose
are discussed especially as regards the player’s understanding of the referent
itself or of its meaning and purpose in the context and co-text of the game
world.
 Culture-Specificity in Video Games 97
3.7 Translating the Name of the Game Wor(l)d
“The name of the game” is an informal expression which refers to the main
purpose or the most important aspect or part of a situation, of an activity.
Here it is used as wordplay to summarize the content of this paragraph,
which focuses on “wor(l)ds”, itself an allusion to the function of words
of giving meaning to the world(s) around us, or on names as a major for-
mal category expressing culture-specificity in game worlds. As highlighted
in Section 3.6, realia and irrealia are meant as real-world and game-world
references, respectively, because a reference is the locus where the real world
and the irreal (game) world interrelate through language. References are
linguistic items which link to either the real or the irreal (game) world. This
is possible thanks to the referential property of names, nouns, and noun
phrases which, basically, word the world.
Given the inherently fictional quality of game worlds, and given the audi-
ovisual nature of video games, in this paragraph it seems useful to begin
with a brief review of some of the studies which examine the transfer of
proper names or nouns in fiction, and whenever possible, within the field
of AVT. As regards the latter, the topic has been explored by many scholars
(see Mayoral 2000) across different audiovisual media, such as films, car-
toons, television series, and documentaries (Matamala 2009), and across
different characteristics of proper names: to name just a few, their culture-
specificity (see Pedersen 2011, Ramiére 2006, Ranzato 2015), their con-
nection to humor (Fuentes-Luque 2014, Gonzáles-Vera 2015), their nature
as vocatives in film dialog (see Bruti and Perego 2005, 2008, 2010), their
untranslatability (Dynel 2010, Tomaszkiewicz 2010), the implications of
their translation in bilingual contexts (Agost 2004), their transfer across
media (Heller 2014). Nevertheless, most of the contributions within the
framework of AVTS reasonably take into account the specific constraints of
subtitling and dubbing, and this seems to bring into question the suitability
of this domain analytical system to investigate proper names in game locali-
zation because, as already discussed, the established “AVT norms are clearly
not adhered to” (O’Hagan and Mangiron 2013, 164) and, thus, they do not
constrain game translation as they do constrain audiovisual translation.
As Hurtado De Mendoza-Azaola (2009, 76) advocates, the transfer of
names, especially of people and places, is rather controversial in Translation
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(2014, 152), “one of the questions which usually addresses the notion of
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98 Culture-Specificity in Video Games
Franco-Aixelá (2000, 222–223) “asking oneself ‘if proper names should be
translated or not’ is a case of unproductive speculations, since we have the
possibility to study how and why they are translated, as in fact they are”.
Indeed, as underlined by Nord (2003, 182–183), “looking at translated
texts we find that translators do all sorts of things with proper names”:
retention, both complete and slightly adjusted to meet orthographic and
phonetic requirements of the target language, transcription or translitera-
tion from non-Latin alphabets, cultural adaptation, substitution, and so on.
In sum, there is not a single and deeply rooted rule to deal with the transla-
tion of proper names. However, some tendencies may be found and seem
to depend on the genre of texts, whether fictional or non-fictional, or rather
on the nature of referents, whether fictional or non-fictional entities, such as
characters, places, items, institutions, etc.
Nord (ibid., 184) clarifies the point and states that “in non-fictional texts,
it seems to be a convention to use the target culture” version “of a source-
culture name, if there is one, but if a translator prefers to use the source-
culture form”, no issues arise as long as the referent is clear. “Wherever
the function of the proper name is limited to identifying an individual ref-
erent, the main criterion for translation will be to make this identifying
function work for the target audience” (ibid.). On the contrary, in fictional
texts, proper names do not refer to real, existing entities in a factual way
(ibid., 183) and authors often “invent new, fantastic, absurd or descriptive
names” whose function goes beyond identification and becomes descriptive
and informative at the same time, and these functions may be implicit and
explicit (ibid., 185). Moreover, fictional names may be “culture markers”,
which implicitly indicate which culture the entity, especially a character,
belongs to (ibid., 184). As regards characters in particular, according to
Matkivska (2014, 41), their names represent a constraint for translators
since “in some cases, they have their meaning which comprises information
about characters or their life. Translators need to find the way to convey
that additional meaning into the target language or the pragmatic effect can
be partially lost”.
The translation of proper names has often been considered as a simple
automatic process of transference from one language into another, due
to the view that proper names are mere labels used to identify a person
or a thing. Contrary to popular views, the translation of proper names
is a non-trivial issue, closely related to the problem of the meaning of
the proper name.
(Vermes 2003, 89–90)
Within the phenomenon of culture-specific items, Franco-Aixelá (1996,
59) argues that proper nouns can be divided into two categories: conven-
tional and loaded. The former are those seen as “having no meaning of
themselves, i.e. those that fall under the collective perception we have of
 Culture-Specificity in Video Games 99
‘meaningless’ proper nouns, apart from the possible textual or intertextual
analogies authors […] tend to activate” while loaded proper names “are
somehow seen as ‘motivated’; they range from faintly ‘suggestive’ to overtly
‘expressive’ names and nicknames” and they include “those fictional and
non-fictional names around which certain historical or cultural associations
have accrued in the context of a particular culture” (ibid.).
The concept of culture, in light of the evaluative reflections expressed in
the previous sections, and that of the “meaning” or “load” of proper nouns
are particularly relevant, since behind names in game worlds there is often
a sort of authorial intent, an intended meaning, whose translation may be
challenging. In gaming history, Pac-Man (Namco 1980) is considered to be
the title “which gave rise to the need for [meaningful] names and characteri-
zation” (O’Hagan and Mangiron 2013, 49) and since then games have been
“full of names and labels not only for people, but a wide array of things”
(ibid., 176). More importantly, the transfer of names seems to be “where a
translator’s creativity is put to the test, as often the names for items, weap-
ons, commands, and abilities come with the game designer’s specific inten-
tions often expressed in an edgy, quirky, or even poetic selection of words”
(ibid., 159). However, “the need to convey such covert meanings has to be
balanced against the need for functional translation” (ibid.) especially when
these names occur in text strings constrained by severe space limitations or
in linguistic variables (see Section 2.6.4). Similarly, names in video games
may present special translational challenges when they are too culture-spe-
cific and thus, they are substituted: “the original name is replaced with a
reference analogous in the target culture with the aim of achieving a similar
effect on the target user” (ibid., 176). According to O’Hagan (2009c, 148),
in games, attributing names that are punchy and memorable is often
more important than a faithful rendition of the original meaning; even
proper names can be drastically changed for the sake of added enter-
tainment value, contrary to norms in literary or screen translation.
This arises from the skopos of games localization, which lies in maximizing
the entertainment value of the product, thereby allowing players a smooth
gameplay experience without the jarring effects that can result from for-
eignization strategies in translation (Mangiron and O’Hagan 2006).
Similarly, Bernal-Merino (2015, 57) stresses that the translation of
proper names in video games, like in literature, especially in children’s lit-
erature, “is evidence of the need for creativity and imagination, though the
challenge is not always resolved with equal creative zest, or it is left in the
original language, which can actually go against the very nature of the text”.
According to Fernández-Costales (2012, 397), “the non-translation of
certain names, terms, places or expressions may be subject to a wider for-
eignization strategy” in game localization, which often starts with the title of
video games. “Unlike the tendency in the film industry, in which the titles of
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100 Culture-Specificity in Video Games
the films are usually translated, the name of video games is kept in English in
the different locales, so titles […] are easily recognizable all over the world”
(ibid., 398). Retention may also depend on the internationalization policy
of some video games: weapons, vehicles or places are given a ‘proper noun’
or they are named after a mythological place or a biblical event; therefore,
they are not translated into any language as they are regarded to be specific
terminology associated with the story (Fernández-Costales 2012, 398), or
rather, one might add, the game world. In this sense, retention may be par-
ticularly functional in the case of online gaming, since players all over the
world compete and collaborate with each other in massive campaigns and
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likely to enjoy it if it is simply retained in localizations. Moreover, if com-
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culture are concerned, may not be as “meaningful” as the original.
3.8 Summary
This chapter has presented the methodological stand of this book study.
It has outlined the research questions, the theoretical model of the real-
ism-fictionalism spectrum which serves as the background to the research
hypothesis, it has described the corpus which has been purposefully created,
the analytical procedure followed, the objects under examination, namely
realia and irrealia, and the working taxonomies used to perform the analysis
reported in the following chapters. Special attention throughout the chapter
is paid to the notion of culture and of cultures in video games, in order to
highlight their role in the relationship between the game world and the real
world and to finally explore how they manifest themselves in language and
translation.
Notes
1 At the time of the research, these online resources were the only complete walk-
throughs of the three games available on YouTube, satisfying the selection cri-
teria of console platform and single-player mode of play for each of them. As
discussed in Section 3.4, since these factors may considerably affect the quantity
and quality of game texts, their adoption as selection criteria aimed to guarantee
a certain degree of homogeneity across the three games.
2 The “realism-fictionalism” definition needs some clarification. Fictionalism, as
mentioned in Chapter 1, is used here to indicate a high degree of fictionality.
 Culture-Specificity in Video Games 101
Moreover, the corpus does not include any games which belong to the gameplay
genre of simulation or to the narrative genre of fantasy. Both types were inten-
tionally excluded to focus on story-driven titles which were originally designed
as fictional game worlds which interrelate with the real world. Indeed, although
for different reasons, neither simulation nor fantasy games could meet the selec-
tion criteria adopted in this study.
3 The average playtime of a video game is generally reported in specialized maga-
zines and websites. According to Gamelengths​.co​m, for example, the average
gaming experience of Medal of Honor, Warfighter, and Battlefield 4 ranges from
5 to 10 hours, that of Mass Effect 3 is around 50 hours.
4 These authors’ viewpoint contributes to better explain the reason for the exclu-
sion of simulators in the corpus. Simulation games require a different analytical
approach which evaluates the realism of their contents, which is the objective
this genre strives for, starting exactly from the reality they aim to simulate.
5 Fantasy here must be interpreted as a synonym of imaginative, with no reference
to the literary genre of the same name.
6 A more detailed discussion about the nature and working principles of narrative
in video games, whose debate is lively inside and outside academia, would be
very fascinating (see, for example, Bateman 2006, Egenfeldt Nielsen et al. 2016,
Rutter and Brice 2006, Tavinor 2009, Thabet 2015) but it is outside the transla-
tional perspective of this book.
7 As Gunn (2003) and Spivack (1996) remark, although it is undoubtedly true that
no game world exists in a void and no game world is completely bondless, the
relationship between the real world and a fantasy game world is a very special
one and, as such, it requires an appropriate analytical framework and set of criti-
cal standards to understand the qualities that make it special. The “dimensions”
(Rollings and Adams 2003) of a fantasy game world, namely fantasy places,
fantasy time, and fantasy cultures do not lend themselves to being evaluated in
terms of realism-fictionality. Accordingly, the application of this study model to
the fantasy genre turns out to be difficult, if not impossible since fantasy irrealia
in video games require a different theoretical and methodological perspective.
8 See, among others, Bartelt Krantz (2011), Bernal Merino (2006, 2015: 88–91),
Crosignani and Ravetto (2011), Mangiron and O’Hagan (2006), O’Hagan
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of Internationalization and Localization 4 (2): 71–73. https://doi​.org​/10​.1075​/ 4 Realia and Irrealia in
jial​.00007​.zha.
Zhang, Xiaochun. 2012. “Censorship and Digital Games Localization in China.” Game Translation
Meta: Journal des traducteurs/Translators’ Journal 57 (2): 338–350. https://doi​
.org​/10​.7202​/1013949ar.
Zhang, Xiaochun. 2014. “Terminology Management in Game Localization.” In
Fun for All: Translation and Accessibility Practices in Video Games, edited by
Carmen Mangiron, Pilar Orero, and Minako O’Hagan, 197–215. Frankfurt am
Main/New York: Peter Lang. https​:/​/do​​i​.org​​/10​.3​​726​/9​​78​-3-​​0351-​​0​667-​​1​/20.
Zhang, Xiaochun. 2015. Main Actors and the Network of Digital Game Localisation
in China. PhD dissertation, Universität Wien.
Zhou, Ping. 2011. “Managing the Challenges of Game Localization.” In Translation
and Localization Project Management: The Art of the Possible, edited by Keiran J. 4.1 Introduction
Dunne and Elena S. Dunne, 349–378. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
This chapter presents the linguistic and translation analysis of this book
research. In the light of the classifications discussed in Chapter 3, the fol-
lowing sections explore the nature and the role that realia and irrealia play
in the original English dialogs of the three games of this book corpus, as
well as a quantitative and qualitative study of the strategies used in locali-
zation by the Italian and Spanish translators. Realia and irrealia represent
the textual representations of the ways in which each game world and the
real world interact through language. Thus, they are linguistic manifesta-
tions of culture-specificity, which express themselves in the dimensions of a
game world (Rollings and Adams 2003, 60). In other words, these dimen-
sions are the areas in which different categories of realia and irrealia emerge
as references to either reality or fictionality, and which are examined in
the following paragraphs to show how realism or fictionalism may influ-
ence video games textual material and therefore their linguistic and cultural
localization.

4.2 Individual References
Individual references are the first group of irrealia and, therefore, are game-
world specific, since game beings or characters are to be interpreted as fictional
entities existing inside the game world and experience. With story or plot, they
represent the fictional layer of a game and serve as “an enabler for the rules, the
actual core game” (Egenfeldt-Nielsen et al. 2016, 13). Characters are actors, as
most of them “are capable of action, and indeed of interacting with the player.
If we take a dictionary definition, characters are ‘the people that the film, book,
or play is about’. […] The revolution offered by video games is that” characters
are playable, they “are not just the people that the game is about, but also the
people who are making action happen and thus producing different stories”
(ibid., 209). For this reason, characters can be seen as the driving force of game
narrative development, and dialogs between characters are the leading narra-
tive device of story-driven products.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003001935-4
 Realia and Irrealia in Game Translation 103
As regards their roles in the game world story, the first distinction is
between playable and non-playable characters, where the first group refers Gameography
to the heroes or heroines controlled and ‘inhabited’ by the player (except
in cutscenes) and manifested through avatars, whose level of customiza-
tion mostly depends on game genres, while the second group includes all
characters which are regulated by artificial intelligence and whose narra-
tive roles can broadly fall into the categories of “helpers”, “villains”, and
“other characters”, based on the significance of their function for the course
of action (Newman 2013). Moreover, the number and types of characters
seem to be conditional on the size of game worlds. As shown in Chapter 3,
the more fictional the game is, the greater the game world, the longer the
gaming experience offered to the player in a specific subgenre-related con-
text, and, thus, the higher the number of characters. These differences can Game title (publisher or developer, year of release).
be observed clearly in the three game worlds included in the corpus. From Age of Empires III (Microsoft Game Studios, 2005).
left to right on the realism-fictionalism spectrum axis (Figure 3.1), by simply Baldur’s Gate (Interplay, 1998).
looking at the number of actors and comparing the walkthroughs selected Battlefield series (Electronic Arts, 2002–).
with data contained in the Wikis or databases of the games as regards the Battlefield 3 (Electronic Arts, 2011).
whole game casts, characters in Medal of Honor Warfighter are 24 out of a Battlefield 4 (Electronic Arts, 2013).
total of 28, characters in Battlefield 4 are 21 out of 26, both of which exem- Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (Activision, 2007).
plify the context of shooters, while characters in Mass Effect 3 are 62 out of Club Penguin (Disney Interactive, 2005).
a total which exceeds 500, and this is consistent with the game features in Conflict Desert Storm II: Back to Baghdad (Sales Curve Interactive, 2003).
terms of playtime and text size discussed in Chapter 3. Counter-Strike Condition Zero (Vivendi Universal, 2004).
However, the following analysis cannot cover individual references to all Dante’s Inferno (Electronic Arts, 2010).
game characters: screening is necessary, and this is based both on quantita- Donkey Kong (Nintendo, 1981).
tive criteria (number of occurrences of their appellations in the corpus) and Fable II (Microsoft Game Studios, 2008).
qualitative criteria (the relevance of characters’ narrative role and of their FIFA series (Electronic Arts, 1993–).
appellations in linguistic and translational terms), the latter variable relates Final Fantasy series (Square Enix, 1987–).
to the notion of meaning discussed in Section 3.7. Final Fantasy VII (Square, 1997).
Grand Theft Auto series (Rockstar Games, 1997–).
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (Rockstar Games, 2004).
4.2.1 Playable Characters
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (Rockstar Games, 2002).
On the realism edge of the spectrum which Medal of Honor Warfighter Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories (Rockstar Games, 2006).
represents, players fight the topical war on global terrorism. There are three Kakuto Chojin (Microsoft Game Studios, 2002).
characters which players can embody, and their code names are Preacher, Mass Effect 3 (Electronic Arts, 2012).
Stump, and Argyrus. Thomas “Preacher” Walker is the main protagonist Mass Effect series (Electronic Arts, 2007–).
and also the soldier featured on the game box cover but, despite the game- Medal of Honor (Electronic Arts, 2010).
play first-person perspective, since Preacher is not the only avatar avail- Medal of Honor Warfighter (Electronic Arts, 2012).
able, the player can see what he looks like in-game. Preacher is a US Navy Mercenaries 2: World in Flames (Electronic Arts, 2008).
SEAL veteran operating in most of the missions against an Al-Qaeda-linked Metal Gear series (Konami, 1987–).
jihadist network. In-game, he is mostly referred to as “Preacher”, “P”, and Metal Gear Solid (Konami, 1998).
“Preach”, the first being his code name and the other two its abbrevia- Ninja Gaiden (Tecmo, 1989).
tions. Only his wife Lena calls him “Tom”, but this name does not occur in Oxo (Alexander S. Douglas, 1952).
the corpus. As regards translation, the three above-mentioned variants have Pac-Man (Namco, 1980).
been transferred in their original forms by means of retention but, in a few Resident Evil 5 (Capcom, 2009).
cases, the full form “Preacher” has been substituted by its short versions Six Days in Fallujah (Konami, 2009).
226 Gameography
Sombras de Guerra (Planeta DeAgostini Interactive, 2007).
Space Invaders (Taito, 1978).
Spacewar! (Steve Russell et al., 1961).
Super Mario Bros. (Nintendo, 1985).
Tennis for Two (William Higinbotham, 1958).
Ultima Online (Electronic Arts, 1997–).
World of Warcraft (Blizzard Entertainment, 2004–).
Zero Wing (Toaplam, 1991).
104 Realia and Irrealia in Game Translation
in both target texts, thus pointing to the translators’ decision to use them
interchangeably. In Italian, for example, “Preacher” is abbreviated into “P”
as in example (4.1), while in Spanish it is shortened into “Preach” as in
example (4.2):
(4.1) Stump, Preacher just painted some targets south of the Capitol
entrance. […]
Stump, P ha segnato dei bersagli a sud dell’edificio governativo. […]
Stump, Preacher ha marcado objetivos al sur de la entrada del
Capitolio. […]
(4.2) Preacher, you’re driving!
Preacher, guida tu!
¡Preach, conduces tú!
As regards “Preacher”, in the transfer from English into Italian and Spanish,
this code name may lose part of its implicit meaning. According to Medal
of Honor Wiki (online), it ironically alludes to the character’s silent and
introverted personality which makes his demeanor cold and elusive. While
Anglophone players can perceive and enjoy the allusion quite easily, it
seems very unlikely that target players appreciate the original wordplay.
Nevertheless, a literal translation or a functional equivalent in the target
languages would have been inappropriate and would have posed issues of
textual coherence. Moreover, in the relationship between the real world and
the game world, it seems interesting to briefly cite that Preacher’s physical
appearance in Medal of Honor Warfighter (MoHW) is based on his voice
actor Christian Mortensen (ibid.). This is just one of the countless examples
of video games’ characters inspired by real people, mostly celebrities.
The second playable character in MoHW is Kyle “Stump” Hendrix,
another US Navy SEAL mostly serving as the team’s sniper. His name and
surname never appear in game texts, he is always addressed and referred to
as “Stump”, and retention is the strategy translators used to transfer this
code name.
The third playable character is Argyrus, an Arabic covert operative who
infiltrated a terror cell in Yemen and then went missing in action after being
discovered and probably killed. Actually, it is possible to speculate that
Argyrus defected and is intentionally acting as a terrorist (Schulzke 2013,
216). In an extremely brief, single training mission, MoHW offers play-
ers the possibility of taking the role of the virtual opponent (ibid., 208)
but, because of the lack of a sufficiently developed narrative, the experi-
ence of being a terrorist remains largely meaningless (ibid., 218). In dialogs,
Argyrus is never addressed by anyone, not even by his trainer during the
mission, he is only mentioned once, and his code name is left unaltered in
both target texts, while his proper name is never revealed as opposed to the
 Realia and Irrealia in Game Translation 105
other two playable characters, which confirms the lack of indications of any
individuality (ibid., 209). Index
In the political-fiction 2020 war between the USA, China, and Russia,
which gamers fight in the Battlefield 4 world, positioned in the midst of
the realism-fictionalism spectrum, the playable characters are two: Recker
and Hannah. The latter, however, becomes selectable only in the final game
mission, as a result of the game narrative branching options. In Battlefield
4 (BF4), the player may influence the game storyline and choose an ending,
one of which casts Hannah as protagonist and female world savior (see
Pettini 2020). Sergeant Daniel “Reck” Recker is a US Marine Corps’ spe-
cial operative, and also the soldier featured on the BF4 box cover. Unlike
Preacher in MoHW, given the game’s first-person perspective, the player
never sees what Recker looks like in-game. Similarly, since he never speaks Aarseth, E. J. 10 Baker, M. 174n2
during the campaign, not even during cutscenes, his voice is unknown. abbreviations 95; in military language Balabin, V. V. 149
Moreover, from a purely quantitative viewpoint, it is worth mentioning 113–114, 140, 144, 151, 160, Balteiro, I. 10
167–174, 188, 190, 192–194; in Bartelt-Krantz, M. 16, 50, 62, 101n8
that, despite Recker’s primary role as the main player’s avatar, the number proper names 103–104, 109, 122, Basallo, B. 86
of the occurrences of his surname and nickname “Reck” is significantly 138, 180, 187 Bassnett, S. 36, 37, 96
smaller if compared to those of other non-playable characters. This depends accessibility 16, 17, 32, 105 Bateman, C. 43, 58n6, 71, 75, 84,
on the fact that, unlike other names, “Recker” is not used as speaker identi- acronyms 95; in military language 140– 101n6
fier in dialogs, thus unbalancing quantitative results. Indeed, names in BF4 142, 153, 168–169, 171–172, 188, Bernal-Merino, M. 1, 2, 4, 7, 11,
193–194; in proper names 135–136, 14–20, 25, 29–34, 36–38, 40–43,
also identify speakers in subtitles, where they are written in capital letters 138, 181, 186–187 45, 47–52, 61, 62, 64, 99, 101n8,
placed on the same line as the relevant speech, as examples of dialog strings Adams, E. 4, 44, 73–75, 77, 90, 93, 118, 194
throughout the following sections demonstrate. This special feature in BF4 101n7, 102, 130, 176, 183, 184, 194 Biffi, M. 175n7
texts seems to favor comprehension and also accessibility for the deaf and AEVI see Asociación Española de Bissell, T. 43
the hard-of-hearing players. Going back to the transfer of this individual ref- Videojuegos blending 109, 138, 167–169, 173,
age rating 36, 68, 69 180, 193
erence, retention is the translation strategy used in both Italian and Spanish. Agost, R. 97 blind translation 28
However, data show a minor tendency to use variants interchangeably, like Alonso, V. 17 Boggs-Cory, K. 151
in MoHW, as illustrated in examples (4.3) and (4.4). Altice, N. 17 Bogost, I. 87, 149
Amvela, E. Z. 166 Bogucki, Ł. 7, 37
(4.3) IRISH: Drive this shit, Recker! Anglicisms 30, 113, 141, 150, 188 Bolter, J. D. 63
Anselmi, G. 45, 110 Bonn, K. E. 154, 156, 191
IRISH: Muovi questa merda, Reck! Ardi, H. 149 Bowyer, R. 140–142, 150, 153–157,
IRISH: ¡Controla esto, joder, Recker! Aristidou, M. 86 165–168, 171, 173, 175n6, 188,
Arrés, E. 17 191, 194
(4.4) PAC: You with me Reck. Arsenault, D. 68 box and docs localization 23, 31, 32
PAC: Stai con me, Reck. artifactual references 93, 139–146, Bruti, S. 97
187–190; irrealia 142–146, 189–190; Bryce, J. 10
PAC: Conmigo, Recker. realia 140–142, 150, 153, 187–189 Burn, A. 68
Asociación Española de Videojuegos Busetto, R. 141, 142, 150, 156, 169,
The second playable character in Battlefield 4 is Hannah. Huang “Hannah” (AEVI) 2–3 171–173, 175n6, 188, 189
Shuyi is a Chinese secret service agent whose narrative role is to protect the assets 23–26, 28–29, 32, 47–51, 54
Chinese pacifist and future political leader Jin Jié, whose safety is threat- audio localization 28, 40, 72, 133, 185 call signs 92, 114, 162, 181
audiovisual translation (AVT) 5, 7, 24, Carreira, O. 17
ened by enemy Admiral Chang’s thirst for power. She plays a fundamental 37–38, 97, 149 Casado-Valenzuela, A. 18
supportive role siding with US soldiers throughout the story, to eventually authorship 6, 35, 42, 44, 76; censorship 16, 83
go missing in action if the player chooses her to destroy Admiral Chang’s auteurism 17, 64, 90; in translation characters 27, 30, 32, 43, 46, 92,
warship at the end of the game. In other words, she becomes playable to 52, 90, 96, 98 102–103; customization 22, 45, 103;
AVT see audiovisual translation foreign characters 133–135; naming
228 Index
of 62, 92, 98, 102–113; non-playable
characters 92, 107–113; playable
characters 90, 92, 103–107; roles of
92, 107
Chiaro, D. 38
Christou, C. 16, 46, 71
cinematics 25, 29, 31, 33, 43, 47–49
code names 92, 103–104, 107–108,
116, 162
collective references 92, 113–115,
181–182
compounding 144–145, 153–154, 173
concatenation 40, 45, 47
Consalvo, M. 1, 16, 59, 76–77, 184
constrained translation 39–42
Corliss, J. 31
creativity 6, 16, 18, 52, 61–62, 95–96;
in proper names 99, 110, 129–132,
138, 144–145, 186
Cronin, M. 12
Crosignani, S. 16, 101n8
culturalization 53–57, 77, 80, 177
culture-specificity 5, 23, 57, 59–61,
76–77, 89–90; culture markers 98,
107, 109, 111, 180, 181; ethnicity
129–130, 133–135; in military
language 150, 166; in proper names
110, 113, 122, 125–126, 131,
135–136, 142
cutscenes see cinematics
Czech, D. 17
Dalzell, T. 161
Darolle, K. 15, 50
Da Silva, F. 17
Dauber, C. 151
Delgado-Lállemand, L. 142,
175n6, 188
Depecker, L. 152
descriptive approach 4, 18, 48, 65–67
De Souza, R. V. F. 17
dialogs 40, 44, 46, 49–51, 65, 72
Dias-Esqueda, M. 18
Díaz-Cintas, J. 39, 91, 126
Díaz-Montón, D. 16
Dickson, P. 160
dictionaries 141, 150, 174nn3–6, 188
Dietz, F. 6, 15, 16, 28, 40, 61, 68
Di Giovanni, E. 96
Di Marco, F. 16
Doležel, L. 89
domestication 64, 66, 94, 97, 115,
134–135
Dong, L. 15, 18
Donovan, T. 29
Dovey, J. 43, 58n5
dubbing 18, 23–24, 33, 37, 51, 96
Dunne, K. J. 13, 20, 21
Duret, C. 92, 118
Dynel, M. 97
Edwards, K. 16, 17, 53–57, 80, 84
Egenfeldt-Nielsen, S. 10, 19, 20, 58n5,
59, 101n6, 102, 124
enhanced localization 29, 34–35
Ensslin, A. 10, 92, 116, 118
Entertainment Software Association
(ESA) 2, 68
Esselink, B. 1, 13, 21
ethnic references 93, 128–129, 184–186;
irrealia 130–133, 147n1; realia
129–130
fantasy 61–62, 71, 90–91, 101n2, 101n7
fan translation 16, 17, 67
fan Wikis 72–73
Fernández-Costales, A. 16, 17, 36,
99, 100
Fernández-Torné, A. 16
Fiano, C. 141, 150, 188
figurative language 132–133
Flanagan, M. 60
Folaron, D. 21
Footitt, H. 148, 151, 174n2
foreignization 66, 94, 97, 99; by
retention 126, 133–135, 164, 192
Forero-Calderón, G. 171–173
FPS see shooter games
fragmentation see non-linearity
Franco-Aixelá, J. 97, 98
Frasca, G. 58n5
Fuentes-Luque, A. 97
Fulco, I. 43
full localization 2, 23–24, 28, 33–34
Furiassi, C. 141, 150, 188
Gallardo, N. 39
game market: European 2; global 1;
Italian 2–3; Spanish 2–3; US 2
game world 4–5, 59–60, 73–76
García de la Cuesta, J. 164, 169,
171–173, 175n6, 194
Gee, J. P. 6, 10
gender issues 18, 87, 112, 148, 178;
customization 45–46, 106; gendered
militarism 107, 119–120, 183; in
language 44, 110, 137, 157, 186;
see also variables
106 Realia and Irrealia in Game Translation
sacrifice herself for the sake of world peace. Contrary to Recker, about
whom very little is known, Hannah is a well-developed character: she is an
idealistic, patriotic, and brave woman who feels the burden of saving her
country from dictatorship so that her family’s deaths and the destruction of
her village are not in vain. In game dialogs, Hannah is mostly addressed and
referred to by her Western name, which is left unaltered in both Italian and
Spanish. There are only two occurrences of her real Chinese name “Huang”
in the whole database and only one occurs in the walkthrough analyzed,
uttered by Jin Jié when the two compatriots meet again at the beginning of
the final game mission.
In the science-fiction war against alien invasion of the Mass Effect 3
world, the only playable character is Commander Shepard, the human pro-
tagonist of this episode, and also of the whole game trilogy. Born on April
11, 2154 (Norman 2010), Shepard is a graduate of the (fictional) inter-
planetary Systems Alliance, later assigned to the starship SSV Normandy in
2183 as executive officer, whose mission is to save the Galaxy from the alien
Reapers. Shepard is also the character featured on Mass Effect 3 (ME3) box
art. As typically happens in role-playing games, in contrast with MoHW
and BF4, in ME3 players can either select a default character or customize
their Shepard, in terms of gender (either male or female), appearance, psy-
chological profile, pre-service history, and class or military specialization,
among others, and all these features influence the story. Even Shepard’s
first name is customizable, it is indeed never stated in-game, the preset ones
being John or Jane for either a male or a female character, respectively.
More relevantly, as regards the protagonist’s relationship with the real
world, Shepard makes two types of reference to reality. First, the US astro-
naut Alan Shepard was the source of inspiration for Mass Effect protagonist,
as testified to by his/her surname. Commenting on this regard in an inter-
view (cit. in Hanson 2011, online), ME3 project director, Casey Hudson
explained that developers wanted to give the character a last name which
sounded “all-American, not too specific but quite common” and could also
refer to one of the Mercury Seven astronauts of the National Aeronautics and
Space Administration (NASA). Ultimately, Alan Shepard was chosen because
he perfectly represents the idea of Shepard the character, being “very tough
and very respected” (Hudson cit. in Hanson 2011, online). Likewise, as Alan
Shepard was the first American in Space on May 5, 1961, Shepard the char-
acter was the first human ever to achieve the elite status of Spectre, a great
accomplishment for him/her and the whole human species. Moreover, accord-
ing to Mass Effect Wiki (online), Commander Shepard’s birthday (April 11)
is a reference to the day when the American attempted manned moon landing
mission Apollo 13 was launched (April 11, 1970) and which was originally
supposed to be commanded by Alan Shepard. Secondly, a reference to the real
world is made visually and concerns Shepard’s appearance: the default male
face is evidently based on that of the Dutch model Mark Vanderloo (Miles-
Cheong 2012).
 Realia and Irrealia in Game Translation 107 Index  229
In dialogs, Shepard is always addressed by his/her surname which is genre 3, 12, 67–68, 71, 75, 84 Jackson, H. 166
retained in both localizations. Retention seems to be the most appropriate geographical references 92, 94–95, Jaén-Diego, N. 15
124–125, 183–184; irrealia 127–128; Jayemanne, D. 16
translation strategy for the protagonist’s name, not only for the purposes of
realia 125–127 Jenkins, H. 10, 73
terminological consistency within the series, but also in order to keep the geopolitical issues 53, 55, 177–178 Jiménez-Crespo, M. 13, 20, 21
reference to astronaut Alan Shepard intact, as envisioned by developers, and Gheno, V. 137 Juul, J. 10, 43, 58n5, 64
enjoyed by players across different locales. glossaries 25, 49, 62, 72–73,
174n3, 179 Kadmon, N. 95
Gómez-Capuz, J. 175n7 Keeton, P. 79
4.2.2 Non-Playable Characters Gonzáles-Vera, M. P. 97 Kehoe, B. 15
Gordo-Peleato, R. 149 Kelly, D. 39
Starting from the left extreme of the realism-fictionality continuum (Figure Gouadec, D. 13 Kelly, M. 174n2
3.1), non-playable characters in Medal of Honor Warfighter include Task Grammenos, D. 17 Kennedy, H. W. 43, 58n5
Force members, mainly US Navy SEALs, jihadist terrorists which are threat- Granell, X. 11, 17, 50 Kent, S. 29, 58n4
Grusin, R. 63 Kerr, A. 10, 58n5
ening the Western world, and also other minor characters serving ancillary
Gunn, J. 91 King, G. 118
parts. Kočotea, I. 171, 194
The international special forces engaged in warfare represent the first Halter, E. 174n1 Kohler, C. 30, 31, 58n4
subgroup, comprising more or less developed “helper” characters, whose Heimburg, E. 15, 47 Krzywinska, T. 118
individual references are mainly expressed in code names: Voodoo, Dusty, Heller, E. 97 Kücklich, J. 75
Hertz, J. C. 29 Kuling, P. 87, 88, 127, 138, 179, 187
Mother, Dingo, Tick, and Tiger 12. The second subgroup of “villains”
Hickey, D. 15
includes characters representing the evil Other: the wealthy Arab banker history 18, 53–54, 63, 75, 88 Lal, P. 96
and terrorist leader Hassan Rasheed, nicknamed “the Cleric”, the greedy Hsu, H. 18 Lavigne, C. 87
Bosnian arms dealer based in Sarajevo Stovan Bosic, nicknamed “the Huizinga, J. 5, 59 Leppihalme, R. 5, 7, 89, 95
Engineer”, and Sad al Din, who is the utterly cruel right-hand man of the humor see wordplay Lepre, O. 15, 17
Huntemann, N. B. 174n1 literature 62–63, 99, 118
Cleric. The third subgroup of “other characters” contributes to depict the
Hurtado-Albir, A. 66 Liubinienė, V. 17
global dimension of MoHW war, including: Ajab, who serves as the local Hurtado De Mendoza Azaola, I. 97 locale 1, 13, 21
asset in Pakistan for US-led operations, Sergeant Xaysana and Sergeant localization models 26–28
Wright who fight in a unit deployed in Somalia, Greko, Maniek, Kaska, Iaia, P. L. 10, 17, 18, 100 Lombardi, I. 10
Diabel, Zuku, and Szczuply, who are Polish GROM operatives, and finally IDEA see Italian Interactive Digital López-Sánchez, R. 17
Entertainment Association Loponen, M. 6, 89
Lena and Isabella who are Preacher’s wife and daughter, respectively.
ideology 81, 86, 178 Lorenzo-García, L. 39
Realism, representation, and cultural issues interplay in this group of Imre, A. 149 Loureiro-Pernas, M. 16
irrealia in different ways: the Navy SEALs Voodoo and Dusty exemplify individual references 92, 102–103, ludonarrative 42–44
those MoHW characters who are based on and probably named after the 179–181; non-playable characters
real operators who worked as consultants for the game (Medal of Honor 107–113; playable characters magic circle 4–5, 59
103–107 Mairena, J. 17
Wiki, online); the Cleric embodies a fictional stand-in of Osama bin Laden,
informal language see slang Mandiberg, S. 15, 17
both are elderly Middle Eastern men, lead terrorist organizations, dress simi- initialisms 95, 111, 135, 138, 186–187; Mangiron, C. 2, 3, 6, 7, 10–20, 22, 24,
larly, and are killed in Pakistan; the two female characters Lena and Isabella in military language 140–142, 27–33, 38, 40, 41, 43–51, 62, 63, 68,
perfectly typify the concept of “gendered militarism” in war-themed video 168–169, 188, 193 96, 97, 99, 101n8
games, which represent violence as masculine only, power as structured interactivity 6, 42–45 Marshall, D. 111
intercultural conflict 53–55, 80, 82, 129 Martínez-Sierra, J. J. 66–67
to promote male authority whereas women are seen as needing protection
interdisciplinarity 7, 10, 18, 37, 64, 194 Matamala, A. 97
(Robinson 2016, 10–12). internationalization 13, 20–22, 24, 100 Matkivska, N. 98
From a linguistic perspective, these individual references are deeply intertextuality 62–64, 90, 92, 118–124, Mattila, J. 154
context-dependent: many names and surnames function as “culture mark- 182–183; in non-verbal references Maxwell-Chandler, H. 2, 11, 12, 15,
ers” (Nord 2003), suggesting the quite varied origin of MoHW characters 121, 178–179; in proper names 17, 19, 21–24, 26–28, 34, 40, 41, 47,
122, 181 50, 58n3, 72
but, more importantly, code names simulate the military’s need for secrecy
irony see wordplay Mayoral, R. 39, 97
and also their tendency to use language to ease tension and pressure, while Italian Interactive Digital Entertainment McDonough-Dolmaya, J. 18
nicknames are used as narrative indicators. In this view, meaning may be Association (IDEA) 2–3 McKearney, J. 71
230 Index 108 Realia and Irrealia in Game Translation
Mead, C. 174n1 Perego, E. 97
Mejías-Climent, L. 18, 24 Pereira-Rodríguez, A. M. 39 98% 98%
Méndez-González, R. 11, 15, 17 Pérez-Fernández, L. M. 15 100% 95% 94%
92% 92%
metaludic intratextuality 92, 115–118, Pérez-González, L. 37
182–183 Perron, B. 10, 64, 72
methodological issues 4, 18, 64–67, Peterson, M. 10 80%
176–177; corpus 24, 28, 40, 42, 45, Pettini, S. 15, 17, 18, 36, 41, 47, 63, 64,
67–73 72, 73, 87, 90, 105, 118, 137, 157
militarism 81, 148–149, 174n1, 191; Pirus, J. 149 60%
gendered militarism 107, 119–120, place names see geographical references
183; military-entertainment playability 18, 37, 44, 51–53, 77
complex 79 playthroughs see walkthroughs 40%
Millbrooke, A. 160 Pons, C. M. 92, 118
Miller, C. H. 58n6 Prensky, M. 10
Mitchell, S. 126, 127 procedural rhetoric 87, 149 20%
Mittell, J. 73 Pujol, M. 15 8% 8%
5% 6%
Moya, V. 97 pun see humor 2% 2%
Mukherjee, S. 118 Purnama, L. S. 18 0%
Müller-Galhardi, R. 17 Purnomo, L. A. 18 Italian Spanish Italian Spanish
multilingualism 133–135, 185 Pym, A. 12, 22
Retention Direct translation
multimodality 18, 28, 37–40
multitextuality 47–51 QA see testing MoHW BF4 ME3
Munday, J. 13, 20 Quality Assurance see testing
Muñoz-Sánchez, P. 11, 16, 17, 19 quotations see intertextuality
Figure 4.1 Translation Strategies for Individual References.
neologisms 96, 143–146, 190 Rabadán-Álvarez, R. 39
Newman, J. 10, 12, 32, 58n6, 92, 103 Rafael, V. L. 174n2
hidden behind code names: like Preacher, “Mother” is apparently based on
Newmark, P. 95, 97 Ramière, N. 97
Nogueira de Andrade Stupiello, É. 18 Ranford, A. 17 this character’s very protective personality and there might be analogous
non-linearity 40, 43–47, 65 Ranzato, I. 5, 9n2, 91, 97 sardonic allusions behind Voodoo and Dingo. Similarly, the nicknames of
non-verbal references 80, 106, 119, Ravetto, F. 16, 101n8 some characters have meaning and clarify their narrative role: “the Cleric”
121–122, 127, 178–179, 183 Reinders, H. 10 refers to the religious leader in the holy war against the infidel lands, namely
Nord, C. 98, 107, 109, 111, 180, 181 Reiss, K. 48
jihad, while “the Engineer” depends on the technical expertise of this char-
Norouzi, S. 97 religion 53–55, 74–75, 79–80, 129, 133
Nowak, Peter 58n2 Remael, A. 91, 126 acter, who supplies the deadly weapon PETN to terrorists at a global level
Robinson, N. 78, 79, 81, 107, 116, (Medal of Honor Wiki, online).
O’Hagan, M. 2, 3, 6, 7, 11–20, 22, 24, 120, 121, 148 In translation, as Figure 4.1 shows, the great majority of individual
27–33, 38, 40, 41, 43–48, 50, 51, 62, Rodríguez-González, F. 150, 156, references in MoHW are retained in Italian and Spanish. The only three
63, 68, 96, 97, 99, 101n8 175nn6–7
exceptions to this tendency are “Tiger 12”, the code name of an opera-
O’Malley-Deming, S. 2, 11, 12, 17, role-playing games (RPG) 3, 61, 68, 71,
19, 21–24, 26–28, 34, 40, 41, 47, 76, 84 tor of the Filipino NAVSOG (Naval Special Operations Group), which is
58n3, 72 Rollings, A. 73–75, 77, 90, 93, 101n7, directly translated only in Spanish, “the Cleric” and “the Engineer” which
O’Riada, G. 16 102, 130, 176, 183, 184, 194 are directly translated in both Italian and Spanish and represent the mean-
O’Toole, M. T. 143 Romero-Fresco, P. 7 ingful nicknames of MoHW villains.
Orero, P. 16, 17, 38 romhacking see fan translation
In the middle of the realism-fictionalism continuum, non-playable char-
Orna-Montesinos, C. 150 RPG see role-playing games
Rutter, J. 10, 101n6 acters in the Battlefield 4 political-fiction world include US-led squad mem-
Palumbo, G. 7 bers as “helpers”, the cruel and ambitious Chinese Admiral Chang Wei as
Papazian, G. 118 Saber, A. 151, 152 the “villain”, who plans to overthrow the existing Chinese government and
partial localization 2, 23, 32 Sajna, M. 11, 17 establish a military dictatorship, and other minor soldiers who mostly serve
Partridge, E. 156 Salama-Carr, M. 174n2
in the US Armed Forces, some of which are not properly named.
Patterson, C. 71, 84, 86, 87, 149, 195 Schallegger, R. 87
Payne, M. T. 148, 174n1 Scheckner, P. 79 More specifically, the story-leading US Tombstone Squad comprises mem-
Pedersen, J. 5, 90, 91, 94, 97 Schmierbach, M. 65 bers like the US marines Kimble “Irish” Graves, Clayton “Pac” Pakowski,
 Realia and Irrealia in Game Translation 109 Index  231
and William Dunn, the CIA agent Laszlo Kovic, and the Russian GRU agent Scholand, M. 12, 15, 84 toponyms see geographical references
Dimitri “Dima” Mayakovsky. In dialogs, individual references to the first and Schules, D. 17 Torrente, J. 17
Schulze von Glaßer, M. 119 Torres-Hostench, O. 16
second subgroups of non-playable characters, namely helpers and Admiral
Schulzke, M. 80–82, 104, 133 Torres-Molina, Y. 16
Chang as the villain, are expressed in surnames, or in abbreviations based science fiction 61, 71, 87, 91, 177; Toury, G. 4, 48, 66–67
on their names and surnames, some of which are “culture markers” (Nord language of 143–144, 149–150, training 16–18
2003). The only exception in this subgroup of BF4 irrealia is “Irish” which 156, 190 transcreation 62, 94–96, 101n8; in
represents a meaningful nickname: he is called Irish because he is lucky, as he Secchi-Frau, F. 118 artifactual references 144–145,
Semmerling, T. 79 189; in ethnic references 129–133,
reminds Hannah in example (4.5). Thus, a popular belief about the legendary
Serón-Ordóñez, I. 16, 61, 63 185–186; in sociopolitical references
luck of Irish people, with national good-luck symbols such as the shamrock Sharp, J. 85 138, 187
or the leprechaun and the traditional saying “the luck of the Irish” meaning Shaw, I. 85 translation strategies 4, 6, 66, 94–96,
“extraordinarily good fortune” (Ammer 2013, 280), provides the basis for shooter games 3, 68, 71, 76, 148–149 99–100
this character’s nickname. Šiaučiūnė, V. 17
simulation games 18, 61, 63–64, Van Oers, A. 17
73–74, 101n4 variables 40, 45, 47, 72, 99, 157
(4.5) IRISH: You are not risking your life, Hannah. I’m Irish, remember? skopos-driven translation 44, 48, 51, Vela-Valido, J. 16, 49
The lucky one. 74, 77, 99 Venuti, L. 66, 97
IRISH: Non rischierai la tua vita, Hannah. Sono Irish, ricordi? slang 151, 166, 188, 190, 192–194; in Vermeer, H. J. 48
Quello fortunato. abbreviations 140, 156, 167, 169, Vermes, A. P. 98
171–172 Vidal, N. 11, 17
IRISH: No vas a arriesgar tu vida, Hannah. Soy Irish, ¿recuerdas?
Smirnova, T. 171, 194 Vieira, E. R. P. 96
El de la suerte. social irrealism 85 voice-over (VO) 23–25, 28, 32–33,
sociopolitical references 93, 117–118, 48–49
Irish is an African American soldier whose nature is harsh and distrust- 135; irrealia 136–138; realia Voorhees, G. 68, 148, 174n1
ful and whose language is often ironic, rude, and offensive. Interestingly 135–136
enough, the humor of this character gives rise to a pun based on the sur- Sommers, J. M. 118 walkthroughs 65–66, 68, 70, 73, 100n1
Spiga, A. 118 Ward, N. M. 86
name of Laszlo Kovic. In the relevant scene, Recker (the player), Pac, Kovic, Spivack, C. 91, 101n7 Warden, R. 71
and Irish are aboard a boat heading toward the main US Navy ship to take sports games 3, 36, 63, 73–74 war video games 148–150, 174n3, 191,
its voyage recorder. After recapitulating the mission objectives, Kovic says Stahl, D. 141 194–195; see also militarism
“You’re here to do a job and I’m calling the fucking shots. Okay?!” and Stahl, R. 148 Weik, M. 152, 162
Irish rebelliously replies “Yes, sir Agent Kobitch”. The latter is a blend stereotypes 55, 79–80, 112, 129, 177 Wilson, A. 152
Stold, R. 42 Wirman, H. 83
formed by merging the first two letters of Kovic’s surname “Ko” and the Strong, S. 15, 17, 18 Wolf, M. J. P. 5, 10, 29, 31, 60, 64, 72,
offensive expression “bitch”. Interestingly, in Italian this wordplay is per- subtitling 16, 23–24, 32, 40, 51, 97, 92, 129, 194
fectly rendered into Cogliovic, which is also a blend merging the first part 105, 133 wordplay 16–18, 104, 125, 152–153,
of the Italian offensive expression coglione [asshole] and the final part of 171, 184–185; in proper names 30,
“Kovic”. On the contrary, in Spanish “Kobitch” is kept unaltered and the Tarquini, G. 17 97, 100, 109–110, 116, 180–182
Tavinor, G. 58n6, 101n6 Wozniak, M. 143, 144, 150, 155, 156,
wordplay is lost because retention does not allow players to understand the Taylor, E. K. 81, 161 190, 191
joke, thus simply suggesting a misspelling. terminology 12–14, 17, 42, 73, 99–100, Wright, J. D. 122
Another interesting example of the use of names for humorous pur- 179, 182, 184; in military language Wu, Z. 18
poses concerns Dimitri “Dima” Mayakovsky, who is sometimes addressed 93, 150–154, 175n4, 188, 190;
as “Ivan” by Irish. Although this name does not occur in the corpus, it platform-specific 41–42; see also Xu, S. 149
glossaries
deserves a short digression due to its cultural relevance. “Ivan” is not a testing 24–27, 49 Yenne, B. 141
proper name in the game world, rather it is a nickname Irish uses with ref- text types see multitextuality Yunker, J. 96
erence to Dima’s Russian nationality. Since “Ivan” does not belong to the Thabet, T. 58n6, 101n6
game terminology, translators can either retain the name, running the risk Thomas, M. 10 Zanotti, S. 96
of losing the reference, since players may think that Ivan is simply Dima’s Timiani-Grant, F. 15 Zarei, R. 97
Titford, C. 39 Zhang, X. 15–17
second name, or deviate from the source text and substitute it with another Tomaszkiewicz, T. 97 Zhou, P. 16
name which may sound even more Russian-flavored to the target audience.
110 Realia and Irrealia in Game Translation
These two possibilities are exemplified in the localizations: in Italian “Ivan”
is retained, in Spanish it is creatively substituted with “Stroganoff”, one
of the most popular Russian dishes and also a well-known and influential
Russian family, called the Stroganoffs. Irrespective of which of the two ref-
erences Spanish translators have made, “Stroganoff” is definitely culture-
specific and successfully renders the humor behind this nickname. Lastly,
for the purposes of comprehensiveness, it seems worth mentioning that
other occurrences of Ivan in the game database, which do not appear in
this book corpus, are both in the plural and always translated into russi in
Italian and ruskis or rusos in Spanish [both Russians].
The third subgroup of “other characters” in BF4 include other US
marines, whose individual references are expressed in surnames and code-
names: Roland Garrison, codenamed “Fortress”, one helicopter pilot
codenamed “Firebird”, one radio operator codenamed “Gatekeeper” and
“Oracle”, “Anvil 2”, and “Bloodhound”, about whom nothing is known.
Another narratively relevant minor character is Jin Jié, the Chinese demo-
cratic politician Admiral Chang aims to kill. Lastly, throughout the game
there are some extra characters whose individual references are narrative
indicators, they are identified by their role or function, such as “marine”,
“sailor”, “doctor”, “jump master”, “officer”, and “driver”. Nothing is
known about these minor characters and their identifiers are transferred by
means of direct translation in all cases except for “marine”, which is prop-
erly retained in both target languages.
In other words, as Figure 4.1 shows, also in Battlefield 4 the vast major-
ity of individual references are transferred by means of retention in both
Italian and Spanish, while direct translation (2%) simply explains the mean-
ing of narrative indicators. However, in connection with cultural aspects,
one gender-related difference is worth underlining and affects the transla-
tion of “doctor”. Although this is a female character, only Spanish transla-
tors adopted a feminine form while in Italian dottore is masculine. Since
the feminine counterpart dottoressa exists and is regularly used, transla-
tors’ choice seems to be unjustified, especially considering that information
about characters and story was given to the BF4 Italian translation team, as
the game localization project manager explained to the researcher (Anselmi,
personal communication, May 5, 2016).
Within the relationship between the real world and the game world, it
seems relevant to briefly mention that, according to Battlefield Wiki (online),
William Dunn’s appearance and surname are inspired by Michael Dunne,
the main character of director and actor Paul Gross’ war film Passchendaele
(2008) and Captain Garrison’s personality and appearance match his name-
sake in Ridley Scott’s movie Black Hawk Down (2001), portrayed by actor
Sam Shepard.
Moving to the right extreme of the realism-fictionalism continuum, non-
playable characters in Mass Effect 3 are numerous and diverse and the science-
fictional genre of this game narrative inevitably impacts the nature of ME3