This book focuses on video game translation from the perspective of cognitive semantics. It presents how the translators' knowledge of cognitive semantics can affect translation. The work is interdisciplinary and aspires to complete gaps in the research on video games. It analyzes almost 3000 standard pages of texts found in eight different games.

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.

This Element takes the initiative to highlight the nascent state of audiovisual translation research centring on users of video games. It proposes ways of advancing the research by integrating numerous related perspectives from relevant fields to guide studies in translated game reception into further fruition. The Element offers an accessible overview of possible relationships between translation and its experiencers, showcasing ways to design game reception studies. Examples, methods, tools, and practical concerns are discussed to ultimately develop a blueprint for game translation user research which aims to consolidate scientific user-centric inquiry into video game translation. To that end, the blueprint captures the three-pronged interplay between the parameters of localisation-reception research in facets of user experience, facets of translated games, and facets of game users.

This innovative collection makes the case for a push within the discipline to adopt user-centric perspectives on translated video games and their corresponding accessibility features. The volume demonstrates how audiovisual translation (AVT) and media accessibility (MA) involve decisions that can re-shape the gaming experience of players and other audiences. Contributions in the book outline this in two ways. First, they collectively provide an account of the prospects and challenges that come with user-centric scholarly inquiry in game translation and accessibility. Second, complementarily, they report on original studies and new, exciting findings while adopting the perspective of global users. Taken together, the collection serves as a call to action to systematically advance research eliciting variable types of input from users who take advantage of translation and accessibility services. Such research will facilitate a clearer understanding of how the particular decisions of translators and other relevant agents shape game reception. This book will be of interest to scholars in both translation studies and video game research, as well as those interested in media accessibility and media studies more broadly.

Providing an up-to-date, multi-perspective and cross-linguistic account of the centrality of the expressive function in communication, this book explores the conceptualization of emotions in language and the high emotional 'temperature' of a variety of contemporary discourses. Adopting a number of methodological angles, both qualitative and quantitative, the chapters present insights from cognitive linguistics, (critical) discourse analysis, corpus linguistics and sociolinguistics, as well as those resulting from the combination of these approaches. Using a wide variety of data types, from song lyrics and TV series to Twitter posts and political speeches, and through the analysis of a range of languages, including Arabic, English, Polish, Italian, Hungarian, and Turkish, the book offers a panoramic view of the multi-faceted interaction between language, expressivity and cognition.

Video games are part of the growing digital entertainment industry for which game localization has become pivotal in serving international markets. As well as addressing the practical needs of the industry to facilitate translator and localizer training, this book seeks to conceptualize game localization in an attempt to locate it in Translation Studies in the context of the technologization of contemporary translation practices. Designed to provide a comprehensive introduction to the topic of game localization the book draws on the literature in Game Studies as well as Translation Studies. The book’s readership is intended to be translation scholars, game localization practitioners and those in Game Studies developing research interest in the international dimensions of the digital entertainment industry. The book aims to provide a road map for the dynamic professional practices of game localization and to help readers visualize the expanding role of translation in one of the 21st century's key global industries.

This book focuses on the English lingua-franca uses in video-game interactions. The typographic and linguistic deviations from the standard norms are investigated, along with the cooperation strategies and status asymmetries of the participants in the online interactions, and the role of language in creating ideological representations.

This book addresses the hot topic in audiovisual translation (AVT) of video game localization through the unique perspective of dubbing, an area which has so far received relatively little scholarly focus. The author analyses the main characteristics of video game localization within the context of English-Spanish dubbing, and emphasizes the implications for research and localization as a professional practice. The book will appeal to translation studies scholars and students, as well as AVT professionals looking to understand localization processes from a systematized approach.

This book attempts to theoretically approach video game localization and subtitling not only from the eyes of translation studies but also from multidisciplinary perspectives. You will find how game studies, ludology, hegemony theory, socio-cognition, visual studies, and translation studies generate new perspectives in video game localization and subtitling studies.

This book is a multidisciplinary study of the translation and localisation of video games. It offers a descriptive analysis of the industry – understood as a global phenomenon in entertainment – and aims to explain the norms governing present industry practices, as well as game localisation processes. Additionally, it discusses particular translation issues that are unique to the multichannel nature of video games, in which verbal and nonverbal signs must be cohesively combined with interactivity to achieve maximum playability and immerse players in the game’s virtual world. Although positioned within the theoretical framework of descriptive translation studies, Bernal-Merino incorporates research from audiovisual translation, software localisation, computer assisted translation, comparative literature, and video game production. Moving beyond this framework, Translation and Localisation in Video Games challenges some of the basic tenets of translation studies and proposes changes to established and unsatisfactory processes in the video game and language services industries.