My presentations about games localisation and testing

After having received last year and this year many petitions of Publishing my presentations, I had been thinking about it for a few months now. The lack of time, made me delay it, as I needed to upload them first (which I finally did last week). I finally found some time for it and here I present you with them. I hope you enjoy them. If you need to include them in your MA Dissertation or your presentations, remember to mention me! ;) If you need anything else or you have any questions, you know where to find me.

QA, Localisation & Experience: The Perfect Combination for the Best Localisation

My presentation at the I International Conference on Translation and Accessibility in Video Games and Virtual Worlds. Barcelona, December 2010.

QA, Localisation & Experience: The Perfect Combination for the Best Localisation (Fun4All2010) from Curri Barceló

QA, Localisation & Experience: The Perfect Combination for the Best Localisation

My presentation at the 4th International Media 4 All Conference - Audiovisual Translation: Taking Stock. London, June 2011.

QA, Localisation & Experience: The Perfect Combination for the Best Localisation (Media4All2011) from Curri Barceló

Video game Localisation and Testing

Presentation for the students of the Translation and Interpreting Studies at the Universitat de Vic. Vic, Barcelona, December 2011. [In Spanish]

Video game Localisation and Testing from Curri Barceló

Theory and Practice of Games Localisation: Academic Training vs Professional Reality in Spain and the United Kingdom

My presentation, together with Jennifer Vela, at the II International Conference on Translation and Accessibility in Video Games and Virtual Worlds. Barcelona, March 2012

Theory and Practice of Games Localisation (Fun4All2012) from Curri Barceló

Theory and Practice of Games Localisation: Academic Training vs Professional Reality in Spain and the United Kingdom

My presentation, together with Jennifer Vela, at the I Media Across Borders Conference. Roehampton, London, June 2012

Theory and Practice of Games Localisation (MAB2012) from Curri Barceló

La localización y el control de calidad de videojuegos: visión general 

My presentation at the Encuentro de Traductores e Intérpretes de Málaga de 2012, in which I speak about localisation and quality assurance of video games. Málaga, 30th de November 2012. [In Spanish]

La localización y el control de calidad de videojuegos: visión general (ETIM2012) from Curri Barceló

La industria de los videojuegos: personajes, PNJ y plataformas de lanzamiento

My presentation at the ENETI 2013 about the games industry, its evolution and current situation and the possible careers that a translator could have within the industry. Granada, 22nd March 2013. [In Spanish]

La industria de los videojuegos (ENETI2013) from Curri Barceló

You can also follow my profile to know every time I upload a new presentation. :)

***********************
Note: I enormously thank Ismael Pardo, blogger of "Diario de un futuro traductor", for helping me embedded the presentations.

A review of 2011

En castellano

Today I look back and I see myself having done my first presentation in a conference, very happy for what I had achieved in the last months of 2010. However, the year didn’t start quite as expected, especially if we compare it with how 2010 had finished. Do not worry, I am quite stubborn and I was determined to change it, and so I focused on getting more clients and a good workflow. Thanks to working hard the year before for the online betting company, they asked me to go back for a few weeks at the beginning of the year, and so the timing was perfect, while I was waiting for the games localisation Spree in summer. Now you know: Work hard, and make sure you prove you are professional and reliable, as you never know when you are going to be needed again. In the middle of this joy, I received an e-mail letting me know that I had been admitted to present a paper to another Conference: el Media4All in London, at the end of June.

I don’t know if you had the same, but to me, it seemed as if the “translation” part was taking a bit too long to take off, just as if, suddenly, translation agencies had disappeared from the map. As I can’t spend too long without doing something, I seize the low moments to do another important aspect of the translator’s life: networking. In April, as Xosé Castro was doing a Workshop about Word (in Spanish) in Valencia (Spain), which was organised by Asetrad (Spanish Association of Translators, Interpreters and editors), I decided to go to Valencia to visit my good friend Vanessa, and see what all the fuss was about. The experience was amazing (I and II, in Spanish), not only because I introduce my friend Vanessa to the whole world of conferences, tweeters and bloggers, but also because I was able to meet more tweeters, as Manuel Saavedra, Jordi Barcells, Irene Sánchez, Ana Rubio and, of course, Xosé Castro (a guru of Audiovisual Translation, very well referred in two of the subjects I did about Audiovisual Translation at uni), who I really wanted to meet (in order to see if he was real… and yes, he was!). Also, I met other amazing people, such as Judit Samblás, Gemma Sanza, Marta Ortells or Núria Sanmartí.

I went back home with my battery charged. Fully-charged. But the translation world still seemed to be idle, and so I used the time to prepare an article about “localisation, testing and QA” to publish. Also, I had to undertake an operation in my ear (a long story. You can read about it in Spanish here) and, not long after, I had very sad news about a friend. That’s Murphy’s Law: if something can go wrong, it will go wrong. But the good thing is that, once you have reached bottom, you can only go up. And so was it. Media4All was here, another amazing experience I recommend to everybody (more info here, and in Spanish here and here). There I met (as in, finally meeting them in person) three more gurus of Audiovisual Translation: Jorge Díaz-Cintas, Miguel Bernal and Frederic Chaume (and yes, they are also real and you can touch them, and even they allow you to take a photo of them!). Wow! I felt like a teenager when Justin Bieber gives her an autograph... but without the screaming.

Of course, Murphy was spying on me all year long, and during those three days of Conference that I wanted to myself, was the perfect moment to make the interesting projects to arrive. The first one was a videogame for several platforms about a Cartoon Network character (when I can disclose more details, I will do so). Then, it was the time for a MMORPG based in the Medieval Times, a very interesting project (the biggest I have done so far), which drove me mental with the research of weapons and punishment tools. I wasn’t even finished with the project and I had to move flat, then go on “holidays” (you know translators can never go on holidays), then come back to London to receive my sister and her family at home... Glorious summer!

Kindly created by @MonkeysvsRobots

No, no, no. Don’t go anyway, as summer didn’t finish here. I also had time to publish my first article, start new projects, as Revista Traditori, a new magazine made by professionals from the Translation/Interpreting industry to anyone interested about translation, interpreting, languages, etc., but mainly focused to future translators, to whom we explain a bit about the “real world of translation” (if you can understand Spanish, you can read about it here, here, here, here and here, or just ask GoogleTranslator to help you out). I also started a project with Pablo and Elizabeth, organised by Johanna Angulo, which I hope I will be able to talk about really soon. What else? Ah, well. In September, an old colleague called me to ask me to collaborate with them creating a videogame, and that is how my autumn started.

The localisation projects, the videogames, preparing my lessons for Johanna’s Project, finish my second article, I barely realise that November had arrived. But my life wasn’t fun me to invited me to do a presentation about student mobility in December. A month earlier, many tweeters colleagues (as well as Maya, the president of the Catalan Association of Translators and Interpreters-APTIC) spent two weeks trying to convince me to go to Barcelona to a workshop about blogs organised by APTIC (in Spanish). I could not say ‘no’. Ah, well, I hear the words “party”, “translators”, “fun”, “networking” ( Carolina, Aida, Iris, Maya, Clara, Mar, Verónica, José Luis, José Manuel, Laia, Miriam, Manuel y Lidia...)... And I have to go. Another unmissable event.

The icing of the cake: the year ended with two (indecent?) proposals. The first of them, Mox’s Blog’s authos, Alejandro, was asking permission (???) for him to publish a comic strip in a book that has just been launched, as he had been inspired on an idea that I sent to him a few months back. Imagine my face... Just like a manga character, with my mouth wide open hanging to the floor. The second one (proposal, of course), was to be part of the teachers group of a new course organised by Educación Digital (in Spanish, though), which will start at the end of January. This time, apart from leaving my mouth open, I had to rub my eyes a few times, because I couldn’t believe what I was reading. Of course, I enrolled the ship too.

And last, but not least, when it seemed the year was going to finish just like that, I was lucky enough being able to start a translation project with other tweeters: Manuel, Ander and Jennifer, as well as Miguel Ángel (who I didn’t know before, and I don’t think I follow him on Twitter). The project was offered by the best Spanish agency I have worked with so far (Kobalt Languages), under the conduction of two project managers who made the whole process pretty easy: Ricard and Ana.

Now, my year has started quite well. I really hope it will be the beginning of an even better year. As you can see, bad things happen, but also good ones, and we have to take advantage of the bad ones, when you are at the bottom, to gain momentum and run up the mountain. Just one more advice: Never give up!

Kindly created by @MonkeysvsRobots

Have an amazing 2012!

Entrada en castellano

If you are Lost in Translation... Find a way out!

After a few years feeling frustrated with some text that I had to translate, and after a few weeks trying to convince the client I am collaborating with as a linguistic consultant that there are many things in the English culture that cannot be transferred to the Spanish culture, I decided it would be good to share a few tips I have been using for a couple of years, which have proved to be pretty useful.

Imagine you have just been given a quite interesting project with a quite high volume of words. You have a look at the text and it seems that it won’t be too difficult, so you decide to accept it. As soon as the assignment is confirmed, you start working on it. When you have been translating for a while, you start seeing strange things in the source text, which, at some places, they are close to incomprehensible. What can you do?:

1. Report to the agency/client that the original text needs to be proofread.

It will probably not convince them, but, at least you cover your own back: if the source text is not good enough, it is likely that our translations would be good either (even though it could happen, of course). If the source is a translation from another language and the client has not even bothered to pay for a proofreader to double check the translation, there is not much we can do; just let the client know that the text is not of the expected quality and that we would probably have issues translating. Thus, if anything has been mistranslated or the translation is not close enough to the original text, at least we have warned the client. If we are working with a direct client and the text is the original text they have created, this warning can make them to ask someone within the company with some good writing skills to read through the text and correct whatever needed: this would improve the overall quality of the product (well, it’s just like a proper quality assurance).

2. Ask, ask, ask.

If you don’t ask, you may not know. Therefore, whenever there is something you cannot understand from a text, either because you don’t know the culture or slang, or because whoever wrote the text invented some terms to try and sound cool, or because the source text we have is a translation from another text and is has not been proofread, the best thing to do is ask the client. Many games developers are used to the “queries” document with questions from the localisers.

However, it is also important to know how to ask those questions. Developers are always in a rush. Always. It is not the localisers’ fault that something is it not clear enough or that it is impossible to translate without losing the play on words, therefore, it is better to make it as easy as possible for the developer (or whoever receiving those queries) to understand our questions. If we do a simple question of “What is this?”, we risk being misunderstood or the client might not understand what is really what we need, and they might answer something else. For example: many times I have found a menu option to translate and I didn’t know exactly what that was for. I therefore asked the client “What is this for?” and they answer with a simply “This is a menu option”... Ah, well, I already knew that, than you... *whatever* Whenever this happened, I had to ask again (most of the times, luckily, it was a question that all localisers had, and so it needed to be answered). Of course, we might give them several possibilities of what we think it is, and they can ask with just a “Yes” or “No” (then you think it’s better to get up and start banging your head against the wall). However, living several options would be better and clearer for the client to understand our query than simply let them guess what the problem is.

3. Ask the text in the original language from which our source text was translated

Let’s say that the original text was written, for example, in French, and the Developer or agency had translated first into English to then send this English text to the localisers so that they could translate it into their native languages. If the source text we are given is not good and we have issues translating it, it would be better to make sure that we are doing it well by having the original text as reference. Ok, we may not know French (as it is my case), but the proximity between the French and the Spanish, or Italian, or Portuguese may help us to guess what the text is saying. Even things like differentiate between a verb in infinitive (insérez) from one in imperative (insérez) or a imperative (inséré) [Thanks to Irene Marinas for her correction!]. Once I localise a game about “Healthy life”, and in one of the sections, the basic groups of food were explained. One of them were the carbohydrates, which could be acquired (so the English said) from “bread, noodles and rice”. At first I found it strange that they were talking only about noodles, but I thought that, maybe, at some point in the game, the player is told to eat only this type of pasta (for some strange reason). But I continued translating and this noodles, rice and bread appeared many other times as the carbs suppliers and a base of any meal. Then, "Eureka!”, I understood why. The videogame was originally written in German (in fact, the game had already been released in Germany), and in German, the word Nudeln is the term use to refer to any type of food (from spaghetti to noodles to rigatoni… everything). I then decided to speak to the agency, explaining that I thought there was a key mistake in English, and they agreed and said that, when the German game said “Nudeln”, they didn’t mean only noodles (or long-thin pasta) but all types of pasta (they also thanked me for realising and they changed it throughout). But this story didn’t end here. After a while, I started to realise that there were some parts in the English text that had very whimsical sentence structures, which had not much meaning, as well as seeing most of the nouns (if not all) with the first letter in upper case (something that happens in German, but in English shouldn’t be like that). But what actually amused me was when I saw some sentences with the verb at the end. Anybody who speaks a bit of German (even if it’s just a little bit) will know that this verb position is a clear warning that the text has been literally translated from German (or, well, from Latin too). It was then when I decided to ask the client if they could send me the original in German. Yes, my level of German doesn’t allow me to translate directly (7 years without using it is actually too much), but a great dictionary and a bit of imagination, was enough to understand more or less where the text was going to. Otherwise, we can always speak to Mr G Translator: sometimes can help us with that little «extra» of imagination.

4. Ask, if it’s possible, the details of the proofreader or the localisers of the other languages

We have all got stuck with a translation, not because we are not good enough, but more because we see things from just one point of view. We say in Spanish “cuatro ojos ven mejor que dos” (Four eyes see better than two). Similarly, two minds work better than just one. With one of the clients I work with, we use an online tool to translate that allows us to see other localisers’ translations (and, of course, they can also see mine). However, thanks to this visibility, if we have a doubt, we can see what the other localisers had thought. A really good example is the English term «game». In French, Italian and Spanish it can be translated in two different ways: jeu/gioco/juego o partie/partita/partida, so all three languages should use the same term (in each language, of course), which is pretty useful if you aren’t sure. I know it’s not easy that an agency will supply you with the translations in other languages, but they might do it at then end, when they have all the texts compiled, or if they aren’t in a rush. Otherwise, you can always ask straight away if they can tell you how the other translators localised a specific term or sentences (I have also done this, and they have always helped me).

It is also useful to have the contact of the person in charge of the proofreading, not only to discuss and agree with the translation of some terms, but also to ask any doubt of the original. Maybe they have done a similar translation/proofreading before or they have more experience in the subject of the translation or game. Of course, the contact may be the other way round too: they can also ask if they don’t know why we have use a specific translation, or even they can send us the text proofread when it’s finished, so that we can learn from our mistakes.

5. Ask a native

If you have tried the “queries” option and the client is a bit slow in replying, or the agency don’t want to give you the contact of the proofreader (or there is no proofreader at all), you can always try to ask a native for some help. Don’t abuse this tip, though, or they might get tired of you asking. ;) My partner is English speaker and every time I have a doubt with an English text, especially if I think that the term or sentence might be slang or a expression that can’t be translated literally. Most of the times, he solves my doubts. Others, not even him understands the meaning (poor thing, it’s not his fault), but he definitely helps me to understand the text from the point of view of a native, and not from the translator’s one. And I think this is very important when translating: we have to understand the source culture, not just the text itself.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

I am sure you use some of those tips (or all of them), and I bet I have forgotten many others. However, I think with these five you have high chances to get it right. Anyone else has a tip they would like to share? We will be delighted to read them.

Quality Assurance, Localisation and Experience: The Perfect Combination for the Best Localisation (Part II)

In my last post, I was explaining what a developer or publisher has to have into account when localising a game, and I also gave some of examples of games, whose developers or publishers have failed in reaching a good localisation. In this post, I will continue with those suggestions on game localisation.

[En español]

c) Poor knowledge of the game

Something translators would request on time and time again when they are given the task to translate anything is to please provide some context. In the case of games localisation, knowing how the game works is crucial in order to get the most accurate translation for each term or sentence. There are multiple examples of how key the context is for a good localisation. For example, in a game where the player has to collect different kinds of objects, the word “bat” could be translated in different ways if we refer to the animal, the “stick” used to bat a baseball, a table tennis bat, or even a verb implying the player to bat. Therefore, there are 1 out of 5 chances to get it right, and so, not only the context but an image or even the game would be necessary to be able to solve this problem successfully.

d) Poor knowledge of the source language

Another example would be those localisations where the user needs not only to know very well the source language, but also how the game to localise works from within. One example of this would be those cases in which the source in English would use the plural to refer to a single person but without wanting to mention the genre of that person (they/them). In Spanish we also have ways to express this “neutral” genre. However, by seeing the English text in plural, any translator without a wide knowledge of this aspect from the English grammar might be tempted to use the plural, instead of singular.

For example, if we go back to the example of Happy Aquarium, when visiting a neighbour, the user can click on an icon to let the aquarium’s owner know that their fish need feeding. At the top-left corner of the screen, there is an icon with the message: “Let them know”, which could literally be translated into Spanish as: “Díselo a ellos”, in plural. However, in the game, by clicking on this button, you only let know ONE person. The correct form in Spanish should be in singular: “Díselo”. In this case, the translator should wonder if this is a neutral singular form or just plural. If they don’t know, they may ask the client for clarification or, as it was explained in the previous point, play the game and discover what that function does, and so, avoid the error in localisation.

e) Specific requirements for a market or culture

The localisation of a videogame takes place, most of the times, while the videogame is still being created. This facilitates the process of adapting the videogame to certain culture, either because puns and jokes won’t be understood in the target culture (and, therefore, we can change them during the Translation/Localisation process), or because certain parts from the source culture are not allowed or accepted by the target one.

For example, in Germany it is forbidden to show red blood or dismemberment of human bodies, or even certain violent scenes in videogames (and it seems that more laws will appear soon on violent videogames development). Therefore, companies wanting to localise their products for the German gamers must add an option in which blood does not look like blood. This can be very creative, sometimes. Most of the times, it can be removed all together, or the colour can be changed, so it is not red anymore. But the options are infinite (as long as the red colour is not used), and creativity can sometimes can sometimes flourish within the design of the game.

In one of the games of the famous Hitman saga, you could either turn off the option of seeing any blood at all, or even switch it to an option that will show flowers instead of blood. Yes, when Agent 47 kills someone in the German version, the dead person “bleeds” flowers. I might be too twee for some people, but it works for the German censorship. In this case the localisation does not really mean an extra cost, as this “flowery” version is included in all languages and the game is sold in just one SKU, Storage Keeping Unit, which in videogames is usually the format or formats the game is created (DVD, game card, downloadable content, etc.).

Sometimes a videogame may require the game developers to do a special version for a certain culture, which will be sold separately, or in a separate SKU. While I was part of the Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures testing team, I was amazed to learn that the company had to do a special version of the ways to kill an enemy.

Age of Conan is a saga of MMORPG translated into 6 languages, in which the main character, so you, the gamer, has to gain reputation by killing, stealing, helping people, etc. So for you to have an idea of what I mean, just imagine Conan the Barbarian (you can use Arnold Schwarzenegger in this case), slaying enemies with his sword, chopping heads and limbs off and leaving the bodies bleeding to death. Something like that would never be allowed by the German censorship. For this reason, Funcom, the developers, had to create a new version of the game in which the killings were “non-aggressive” (if we can say that). Besides, the character would never chop off any heads or limbs. Blood was also inexistent. Due to all those changes in the code itself, this version had to be sold in a different SKU (on a DVD), aimed only to the German market.

It might seem that localising a game might mean a lot of effort and money, and that doing those special versions may make things too complicated, raise the budget and make the whole project more expensive, but when a game is good and the foreign gamers like the localisation, the sales a company may reach will completely justify the initial expense. Because a good localised product does not have to be too expensive, and it should not add any extra issues to the already complicated software creation. I think it is wrong to believe that, the most important thing when creating a videogame is to keep costs to the minimum, without caring what the result will be. Also, localising a videogame once the whole process is finished or doing it while the product is being created can make a whole of a difference. As Diana Díaz Monzón explains in her article about localisation, “planning the game localisation from the beginning is an investment that may be tremendously profitable: up to 50% of income is obtained from international markets”. The “easy” solution may not always be the cheapest and not even the one providing the best quality.

But with the industry in need of experienced, flexible and hard-working professionals, we should wonder why do we see once and again games that haven’t been properly localised (such as the examples I showed above). Are external contractors the best to do the job or is it better to have everything done internally? I will try to explain these and other questions in my next post.

Thanks for reading.

Curri

Quality Assurance, Localisation and Experience: The Perfect Combination for the Best Localisation (Part I)

First of all, I wanted to apologise for not having updated my blog for so long, but I have been busy on personal things, doing some more website testing, doing some translation tests and, well, embracing the arrival of spring, which will probably be the season with the best weather we will have in London. J I have also been preparing a paper to be published. I have never thought that publishing a paper was so challenging, especially because of the amount of references and the tone you need to use (well, you know me, it’s hard for me to be cold-serious at all times…). But I am still working on it. Hopefully, I will manage to get a good text and I will get it published.

But now it is time to explain you a bit about one of the subjects that really worry me: Quality Localisation of videogames. That was what I talked about at the Conference about Translation and Accessibility on Videogames and Virtual Worlds in Barcelona.

So, Ready? Stady? Go!

[En español]

Quality Assurance, Localisation and Experience: The Perfect Combination for the Best Localisation.

1.- Introduction

Videogames, Arcade games, Facebook applications, smartphone applications, mobile games, online games… Since their first conception in the 50s, and their boom in the 70s, we all have interacted with one those in some way: on an arcade machine at the nearest pub, at our best friend’s house, using our older brother’s consoles, being beaten by our big brother, at the school/university computer (even though this is not allowed) or grabbing our partners’ phone when they aren’t looking… The era of the Internet allowed the games industry to take off and get to what we know it now, where we can interact with other people in our games, or even play and speak at the same time. Nowadays, we are more connected with the rest of the world than ever, and selling a videogame in an international market can prove huge benefits for its creator (Diana Monzón, 2006: 4). It is because of all this that the translation of any game or application is essential for any company that would like to reach top marks in sales worldwide.

But, as it always happens in any business, money seems to be the most important part, and, at the same time, localisation and creating good versions of a game or application for international markets seems to be the least important part of their business. Therefore, the localisation of software is not always up to the highest standards, not only because companies want to save on costs, but probably because they don’t really understand the importance of a localised product and how it can impact on their sales.

2.- What is considered a good localisation?

There are examples of games in which this cultural adaptation has been brought too far.

a) Translations too specific for a culture or a generation

Not long ago, Álvaro García, a blogger who writes about translation in his blog “[Sé lo que] Traducistes”, helped us discovering a fantastic game, which had been localised into Spanish following a parody on a famous Spanish comedian. The whole game was full of expressions used by this comedian in his jokes, which made this localisation not only a bit old-fashioned, but also a bit annoying. It is true that one of the prints of the creativity present in the games localisation is the so-called linguistic variation (which Molina and Hurtado, 2002, defined as “the introduction in the target text of dialects absent in the original for characterisation purposes”), but I think, in this case, the localiser went one step too far. I have not played the game, but we could imagine that, spending around 20 hours reading not only spelling and grammar mistakes but also the same type of language, jokes and twists that used to characterise that comedian, can be very, very tiring. I will mention three examples that made me raise an eyebrow:

1) If you can understand Spanish, in this first image you can see how an extra “l” is added to the end of the last word of each line. This was how this comedian used to pronounce some words. It was funny for a while, but that was 15 years ago. Not anymore. Also, in this case, it shows the lack of imagination of the translator, who instead of doing a proper poem out of three lines, with their corresponding rhyme and metrics, decided to rhyme those lyrics by making the words to finish the same way.

2) In the second case, the translator decided to use one of the insulting words of that comedian. “Fistro” is what this comedian would use to call someone an idiot (pardon my French), even though that word does not exist in Spanish. But the irony of all is that, in the game, this was not used as an insult, but as the name of a character.

3) In some cases, the localisation of some of the characters names was puzzling and difficult to find a relation with the original. And it is not because the translator decided to localise most of the names and use proper Spanish names, which would have made some sort of sense, but the fact that, in some cases, references to this comedian, certain Spanish beverages, insults or even politicians, were added to the localised name.

One good point is that the three main characters were localised properly adapting the original names to how they would be pronounced by a Spanish-speaker:

· Howser → Hauser

· Liam → Liam

· Verde → Verdi

On the other hand, some of the names of the “supporting characters” can bring some giggles or smiles to those Spaniards reading them, and not for the good reasons:

· Jaden → Merluzo (male hake; a fish)

· Mike → Florentino (a TV Presenter)

· Adolf → Rosendo (the name of a Spanish band)

· Lily → Pecadora (Sinner, female)

· Caden → Aznarín (“Little Aznar”. Aznar is a Spanish former politician)

There are also other funny names such as Tintorro (beverage) or Fistra, as well as other very old-fashioned names such as Hortensio, Agapito, Fecunda or Wilfredo (Wilfred), which brings us to our memories names of our grandparents and great grandparents.

This is the full list of names, for your rejoice:

Main characters

· Howser -> Hauser

· Liam -> Liam

· Verde -> Verdi

Secondary characters

· Mr M. -> M.

· Elaine -> Rosario

· Kenzie -> Darío

· Nicole -> Romilda

· Jaden -> Merluzo

· Mike -> Florentino

· Lunasa -> Aurelia

· Keine -> Belén

· Deon -> Wilfredo

· Sadie -> Concepción

· Adolf -> Rosendo

· Lily -> Pecadora

· Caden -> Aznarín

· Shea -> Fabián

· Alena -> Soraya

Unknown characters

· Xavier, Josh, Merlan, Lyrica, Conner, Grace, Kaleb, Aidan y Cace.

· Elias, Ariadna, Hortensio, Agapito, Claudio, Aurora, Fecunda, Fistra, Araceli, Tintorro.

The problem of this localisation is that it can’t travel through time (15 years later, people might not understand the jokes) and people from other countries where Spanish is spoken might not understand it either (not only in Latin America, but also any other person in any country where people might understand Spanish). This is because the localisation has been made for a particular culture, is stuck in a period of time relatively short (what are 5 years of the comedian Chiquito de la Calzada in Spain when Spanish language has been “alive” for 1000 years!). I doubt many of the teenagers nowadays can understand this localisation, as when Chiquito de la Calzada was on TV, they were just babies, or maybe their parents weren’t even together! J

Yes, it is important to adapt the product to the culture, but it has to be understood by most of its members, even better if several generations can understand it. It is also recommendable, especially with humour, that it can work well throughout the years.

b) Localisations unfinished or partly localised

Apart from those cultural-related issues when localising, there are other mistakes in localisation that may come from lack of information about the game to localise or even a poor level of the source language that they might have. Sometimes, it can be as easy as the lack of interest from the developer/distributor to even spend some money on doing a proper localisation. One example of the latter can be found in the so-called Spanish localised version of Happy Aquarium. This is a very simple game, in which the player has to keep and take care of an aquarium by buying fish and making sure they are fed and healthy at all times. But it seems the developers gave up too quickly in localising the game, as they have left it half translated.

The text highlighted in red is translated whereas other items that are always present, such as the Rescue/Ignore icons or even the ‘s after the name of the owner of the Aquarium, aren’t localised. Even in the game tabs at the top, it seems that they forgot to translate basic things such as “My neighbours”.

To be continued...