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...

List of conferences and activities for translators, interpreters and linguists taking place in Spain and some other countries

After the fruitful experience I had at the conference I participated in last December in Barcelona, I have decided to go to more events during this year. As I said in a previous post, I will be at the Media4All conference held in London in June, but until then, there are loads of things happening in the "Conference for translators" world.

So, to have a visual image of when each event happens, I have decided to create a document with all the conferences, courses, talks, etc. happening not only in Spain but also in other countries. The idea came after speaking to two colleagues, Eugenia and Jennifer, who were also thinking about creating a list of activities, so I told them why we didn't share them online :) For now, I only have those happening in the first six months of the year, but I hope I will have more information about others happening in the future. The document is in Spanish, but do not hesitate to ask me for a translated one if you need it. Of course, anybody can add any other events you know and aren't present in the document, as well as letting me know of anything that might improve the document.

The link is the following (in Spanish): https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0Ao0favkU3Ua4dGRCZmpXX3VkVmlVY0ZYTlRyRm02Z0E&hl=en&authkey=COyjwd4L

Let's hope this way we will have more events to go to and meet each other :)

Have a good day!

Another paper, another Conference: Media4All

Today I have good news :) I have just received an e-mail confirming the approval of my abstract presented in order to take part in the «4th Intentational Media 4 All Conference - Audiovisual Translation: Taking Stock» that will be held at the end of June in London. If you want more information, here is the link:

http://www.imperial.ac.uk/humanities/translationgroup/mediaforall4/

I am very happy. I loved the experience altogether: preparing the presentation (even though I didn't have much time to do it), meeting other people from the same industry and also other industries related to videogames, explaining to other people my point of view about Videogames Localisation and, above all, I loved having created a bit of debate about the best way to carry out the localisation of videogames.

The conference in London, though, is dedicated to Audiovisuals, but they wanted videogames localisation to be part of it. For the time being, I know Miguel Bernal will participate and will be doing something on videogames localisation, so I think I will focus more on the videogames localisation testing. Miguel Bernal is like a guru of videogames localisation, so I won't have much more to add to his speech :) Besides, I want to do something a bit different from what I did in Barcelona. I have a few months to prepare it, and yes, this time, I won't do it rushing and running at the last moment (I swear it by Link!).

I hope I can see some old faces and also meet new ones. And I hope it won't be the last one!!

Regards from New York.

Curri

One week of testing...

Dear fans and readers of this blog.

I know I promised to publish the text of the Conference I did in Barcelona last December, but yesterday I got a call from the company I worked with last year (so, suring the first half of 2010), as they needed someone for a week to do some testing, I am not going to have much time. There are good news, at least for me, even though today it has been hard to get up so early, get dressed at full speed, run to catch the tube (this morning, instead of "Singing in the rain", I would call it "Running in the rain"), get out of the tube and continue running to get to the company only 10 mins late.

So, what am I going to do over there? Well, something that might seem boring but it is well paid, and if the year starts with money, it ends with money. Today I have spent about 7 hours preparing a test plan of one of the betting games websites they have, which I already had done last summer, but it is just that it was a new system this time. What a fun!

I will therefore ask you not to forget about me. I will try to continue annoying you all over Facebook and Twitter, as usual. An, if you are good, I might show you what type of test plan I have been working on :).

Have a lovely weekend!

Curri

Ho-ho-ho! Merry Xmas & a better New Year!

I wish you a Merry Christmas

I wish you a Merry Christmas

I wish you a Merry Christmas

And a Happy New Year

My Premier as a Conference speaker

Hello everybody!

First of all, apologies for not having updated my blog for such a long time. Back in September, I learnt that a Conference about Localisation and Videogames Accessibility was meant to be held in Barcelona, on the 2nd and 3rd of December. I thought it would be very interesting to take part in it, as I haven’t been in any conferences about translation since I left University (during my University years I went to a few Jornades de Traducció –Translation Conferences- which happen every year). But during one of those days of transitory insanity, where Pablo Muñoz and Ana Ramírez didn’t stop bugging me to present a paper as speaker, I realised that, well, some day, had to be the first time, and I decided to prepare a paper. I contacted the organisers, who also insisted on me going there to participate as a speaker, as they wanted to hear what I had to say about the localisation industry... And I couldn’t resist to so much imploring (well, well, it wasn’t really imploring, ¡but it sounds so good! ^_^).

I had about a week to prepare an summary explaining what I wanted to say. But... ¿what do I wanted to say? ¡I had no idea! Ok, both P

ablo and Ana were telling me that I had to go, but they didn’t specify what they wanted to know from me J Well, at least, that was my excuse. I imagine that, my subconscious, had another excuse, the excuse translators and writers constantly find: Fear to the «White page». It was hard to overcome that fear, but I managed to overcome it, wrote the abstract and sent it. I had a few weeks to prepare my paper. Well, it’s still a long time, isn’t it? Especially, because I didn’t have much work to do.

But, amigos, you can’t imagine how annoying Mr. Murphy can be. He is like a hyena, always lying in wait for some distraction, or for someone wishing something, to intervene and pester. And that is what happened. I was sooo happy with my spare time and the opportunity to be able to prepare properly my paper… And, BANG! Agencies started sending me work, new people contacted me to offer work... Of course, for obvious reasons, I couldn’t say no to that (who knows when I will have work again?) :)

Thanks goodness, as my best university friend Núria says, sometimes «luck» comes when you less expect it (more than luck, I needed time). I spent a month without any rest. I overcame a tonsil infection and two colds, but I tackled it head on :) I started putting on paper everything I had in my head, everything I wanted to shout at the World about, and what I think of the Localisation industry, and I didn’t stop until I finished it. And I felt great, man! I think I felt as good as if I have had a baby… But without the pain bit.

I managed to create a decent Power Point (isn’t it?) on time to the presentation, even though I haven’t used a Power Point program since 2003, and even though the trip was stressful and I hadn’t properly rested for about a week, and also my voice started to sound more to that of a truck’s driver, I managed to pass the task!

But is not that simple. I managed it, yes, but I got so excited while I was talking that, half way through my presentation, I was told that I had only 3 minutes left, of the 20 minutes allotted to each speaker. I confess that I added a few things that I didn’t prepare, and probably that is the reason why it was a bit longer than expected, but hey, that is what happens when you have a public that stares at you with open eyes and absorbing brains, trying to get as much information as possible: one feels bigger and can’t help it but share all her experiences with her audience. I think it took me about 10 more minutes to finish (sorry!), but it turned out quite good, and it seems the audience liked it. And, well, I also felt great by being able to deliver such a good speak in such a short period of time. But that wasn’t all. It seems I said some things that surprised some people for bad, and others, for good. But you all know I am just like that: I first speak, then think. I was probably the one who dare to say what everybody were thinking but didn’t dare to say. Yes, that is me, Curri Barceló. For everything else, Mastercard :)

I also loved to hear other points of view, learn new things (as the issues color-blind people have when playing videogames... Yes, I had never thought about that!) and, well, discover that more people than what I knew know me ;) (my favourite sentence of the people attending to the Conference was: "Oh, you are Curri! Finally!»… I could't believe it! But... «I luv it». Thanks to all for making me so happy.

Oh, yeah, ladies and gentleman, I have loved the experience so much that I want to repeat it. What the heck have I done in the last 6 years? I have missed so many «translation» parties! I could have written so many articles and, well, who knows, even a book. From now on, get ready, because Curri is back for good. I hope you like «Curri» (it’s a pun), because you will enjoy me for a long time ^_^

Thank you for reading.

Machine translation + Post-editing... Really?

I was going to start blogging by talking about how to start, how to create a CV and a cover letter, etc., but this morning I received one of those LinkedIn e-mails, in which there was an alert about a new post in a forum about translation: Machine translation and human post-editing.

I felt it could be interesting to see what that person wanted to say about machine translation, but my surprise was to find another of those people who think machines may substitute translators in the future, and that giving the translator a machine translation to post-edit actually helps the translator and, therefore, that should be pay with lower rates. I really couldn't leave it there, so I had to reply to that article. Here I will copy what I said in that forum, what do I think about automated/machine translation, and why me and other translators feel beaten up every time we read one of those articles.

The article was posted at the SDL website: http://blog.sdl.com/blog/2010/11/machine-translation-post-editing-a-new-skill-for-linguists.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&goback=.gde_839927_member_34055918

And it really scared me that SDL allows something like that to be published, because it might mean that they actually practise that type of translation. I just hope I am wrong.

And this is what I posted in the LinkedIn group where this article was posted:

"I am sorry to disagree, Adriana, but I feel automated translation is an utterly useless tool. I agree with Elena that it seems we are the baddies in this movie, because we just want to do our job, which is delivering quality translations. Machine translations ARE a re-translation, because, at the end of the day, you still have to read the original text and see how close to the machine-translated text is. And believe me, I have done a few of those, and I would be quicker by just translating the text from scratch.

You say that machine translators are made, apart from the "money saving" reason, because there is no time to do proper translations. Well, it takes me the same time to translate a text from zero than reading the crap machine translation, read then the English text and think of which part of the machine-translated text do I need to change. 98% of the times is everything.

It's like when someone asks you: "What does this word mean in your language?" and then they tell you: "Is this X?" And from that point on, you cannot thing. That person has put a word in your mind, and you brain can only think about that word, even though you know is the wrong one. That is the feeling I have sometimes with automated translations.

I am not going to say that they are useless. I use them when they give me a bad English text to translate, which I cannot understand, and then they also give me the French. Being French closer to Spanish, I do an automated translation from French into Spanish to see if, this way, I can understand better what the English says. I do not speak French and I have never learnt French at school. I can tell you, sometimes it gives me an idea, but the result is nowhere near a proper translation, so I always do like a mixture between the translation I understand from the English and what that French translation has given me. Other times, it just confuses me even more, and I end up asking the client to please explain me what they mean with that specific sentence and to make sure the English text makes total sense.

Finally, I am going to give you an easy example.

It's Sunday and your toilet breaks. You don't want to pay the expensive rates of a plumber, so you decide that you can fix it yourself, because "it can't be too difficult". You dismantle the whole system and try to see where the problem is and, after one hour, you decide that you can't fix it. You assemble everything again, as good as you can, because you aren't an expert in plumbing and decide to call the plumber. But you tell him that, because you have already tried to fix the problem, you are going to pay him only a third of the fee, and no Sunday fee at all but a normal weekday fee.

What do you think the plumber will say?

Same will happen with any professional. Do you think a lawyer will reduce the fees he charges you just because you have done half of the research he needed? NO. Is a chemist/Pharmacist giving you a discount if you tell them that you don't need the paper wrapping the medicines or the bag they offer you? NO. Will a restaurant manager give you a discount if you grab the pizza from the over yourself? Probably no (maybe he invites you to an extra glass of wine, but I doubt he will allow you to leave the restaurant paying 1/3 of the bill only). Or imagine something even more puzzling: you need an open-heart surgery and the only clinic that provides that service is a private clinic so, in order to save you some cash, you tell the anesthetist that you will put yourself the anesthetist, and you ask the nurses to leave the premises, because your brother and sister will help out the surgeon. What do you think it would happen?

So, what makes anybody think that translators should be different?

I suppose the case that you expose, in which a company decides to use the MT they have to create a new translation will work in a 2-5% of the cases? I can only think that it can work if you have an MT of a manual of a, let's say, a camera, and they have created a new camera that has only a few updates and the manual is practically the same. Then, yes, this could work. But wouldn't make more sense to just give the translator the MT and ask him to charge the 100% matches at a reduce rate? At the end of the day, maybe the previous translator had a few mistakes in the translation, and the new translator decides that some words need to be changed."

I think machine translations are too little too frequent and are destroying the industry all together. One thing is to use them to just have an idea of what a text reads, but using it as if it was a translation made by a person to then give it to a translator to edit, I think is unfair for us, as professionals, and also an insult to our job and our industry altogether.

Feel free to post a comment with your thought about this.

Thanks for reading.

Curri

Blog under construction

I am getting ready for my leap into the glamorous world of renowned translators. I will share my ideas, frustrations and tips about videogame and software localisation, as well as how to stop the quality assurance (also known as testing) from driving you crazy.

Please, bear with me :)