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

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.