Media4All: the «Oscar» of the Audiovisual translation (Part I)

A week after the big audiovisual translation event, I have managed to find a a few minutes to explain you how the experience was. As many of you may know, I presented a paper about videogames localisation and quality assurance (a new version, slightly different from the one I did last December in December, which I started to explain to you about a few months back), therefore, the whole event was even more special for me.

The adventure started on Tuesday the 28^th. In the morning there were some workshops on offer for some people. For others, like me, the whole thing started in the evening, as the Spanish Embassy had invited some of the lecturers and collaborators to the embassy. I went there with Jennifer Vela, who I as looping forward to meet again. After Jorge Díaz-Cintas, Fréderic Chaume and the Spanish Ambassador in London addressed their speeches to us, we were allowed to socialise a bit before we had to move to the Imperial College London to the presentation party. It was in this little while at the Embassy that Jennifer introduced me to some of the translation celebrities (Wow! This girl knows loads of important people!), included Miguel Ángel Bernal, one of the most important researchers in videogames localisation. I also saw known faces, such as Pilar Orero’s (I love her!) or Diana Sánchez, who was my teacher at university back in 2003-2004.

Afterwards, we headed to the Imperial College London, where some drinks and munchies were waiting for us: our first networking and socialisation night at Media4All. Jennifer and I spent just a few hours there (including the hour that took us to ay goodbye ^_^) were very interesting. I met some interesting people, got some contacts and enjoyed to see so many people as crazy as me about translation and quality. I also met another teacher from my uni, Eva Espasa, with whom I hope I can collaborate very soon in something (stay tuned: second part coming soon).

The following day, on Wednesday, we started at 9 am and Julia Buckingham opened the conference and introduced a Round Table about Taking Stock in Audiovisual Translation. It was interesting to see how pretty was everything from the point of view of the big multinational company, which infuriated many of the audiovisual freelance translators present. And that was just the beginning… I couldn’t wait to see how everything would end.

After this round table, it was time for a break, tea/coffee and biscuits included. After the break it was the time to go separate ways and choose different rooms, as the parallel presentations were about to start: a total of 5 different rooms offering different presentations simultaneously. Decisions, decisions, decisions. Too many interesting subjects! However, as human clonation hasn’t been invented (yet), nor is teleporting, we had to choose which presentations to go to. As it was the beginning and I had been checking for a few hours, I knew exactly where I was going to go: Audiodescription. Jennifer Vela was presenting a paper and Pilar Orero was the chair, so I couldn’t miss it!

However, it was time of the “anecdote of the day”, and probably, the anecdote of the whole conference. Half-way through the first paper, the FIRE alarm was activated and we had to evacuate the building. We were told that, somewhere in the building, they were recording the last movie of Batman (no, I didn’t see Christian Bale, even though I was looking for him), so we just blamed the recording team for that. I am sure they made something explode and they forgot to warn the security team.

About half an hour later, we were allowed to go back in and we restarted the presentations. Jennifer’s presentation was very interesting, as she compared Audiodescription in different European countries and the USA, as well as the differences in the legal aspect, which proved to be tricky, as nowadays, researches have to pay constant attention to, as rules and regulations keep changing and the information that is true right now, might be obsolete just a few weeks later. Two attendees confirmed her that new laws about Audiodescription and accessibility had been created in some countries. Great news for the accessibility world, aren’t they?

Lunch time arrived, and we went to the food hall to grab some nibbles. It became a bit stressful as it seems the catering service didn’t realise that we were so many hungry people, waiting to be fed. Waiters and waitresses could barely leave the kitchen and the food on their trays was already finished. I had to wait for a long while to be able to grab my first bowl of food. I went to the kitchen Entrance (yes, like a hyena waiting for the lion family to fill their bellies J), where I found Pablo, and asked him to help me get something toe at, as my breakfast and the few biscuits I had during the tea break had been digested a long time ago. My surprise was meeting there a follower of this blog, David (how exciting! A fan!), who also helped me to get another bowl of food. Isn’t that cute?

Lunch time ended and the next presentations session started. This time it was the turn of characters translatability in movies and the effect of those characters in the audiences. Three very interesting papers. On one hand, we were given (loads of) data about audiences in cinema festivals in Italy. Then, Carlos de Pablos explained to us part of his research about how different audiences (people who had contact with Spanish culture and people who had no contact whatsoever, as well as Spanish audiences) perceived the different characters and roles in Pedro Almodóvar’s movies. The results were astonishing, and helped me understand why British people thought I was a bit of a nutter J The last presentation was given by an old university classmate, who explained how characters from the Lord of the Rings books had been “translated” in the movies. I had already seen his presentation in Barcelona, but there he had focus his study on videogames, and not movies, but it was as interesting as the first time I heard him.

Another tea/coffee break and the last session of the day started. Now my heart was divided, as I was interested in the papers being presented in two of the rooms, and so I tried to go first to one of them and, then, to the other one.

I started with audiodescription in museums, which was pretty interesting. They explained that in Ottawa museum they had an App for iPhone and iPad with audiodescription and subtitles of each of their artworks. It was like an accessible audioguide. The rest of the presentation, I was a bit lost, as it seemed they were advertising how great their museum was, and we weren’t interested on listening to commercials, were we? ;)

And the «Vino de honor» (Honour wine) time arrived. I decided to go for juice, as I had some work to do at home, but it seems wine honoured many of the guests. ;) After the wine and networking time, we went to look for a place to have some dinner. The idea was to go to have a pizza, but we couldn’t fidn the place and ended up having English pub dinner. And, as it happens in all English pubs at 11 pm are last orders, so we had to leave. My presentation was the day after, so I decided that my party time was over for the night and went home.

To be continued…

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

And the winner is...

On my last post, I explained that I had been nominated for “The Best 100 Language Lovers”. To be more precise, I had been nominated to the 100 language tweeterers (@Currixan) and also, the Facebook profile of this blog, Localización y testeo con Curri, had also been nominated for the 100 Language Facebook Fan Pages. The results we published some time ago (sorry, I haven’t had much time to prepare this post to announce it), and all I can say is that it has been quite good for me, having into account that both my Facebook page was created only around 6 months ago, and my Twitter profile had been around for less than a year.

And so, the rankings are as follows:

Twitter: @Currixan was 16 out of 100 → You can see the Top-25 here. If you have a Twitter profile, have a look at their profiles and follow the guys and girls on the list (well, apart from me, of course ^_^), as some of them offer really good info. Before the contest, I was already following a few of them, such as Pablo, Catherine or Silvina), and there are others, who I have started following after the contest, and they have tweeted very interesting news about languages and translations.

Facebook Page (Localización y testeo con Curri): I was 16 out of 100 → No, it is not a mistake. Maybe 16 should be my new lucky number, but yes, I was, again, 16^th. The top-25 Facebook fan pages can be seen here. It’s worth having a look, as many other known translators and followers of this blog also had good results, such as Ismael, Pablo or Leticia.

It is also worth having a look to the other two categories:

Professional blogs, where you can find people like Clara, with her blog «Bootheando», Pablo («Algo más que traducir»), Judy and Dagmar, with her excellent bilingual blog «Translation Times», the well-known José Yuste Frías, or Corinne McKay’s blog called «Thoughts on Translation».

Language learning blogs, where «Fluent in 3 months» won the prize to the best language learning blog thanks to the good tips suggested. In this category, there are blogs with tips to learn many different languages, so have a look at the list.

And last, but not least: from the contestants in all categories (i.e., 400 in total), they did a list of the 100 language lovers, where my Twitter was ranked 44th, which I think it’s a pretty good ranking.

All this, thanks to you, and you, and you, because you have encouraged me to write. And you also have voted for me. Thank you very, very much.

And the time to vote has come

The Best Language Lovers 2011 contest, organised by LexioPhiles and bab.la, has started.

A few weeks ago, I learnt that someone had nominated my Facebook page about this blog for the Favourite Language Facebook Page 2011 category. Yesterday, seeing that I was amongst the 100 best pages, I decided to announce it to everybody. My amaze increased when someone told me that, besides, my Twitter account was ALSO nominated for the Favourite Language Twitterer 2011 category. You can’t even imagine how happy I am, so I would like toyou’re you that, if you think that my page or my Twitter account (or both) deserve to win (I used both to publish news, articles, blog entries, etc. about language, videogames, localisation, etc.), please, vote for me. J

It’s as easy as:

1. Go to the page with the nominations:

- Favourite Language Twitterer: http://www.lexiophiles.com/language-lovers-toplist/time-to-vote-for-your-favorite-language-twitterer-2011

- Favourite Language Facebook Page: http://www.lexiophiles.com/language-lovers-toplist/time-to-vote-for-your-favorite-language-facebook-page-2011

2. Find within the list the Facebook page: «Localización y testeo con Curri» or the Twitter account: @Currichan (Curri Barceló).

3. Scroll down and click on «Vote».

What you get in exchange?

Make me very, very happy, and encouraging me to continue writing, publishing news, speaking about languages, videogames, etc.

Of course, if you think there is another Facebook page or Twitter account deserveing more your vote, I don’t mind if you vote for them. There are many good pages and Twitter profiles, which also deserve the prize.

I also suggest you to visit the other two categories:

- Language Professional Blog: http://www.lexiophiles.com/language-lovers-toplist/time-to-vote-for-your-favorite-language-professional-blog-2011

Donde aparecen nominados estupendos compañeros de profesión como Pablo, Clara, José, Álex/Mox, Corinne y Sebastián,

- Langauge Learning Blog: http://www.lexiophiles.com/language-lovers-toplist/time-to-vote-for-your-favorite-language-learning-blog-2011

May the best win!

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.