From fan to fan: the translations of Chrono Trigger

Abstract

This paper was written under the umbrella of Translation Studies in general and of fan translation and game translation in particular. Through the analysis of the translation into Brazilian Portguese made by fans of the game Chrono Trigger it was possible to show how fans may get results similar to those achieved by localization professionals. In order to define the object of our analysis we prioritized a cultural approach to translation following authors such as Nord (1994), Newmark (1998), Vermeer (1987) and Fish (1980). We have also used the concept of “transcreation” as employed by Mangiron and O’Hagan (2006). The selection of cultural terms from the game – despite it being a fictional universe – allowed for the investigation of aspects of those translations that highlight the clash of two or more different cultures. With that in mind, an adaptation of Venuti’s translation proposal (1995) on how to translate cultural marked texts was used, along with the translation techniques suggested by Molina and Hurtado (2002). The names of the characters in Chrono Trigger were then analyzed in the translation of two groups of fans: CBT and Ips Center.