Translation and paratranslation in video game localization

Abstract

Digital technology has definitely and radically transformed the working conditions in translation, giving birth to new audiovisual productions where text – understood as purely verbal – is accompanied, surrounded, mixed up, prolonged, introduced and presented by an increasingly multimediatic paratextual production. The audiovisual and multimedia text of videogames is created by using different signifying codes other than the purely linguistic: sounds, music, melodies, gestures, along with the various embodiments of image (color, symbols, markings, signals, pictures, icons , pictograms, landscapes, drawings, etc.) are paratextual elements that prove to be as important – or more – as the purely linguistic units. Reading, interpreting and translating for videogame dubbing and subtitling depends on the degree of understanding of the meaning network woven between the textual elements, on the one hand, and all the paratextual elements, on the other. The successful localization of a videogame depends on a good translation of the text, on the one hand, and on an even better paratranslation of the paratexts, on the other, because text and paratexts create together the imaginary of the game one experiences on the screen.