Linguistic varieties in game localization: the dialects and races of World of Warcraft

Abstract

The main objective of this paper is to understand more about the nature of game localization by investigating how linguistic variation is localized in a game. We selected the Brazilian Portuguese localization of the game World of Warcraft (Blizzard Entertainment) to examine the players’ reception of the localized product and of the solutions adopted by the translators to deal with the issue of regional and social dialects used to characterize the races in the game. In order to do so, we collected and analyzed players’ comments from official Blizzard forums on the usage of regional and social dialects in the localized version. We looked into this reception in the light of game localization’s purposes (O'HAGAN & MANGIRON, 2006; BERNAL-MERINO, 2008; DI MARCO, 2007), especially the goal of preserving gaming experience for the target audience. Considering that there are not enough works about linguistic variation in game localization, we resorted to studies on linguistic variation and translation in literature too (such as TAIVALKOSKI-SHILOV, 2003). As a result, we expect to have shed further light on the process of reconstructing race identity in a localized game as well as on the approaches by which game localization solves issues of linguistic variation.