Found in Translation: Evolving Approaches for the Localization of Japanese Video Games

arts Article Found in Translation: Evolving Approaches for the Localization of Japanese Video Games Carme Mangiron Department of Translation, Interpreting and East Asian Studies, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 08193 Bellaterra, Barcelona, Spain; [email protected] Abstract: Japanese video games have entertained players around the world and played an important role in the video game industry since its origins. In order to export Japanese games overseas, they need to be localized, i.e., they need to be technically, linguistically, and culturally adapted for the territories where they will be sold. This article hopes to shed light onto the current localization practices for Japanese games, their reception in North America, and how users’ feedback can con- tribute to fine-tuning localization strategies. After briefly defining what game localization entails, an overview of the localization practices followed by Japanese developers and publishers is provided. Next, the paper presents three brief case studies of the strategies applied to the localization into English of three renowned Japanese video game sagas set in Japan: Persona (1996–present), Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (2005–present), and Yakuza (2005–present). The objective of the paper is to analyze how localization practices for these series have evolved over time by looking at industry perspectives on localization, as well as the target market expectations, in order to examine how the dialogue between industry and consumers occurs. Special attention is given to how players’ feedback impacted on localization practices. A descriptive, participant-oriented, and documentary approach was used to collect information from specialized websites, blogs, and forums regarding localization strategies and the reception of the localized English versions. The analysis indicates that localization strategies for Japanese games have evolved over time from a higher to a lower degree of cultural adaptation in order to meet target markets’ expectations. However, it was also noted that despite Citation: Mangiron, Carme. 2021. the increasing tendency to preserve the sociocultural content of the original, the language used in Found in Translation: Evolving the translations needs to be vivid and idiomatic in order to reach a wider audience and provide an Approaches for the Localization enjoyable gameplay experience. of Japanese Video Games. Arts 10: 9. https://doi.org/10.3390/arts10010009 Keywords: Japanese video games; game localization; cultural adaptation; localization approaches; localization strategies; domestication; foreignization; reception Received: 2 November 2020 Accepted: 22 January 2021 Published: 26 January 2021 1. Introduction Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral Over the last six decades video games have consolidated as one of the most popular with regard to jurisdictional claims in entertainment options worldwide (Bernal-Merino 2014) and gaming has become the most published maps and institutional affil- lucrative entertainment industry, generating $145.7 billion in 2019, in comparison with iations. $42.5 billion generated by the cinema box office and $20.2 billion from the music industry (Richter 2020). Since the origins of the game industry in the 1960s, Japan has been one of the key players in this sector (Picard 2013; Consalvo 2016; Hutchinson 2019), with companies such as Nintendo, Sony Computer Entertainment, and SEGA playing a significant role in Copyright: © 2021 by the author. the industry’s development, both as a hardware manufacturer and as a software developer Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. and publisher (O’Hagan 2012). Japan is the third largest market for video games, after This article is an open access article China and the United States (Newzoo 2020), and the second country in the world, after distributed under the terms and China, in terms of the dollar value worth of exports of video games-related equipment in conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// 2019, with $2.12 billion worth of exports (Workman 2020). However, in order to move across creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ different boundaries and borders, video games need to undergo a series of transformations 4.0/). (Newman 2019). Adapting a Japanese game to be sold overseas is complex and costly, as Arts 2021, 10, 9. https://doi.org/10.3390/arts10010009 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/arts Arts 2021, 10, 9 2 of 18 they have to be localized, i.e., adapted technically, linguistically, and culturally to meet the target territories expectations (Chandler 2005; O’Hagan and Mangiron 2013; Bernal-Merino 2014). This paper examines how strategies for the localization of Japanese games for the North American market have evolved over the years through the analysis of industry perspectives on localization and target market expectations, as well as how the dialogue between industry and consumers takes place. Special attention is paid to the way in which players’ feedback can impact on localization practices. After briefly describing what game localization entails, an overview of the localization practices followed by Japanese developers and publishers is provided. Next, the paper presents three brief case studies of the strategies applied to the localization into English for three renowned Japanese video game sagas set in Japan: Persona (1996–present), Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (2005–present), and Yakuza (2005–present). This paper maps out how localization strategies for these series have evolved over time and how sociocultural, audience, and industrial factors may have impacted on the development of localization practices and, therefore, on the transnational circulation of Japanese video games. 2. Methodology This paper was written with a descriptive and qualitative Translation Studies perspec- tive, although it also drew on existing literature from other disciplines, such as Japanese Studies, Game Studies, and Media Studies. First, I provide a brief review of scholarly research on game localization and, more specifically, the localization of Japanese video games. Then I present three case studies of Japanese video game sagas. The criteria for selecting the sagas were the following: • In order to be able to track any possible changes in localization strategies, it had to be a saga that spanned over at least 10 years, as from the author’s professional experience as a game translator, there have been changes in the approach to the localization of Japanese games over this period of time. • It had to be a saga of video games that is set in Japan or includes a significant amount of references to Japanese culture, in order to examine how such cultural markers had been dealt with for the release of the North American version. • The video games had to contain a high amount of text, in order to be able to explore the translation and adaptation processes they underwent in detail, so games containing features of role playing games (RPGs) or visual novels were deemed most appropriate. • The localization of at least some of the games in the saga had been discussed widely on the Internet by translators, editors, or producers of the localization team, as well as reviewed or discussed in specialized sites, blogs or players’ forums. With all these criteria and due to the scope of the paper, the selection was narrowed down to the following three sagas: Atlus’s Persona1 (1996–present), Capcom’s Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (2005–present), and Yakuza (2005–present) by SEGA and Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio. The paper also adopts what Saldanha and O’Brien(2013) describe as a participant- oriented approach, focusing on the agents involved in the localization process (e.g., translators, editors, producers) and the end users (mainly players and specialized journalists). A documentary approach (Newman 2019) was also applied, whereby the opinions of localization practitioners, game critics, and players were collected from secondary resources publicly available on the Internet, such as interviews, blogs, specialized websites, and 1 The Persona series is a spin-off of Atlus’s Shin Megami Tensei franchise (1987–present). However, as the first game of the franchise to be localized into English was Revelations: Persona in 1996, the paper focuses on the Persona saga to obtain a clearer picture of how localization practices at Atlus have evolved over the years. In addition, as it is a smaller saga, it fits better with the scope of the paper. Arts 2021, 10, 9 3 of 18 discussion forums.2 With this approach I hope to expand the scope of studies about localization by including agents who are involved in the production and the reception of the localized versions and by widening the lens to examine the communicative exchanges that take place over the Internet, which can provide a wealth of resources for documentary qualitative analysis of online communication (Bryman 2012). 3. What Is Game Localization? Localization consists of a series of complex technical, linguistic, cultural, legal, and marketing processes in order to sell a game in a different territory while also maintaining the “look and feel” of the original game and providing target players with a similar gameplay experience to that of the original players (Mangiron and O’Hagan 2006). It is a type of functional and user-centered translation, where priority is given to the players and their gameplay experience. The skopos or main brief of game localization is to provide a version that allows target players to experience the game as if it had been originally developed

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