TRANSLATION OF COMPUTER GAMES: CHALLENGES AND STRATEGIES

ABSTRACT

As the global games market has expanded, so has demand for localised products - yet existing research tends to treat all games as a single category. This review examines whether, and how, translation challenges differ across game genres. Five genres are analysed - RPG, FPS, puzzle, visual novel, and RTS - drawing on nine academic sources published between 2006 and 2020. Each genre is shown to carry a distinct profile of primary challenges: branching dialogue and cultural depth in RPGs; real-time interface pressure in FPS games; code-bound string constraints in puzzle games; voice-acted, culturally embedded content in visual novels; and dense, consistent terminology in RTS games. These differences suggest that genre-blind translation strategies are unlikely to serve any single genre well. The review concludes by proposing a genre-aware approach and calling for empirical research to test its effectiveness on real localization projects.

Keywords: game localisation, video game translation, genre studies, translation challenges, localisation strategies, translation of computer games.

Introduction

The computer games industry has grown rapidly over the past two decades, driven by advances in hardware and the spread of internet connectivity. Games now reach players through consoles, smartphones, tablets, virtual reality headsets, and personal computers - and the size of that global audience has given publishers strong commercial incentives to offer their products in more languages. Unlike literary texts or conventional audiovisual material, a game is an interactive, multimedia artefact that places simultaneous demands on the translator across technical, linguistic, cultural, and spatial dimensions.

The academic study of game translation was established in the mid-2000s. Bernal-Merino [1] was among the first to describe games as a distinct object of translation research, drawing attention to the particular challenges posed by code-bound text and the need for creative adaptation within tight technical constraints. Since then, a body of scholarship has developed under the umbrella of game localisation - a term that reflects the broader cultural and technical work involved, beyond the linguistic transfer implied by translation alone [2].

Despite this progress, existing frameworks share a significant limitation: they treat games as a largely homogeneous category. Genre - the single most important variable in determining what a translator will encounter - has received little systematic attention. A first-person shooter and a role-playing game may both be “video games”, but the translation challenges they pose are quite different in kind and priority. No existing study maps these differences across genres in a structured way [3].

This paper addresses that gap. Through a review of nine academic sources, it identifies and compares the primary translation challenges associated with five game genres - RPG, FPS, puzzle, visual novel, and RTS - and proposes a simple genre-based framework to guide translators and inform future research.

Methods

This review set out to identify and compare translation challenges across five computer game genres. The genres - role-playing games (RPGs), first-person shooters (FPS), puzzle games, visual novels, and real-time strategy games (RTS) - were selected on the basis of their frequency in the existing localization literature [1, 2, 3]. Since all sources consulted are publicly available academic publications, no ethical approval was required.

The analysis used a coding framework adapted from Bernal-Merino [1, 2], which distinguishes four categories of challenge: technical (code-bound text and string constraints), linguistic (idioms, register, character voice), cultural (references, norms, politeness systems), and spatial (interface limits, real-time readability). Applying this framework consistently across all nine sources made it possible to map identified challenges onto the five genres using a matrix approach.

The number of sources is modest and the analysis qualitative. That said, the consistency of findings across independent studies - for example, the convergence between Dietz [5] and Šiaučiūnė and Liubinienė [6] on spatial constraints in action genres - supports confidence in the genre distinctions that emerge.

Results

Previous research on game translation has largely treated games as a single category. Czech [4] called for an integrated perspective on localization but did not differentiate by genre; O'Hagan [3] offered a thorough critical overview without proposing genre-specific strategies. The present review takes a different approach, mapping challenges from nine sources onto five genres using a four-category framework [1, 2].

The results broadly confirm Bernal-Merino's [1] original observation that technical and spatial constraints are central to game localization.

The clearest pattern is the divide between narrative-driven and action-oriented games. RPGs and visual novels are dominated by linguistic and cultural demands - the need to render branching dialogue, maintain consistent character voice, and navigate culturally specific reference systems.

The comparison between FPS and RTS is worth pausing on, since the two genres look similar at first glance. Both operate in real time and both impose spatial pressure on the translator. But the nature of that pressure is different. In FPS games, Šiaučiūnė and Liubinienė [6] found that on-screen interface text commonly disappears within two to three seconds, which makes condensation the overriding priority. RTS games, as Dietz [5] showed, present a different problem: hundreds of unique unit names and ability descriptions that must remain internally consistent across an equally large number of text strings. Speed matters in both cases, but in RTS the greater challenge is terminological coherence rather than brevity alone.

One limitation should be acknowledged: puzzle games are represented by only a single source [1], which limits the reliability of the claims made for that genre specifically. The technical challenge profile assigned to puzzle games here is consistent with what other sources report about code-bound text more generally [4], so the characterisation is unlikely to be wrong - but it would benefit from broader empirical support.

Discussion

As far as can be determined from the existing literature, this review is the first to compare translation challenges systematically across five game genres. The main finding - that each genre presents a distinct challenge profile - has implications for both localization practice and translator training that are worth unpacking in some detail.

The similarity between FPS and RTS, combined with their crucial difference in terminology management, is perhaps the most practically significant result. It would be reasonable, on the surface, to treat real-time action games as a single category for training purposes. The evidence suggests this would be a mistake. A translator moving from FPS work to RTS work - or vice versa - is not simply shifting register or speed; they are encountering a qualitatively different kind of problem. FPS translation rewards concision above all else. RTS translation rewards consistency and systematic management of a dense terminology network. Both skills can be trained, but they need to be trained separately.

It is well established that game localization requires translators to hold technical, linguistic, cultural, and spatial considerations in mind simultaneously [2, 4]. What this review adds is the observation that the weight of each consideration varies by genre - and that this variation is systematic enough to have clear consequences for how translators should be selected, trained, and briefed. Genre-specific preparation is not a refinement of good localization practice; on the evidence here, it is a basic requirement of it.

Conclusion

This review set out to ask whether translation challenges differ across computer game genres - and the answer is yes, clearly and systematically. Drawing on nine academic sources, the analysis shows that each of the five genres examined presents a distinct primary challenge: linguistic and cultural depth in RPGs; real-time spatial pressure in FPS games; technical string constraints in puzzle games; cultural and spatial complexity in visual novels; terminological density in RTS games. Genre-blind translation strategies cannot accommodate this variation, and the evidence suggests they are likely to produce suboptimal results in any single genre.

The practical upshot is straightforward: translators working in game localization should approach different genres with different priorities and different toolkits, and training programmes should reflect this. The theoretical upshot is equally clear: genre deserves a more central place in localization research than it has occupied so far.

References:

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