BEHIND THE SCENES
LOCALISATION
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For a game that relies on dialogue and characterisation as heavily as ‘Hotel Dusk: Room 215’ , localisation is a key process to ensure the title can be enjoyed overseas. For NOE’s Product Localisation and Testing Service in Frankfurt, Germany, it is their daily business to make the most out of the source material when adapting it for the different European markets.
We asked the localisation team of Hotel Dusk: Room 215 to tell us about the hurdles they met on the road to the game’s release.
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Paul Logue: “Hi. My name’s Paul Logue. As software producer, I was responsible for the execution and day-to-day coordination of the Hotel Dusk software localisation. What exactly does this entail? Well, apart from daily task designation, problem solving and brainstorming, I made sure that the title was released on schedule and in a form that realises CING's original vision. I also like to think I provided the translators with a shoulder to cry on!” (laughs)
Mark Boyle: “My name is Mark Boyle and I am a Japanese-English translator. I was in charge of modifying the NOA translation for the UK market, as well as doing some retranslation work from the original Japanese. Hotel Dusk was the first major project that I’ve worked on.”
Frédéric Venet: “My name is Frédéric Venet and I was the lead Japanese-French translator on Hotel Dusk. Like Mark, this was my very first ‘big project’ as a translator but I'm also working on a number of other major projects at this very moment.”
Fabrizio Cattaneo: “Hello, I'm Fabrizio Cattaneo and I was the Japanese-Italian translator for this game. I have to say that Hotel Dusk was also my first experience with a big title! I’ve got other projects in the pipeline at the moment, but I’m afraid I can’t say anything about them!”
Thomas Ito: “I’m Thomas Ito, and I was responsible for the German part of the localisation for this game. Other titles I have translated include ‘Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga’ on Game Boy Advance, ‘Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door’ on Nintendo GameCube, and ‘The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess’ for Wii. However, some of them were translated before I got married, so in the credits you'll only find my maiden name...” (laughs)
Raúl Arol: “Hello. My name is Raúl Arol and I worked as lead Japanese-Spanish translator on Hotel Dusk. During the last year I also worked as lead translator on Square-Enix's ‘Kingdom Hearts II’ and translated other titles such as Red Steel and ‘Warhammer: Mark of Chaos’.”
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Can you explain the process of localising a game to our readers, applied to Hotel Dusk? What sort of phases does the project go through?
PL: “Certainly. Broadly speaking, every localisation we produce here passes through a similar set of stages. After we plan the project, chart its course and identify any potential pitfalls, translation starts. Here the translators translate the texts, adapt certain content to make it suitable for audiences in their own respective countries, and then they give the fruits of their labour a final polish. Hotel Dusk's translation was completed in around four weeks.
“Following this, we have a testing period, where a team of native speakers ensure that all texts are correct and that the software is problem-free. For Hotel Dusk, this stage lasted three weeks. Finally, from the software side, there are a further series of safeguards in place to ensure that our software functions correctly.
“Whilst all this is happening, our artwork team is hard at work creating the packaging and manual, and once both software and artwork are ready, it's a simple matter of bringing it all together and shipping the final product.”
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How would you describe the localisation of Hotel Dusk in terms of volume? How many people worked on the project?
PL: “Initial estimates placed the text volume in the region of 80,000 English words, but by the end of the translation period we had translated 120,000 words! To put this in perspective, ‘The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess’ had a text volume of approximately 150,000 words, whilst ‘New Super Mario Bros.’ has a mere 3,000 words.
“Of course, we can't always rely on text volume alone when calculating how long a translation might take. It really depends on the nature of the text in question. For example, is the game an old-school platformer with simple texts? Or will the translator require some kind of academic knowledge to do it justice?
“One of the real challenges we faced in the course of localising Hotel Dusk was how to retain the sense of mystery and grit that would make the title appeal to an adult audience. Needless to say, the last thing we wanted to do was dumb down the text by attempting to appeal to some kind of universal common denominator. Fortunately, both CING and NCL were very supportive of the decisions we made, meaning that our talented bunch of translators were given all the necessary leeway to make their texts ring true in their respective languages.
“As for how many people actually worked on the software here at NOE, we had a maximum of 10 translators, 40 fantastic testers, two testing coordinators and a whole host of industrious support staff working simultaneously. As far as projects go, it was quite big!”
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Did you work from the Japanese original text, or did you use the version translated by Nintendo of America's localisation team?
PL: “We made a conscious decision early in the project to remain as true to the original Japanese texts as possible. That said, we quickly realised that NOA's English translation contained a vast number of subtle embellishments that would actually serve to maximise the atmospheric authenticity of the game.
“You could say, in fact, that we were in the unique position of being able to make the most of both worlds, and I'm absolutely certain that this is reflected in the vibrant nature of our texts. An obvious exception to the rule would be UK English, where we simply fine-tuned the US English to make it more comprehensible for a British audience. However, I think Mark would like to talk a little about this...”
MB: “Thanks Paul. I should say first of all that the localisation by NOA was very successful in capturing the tone of a classic hard-boiled tale. Kyle Hyde himself was particularly well characterised, with a world-weary cynical sense of humour that worked perfectly.
“As far as adapting the script for a UK audience went, clearly it’s a game about a former New York detective staying in a hotel outside of Los Angeles, so we didn't want the characters to be speaking in Cockney rhyming slang. Therefore, I approached the localisation process by trying to have as light a touch as possible.
“I wouldn’t say there were any particularly big cultural barriers to contend with; people in the UK grow up on US cop shows after all, and crime fiction by writers like Raymond Chandler and James Ellroy is hugely popular. Having said that, there were a few colourful US expressions that left me scratching my head and which I decided to modify. ‘Taking a powder’ to refer to doing a disappearing act springs to mind, along with ‘sawbuck ’ as a reference to money and ‘land’s sakes ’ meaning “for goodness sake” among others. There were also a lot of words that would have confused UK players, for instance a case where ‘birds’ is used to refer to ‘people’.”
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Hotel Dusk is a game about Americans, made by Japanese developers, which you had to prepare for Europe. Are there situations in the game where you felt those diverse influences were obvious, and did you ever run into any big problems preparing the game for Europe?
MB: “I think the Japanese image of America is formed to a large extent by the same Hollywood movies, TV shows and novels as people in the UK grow up consuming. Although the game was developed in Japan, I think it successfully avoids being an overly-stylised, artificial vision of America. It has the tone and look of an authentic American crime novel or movie.”
RA: “The atmosphere that the development team created for the story and the characters was absolutely perfect, very close to the portraits we can read in books or see in movies. Spanish players are used to American noir films and novels, and the way situations are presented in them, so we tried to take advantage of this and recreated the whole game as one of those stories."
FC: “Personally, I had some hard times when I had to face an American reality which wasn't immediately clear to an Italian audience. Italians are used to Hollywood movies, of course, but many of them are at a loss when asked about a pancake’s recipe or where Utah is. In my opinion, Italian people tend to have too general a view of the United States. While, it may sound absurd, Japan can be defined as being closer to the US than Italy is. In fact, the image emerging from the game was adopting American elements that are well known in Japanese society, such as certain kinds of food, or images and so on. However, these elements were hard to place smoothly in an Italian context, as they are not so well known as in Japan. But hey, that’s the lovely challenge of being a translator!” (laughs)
FV: “Strongly situating the game geographically and stylistically gave me some liberty in the translation. French people and especially game players are aware of some American cultural aspects they discovered through movies, music, etc. For example, I left the names of the rooms in English in the text, partly due to technical issues, but also because it was not a major problem as the story is clearly happening in the US. Nevertheless, there are defined formats, such as dates, that I had to change so the player wouldn't get confused."
TI: “During translation, we could compare the Japanese source text and an American localisation prepared for the US market. There were some striking differences between the two texts, and we always had to try and find a balance between the original text and the very hard-boiled adaptation for the American market.”
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Can you give some examples of situations where you really had to be creative to make the game work in your language?
RA: “One of the first instructions we received was to make the script look real. We did not want normal people in a hotel speaking as if they where in a stage play. We worked hard on giving each character a style according to their role in the story, and most importantly, making them speak naturally.
“This game is about conversations, and dialogue plays the most important role, so we focused on adapting the text to read like vivid dialogue - as if you were hearing someone speaking. To do this, we tried to reproduce common spoken language at all times.”
FV: “The Japanese text was taken as a reference but we also had the US text which was very different from the original atmosphere created by the developer. The direction taken by NOA was to strongly characterise the game to make it authentic to the US players, which I perfectly understand. The problem is that, in my opinion, in some parts, the game was lacking a sense of reality. I liked the Japanese atmosphere, serious and focused on the story rather than on the characters. So I tried to stick to the Japanese atmosphere, avoiding adding too much text which would have bored the player.
“As for the text itself, the Japanese was a little robotic, always using the same messages in different places, for example when knocking on doors, showing objects, and so on, so I tried to put some diversity in such messages.
“Finding a style for all the characters which are obviously not familiar to a French audience was a bit of a challenge. I tried to find a compromise between the stereotypes they represented, their graphic representation and the geographical and temporal context in which they were set.”
FC: “I remember that I worked a lot on Louis' character. He was as well characterised as any other, but for me he was the hardest to position in Italian due to the way he is presented: a tough guy from New York. He is a type that barely exists in Italian society. I tried to figure how a man like him would live, speak and think in Italy and I put my efforts to stick to the overall image more than to the specific words. To do this, it’s only natural that I had to use some expressions which are uniquely Italian and the uniqueness of his character allowed me to really use my creativity!” (laughs)
TI: “To put it in a nutshell, a translator of video games always has to apply a lot of creativity to make a screen text work properly in his own language. But I think that this is just what makes our job so rewarding.”
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Software Benefit
> Empathy > Focus > Escapism |
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