Translating video game – sounds like a dream, doesn’t it? And it is… up to some point. But let’s not get too ahead, shall we?
We have a 3-person video game specialist unit. Being specialists for this particular video game means, beside creating a glossary, playing the video game for DAYS. It was probably one of the best things that could have happened – “Sorry mum, can’t help you, I gotta play!”. It is really helpful to have at least 2-3 people in the team who know the game better than themselves. This way the rest of the group can focus on segmenting the text and translating the glossary (which turned out to be HUGE). Then they can hit us up and we’ll explain them the context of the text or how it is visualised in the game. It also means that we need to go through the game several times, especially in Beholder – the number of routes, choices that affect the endings is astonishing! Depending on your choices it can take you from ten minutes (and you usually end up dead) to several hours and it may still not be enough to visit all the tenants! It is fun but it can also be exhausting for several reasons – first, let’s be honest, how many hours of the same game can you play? Especially when you try repeating the quests but making different decisions. At some point all the names, all the quests and tasks get really mixed up and it’s time to step away for a bit and have a cup of cocoa. The other problem is theme of the game – sometimes you need to harm someone in order to survive with your family. But you still feel awful and morally corrupt!
Of course, we can’t be just mindlessly playing the game, that’s why our new favourite Windows programme is Paint, fav key is Print Screen and shortcut “Windows Key + Tab” and “Ctrl + V” – it allows us to quickly switch between the game and the Paint and paste the image into it. What are we looking for? Basically everything and anything. Most important are menu and inventory, but we also screenshot anything that we deem problematic, be it because of the in-game context or historical context or because the text itself is not very clear, ex. the NPC our character is talking to. Sometimes there is a text that only appears as a response to another item, so we also need to have context for this, as to know exactly what text is referring to. And remember. Context is everywhere 😉
So who wants to have a job like this? Come join us and be there when the next project starts!
But behold Big Brother!
