Tiago Kern, a native Brazilian with a journalism degree and fluency in English, works in the Brazilian office - mainly as a proof-reader and sometimes translator for Synthesis. He sat down with me to discuss this vital aspect of game design.

GS: So how and why did you get into translating, and video game translating in particular?

Synthesis localizes numerous games for the Brazilian community

I started working with translation informally. I’d offer translation services in the ads of a local newspaper, and that got me my first job as a translator for an Intellectual Property company. I made the move to video game translating some time later when a friend of mine mentioned my name when his teacher asked if he knew someone who played lots of video games and was proficient in English. This teacher must have given my contact information to Synthesis, as I was contacted by them some months later when they were starting to set up their Brazilian team. I had to take tests devised by the company and go through a training phase, and now I’ve been working for them for almost four years.

GS: What games did you play growing up and what is your overall gaming background prior to translating?

GS: So first of all just talk me through the basic process of translating a game.

GS: How much freedom do you have when making a translation? Can you make changes that you deem necessary or must you stick to direct translations?

Once the text that needs to be recorded is fully translated, it is sent to a studio and recorded with Brazilian voice actors. If they make changes to the text during the recording sessions, we are notified and then implement the changes into the game’s text (usually this happens due to time constraint and/or lip sync for character lines).

For instance: if there is an acronym in the original game and there’s no way we can use the same acronym for a translation in Brazilian Portuguese that retains the same idea, we may change the acronym in the translated game - provided the client says it’s fine, of course. The same goes for puns and jokes: some things are impossible to carry over, as English puns will simply not work in Portuguese, so we must come up with a solution - a pun of our own, or an adaptation of the original text with new ideas that will work for Brazilian Portuguese.

Certain things like puns simply can’t be translated

GS: I notice that you refer to the work as localizing the game rather than simply translating it. Do cultural differences between Brazil and the game’s country of origin ever effect your work?

GS: So if not the cultural changes, what are the biggest challenges that the translation/localization team is faced with?

It’s true. Imagine what could have happened to Batman

GS: So context or lack thereof is probably the biggest challenge the team faces. To what extent do you collaborate with the original writers to combat this? 

GS: What are the biggest project you have worked on and what work are you the most proud of?

This usually isn’t a huge deal in English, but in Latin languages like Portuguese, it is very hard to localize a game where the player can choose to play as a male or female character, since our adjectives will mostly have gender indications. So if the game developers allow for this kind of variation in the localized languages, a female warrior will be guerreira (instead of guerreiro) in Brazilian Portuguese, but if the localisation team has no support from the development team in a game like this, we’d need to go with a neutral term in Portuguese, such as combatente.

TK: Depends on what you’d call “big”. I’ve worked on several projects, some of which I can’t even discuss, but I’ve worked on Ubisoft’s Far Cry 3 and CD Projekt RED’s The Witcher III: Wild Hunt, which were definitely big games. I think the projects I’m most proud of are The Witcher III and Child of Light. Child of Light was particularly tricky as the original text was comprised of poems that rhymed, so the translation process for this one was a real challenge. 

GS: You worked on the Witcher III from the English text? So the Portuguese has gone through two filters. How does that affect the finished game? Did you consult the Polish original as well?

GS: You mentioned working on Child of Light and its rhyming structure. I have often wondered how things like Shakespeare can be translated. How on earth can you keep both the meaning and the rhyme when localizing the game?

Poetry is particularly difficult to translate

GS: English speakers often forget that translators are even a part of game development. We forget that any Nintendo game we ever play was actually translated from Japanese! How do you think the experience of playing a game is effected by playing it in its non-original language?

GS: “You must defeat Sheng Long to stand a chance!” Any funny stories about mistranslations or anything like that which made it into a game you worked on?

TK: I’ve heard stories about terms that have been translated erroneously in games to great comedic effect, but no particular one I can think of right now. However, I do remember that once I was proofreading a batch for a game where the original text read “Pull the trigger” and the translator inserted a typo in Portuguese so that it read “Aperte o gatinho” (“Pull the kitten”). Of course I laughed when I read that, but ultimately I corrected the text.

GS: Do you play the games you translate?

Need an excuse to play The Witcher III again? Check out Synthesis’ work

GS: Any advice for bi-lingualists out there who might want to get into your line of work?

 A huge thank you to Tiago Kern and Synthesis for facilitating the interview. How many of you out there have ever played the same game in more than one language? How aware are you when you play a game that has been translated for you? Comment below to ask Tiago any other questions you may have.

I think the best advice to hone your translation skills for video game translation is to actually play games both in the original language and in the localized languages: check how they dealt with each issue, see if you can find translation mistakes, pay attention to how text is displayed in the game and what solutions they found for challenging situations. Play games from different genres and see how the tone changes in the language: some games have extremely informal language, others keep their text safe from curse words and slangs.

And finally, take part in localization events, such as LocJam, since that helps a bunch - it helps you get to know people who work in the industry while at the same time you discuss the process of localization, its challenges and practices.