Episode Transcription

MELISA: Hello, everyone, and welcome to the last episode of Open World. I’m here with Lali and Ale, and we are finishing this season on a high note. We have a very special guest today, Arthur Flew. We’re so excited to have you with us. Thank you so much for coming. We are big fans of yours. So would you like to introduce yourself to our audience?

ARTHUR: Sure. First off, thank you for having me. So my name is Arthur Flew. I’ve been doing localization for 17 plus years at this point, most recently at Epic Games. And then previous to that, I worked at Blizzard Entertainment.

MELISA: Nice.

LARA: So cool. How can you say that being so chill?

ALEXIS: This man’s luck is like this, you know?

LARA: Yeah.

MELISA: Well, we wanted to start talking about cultural adaptation. And, my first question is, can you share a specific instance where cultural adaptation led to unexpected but fantastic results in some of the iconic games that you worked through the years?

ARTHUR: Yeah. I mean, I think generally you’re always pleasantly surprised whenever you try something new when you’re doing localization. But I think… I think it’s easy to sort of go through the motions of doing the same thing over and over again. And so, whenever we have an opportunity to try something sort of out of the box, you never know how it’s gonna land. We had this one opportunity once where the game I was working on decided to have some DJ radio station in the game, and, you know, the normal way to go about it would be to, you know, hire some local voice actors and have them record those same lines. But we decided to go a little bit extra on it and talk to the marketing teams and the regional groups and things like that, and see if we could actually find some local DJs for the different countries that we localized in and try to maintain sort of the same vibe and feel of what the English DJ was doing, but kind of adapt it more culturally for those countries in it. We found some up and coming or just, you know, recently popularized DJs in every one of those countries and have them record, and it really gave those countries, like a little bit more, authenticity, right?

ALEXIS: Authenticity. That’s the word that I was thinking, yeah.

ARTHUR: Yeah.

ALEXIS: It’s authentic.

ARTHUR: Exactly. And the DJs really liked it. And I think it really hit a chord with all the audience in those countries. And it was a really good, good experience. Everybody loved it. And it was outside the norm. We had to, you know, make all kinds of new contracts and work with them on, you know, what we could and couldn’t do and what they could and couldn’t do and all that kind of stuff. But it was, I think, a fun vibe for everybody.

MELISA: That is so cool. I love it. That’s definitely what cultural adaptation is about, at the end of the day. Like you want to connect with the different audiences and, you know, have a similar experience. If you had a DJ in your original language, you would be like… It’s just so cool that everyone had the same experience, like different countries. So it’s really, really cool.

ARTHUR: Yeah. It was a fun experience.

LARA: Yeah, with the rise of diverse voices in gaming, how do you approach inclusivity within localization? Because, I mean, I think this is very related to what you’re saying right now, having diverse voices to approach these different cultures. I think that’s amazing.

ARTHUR: Yeah. It’s always an interesting topic when you try to do inclusivity. Obviously, from a cultural standpoint, you really want to try to be as authentic as possible. So where you can, you know, you don’t try to do a straight adaptation of the content, you try to make it make sense for the region you’re adapting it to. But even more so, like, not even just cultural adaptation, but LGBTQ+ adaptations and things like that. It’s a bit harder for some languages than others. You know, some cultures are less inclined to support that kind of content. But where we can, we try to do that stuff while staying true to the source material, right? We don’t want to rewrite the original content, but try to adapt things so that it fits and works for that culture. But yeah, even within the language itself, right, you look at a lot of the Latin based languages which have genders, like, this is this word is a masculine noun, a feminine noun. Try to figure out ways to kind of get around that so it doesn’t feel like we’re injecting that stuff into the content using neutral pronouns and things like that, we don’t need to specify masculine, feminine, that kind of stuff. My team at Epic was really good about that.

MELISA: That is really cool. It’s happened so many times that I, like, choose the feminine character and then the text in Spanish is masculine, even though I chose a feminine character, so like talking to me as if I was a boy. So, yeah.

LARA: It happens. Yeah, I’ve seen that.

ARTHUR: Hopefully, it’s never happened in any game I’ve done.

LARA: No. No, don’t worry about it. No, no.

ALEXIS: I really don’t think so. I really, really, really don’t think so. So, Arthur, beyond these things that are… that really cater to gamers of different identities, from different places, you know, where accuracy is also involved. You were talking about different things that you’ve tried to make some elements of the games pop. What do you consider to be the secret sauce to some really outstanding game localization? Maybe this is too much of a broad question, you know, but take it wherever you want it to be, whatever you want it to take it.

ARTHUR: Sure. So, you know, so accuracy is important, but I don’t think it should be the number one driving force behind the approach to localization. So like, you want to be accurate, but you also want to adapt, you know? The easy example is, an English joke may not land in French, right? So you want to try to figure out a way to make that joke have the same sort of feeling that you would expect it to have. But, beyond that, there’s a couple of things that I think are truly important when you’re dealing with trying to localize content is, you want a team that really understands the source material. You know, anybody can translate a sentence into another language, but if you really hone in on trying to understand what the original source is trying to convey, you’ll get a better translation than you would otherwise. So like a good example would be, like, if you’re trying to translate something sort of goofy, like Cuddle Team Leader from Fortnite, you could take that in a lot of different directions, in every language. And so you really want to try to hone in on what the source material was trying to do with it, find something that makes sense for those languages. But the other part of it that I think often gets overlooked is the tools, specifically the tool set that you’re working out of. A really good pipeline and functionality behind everything really makes or breaks what you can and cannot do with localization. So the flexibility inside the original product, you know, even things like allowing gender tokens or allowing plural forms, all that stuff really determines whether or not you can provide a quality localized product. And so a lot of times what ends up happening is you have a bare bones product from a localization standpoint, it’s just you have a string and you can localize it. And so you will often find those situations like you described where you might have picked a female character, but they only had the opportunity to write one version of a line, so they default to male or something like that. And so that flexibility needs to exist inside the product. And I think it’s an often overlooked aspect of localization.

MELISA: Absolutely. What you were just saying it’s like, a lot of the things have to be considered in a previous stage, like, in the developing stage.

LARA: Yeah. Once it comes to localization, you’re like, what do I do with this? So this is like the perfect intro for my question. Like, have you ever encountered major ethical dilemmas while localizing and how did you navigate them with your team?

ALEXIS: That’s a great question. Sorry, but that’s a good one.

ARTHUR: I don’t think I’ve worked on a product that hasn’t had ethical dilemmas. It’s one of those things where they’re often innocent, like people who are making the content or things like that, they don’t know everything about other cultures. I don’t pretend to know everything about other cultures. And so, you know, they’ll build something and they think it’s cool. And then, you know, it comes to us and we take a look at it and go, you know, “This is maybe not the best idea.” And, you know, it’s not that uncommon for it to happen. And so what we usually do when that comes across our plate is we take a look at it and we try to sort of build a document explaining why this is a problem. If it’s minor, it’s something that we might just directly talk to whoever designed the content. But if it’s something more significant or we think it might have legal repercussions or significant impact on sales or something like that, then we would definitely draft something up that we would then bring up as a concern to the team at large and try to find a solution from there. And usually it’s resolved, it’s a matter of discussing things. The designer is usually not so gung-ho about something that, you know, that they wouldn’t make changes to it. And there’s compromise there always to be found, right? Like, the only thing we need you to change is this little thing over here, and then the problem goes away because nobody’s going to associate it with whatever it is.

ALEXIS: That’s a good way to put it as well.

ARTHUR: Yeah. I think it’s fairly common, and it’s just a matter of discussing it with… The issue is if it happens too late and it doesn’t get caught and it goes live. But thankfully, I think that’s only happened sort of once for us. For me. Long time ago on Diablo, during beta. Diablo 3 during beta. We hadn’t noticed it, but at some point, I guess, somebody had taken the cover of the Quran and placed it as the cover of one of the books inside the game. And, if you play Diablo, you can click on the bookshelves and all the books fall off onto the floor, and you can’t have the Quran on the floor. So that caught a little bit of an uproar. And it was fixed as soon as we were notified. But that’s something that, like, sometimes those slip through the cracks.

ALEXIS: Now, to be fair, when the books fall on the ground, they’re like this.

ARTHUR: Yep.

ALEXIS: Very, very small. That’s having quite a keen eye for detail.

ARTHUR: And for sure the artist didn’t realize that he had grabbed the cover of a Quran either, right? So it was completely an innocent mistake that happened to fall through the cracks. But since then, you know, we’ve put things in place to make sure those types of things don’t happen.

ALEXIS: Nice.

MELISA: That was really, really interesting. And I think that’s also cool kind of like to talk about more for… Because, like you said, a lot of times it’s like, most of the times it’s not even, you know, intentional. So just, if culturalization is taken into account beforehand is always good. So thank you for that. And now I wanted to ask, can I change topics here and introduce the metaverse? I know you’ve worked in this, like, developing concept of the metaverse, and I was curious about, like, what’s your vision about it? Do you think it’s something that will be localized? Like, how do you envision that happening?

ARTHUR: So the metaverse is interesting. I’m going to preface this by saying that I have no idea what shape or form the metaverse will ultimately take. And I think anything can happen between now and that day, should it ever happen, that could dramatically alter the course of things. But in my opinion, and I’m no engineer, I’m not a professional in this space, but in my opinion, I think, like, the technology of today or the near future wouldn’t necessarily allow us to build a world that millions of people could be in at the same time. So I would expect something where we have, like, you know, worlds within a platform that exists, that can be thematic. Something like, you know, this is the Japan world, or this is the Star Wars world, or this is the…

LARA: I will be there.

ARTHUR: The Nike world, or whatever.

LARA: You can find me there.

ALEXIS: If you build it, they will come.

LARA: Yeah.

ARTHUR: Yeah. And so you’d have these… I don’t know if you saw Ready Player One, but I think they do something similar where they have one world for, like, the school and a world for, like, you know, gaming places and blah, blah, blah. So I think sort of that idea is probably the most immediately achievable concept of the world. And… As far as whether or not we localize it, I think yes, I think the answer to that is yes. But I think that it’s going to take a few different approaches. And I don’t think that one solution to encompass the entire thing makes sense, right? So like if, as an example, if the Government of Japan had decided that they wanted to make a replica of Tokyo inside this world to allow people to come visit Tokyo for whatever reason, I don’t know that it necessarily makes sense to localize all the signs in the streets and things like that. Like you want that authenticity forthe people that are going there. But I could see something like, you know, an overlay where, like, you look at a sign and there’s some kind of translation that pops up over it or something that’s optional for you if you wanted to actually understand what you were seeing. So I could see that making sense. But if you’re looking at a Star Wars world or something like that, I think that you would want to localize and make that experience more I guess inclusive of all the different cultures that are out there. And I think, like, if you look at something like that, it’s absolutely way too much. If you’re building a platform that anybody at any time could submit content to and prop up the world, there’s no way one single entity can try to localize all of that, right? Like, it’s just too much. So I think that… sort of similar to how, if you want to put out a content on Sony PlayStation or Microsoft Xbox, you have to submit the localization for it, I would expect something similar to that where, like, Nike wants to put out a Nike building where you can go in and look at all the different shoes that you can buy from Nike, that they would supply whatever localization is that they want. And there’d be certain requirements that the platform would have, like number of languages or, you know, no cuss words and blah, blah, blah, whatever it is. But that they would supply it and it would maybe go through a round of QA or things like that to make sure everything looks okay, just like any other content submission platform. But yeah, that’s sort of what I would expect, where the people making the content would provide the localization, and there could be an option of hiring providers by whoever makes the metaverse to help localize it as well. But, yeah, that’s sort of how I imagine it working.

MELISA: That makes sense, yeah. This is such a such a fascinating topic, honestly, because, like you said, we don’t know, like, what’s going to look like in a few years. But it sure would be very interesting to see what happens.

LARA: Yeah. And if you find out, like, some kind of metaverse world about Star Wars, call me, please. I will be there. Yeah, yeah. So beyond video games, what other forms of media or artistic expression do you think will benefit from your unique localization expertise?

ARTHUR: Uh… So… So, for me… This may sound a little weird, but I think localization as sort of like a solution that’s been solved, in a lot of ways. Like, we know how to take a file and localize it and give it back. Like, that’s not a complicated process. What I really enjoy is solving the pipeline of localization, like going to the roots of, like, hey, we have this product, we want to localize it, how do we get the product in a way that makes sense to get localized and make it easy for the people to do that actual work? That’s what I really enjoy ultimately out of the work. So it’s not so much about the content for me, I guess, as much as it is the technology and trying to figure out ways we can make that better. And for me, something like the metaverse would be a super interesting challenge. Something like AR I think would be super interesting to try to solve, like how do we overlay content on the real world without it being annoying? That kind of stuff to me is super interesting. And not to say like, you know, a movie or TV stuff wouldn’t be interesting, but like it’s a solved problem, right? The problem is the volume, right? Like how do you tackle so much content and get it back in time? But that’s, you know, more hours or more time. Pick which one gets done.

ALEXIS: Yeah.

ARTHUR: So, yeah, for me, it’s the technology. It’s finding ways to make lives easier for everybody finding solutions.

LARA: I love that. Beautiful.

ALEXIS: Yeah. And especially AR. I mean, AR really… I mean, with the VR thing, I get dizzy, on a personal note, but the AR thing, I think that once it explodes, once it’s done like just right… And there are many companies that are really aiming towards that. I’m looking forward to what’s going to come in, I don’t know, I wanted to say five years, but even a year from now.

ARTHUR: See, for me, like, I’ve tried the VR headsets and I’ve tried, like, I’ve looked at the new Apple Vision Pro or whatever you call it, I don’t remember, but, like, they’re still too big and they still require you to have cables and all that kind of stuff.

LARA: Oh my God, yeah.

ALEXIS: It’s like the initial cell phones, right?

LARA: Yeah. Ughh!

ARTHUR: I need it to get to a point where it’s literally like my glasses.

LARA: Yeah, exactly.

ARTHUR: That’s what I want. And the day that happens, I think it blows up. Like if I don’t need to carry around like this heavy headset, if I can just put my glasses on. And I think Google announced like years ago this Google Glass thing, which is supposed to be a tiny thing.

ALEXIS: Yes they did. I think they didn’t move forward with it.

LARA: It failed because society was not ready for it at the moment. It was just like, no.

ALEXIS: You know what I want? I want to go like Aloy, you know? Like… The Focus. Something like that would be fine.

LARA: You’re asking way too much, bro. We’re just asking for glasses.

ALEXIS: Okay. With the glasses.

MELISA: He’s thinking further into the future, kind of like when we’re grandparents.

ALEXIS: Hey, ten years from now. For my kid.

ARTHUR: But that’s what I want, I want it to be simple, right? And I think the public at large is waiting for that, right? Like, it needs to make sense for people to walk around with these things. And until that happens, I don’t think these things are really going to take off. They’re cool, but they’re not massively popular until then.

ALEXIS: Arthur, let me change the subject a little bit. And for someone who has been in the industry for so long, in such massive companies for so long, working in so many IPs, projects, developing pipelines, I’m sure you have funny anecdotes. This question, it has a structure, right? But I just want to ask if you could share something funny, unexpected, without breaking any NDAs, of course, but something that really still makes you giggle to this day.

ARTHUR: Yeah. So let’s see. I guess this one isn’t a secret anymore. So back in the day, we were working on Diablo 3 and we had already shipped the PC version, and we had decided to ship a console version post-launch.

ALEXIS: Yeah, because it took a little longer.

ARTHUR: Yeah. It required a lot of changes to the UI, and we had to add couch co-op and things like that to it. And so it took about a year for us to get the console version out after PC. Don’t quote me on that, it’s been so long. But yeah, we were nearing the end of the release, it was getting close to submission time, and the designers had come up with this cool idea of creating a secret level where you can…

ALEXIS: The cow level?

ARTHUR: No, that one was in the original PC version. But it was a secret level you could access where, if you got in, you could kill all the people on the team, so all the developers on the team. And they would have, you know, their names and then a title underneath them. And… I was one of the monsters that you could kill in there, as with everybody else. But… The title they ended up giving me was Destroyer of Dreams, and it was sort of a funny tongue-in-cheek moment because, as we sort of neared, you know, the console submission, this was Blizzard’s first console title, I want to say, in 15 or 20 years or something like that, I had to more regularly tell them, no, you can’t do that, that that would cause a lot of changes for us, so no, you can’t do this thing. And so, that was the nickname I was dubbed.

ALEXIS: Inside joke.

ARTHUR: Yeah. The Destroyer of Dreams. It was a fun one. Everybody laughed when we saw it, but it was it was….

MELISA: Is that your bio on social media now, “Destroyer of Dreams”?

ARTHUR: No, no.

LARA: It should be. So cool.

ARTHUR: I try not to say no, usually. I want to give designers and UI people as much freedom as they can do. But, you know, there comes a point in the project where you can’t change everything anymore, where we need to ship things. So… Yeah.

MELISA: That’s hilarious, I love it. Arthur, thank you so much for everything you’ve shared so far. And the last question I wanted to ask you, looking back on your career, what’s one piece of advice that you’d give to someone aspiring to get into game localization?

ARTHUR: So as I mentioned, I think one thing that often gets overlooked is understanding how everything works behind the scenes. So one thing that I often encourage everybody that’s worked for me is really sort of dig in and understand what happens when you press run. What does that button actually do? Because it helps you troubleshoot things a lot when things break unexpectedly. If it breaks in a certain way, you can go, “Oh, it’s because of X, Y, Z,” and you can go and either fix it yourself or tell whatever engineer you’re working with, “Hey, it’s broken in this location and we need to fix it.” Really understanding how things work I think is an undervalued skill set for anybody working in localization.

MELISA: That’s like really good advice. And I’ve never heard anyone say it. That’s awesome. So thank you for that.

LARA: So I want to know, Arthur, what are you playing at the moment?

ARTHUR: Right now, I am in my fourth playthrough of Baldur’s Gate 3.

LARA: Oh, my God, same! Yes!

ARTHUR: I’ve played the first time as a goody-two-shoes Paladin. And the second time I played as a Dark Urge character and went the full evil route, which was harder than you would think. Not in the sense of difficulty of the game, but actually pressing the evil options.

LARA: Oh, my god, yeah. “Minthara would be so proud of you.” “Minthara is thrilling for you right now.” I hate her.

ARTHUR: It’s harder than you think it is, but yeah, I managed to pull that off. And then, I think my current playthrough is, I wanted to try a Bard because it’s not a class that is part of the companions that you can get, so I just wanted to get a feel for what it plays like.

LARA: That is my class. I’m a Bard.

ARTHUR: Yeah? You like it?

LARA: Yeah I love being a bard.

ARTHUR: So…

MELISA: There’s something…

ARTHUR: Go ahead.

MELISA: No, it’s just it’s really funny because it was the same thing we were doing. We’re playing with my boyfriend, and I’m always like, “No, we can’t harm this person,” so I’m always choosing… And then he was like, “Okay, but then we can have to start again and choose all the evil options.” So I will have to go through that thing very soon.

ARTHUR: Yeah. It’s harder than you think because you feel bad.

LARA: Yeah.

ARTHUR: But yeah, it’s fun. It’s really interesting how different the game feels based on the choices you make. They did a really good job. I don’t know that I’ve played a game before where, you know, it sort of doesn’t matter what choice you pick, the game just keeps going forwards. So if you just take too long to do something, the game doesn’t care, just moves on. And it’s really interesting. Normally it’s like you can just sort of wait until the right time to make decisions. But now here it’s just like, okay, you’ve made this choice. We’re just going to factor that into everything that you do going forward. And it’s very interesting, it plays out surprisingly differently. And believe it or not, I have found things in the game on my fourth playthrough that I did not know existed. I somehow missed them in my first three times around, so I think that’s really cool.

LARA: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the hardest part for me in the game is not to fall in love with Astarion, because I love him so much. But, yeah, I mean, I’m in my fourth playthrough and it’s just like insane the amount of things I’m finding out the fourth time I’m playing.

MELISA: It’s a well-deserved Game of the Year for sure, in my opinion.

ARTHUR: On my Dark Urge playthrough, I decided to romance Lae’zel, and it was fun because on my good playthrough, she was probably sort of the meanest or most, you know, reproachable character in the game. And then, in my evil playthrough, she was the nicest, because everybody else was super mean, right? Like, you know, you get Shadowheart to go evil and you get Astarion to follow his questline and become evil, and so she was the nicest.

MELISA: Wow. That’s amazing. I love it. Honestly, I would make this episode like three hours long.

LARA: Yeah.

MELISA: It’s so great to hear you and all of your kind of like wisdom that you shared with us in this episode. We really appreciate it. And for everyone hearing, thank you so much for all this season. It’s been a wild ride. And yeah, thank you for listening.

ARTHUR: Thank you for having me.

ALEXIS: Thank you, Arthur. Thank you, everyone.

LARA: It’s an honor. It’s a pleasure. Thank you so much.

MELISA: Bye-bye!

ARTHUR: Bye!

ALEXIS: Bye-bye!

Episode Transcription

MELISA: Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of Open World. I’m Melisa, I’m here with Lara and Ale.

LARA: Hi!

ALEXIS: Hi, everyone!

MELISA: And today we have a little different of an episode. So what we did is ask our community what they wanted to hear, what they wanted us to talk about. And after a few days of voting, the people spoke, and the topic that was chosen is culturalization. So this is what we’re going to talk about today. And it’s a term that we use a lot in the industry and sometimes it’s mixed up with localization. So how would you guys define culturalization?

LARA: For me, culturalization is taking that little step forward from localization because it’s just a little bit more than just localizing our content, because we know that localization, it goes with words, with everything. But culturalization just makes it more of the culture, more of the target culture. You can see things that, yeah, maybe I localized these texts, but this is offensive in my country. You know? That’s just an example. So it has to be rewritten or it has to be rethought or… I don’t know.

ALEXIS: Yeah. I mean, it’s tailored even more to the game, even regarding current events or news that are relevant to when the game takes place. It’s taking a step further.

LARA: Yeah, it’s taking a step further in the meanings of, I don’t know, making something more accurate or something more relatable because maybe, if I have this joke and I localize it, right? Maybe the joke doesn’t have the same punch if I add my culture into that joke, you know what I mean?

MELISA: Absolutely.

LARA: So it’s just like, yeah, it’s taking that step forward from localization and trying to own that content that you’re trying to localize.

MELISA: Absolutely, and it makes me think of our episode about Spanish from Latin America and Spanish from… European. If you haven’t watched it…

LARA: Please, go watch it. We explain a lot about the differences and how to appropriate your own language.

MELISA: Exactly. And how can these cultural differences, in the case of, you add that step of culturalization, how can that change a video game?

LARA: Well, in the case of video games, it changes because sometimes you have this absolute great idea of a video game, but you don’t realize. I don’t know, for example, in Fallout, you don’t realize that cows are sacred in some religions in India. And in the Fallout series, you have a two-headed cow that you can actually shoot and kill. So it’s just like, that had some sort of repercussion over the culturalization part of it, because maybe if the game was culturalized for that specific market, you can remove the cow entirely. I mean, it’s just like you can remove it. Just it won’t be as offensive as it looks like right now. Even though it was not the intention, of course. It is unintentional, right? But because only one person cannot know all the cultures that they have in the entire world. So that’s why I think also it’s so important, because you do your research and you try to make your game for that specific market.

MELISA: Absolutely.

ALEXIS: Yeah, I mean, also it’s taking into account the symbols, body language, gestures… even hands, I mean. In Japan, fictional characters like, I don’t know, Crash Bandicoot has five fingers instead of four, like it has in America. Even Bart Simpson has four.

LARA: Yeah. It’s amazing because I remember seeing pictures of the Simpsons, and in this side of the country… in this side of the world, we have four fingers for all of the characters, but in Japan specifically, they have to have five. And it looks so weird.

MELISA: It’s so interesting. Yeah, definitely.

LARA: And another example talking about Japan is that, in Fallout, you have a gun that is called The Fatman and the name has been changed. This is not like a major change of the entire history of the game, but it has been changed because it was too close, it was too relatable to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, so they had to change it for cultural respect and everything. But yeah…

ALEXIS: But it can get extreme, like Far Cry 3. I mean Far Cry 3 was completely banned from Indonesia because the local authorities thought, they weren’t that wrong, but the game makes it as if living in Indonesia was a living hell. So they don’t think that that’s appropriate for their culture, for their people, and they banned the game.

MELISA: Yeah, so I think culturalization must be like really important to avoid these type of things from happening, like when you have your game banned from a country, and you want to reach that audience and, you know, sell your games in those countries. So in that way, would you say that culturalization is a market enabler for video games?

LARA: Yes and, at the same time, I would love to add that culturalization for me is that little step that you’re taking to take care of your community. Because you might find some things offensive. I don’t know, I’m thinking, if you’ve seen the latest episode of European Spanish and LATAM Spanish, I mention this Grim Fandango character that is supposed to be evil, right? And he was Argentinian, and the depiction of the Argentinian character and how… It didn’t sound right. It was just like, “Um…”

MELISA: Yeah, it’s like a stereotype…

LARA: Stereotyping. Yeah, you could’ve done your… I know it’s a really old game, but I think you could’ve done your research. I mean, it’s a matter of researching or having a diverse team on your own team so you can see different perspectives or in which ways this can be offensive. So to open these kinds of discussions between the teams and make the game go into a very much interesting direction, I believe. Another example that comes into my mind regarding culturalization and laws is that, for example, there was a law in Germany that prohibited every single thing that had to do with Nazi propaganda. So when you have, for example, the game Wolfenstein…

ALEXIS: Yeah, you can’t even show Adolf Hitler’s mustache.

LARA: Yeah. Or the Nazi symbols and everything. But then, when the law got removed, because I think they removed that law, the game was patched so that everyone could see how the game was in the rest of the world. So it’s just like, it is a constant thing of changing, of making the game more suitable.

MELISA: And adapt it to different…

ALEXIS: As the world changes, I mean, video games should change as well. I mean, culturalization is a market enable… a market enabler, sorry, if you think about it as a tool, you know, in order to better reach the market that maybe the game that you originally made has things that just don’t see eye to eye with, with an audience, you know? But it’s a tool.

MELISA: Like a tool to avoid disasters.

LARA: Yeah, and as a translator, I believe it’s so important to be, like, the gatekeeper of your own culture and flag the things that you believe are going to be offensive on your culture or on your language. I believe it’s so important because it’s going to deliver a better experience, and maybe the client is going to be thankful for your input.

MELISA: Yeah, so culturalization goes beyond just language, right? It can be a lot of things in your game, so it’s kind of a bit more like a holistic kind of view of your game in general, how it impacts different cultures, different, like, geopolitical situations. And I think our point in this episode is also just to bring awareness again to a topic that is really important in our industry.

LARA: I believe also what is really important in terms of culturalization is context, because, without context, how can you culturalize something, right? And we have, I believe, as translators, we can culturalize things in a way, but sometimes we don’t have the chance to change completely or an entire video game, right? So sometimes we have to adjust things as we can, or maybe the client doesn’t want that, so we have to take also that into account. So, as a translator, we want to be, like, the gatekeepers of our culture and everything, but also taking into account what the client says, the content…

MELISA: Having enough context for sure.

LARA: Enough context is just… Yeah, absolutely.

ALEXIS: I like that expression, the gatekeepers of our culture. I mean, in order to do that, you need a clear communication with your client so that they’re satisfied with what you’re bringing to the table.

MELISA: Yeah, and it shows that you really care, right? About your work.

ALEXIS: “Hey, this is not gonna work.”

MELISA: Yeah, because you want the game to be successful in the market that you want to…

LARA: Absolutely. And talking about context, because imagine what kind of culturalization you could do if you had enough context and if you knew your culture. Then you can maybe transform this into transcreation.

MELISA: Yeah, that’s another term that is quite used in the industry. And, yeah, like transcreation, culturalization, and they all refer to different aspects…

LARA: Transform… Yeah.

ALEXIS: Yeah, not translating, transforming into something that makes sense in the target language.

LARA: Exactly. I’m just thinking, when the first thing that came into my mind is, we all know Pikachu, right? But there are other Pokémons that have changed names in different countries, in different languages. There are a lot of examples of this.

ALEXIS: Well, just to name one, Lickitung, that we all know in Spanish is also Lickitung, in German, he’s called Schlurp, like the onomatopoeia. Or, I don’t know, the first three legendary Pokémon. I’m gonna mention the first era because I lost after Cyndaquil, Totodile and Chikorita.

LARA: We’re too old.

ALEXIS: I’m too old.

LARA: Even though I played Pokémon Scarlet, I don’t know why I’m throwing myself away from…

ALEXIS: But I don’t know where to start if I… It’s fine, let’s talk about it later. For instance, the first legendary birds Moltres, Articuno and Zapdos. That’s clearly, like, one, two, three, you know? But actually, in Japanese, the names are Freezer, Thunder and Fire, straightforward names with the elements with which they attack, right? Like, the legendary bird of thunder, Zapdos.

MELISA: Yeah, and it definitely, of course, has to do with the culture, what they think will impact…

ALEXIS: Be appropriate.

MELISA: Yeah, exactly, like people will, you know, get it a bit more if it’s more straightforward, maybe. Like, you know, all of that has to do with the culture, the country that they’re targeting.

LARA: Yeah, absolutely. And sometimes, not taking these extra steps as a developer, right? Because, as a translator, I believe we all do this, we all try to gatekeep our culture and everything, but sometimes developers don’t take this extra step. And sometimes there is like some bad and negative information or, like, repercussions with that game. Maybe you even kind of have legal problems with this too. And I believe you want to avoid that at all costs. So maybe your game that is doing so well in America will not be properly done if you want to launch it in Japan. I don’t know.

ALEXIS: You need to make some changes that are things that don’t actually impact the game, but they’re gonna work best, they’re gonna be better.

MELISA: Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s what part of culturalization also, what’s known as, like, the proactive and reactive culturalization, which depends on the moment in the process. And there are certain things that you can think when you’re planning your game, you know, you can think, “Ok, these aspects, I can change them a bit around so that people…” Because you already know you wanna ship your game to different places, so you think, these things can be culturalized and they can connect a bit more with the target audience. What types of things do you guys think can be adapted?

LARA: To me… Yeah, there are some things. For example, there’s no need to adapt everything, because I know you might want to keep the essence of your game.

ALEXIS: Yeah, you’re gonna lose something in the process.

LARA: And you’re gonna lose something. But to me, the things that have to be changed, the things that could be prohibited because of religions or insulting or offensive, or goes against any laws. So to me, those things have to be changed.

MELISA: That is more like the reactive side of…

LARA: Yeah, that’s more the reactive side of things. For example, if you have a game like Far Cry 6, right? And you want to create this cultural immersion into the game and to let you know that you are in Latin America, that it’s today and you are in Latin America, you’re in 2023 in Latin America, the first thing that comes into your mind is the music. Because, for example, for me, that’s the best case, because whenever you get into a car with Dani and she turns on the radio and she starts singing with the radio, all these Spanish songs and all these… I mean, at least for me, that I know, Gente de Zona, all these bands that are so welcoming and from Latin America. The level of culturalization that they have done to make things culturally appropriate for that game is just, to me, amazing. I cannot believe how… how is it possible that you make me feel like I was at home.

ALEXIS: On that same spirit, I think it’s a constant that we mention Ubisoft as doing many, many things right.

LARA: Yeah.

ALEXIS: Like keeping the players in mind first. But I also remember some cultural aspects that were taken care of with absolute love in the latest Assassin’s Creed games. I mean, in Odyssey, they worked with Greek actors with actual insults that they used back then. And even in one game before that, Origins, one of the key elements of the story is Bayek finding some stones in a certain form or shape help him remember things and has some visions that each of these stones represent constellations that were meaningful for the Egyptians, even back then. So all of those things that are from the developers themselves, are so well-thought-out, you know? And that’s what I appreciate as a gamer.

LARA: Yes, absolutely. And sometimes you hear music, for example. I just… When you hear, for example, the radio in GTA 5, you are transported into the place, you know? And… yeah, I love it because they took like normal songs and, for some reason, your brain now is attached to that memory, and you’re like, yeah, I’m driving my car into the highway like… It’s so good. I mean, when the culturalization is taking part in the development of the game, you can really tell.

MELISA: Yeah, exactly, because there’s these, like, tools that you can plan ahead and then connects really well with your audience.

LARA: Absolutely. We had last year Kate Edwards, she worked on Age of Empires. If you haven’t seen that episode, please go check it out, because, when she talks about culturalization, she takes it to the absolute next level because she’s a genius. And when she explains about the maps and how that could be culturally inappropriate, you start thinking, oh, my God, this is not… good. I mean, you have to make it good. That’s what she does for a living, she just goes researching culture everywhere. So yeah, maybe also it would help having a diverse… I know I always say the exact same thing, but for me it’s important to have different perspectives of the world because it will make the game more rich and more beautiful, in general, right? Like, it is going to hit that spot.

ALEXIS: On that same note, one of the things that is important to have culturalized is what gamers see in the stores, right? The message that comes to them before they buy the game. And even the currency that they buy the game in.

MELISA: Yeah, yeah, yeah. The marketing content, I mean, how important it is culturalization, transcreation in marketing. I think that’s already really established, as well.

LARA: To me, it’s just simply, to make like a conclusion of this, it’s just do your research. If you want to get to a specific market and you think that the content that you have is not going to be suitable for that market, please do your research. Have a diverse team. I think everything could be so beautiful like that, it could flow so well. And, yeah, it could avoid disasters, to be honest with you. It could avoid you losing money, too.

ALEXIS: And it can make you earn far more fans.

MELISA: Exactly. I think people will definitely appreciate you going the extra mile, it will have a positive impact, we can assure you. Thank you so much for watching or hearing this episode. And if you wanna know more about culturalization or you have any questions, please let us know. We’re happy to hear… we’re gonna be reading all the comments. And yes, that’s it. Thank you so much. Bye, everyone.

LARA: Bye-bye! Thank you!

Episode Transcription

LARA: Hi, everyone! Welcome to another episode of Open World. Hi, Ale. Hi, Meli. Today we have a special guest with us, Olga Petrova. Hi, Olga! It’s so nice to see you here with us. Thank you for joining us.

OLGA: Hi! Thank you for having me.

LARA: It’s a real pleasure. Like, we are really excited to have you.

MELISA: Yes, thank you so much for joining us, Olga.

ALEXIS: Olga, for everyone that’s watching us, can you please introduce yourself, provide some background on your experience on video games localization, and a little bit about your journey?

OLGA: Yeah, sure. Once again, thank you for having me. I’m super excited to be here and share a little bit about what I know about localization and what keeps me going, for more than 15 years already, going on 20, I think. Yeah. I’m mostly in project management throughout my career, managing teams and projects and video games localization. I have participated in localization of over 200 games, roughly. Triple A titles, MMORPGs, mobile games. So when I started, I was just a freelance translator, so I actually took the full path from being a freelance translator to being a professional. And I was lucky to have worked on some of the most successful projects in the gaming industry from…

ALEXIS: I was gonna ask you if there was any OP that you’re most proud of or that was very successful.

OLGA: So big companies like Activision, 2K, Capcom, Bethesda, Rockstar, I did projects for those.

MELISA: Dropping names.

OLGA: Yeah, I know. And then, yeah, so I used to work for a big… for the largest original publisher in Russia, and that’s when I got acquainted with big names. And then I moved on to work in the development studios, where I was able to do some influence on the development process and become a localization advocate and evangelist. Yeah.

ALEXIS: Yeah, it’s needed. It’s needed. Especially in indie studios. I started…

LARA: Not only in indie studios, but yeah. It’s just like…

ALEXIS: Everywhere. I remember one of my first steps in the video game industry was to be a localization something, you know, advocate, consultant or whatever in an indie dev studio.

LARA: Yeah. Yeah, it’s really needed. And you can tell when someone puts into the game localization early in the stages because you can tell that everything runs smooth, the localization is perfect, all the cultural aspects are taken into account. So, yeah. That’s awesome.

ALEXIS: Sorry I interrupted you, Olga.

OLGA: Oh, that’s okay. I couldn’t agree more to everything you guys are saying. Yes, it’s extremely important. And I’m, like, I’m still… It’s hard to believe that in 2023, we’re still talking about why we need localization to be a part of the game development, right?

LARA: Oh, my God. Yeah.

MELISA: Absolutely. That’s why I think it’s so important what you were saying. And since we’re already talking about this, I hope it’s okay, I’ll ask you the next question, which is very related. And that’s, what are some common challenges that arise when localization is brought in too late in the development process? And how can these challenges be mitigated?

OLGA: Yeah. Where do I start?

MELISA: A lot to say about this.

OLGA: Yeah. I sometimes call localization a Cinderella of the game development. We rarely get invited to the ball.

LARA: I love it!

MELISA: I love it. That’s so funny!

ALEXIS: Can I use that? I’m using that. I’m sorry, I’m using that.

OLGA: It is true. For a lot of companies, we are the least favorite stepchild, and it is what it is, right?

LARA: And we are so important. Like, come on. How? How can this happen? We’re like… We’re like Cinderella, you know? And you’re inviting us like… No, there’s no way.

MELISA: If you invite us, we’re gonna make an impact. Just saying.

OLGA: Yeah. Maybe drop a shoe or two. But yeah, in all seriousness, just, I think, for the most part, it’s never intentional. It’s just because the developers don’t know better and they just don’t think about it when they start their journey. So… bringing us late in the process essentially cost you. And you end up doing a lot of reworks, a lot of changes or just accepting a quality in localization that is… that is lower than what you have in English or whatever original language your game is created in. So you might be telling a joke that, when it is translated, will not get understood by most of the players who don’t speak English. You might have a puzzle in your game that a person who doesn’t speak English won’t make any sense and will leave them confused. Um… Your user interface might not support text expansion and it will just end up playing font size Tetris when you try to put in the translated text in that small box. What else?

MELISA: These are great examples. They’re very practical, like, very to-the-point ways to know how, like…

OLGA: It’s like, I am a manager, but I’m always very close to what I’m working on. So that’s also one of the things why you have to have localization people on your team. They will spend time, they will invest and make an effort to get your game. They will be on your side. They will be protective of the product that you as a developer are creating, and they will try to make it as good in other language as it is in the language that you used to conceive it. So yeah.

LARA: Yeah. I mean, when you were mentioning…

OLGA: And we haven’t even mentioned the cost here, right? So all that comes up when you bring in localization late, that means more money is gonna be spent on the work that can be done early in the process and therefore be cheaper.

LARA: Yeah. So when you were mentioning the challenges, I could easily like recall games that had those problems that I already played, you know? And I was like, oh my God, this could have been such an easy fix from the early stages, but here I am, playing this game, facing these challenges, and it’s like, Oh, this joke is not even funny in my language. So I totally agree. Um, I have the other question now. From your experience, what are the benefits of having a localization expert collaborate with the development team from the early stages?

OLGA: It’s a really good question, and I think we touched a little bit on that already, but let me just expand and see what else comes to mind when I think about the benefits for the developer. Well, let’s start with money. Because I think that proverbial return on investment from localization that everyone expects is one of the things that you can really justify and can really separate what exactly was the localization role apart from the marketing or user acquisition campaign or the game itself. Maybe the game is so genius that it doesn’t have to have all the bells and whistles that localization brings into. But the money is just, you keep the costs down. You… You avoid the expensive do-overs because you get it right the first time. So one of the games in my last workplace turned out to be extremely successful, but it was not created with localization in mind. They had it in English for the longest time. At the same time, the management realized that they’re leaving a lot of money on the table because, well, there are players who don’t speak English all over the world that could be enjoying the game and bringing in money, the revenue. So that need, it was there, so the decision was made to actually finally have the localization in the game. So without like even any numbers, I’m just gonna tell you that it took nine months of work for two engineers revamping the code and making the localization possible.

LARA: Oh, my God. Like the amount of money, time and effort. Oh, my God!

OLGA: The translation itself didn’t take that much time.

ALEXIS: Right.

LARA: I imagine. Oh, my God, it’s insane. I get, like, goosebumps. It’s insane.

OLGA: It can be really expensive. It can be, like, it can save you a lot of money if you think about internationalization. If you have the right people in the team who can guide the developer and tell them that there are certain things that are better avoided or there are certain things that need to be done from day one that, even if you don’t launch with multiple languages, even if you only launch in English, by the time that you make a decision to localize, it’s not exactly going like that, but very similar. And it does save you a lot of money and time to make it happen.

LARA: Money and time, two things that we could all have more of.

OLGA: And that’s the famous triangle, right? Money, time and quality.

LARA: Yeah.

OLGA: At least you hit two of those. And then quality is up to the professionalism of the localization people that you have.

ALEXIS: Olga, you’re talking about the quality, the professionalism that translation, localization, when taken in the right time and place of the development process, saves you money, saves you time. But I want to go back to the professionalism aspect and the cultural considerations that come with the localization process. Do you think that there are any cultural considerations, like in a broad aspect, that are particularly important for game developers to be aware of when creating content for different markets?

OLGA: Absolutely, Alex. It’s a very good question. Again, like it’s very relevant to the daily work that localization teams are doing around the world, right? We are bridging the cultural gaps. We’re doing it every single day. And we help because we’re bringing players together, and making us all a little bit closer to each other. So there are linguistic considerations. So language and humor, you don’t want to have any puns and jokes that might not translate well. It’s like, if you tell a joke that only makes sense in one language and you hear crickets from the audience, right? So you don’t want to run into this. And don’t get me started on geopolitical sensitivities. I can give you two very fresh examples and one not so fresh one.

ALEXIS: I was gonna ask for examples. Please, go ahead.

OLGA: Oh, that’s fine because I do have it. Say that Spider-Man game that was just released and the flag SNAFU with mixing up Cuban and Puerto Rican flags.

ALEXIS: Yes. I saw that.

OLGA: If they had a culturalization expert on the team or if they paid maybe more attention, they could’ve easily…

LARA: Oh, my God. Yeah.

OLGA: And that was…

LARA: It was so simple.

ALEXIS: It’s simple. We’re doing the same expression, Lali. We’re both like…

LARA: It’s just like, oh, my God. Yes, I saw it, and it was like, no way.

OLGA: It takes a certain like… It takes some skills, right? It takes a certain… Um… You need to be attuned to certain things in a game or in a movie or in a book to be able to catch up on these things. And that’s why you need people who can help you with that. The same thing with the Barbie movie that was banned in Vietnam because of the nine-dash line and that map that they were referring to, it didn’t even look like a map, but it was significant for Vietnamese people, right? And it was a big issue for them, so it was justified in their eyes. From my own experience, I can tell you that we had really big problems with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 that was released in Russia with the level that Activision actually took away from the Russian edition with the terrorists killing civilians in the airport.

ALEXIS: Yes, that famous/infamous level.

LARA: Oh, my God, yeah.

OLGA: But we had quite a big backlash from inside the country that was pointed at the company at that time, the publisher. So they blamed us for neglecting this particular sensitivity in this particular case, even like considering releasing the game in the country. So just like, you know, like three quite bright examples, but there are so many more and they happen all the time. I actually, myself, I have a collection of the movies that make some funny things with the Russian language just because they sort of entertain me, and I find it interesting that, with the amount of money and the budgets that Hollywood has, they just neglect double checking so many things.

MELISA: I would love to see that collection.

OLGA: Well, the movies that have actually Spanish speakers in them, you probably, like, you can totally relate.

ALEXIS: We can do the same with the Spanish. It’s a horror.

MELISA: Yeah. But I think the point that you were making about the movie and why this, like, those are great examples. And it’s so painful, there’s a lot of effort and money and people working for years sometimes in some of these games, and just, you know, to get ruined or banned completely for a completely full audience like of several countries and stuff like that just for these tiny mistakes that, you know, can be avoided. That’s like how important I think this message that we are here trying to spread thanks to Olga. It’s like… You know, I think that’s a great proof of our point.

OLGA: And it’s heartbreaking for the teams because, like you said, they’re working so hard, they’re putting their heart and soul in the game and then they’re being criticized for something that could be easily corrected or avoided at all. So, yeah, those were my examples.

MELISA: Yeah, those are a great examples.

LARA: Great examples.

ALEXIS: Thank you for those great examples.

MELISA: And related to what I just said, can you share some advice for those game developers who may be listening to this episode and may need to become more familiar with the importance of early localization involvement?

OLGA: Yeah, let me try. So, I would tell that they need to be curious, because a lot of times, the developers speak only one language. And there’s nothing wrong with that. You can’t expect everyone to be bilingual or be interested in learning something about the different culture. But it pays off when you try and do that. So just be curious. Try to understand and embrace the landscapes of different cultures and languages. Do the research, ask questions. I think not being guilty to ask questions, and not be afraid to ask them is one of the most important things that a person can actually have in them. I think that the ability to ask questions and to show curiosity is actually showing that people are not indifferent and they’re passionate about what they’re doing. And that’s really important. And it usually shows in the results. What else? So besides curiosity and asking questions, building a diverse team.

LARA: Oh, my God, yeah.

MELISA: I love this.

OLGA: Different backgrounds from different countries speaking different languages. That usually helps. My biggest release so far was a game that was published on Netflix platform, and we launched in 15 languages and we ended up having 33. Obviously, I don’t speak 33 languages, but we had a lot of team members who were able to help out with a lot of them. And that did help. And because, again, like having people on the team who were able to give you advice about their culture, who can tell you what’s acceptable and what’s not, what is… what aligns with customs of the country and what doesn’t, and sometimes are able to tell you the peculiarities of the language. And, if you have a problem with, say, Hindi, which we didn’t know that Unity had, but we had some Hindi speaking people on the team and we were trying to assess how serious this issue is, can we actually release the game with this issue or do we need to change all the words in the game that have this particular glyph or this particular character in it to something else and try that approach instead? Right, so, there are those small things, but they add up to being very important and the quality, never going down. So, yeah, that’s… Definitely brings a unique flavor to the table, for sure.

MELISA: This is some great advice. Thank you, Olga, that was…

OLGA: In fact, with the Netflix release, there was… My mom was actually… Well, I was bragging on my social media, and she was seeing that and was asking, “But how do you translate in 33 languages?” Like, “Mom, it’s okay…”

LARA: I love that!

ALEXIS: I love that. It’s a constant that I found in many people working in the localization industry, that moms usually don’t quite grasp what we do.

OLGA: And that was after 15 years that I’ve been doing that, she was still very naive.

ALEXIS: “My daughter is a translator.” Right?

LARA: Yeah, that’s what my mom says, like, “Yeah, my daughter works translating video games.” She doesn’t even have a clue what goes into it.

OLGA: And I think that’s actually a common misconception that we also have to fight, because for… A lot of times for the management, we are just glorified translators, for some reason, who earn more than they deserve. But that’s not the case. Like a lot of work that we as localization professionals do is language agnostic. It needs to be done in your product no matter how many languages you support. You need to have your conversation with the Game Designer to find out what was put behind each and every player phrase and string in the game, you need to have it documented and you need to know the context for that game because the translators, they’re gonna ask you. And if not the first time, then maybe the second time around. And you need to have that localization Bible like I call it, like it’s usually based off on game design document, but it’s so much more, right? So you build up on that and you use the questions that are asked by the translation team, you add on to that and then, when it’s time to launch in a new language, you have it already and a lot of questions are already answered. So yeah, it’s so much more than just translation and just sending files back and forth. You have to think about so many things besides just having the text translated, starting from, I don’t know, choosing the right font, making sure that all the characters are there, like I said. When I started in localization, I was translating into a language that was not part of EFIGS. So very rarely the developers had an idea that there are certain sets of characters that will be used for displaying the text in the game. So a lot of times, we were receiving a localized version, no characters were seen or, the best case, we had like the tofu squares.

ALEXIS: Yeah, I remember those squares.

OLGA: I can’t count the times I had to get back to the developers and ask them, “Where’s my Cyrillic font? Why don’t they have a Cyrillic font?” So, it’s better now for sure. And a lot of phones have like a full set of characters for alphabetized languages, but it’s still, like, for a lot of them, it’s still a work in progress. And usually, the… the game designers, the UX, UI people, they like to work with the fonts that are pretty, that create a certain atmosphere. Like, imagine something like Bioshock, with its art deco vibes, right? So those fonts, they rarely have support for all the glyphs. So you need to think about that because your engineers, game designers, even your UI, UX people might not, and you need to help them. So, yeah, it’s part of the job. Very exciting, actually.

LARA: Yeah. Yeah, I love that. I love that. I mean, we in Spanish, we have special characters all the time too. And it’s actually funny because the tofu squares that, like you mentioned, I find them always, all the time, and it’s just like, oh, it was just as simple as changing the font. But yeah, there you have it. It happens.

OLGA: Yes. Or just testing, right? So just bring the pangram, use the pangram and you will be able to tell right away if any of the characters are missing. But it’s just because engineers are not trained and the game developers rarely think about it from the start, especially Hindi, right? Like they’re thinking about creating something so special, so new, so exciting that they just don’t have time to think about all the intricacies that might come with actually making a global release. So it’s just the nature of the work. And that’s why localization exists as a discipline and that’s why we need it.

LARA: I love it. I love it. This episode has been one of my favorites. Like, thank you so much, Olga, for your time. This has been amazing. Guys, I don’t know if you want to say anything else.

MELISA: Olga, everything you said was so on point. I think everyone listening, like, it’s just great, great advice, great examples. So thank you so much for joining us.

OLGA: Oh, thank you for having me. I really… I love my job. I really like what I do.

LARA: We can tell. We can tell, we can see the passion that you have.

ALEXIS: Thank you for sharing your own personal stories as well. That’s very important.

OLGA: I find it that some people usually want to hear something personal rather than just very abstract…

ALEXIS: We do it, too.

LARA: Yeah, 100%. We really appreciate it. Thank you so much, everyone. You that you are listening or hearing or watching this episode on YouTube or wherever you are listening this, too, thank you so much for joining us today. We will see you again in another episode. Bye-bye!

MELISA: Bye, everyone.

ALEXIS: Bye-bye.

Episode Transcription

ALEXIS: Hi, everyone! Welcome to another episode of Open World. I’m Alexis and I’m here, as always, with Melisa, with Lali. Hi, guys. How are you? So, in this episode, we’re gonna be talking about accessibility in video games.

LARA: And what a topic.

ALEXIS: What a topic. So let’s start small, okay? So what do you guys think that accessibility is and what does that mean in video games?

LARA: Um, accessibility is making the game available and playable for everyone, regardless of anything, you know? Just like, to me, it’s opening the opportunity for someone that might have never played a video game before being able to play a videogame. For me, that’s huge. And nowadays you’ve seen like a lot of games adding these accessibility features and stuff, and something that flutters me a little bit is just like… I’ve seen video game companies talking about accessibility as if it was an issue. And I think it’s a solution. It’s far away from an issue.

MELISA: It’s an opportunity to reach more people.

ALEXIS: It’s all the contrary.

LARA: It’s all the contrary. Yeah, absolutely. So, yeah, that’s basically for me. Accessibility is making your game playable for everyone.

MELISA: Definitely. And for me, it’s also like, make it part of your process. Like, you know, for a lot of people, they have to find a way around it of how to play it. But when you have it, you know, as part of what you offer for your game, it’s great. And we’ve come such a long way and like technological advances and everything. So it’s something I believe it’s very, you know, like people just know the importance of it a lot more now.

LARA: Yeah. And sometimes we have these misconstruction or misjudgments that accessibility is, I don’t know…

ALEXIS: A ramp for a wheelchair. Right?

LARA: Oh, my God. It’s just like, it’s so much more than that. It is that, but it’s so much more than that.

MELISA: Exactly. There are a lot of different disabilities, you know. Mobility disability, of course, but there’s this whole other, you know, speech…

LARA: Speech, hearing. Yeah.

ALEXIS: You have vision. I have cheats. Sitting here gives us that privilege. Vision, hearing, speech, mobility and cognitive impairments. So on that note, in video games, what are some of the accessibility features that nowadays are being used or that should be used, as you said, Lali?

MELISA: One of the main ones I know is like the remappable keys, so like when you have the option to configure like different keys to have, you know, different options in the game. Or, I mean, not only keys, but like different controllers, different buttons. So like, an example, if you’re playing a shooting game and to fire a gun, you have to press Enter, and you can change it to, you know, the spacebar, if you’re playing with a keyboard. But, you know if you can add a different controller, like the Xbox controller.

ALEXIS: The adaptive controller of Xbox, yeah.

MELISA: That’s like a huge advantage, you can even add different, you know, comfortable controller for different mobility disabilities.

LARA: Yeah, I know a bunch of streamers that have built their own console or keyboard by themselves just to adapt their necessities to gaming. And I think that’s so amazing. And being able to have these feature of remappable keys, it gives this option to these people that are doing their own controllers or their own way to play a video game more accessible. So it’s just like, if you do that, you know that everyone can play that game. It’s so important.

ALEXIS: Nothing should stop someone from playing video games.

LARA: Absolutely.

ALEXIS: So, Lali, what about you? Any other?

LARA: Yeah. For me, it’s colorblind options. I’m a little bit color blind, I have troubles with blues and greens, and I’ve seen it in some video games like League of Legends or Overwatch. What they have is just like, ‘cause they are PvP video games, so it’s player versus player, you can actually change the colors of the teams so you don’t mix them, which for me is great. And I know… the problems I have with color blindness is they are so small compared with other ones, but this accessibility feature, to me, makes it easier. It is easier for my brain to process which one is the enemy and which one is my teammate, you know? So for me it has to be that.

ALEXIS: But, I mean, it’s quite common. It’s a quite common problem to some extent, to have colorblindness, especially in men. I have one or two friends that are actually quite colorblind with different colors, I don’t remember right now which one. But it’s also, I mean, not only the color of things, right? But also like subtitles or even closed captioning, you know? And other elements that…

MELISA: Another feature that is really important.

ALEXIS: Right? Not only adding colors to the subtitling or the size or even like a background to make them more visible…

LARA: Or change the fonts.

ALEXIS: The fonts.

LARA: The amount of times… The size of the fonts. Yeah. Sometimes I find myself… The other day I was playing actually a video game. I don’t remember the name, I don’t think it’s important at the moment. But I was playing on my PS5, and I had the controller and I was playing in bed, chilling. And when the game started with the… In the game, actually, you have to customize your character. And then when the game starts, I encounter myself with subtitles like this. Like this. And the size of the letters was so small.

ALEXIS: Many lines?

LARA: It had like four lines. It was like screen-wide long.

ALEXIS: Wow.

LARA: So I actually had to pause the game to be able to read the subtitles. Because that is not subtitling, dude. That’s just putting text on your screen.

ALEXIS: A paragraph.

LARA: An entire paragraph. You are writing the story of your game in the screen.

MELISA: And nowadays, I mean, you have so many of like, you know… everything is like measured in how long it takes you to read.

ALEXIS: You have best practices for everything.

MELISA: For everything, which is great.

LARA: Right. Yeah. I have played video games when you can actually slow down the speed of the subtitles. That’s so good.

ALEXIS: And, I mean, even in closed captioning, it also gives, like, for example, this is very, very used nowadays, but The Last of Us too did an amazing, and one of the most visible examples that I can remember, in their closed captioning, you could even see, from the intensity of the letters, how near were, I don’t know, your enemies or the soldiers, and where the sound was coming from.

LARA: Assassin’s Creed Valhalla had that, too. Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, when you start playing it, you can see the arrows or you can see where the sound is coming from. So it makes it much easier for you to set yourself and immerse yourself into that world if you have hearing aids or something.

MELISA: And for night, too. Also.

ALEXIS: And what about difficulty or tutorials or things like that? Because those things can be restrictive for players.

MELISA: And for cognitive disabilities. That’s why tutorials are key.

LARA: Yeah. To me, having AI assistance is so important because you don’t know the person that is playing your video game. And if you want that person to play your video game and you have, I don’t know, only one type of setting of difficulty to be like super hard, that person is not going to be able to play your game. And I sometimes I feel it myself, because I might be a try-hard with some games, but with some other games I just really enjoy…

ALEXIS: It’s good to have the option.

LARA: Make the game easier. You’re not going to judge me if I play a game on easy mode. I don’t care if you do, but you shouldn’t. You shouldn’t. You shouldn’t at all, because I’m doing it because I wanna chill, my brain is tired and everything, but there is people that are doing it because it’s their only option.

MELISA: Yes, of course. And tutorials are key to learn how to play it in the first place. So absolutely, they’re a key part. And now that we’re talking about, like, all the different features, I also have… I’m sorry, Ale, I’m also going to use it. There was the Video Games Accessibility Awards in 2021. We’re going to link this in the description because this is great. I mean, just the games that are doing a really good job because are getting recognized and, you know, it just brings more visibility to everything that we’re talking. And I thought about just naming a few of them because there were many, like, different things that they gave awards for. But some of them are Clear Text with Halo Infinite, was someone who won. AI Assistance, it went to Forza Horizon 5. Improved Precision, Far Cry 6. And Peer Assistance, It Takes Two.

LARA: Amazing. What a great game.

MELISA: And Remapping, that we were talking, it’s Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker.

ALEXIS: You have so many, you need like 12 or 15 fingers sometimes, who played that kind of game. So, the fact that they can have the remapping.

MELISA: Yeah, the configuration to adapt it.

LARA: Yeah. And having like an award for this is so important. I remember the Game Awards in 2020 when they first introduced the Accessibility Award, because I think it’s like an encouragement for the video game industry and companies.

MELISA: And to keep innovating because it’s a field that there’s so much improvement that you can, you know, and like technology is advancing. It’s amazing the work that is being done.

LARA: Yeah. I remember the first one being The Last of Us, and the latest one, that was last year, God of War: Ragnarök got it. And when the person that went up to the stage to receive the award gave an amazing speech, I actually got in tears because it was, like, so good. It’s like a side of the video game industry that is not competitive. They are all there just to get to one same result.

ALEXIS: To get video games for everyone.

LARA: That everyone is able to play video games. And it was so good.

MELISA: There’s a lot of advances from different companies that they share everything so that other companies can learn from them too.

ALEXIS: Yeah, that’s a big thing. Most companies should share what they’ve been doing, you know, in order to make their games more accessible. Because that’s not happening that much.

LARA: It’s tricky because they all have these secretive kind of stuff.

ALEXIS: I wonder why.

LARA: They wanna be the only one, they wanna be the best one, they wanna be… It’s just like, but in this case, I don’t think it should be like that.

ALEXIS: Or maybe it’s not even… they don’t even realize…

LARA: No, but just make that for your story, for your quest, for your type of video game. But with your accessibility features, please make them available for everyone so other game developers, indie developers can study what you did with your previous video games.

ALEXIS: And how to install them on the engines that they are using, whether it’s Unreal, Unity.

LARA: And make it, like, available for everyone so everyone can learn how to improve their games for everyone. So it’s just like…

MELISA: It’s the whole point of accessibility, right? So it’s great that… I mean, some companies are sharing it, which is great. And of course, you know, some aren’t. But I think it’s, you know, maybe it will help. Like the more we talk about it, it will help bring awareness to this and that companies, like, sharing.

ALEXIS: Yeah, I mean, we’re talking about this, but I think that the question is due. Why is accessibility important and in what levels? Because we’re talking about making the game more accessible for everyone, of course. But if you had, I don’t know, an indie developer that wants to know why make their games more accessible, or even a publisher that wants to further… enhance, sorry, the experience for the gamers, why is it important?

LARA: I’m going to be like straightforward with this. If you have your game accessible for everyone, more people is going to play it, more revenue for you.

MELISA: Yeah, that’s a great point from the business side.

LARA: The straightforward side.

MELISA: And for the more sociological side…

ALEXIS: But please, be straightforward too.

MELISA: No, of course, of course. I think, I mean, we want to be a better society, like a better world, we wanna be better as an industry and we want to, you know, portray video games like everyone can play it, everyone can connect with it and have a great experience and don’t feel that, because you have a disability, you’re going to be discriminated in the video games or in the, like, you know, your possibility to play it. So I think we’re going in the right direction here. We want to see more of it.

ALEXIS: I agree. I agree. I mean, you both make a great point. There are no downsides of implementing accessibility features in your game. You might not know them all as a developer or as a publisher, but it’s a constant in every episode, if you don’t know how to do it…

LARA: Research.

ALEXIS: Research.

ALEXIS: Find a way to do it.

MELISA: We can leave some links below as well, more information of where you can, you know…

ALEXIS: I mean, just from the top of my head, AbleGamers is a company that even assisted I think Xbox in making the adaptive controller, so kudos there. I mean, but I don’t want to leave this aside because we’ve been talking about many different accessibility features that exist, but localization, I mean, is an accessibility feature as well. If you don’t know a language…

LARA: It is. You make your game more accessible.

ALEXIS: I mean, I don’t know English, I don’t know any other language except my own, and I want to play, I don’t know, The Witcher. Or, I don’t know, any game. You name it, it doesn’t matter. And I grab my joystick, I sit down to play and I don’t know how to play it because I don’t understand anything that’s on screen from the story, from what I have to do. And, if you don’t have contact with games that you don’t really know, localization is an accessibility feature as well.

MELISA: For sure.

ALEXIS: Yeah. So, guys, no one likes to feel an outsider. Thank you everyone that is making accessibility features for everyone, no matter what they are. Keep improving. Let’s work towards making a better industry and a more inclusive experience for everyone.

LARA: Yeah. If you have more examples of games that are more accessible for everyone, please let us know down below in the comments.

ALEXIS: We’d love to know more.

MELISA: Or our Discord server.

ALEXIS: Yeah, and share them on our Discord server. I mean, I’m sure that everyone has someone that needs accessible games, so please share. Thank you for your time, for visiting us on this episode, and we’ll see you next time.

LARA: Bye-bye!

ALEXIS: Bye.

Episode Transcription

MELISA: Welcome, everyone, to a new episode of Open World. I’m here with Ale and Lari, and today we have the pleasure to interview Hi-Rez’s Localization Director, Estelle Bailly. We are extremely excited to have you with us today, Estelle. Thank you so much for joining us.

ESTELLE: Well, thank you for inviting me. I’m very excited too.

LARA: Yeah, this is extremely exciting. And I have the honor to ask you the first question. So here it goes. What inspired you to pursue a career in linguistics?

ESTELLE: Oh, I’ve always been interested in having an international career. I wanted to be a diplomat, actually, so… I thought that, you know, languages would open new horizons to me, so I studied German and then English. And after college, I thought about maybe studying international business, but I wasn’t too sure, so… and I was a good student. So I went to what is called in France Hypokhâgne. It’s a preparatory school. And basically, once you’ve done that, you can apply to very elite schools to have international careers or do politics, you know, fancy jobs. Well… it depends on what you want. So the program is in two years and I did… one month. So, yeah, it was my first fail. There were so many things to learn, to be honest. So many books to read, essays to write, lots of things. It was like being back to college, but… worse. And you’re 18 and you want to have your student life you’ve been hearing about, right? You want to go out with your friends and do stuff, still, do some studies but, you know… have a good balance. So, after a month, I decided to quit and I signed up at uni to study English and German because that was the only two courses that I really enjoyed during this preparatory school. So that’s how it all began, I think.

MELISA: Great that it was just one month. Your decision was pretty quick. I mean, a lot of people start a career and then you’re like after a year or two… “Actually, this is not for me.” But you, immediately… “No.”

ESTELLE: “Diplomats? That’s really cool!” And after one month you’re like… “These people are not for me.”

LARA: That’s so cool. Yeah, I wasted like a year doing a career I didn’t like, and it took me a year to figure it out. So, if you figured it out in a month, that’s incredible. Yeah.

MELISA: And sometimes you force yourself, like you want to like it. Okay, I already made the decision, like, I have to do this now. But, you know, you don’t, so… It’s always good to, you know…

ESTELLE: Yeah, exactly. Or maybe I was just too lazy to, you know, to stay more than a month. I really enjoyed it.

MELISA: There was something telling you you had to go a different way, so…

ESTELLE: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uni was better for me, I think.

ALEXIS: So, could you describe how was your journey in the world of video game localization from where it all began to where you are now?

ESTELLE: Oh, sure. So I was at uni, and I had to work to finance my student life.

ALEXIS: That’s always a good drive away. You know, I need money.

ESTELLE: Yes, I needed money. I did various jobs and then one day I saw this offer at uni, actually. It was to translate video games and it was in an agency not too far from where I studied, so I thought “Oh, that’s perfect.” And at that time I played video games quite a lot. And I have never thought… It was in 1999. Oh, the last century! Oh my God, I feel so old.

ALEXIS: Okay, wait. But do you remember what were you playing?

ESTELLE: Um… yes, it was more… more a girly game, but more like adventurous game. The 7th Guest, Grim Fandango. Remember Grim Fandango? Yeah, it’s the best one. Yeah, these kinds of games. I really liked it. The 7^th Guest, and I think the second one was The 11th Hour. It was not that good. The 7^th Guest was good, I remember that one. And then console games like The Mario thing and, you know…

ALEXIS: Sorry, I wanted to ask, but I love that you remember all the games that you were playing.

ESTELLE: Oh, yeah, yeah. Grim Fandango is still one of the best I’ve ever played. And that was… Yeah, last century, right? So anyway. Yeah. I didn’t know there was a job who could really need both my passions at that time, translation and video games. So, you didn’t know it existed, right? It was very… a while ago, I mean, a long time ago. Anyway… long story short, I applied, I got the job. A minimum wage, maximum working hours. You know, it was a true… How do we call that? Startup, you know.

ALEXIS: Putting your foot in the door.

ESTELLE: Oh, yeah. And you do everything yourself, right? But the team was lovely, very small. We would not outsource anything. And we were working almost nights and days, you know, seven days a week, for sure. On Friday nights you could go out, but then Saturday would be in the office. But I liked it. So it was a team of passionate people. And we all got along very well, so… When I think about it today, I think “Oh, that was a bit crazy.” But, um… actually I really enjoyed it at that time. And because we were doing everything ourselves, I learned so much. I really worked on all aspects of the localization pipeline. Well, obviously translation, but proofreading, project management, account management, I even did some assistance for our direction in the recording studio. Also recruitment, training of the new hires, going to conventions, and meeting with clients and team management throughout the end. So it was really hard work. I learned so much. I also discovered that I wasn’t that good after uni. You know, at the end of uni, you think that you know everything but actually, you know nothing. But it’s okay. You learn. And I had a mentor and good people who were passionate enough to teach me stuff, so I learned how to do it. And working at a localization agency, you adapt. You have to adapt so many… I mean, so much, because during the day you will work on six, eight different projects for as many different clients, jumping from one translation guide to another, one tool to another. And one day my boss told me: “Once you know how to handle the pressure and the work in a loc agency you can do anything… publisher, developer in localization because it will sound easy to you.” And I was like “Oh really? I want to try that. I want to go on the other side.”

ALEXIS: I want to see if you were right.

ESTELLE: Yeah, I want to work less. And so I tried to go to the other side to developer or publisher several times. I was looking for a job in France and there was not that many opportunities. And each time I got the same thing, you know, I ended up in the last two candidates and people said: “Oh yeah, you have some experience, but you don’t have experience as a publisher or developer. So we are going to pick the other candidate.” And you’re like… “Yeah, that’s why I applied to get this experience.”

ALEXIS: That’s what I’m trying to get.

MELISA: It’s a typical cycle. “You need the experience.” But I need to get in to get the experience.

ESTELLE: It’s like when you’re looking for an internship and you’re like… “Yeah, but you’re too new to know.” “Yes. That’s why I’m going to be an intern.” “Yeah, but, you know, you have no experience.” Yeah, it’s always the same thing, right? So, anyway, in parallel I became a mum and Paris is a lovely city, a very busy city. And it’s great. Just if you want to have a family life, especially with young kids, it’s not probably the best city you could live in. So, with my husband, we decided that maybe I could apply somewhere else. He’s self-employed, he just needs an internet connection. A good one, but, still… that’s convenient. So I started to apply to jobs in other cities and other countries, and that’s how I joined Hi-Rez in 2016. I didn’t know this company, actually, before applying to it, but the Free-to-play monetization model really interested me as well. So, anyway, I got the job once again and we all moved to Brighton in the UK with the kids who couldn’t speak a word of English at that time and that was quite an adventure, I have to say.

MELISA: How old were the kids then?

ESTELLE: They were six and eight. Yeah. In France, we start learning foreign languages very late. That’s why we are bad at foreign languages. But yeah. So, when we arrived here, a teacher said: “Well, you know, after three months, they’re going to pick a few words here and there. After six months, they’re going to start to understand. And after a year they’re talking.” And that’s exactly what happened. And now, you know, when I talk to their teacher and tell them that their native language is French, they say: “Oh, really?” They don’t know. While, when the teacher hears me, after 5 seconds: “You’re French, right?” I wonder how you guessed.

MELISA: It’s such a big change for everyone in the family, right?

ESTELLE: Yeah, but, I thought…

MELISA: It turned out good.

ESTELLE: Yeah, exactly. It was a great change.

MELISA: I love hearing your whole journey and through how you got to your current role. And now my next question is: What do you find most rewarding about your current role and why?

ESTELLE: Team management, definitely. I like being a team leader. I started in France. I had a great team in France as well, brilliant project managers. I was very lucky to have them. When I arrived at Hi-Rez, we developed the team, the localization team, and we had great people joining and learning with all of them. It was a multi… it was a multicultural team obviously, and that’s so interesting and I love being a team leader, taking care of people. I think… I’ve always known I like caring for people. But I think the older I grow, the more interested I am in human beings, you know, rather than projects. Sorry, no offense to Hi-Rez projects. I still like our projects. But I do love our people at Hi-Rez. And I think this really reflects my way of managing people. You know, if you ask me or if you talk to me about OKRs. Do you work with OKRs? Do you know what OKRs are? Well, if you don’t, you can Google it or just don’t Google it. It’s just like setting objectives and to each of your team members, you know, in a specific period of time and you need to achieve these and that and, and if you ask me to do this, I probably would run away because I’m more like on the human side… “Okay, tell me, what are you interested in? What kind of games do you want to work on? What kind of skills do you want to develop, to focus on?” You know, I try to keep that in mind when I sign a new project. It’s not always possible. I’m not saying: “Oh, I’m perfect.” I’m not perfect. So, definitely it’s not always possible to please everyone. But to me, if I can give a project manager a game they want to work on as a project, then I’m quite certain that they will do their very, very best to deliver an excellent job just because they would be motivated. You know, some people say “pressure makes diamonds.” I really don’t like that. I really prefer “motivation makes diamonds.” You know, that’s my motto, actually. And let’s say that when you’re motivated, I think half of the job is already done. Kind of.

MELISA: I love it. Motivation makes diamonds. I love it.

LARA: Yeah, it speaks wonders of you, honestly. You’re putting people first. I mean, nowadays, in this industry in particular, it speaks wonders, so.

ESTELLE: I try to do it. I’m not saying. Yeah.

LARA: But you are trying it at least. That’s something. Yeah.

ESTELLE: I think it is quite well, so, yeah.

LARA: Yeah. I have the next question. And how has your career evolved over the years and what lessons have you learned along the way?

ESTELLE: Oh, um… Well, as I mentioned earlier, I think I did all the roles I could possibly do, I believe, in the video game loc industry, not that I can’t learn anything anymore. But you know, from translation, proofreading, project management, recruitment, I even did some LQA at some point on casual games, and it was in my early years. But yeah, Team Leader and now Loc Director… Yeah, that’s pretty quick. I did a lot of things. There must be other things I can do. But the lessons I would say, a few lessons. Well, motivation. Motivation is key. Try to motivate your team. You know, that’s how they will want to stay in your company. Not necessarily stay in your team, but at least, you know, make them feel part of the they belong to a group, a team. I think that’s important. To focus on their motivation and on your own motivation as well. And obviously, communication, communication is key. Work-life, private life… communication is always key. I keep saying that to my kids. And communication is key. Not always when it’s bad, you know, to talk about the thing that went bad. If things go well, say it as well, you know, because, like, when you work with a vendor, you know, don’t be too shy, you know, and send them an email when you’re happy with them delivering the job with good reactivity, because they respected all instructions or because it went well. It’s not because you don’t have a bad comment to say that you shouldn’t communicate with them. So, yes, communicate. When you’re not happy, but also when you’re happy. It’s important. Communication is key.

MELISA: I think this is such a good point because I feel like feedback, a lot of times it’s like you just give feedback when something wrong is happening and so the other person might feel like… “Well, I’m doing everything wrong” But that just little positive feedback might give them that motivation. “Okay, I did a good job.”

ESTELLE: Yeah. And when you’re French, you know, French tends to focus on the negative. “Oh, you should have done better this, that.” And all this is not really good. “This is not really good.” It’s not really the positive education, even at school. So I think it’s really important that once in a while to send an email just to say thank you for your commitment, thank you for being there because, you know… you’re really part of our success as well. So it’s good to say that. And also send feedback when they didn’t think exactly what you were expecting as well, because otherwise they can’t know what they have to improve, obviously.

ALEXIS: And that’s something that you need to know how to do as well, right? To give that feedback the best way possible.

ESTELLE: Yes. Yes, exactly. Exactly. And also to accept the feedback. But yeah, definitely it’s super important. Communication. Be humble as well. Always. Don’t be afraid to be too vulnerable. I think, especially, when you are in the leadership team and Yeah. You can’t know everything. You can’t have the answer to every single question or you can’t solve every problem. You’re not perfect, so, yes, accept it. And try to just be humble and be open. You can learn from everyone any time. Well, overconfident people tend to make me feel very uncomfortable. That’s my impostor syndrome. So, yeah, humility is key. I prefer humility in human beings. Also don’t be an asshole. That’s one of our motto at Hi-Rez. Don’t be an asshole.

MELISA: I really like this message. Because usually it’s confidence that gets praised. Like you have to show yourself really confident, like you know everything. and, you know, being humble… is also really, really important. It shows really good things. For me, at least, you know, when I see a leader that is humble and it’s open to learn new things like you were saying, you’re like… “Oh, wow, okay.” You know, we connect a bit more, I think.

ESTELLE: Yes, exactly. Don’t be an asshole. Be nice with others. Assholes, they never win, in the end. Except in politics, but that’s another discussion. Yeah. And the last thing I would say it’s maybe this is just work. It’s important as well to remember that because especially when… If you are like me and tend to feel like an impostor and then you tend to push yourself to work as hard or as much as possible because you want to show to people that “Yes, I belong here, I deserve my promotion.” Or, you know, you want to prove something to others, then the burnout is never really too far from you. So learn to stop before it’s too late. I went through burnout as well in my early years in France, and that’s really not something you want to go through. It’s not nice. And it takes time to recover. So we’re not saving lives. We’re just doing video games, right? So it’s cool. It’s really cool, but just don’t forget it. It won’t change anything if you answer this email in half an hour. Just go for a walk. A short walk. Get a break. Yes. I mean, it’s just that you would be so much more productive. And yes, I don’t need to answer you email constantly. Because I was like… I would stay in front of my desk. Not going to the toilet or to go and get food. And, you know, just because I thought… “Oh, if I go back to my desk, there would be so many emails to answer. And you know, I need to answer right away because the clients need to know I’m on it. I’m on it.” You know, that was always my… “I’m on it,” you know? Yeah, actually yes, I’m on it, but I can be on it, like in half an hour and take care of yourself as well. It’s really important. And I think after COVID years, oh, I got to realize a bit more that it’s important, but it’s definitely the most important thing. Yes. Yeah, absolutely. You know? And yeah, yes. Because I’ve been working on my impostor syndrome recently, I try to be more gentle with myself and to accept that I’m not perfect. And some people have been in my team no more than I do, and actually it’s fine. Probably it’s because I was good enough to hire them. So I hired the right people probably. And I shouldn’t be afraid if they are better than me. Um. Yeah, I try to be more comfortable with my weaknesses as well. It takes time. I’m not going to lie, but, I’ve been there.

MELISA: That is such a good point. Being gentle with yourself. And you know how people say all the time there’s things like how we… we are so used to lifting other people up, and how a lot of things when something happens around a situation, we talk to ourselves like we would never talk to a friend, like we talk to ourselves and say… “Well, how is that possible?” We’re not being that compassionate with our own selves.

ESTELLE: Or we don’t have a lot of friends, right?

LARA: I mean, it’s so important because also I believe after COVID and remote working and everything, it was just harder to separate your personal life from work, you know? And for me personally, I have to constantly remind myself it’s just work. Like tomorrow is going to be okay If you send these like two hours later, no one’s going to die.

ESTELLE: Yes, my manager in Paris used to say that all the time. And I keep saying it because it’s true. No one will die. It’s just work. It’s just games. Even games are important.

LARA: Yeah, a hundred percent.

ESTELLE: But, yeah, no one will die, and that’s the most important thing.

ALEXIS: So, Estelle, with so many people experiencing impostor syndrome at some point, beginning or even when they get a high position. But you have presented some excellent talks about this subject, right? So, I don’t know how to phrase this question, but maybe it would be what strategies or techniques have you found effective that you’d like to share with us in fighting these feelings of inadequacy, self-doubt? I don’t know. You take it from whatever you want.

ESTELLE: Okay. First, allow me to… because of the terminology, because of my translation background. So it’s going to be a terminology minute.

ALEXIS: Yes.

ESTELLE: I know we all say “impostor syndrome.” I do say it all the time. In fact, the official historical term is “impostor phenomenon” or “impostor experience,” because it is an experience rather than… When we say “impostor syndrome,” it makes people feel that it’s a clinical diagnosis, which is not. So the right term should actually be “impostor phenomenon.” But, that’s the end of the parenthesis. “Impostor syndrome” is the term that is widespread. Indeed, just to confirm what you were just saying, it does affect 70 to 80% of the global population at one point in their lives. So if you do feel this way, you’re not alone. And I’m here.

ALEXIS: I have to say that I love that it’s a phenomenon, right? It sounds more interesting than something clinical that something is actually wrong with you.

ESTELLE: Yeah.

ALEXIS: We should spread around that it’s “impostor phenomenon,” not “impostor syndrome.”

ESTELLE: Yeah. I’ll try to use phenomenon in the rest of the interview. Yeah, talking about some tips or strategies or things I’ve learned with my research and my training so far, the best one, or what I find is the best one, at least to me, is to consider myself as a work in progress person. Someone who is constantly learning things. And then it allows you to make mistakes. It allows you to accept that you’re not perfect because no one is. You are not perfect, sorry, team. I’m not perfect. And it allows you as well to accept that good enough is actually quite excellent. Sometimes, as an impostor, you just… “I’m not good enough.” But actually you are. And good enough is good because you can’t be perfect. So, considering myself as a work in progress person is actually one of the best advice I received. And I keep repeating it to myself very often when I don’t have the answer. And that it’s fine. I’m learning. I’m open to learn, you know. Yes, I keep learning every day from everyone, so that’s fine. Don’t be afraid, we mentioned that earlier as well, you know, to ask for feedback or to ask for help, wise people actually ask for help. There’s nothing to be ashamed of and to be vulnerable as well, you know, especially as a leader, but not only as a leader. Yeah, asking for feedback is actually a good way to know where you are or where you think you are. And there might be a big difference, especially if you feel like an impostor. And be gentle with yourself because yes, believe it or not, you are entitled to make a mistake once in a while. So don’t be too hard with yourself. Self-compassion, I mentioned that in my talk. You know, if you’re good at being an impostor, you probably suck at self-compassion and you should consider self-compassion as a new friend, actually, because it can really help you to silence the negative self-talk or message that pops up in your mind each time the impostor syndrome, impostor phenomenon, is triggered. You know, well… “I’m not good enough.” “I don’t deserve my role.” “What am I doing here? I feel so stupid.” “They know better than me.” “They are better than me.” All these negative thoughts, they don’t define you. And, you know, self-compassion. Try to be more gentle with yourselves. And of course, talk about it. Normalize it. Break the silence. It sounds easy to say it like this, but in fact, when you’ve spent most of your life trying to hide that you feel like an impostor, trying to hide one of your biggest weaknesses, it’s not that easy to talk about it, but it’s really worth it. And also, consider the source, right? Try to contextualize the impostor phenomenon. Are you the only woman in this board meeting or the only person of color? Are you a student whose skills are constantly assessed? Exams, tests. Are you the first graduate in your family? Do you work in a creative field? In a highly competitive field, or in a field where everything changes so rapidly? You know, we talk about AI a lot at the moment, and I think you can quickly feel overwhelmed if you work in this field. So there are lots of societal and situational factors to take into consideration if you want to get a bigger picture of the impostor phenomenon.

MELISA: That’s such a great point that you just made. Like Ale said before, you know, the thing about “oh is there something wrong with me?” And a lot of times you can explain it, like you were saying, with the context as well. There’s a lot of things, you know, inequalities in the society and in the private sector, in companies and leadership roles, so a lot of times it makes sense that people feel that way because they’re not actually being represented. There’s no other people like them in the room. So it’s really hard not to feel that way.

ESTELLE: Yeah, exactly. It has a lot to do as well with diversity, inclusion, equity and yeah…

MELISA: And like you were saying, talking about it, you know, the phrase “fake it till you make it” and then people just feel like they’re faking all the time because they can’t really feel like they deserve what they’re doing, they know what they’re doing. And I was very shocked, also for everyone that’s listening, how we met Estelle. It was one of her talks at a conference, and I’d like to say it was one of the most popular talks in the conference. The room was full. Everyone was so interested in participating. And then, when you were asking people to raise their hands, everyone, in different parts of the talk, they were feeling represented. Everyone in the room. So you can tell how many people actually feel this way.

ESTELLE: And, you know, I’ve done these talks several times and each time I can’t help but being surprised, but in a positive way to see how actually people in the audience feel comfortable to open up about their own impostor experiences. You know, at the end I tried… Well, we didn’t have enough time in the talk when we met because it was limited, but I did another one with more questions at the end and I tried to do… I’m not a medical expert. So the Q&A at the end is more like an open discussion for people to share their experience if they want. And you know, rather than really… “Oh, what should I do when I feel like this?” And each time people really open up and talk about their experience in front of people they’ve never seen before, you know. And sometimes in front of their own colleagues as well, you know, who discover that “Oh, that’s how you feel,” you know. So that gives lot of discussion as well. It’s super interesting. It’s a topic I’m really passionate about and talk about it for…

MELISA: You’re very passionate as well.

ESTELLE: I’ve just completed a new training. It’s actually an impostor syndrome informed coach, so I can coach now. And it was delivered by the Impostor Syndrome Institute, who is actually co-founded by Dr. Valerie Young, and the conclusion of this training was actually the only way to stop feeling like an impostor is to stop thinking like an impostor. People who don’t experience impostor phenomenon, they just think differently when facing a challenge. They are not more intelligent or more capable or more competent than people with the impostor phenomenon are. It’s just that they think differently. I think it’s a good thing to keep in mind.

LARA: Yeah. I mean…

LARA: Yeah, I started, early in my life, doing some sort of switch. I still suffer impostor syndrome. I still have that monster in my bedroom. It’s still there.

ESTELLE: Oh, a monster? I call it my friend.

LARA: Yeah, it’s a monster. No, mine is a monster because it haunts me all the time. It could be a ghost, too. You just throw the Halloween theme there. They’re like…

MELISA: You have to turn it into a friendly monster.

LARA: Perfect Halloween costume: The impostor syndrome. Yeah. I mean, I started doing something about it. I am really hard with myself, you know? So every time I make a mistake, usually I will go like, extremely, super hard on me. But then I realize that if I don’t make that mistake, I’m not allowing myself to learn from that mistake. How else am I going to learn? So that’s something that like, I don’t know, interrupt in my mind one day and I was like… “Oh, well, it’s not that bad then,” but it’s so hard. So hard. I always try to remind myself it’s extremely hard.

ESTELLE: It is extremely hard, that’s for sure, but it’s worth trying to remember that because you’ve done this mistake that you are who you are today. Sorry, that sounds a bit cheesy, but it’s true. And you learn so much from your mistakes. It’s just… you have to do mistakes. Otherwise, you would never really improve or change. It’s part of the experience, the whole life experience, I think. During the training, I forgot the name of the guy, but we talked about this TED talk about a guy who thought about… We were talking about the importance of failure and the way you could see how failure actually helps you grow up and help you grow. And this guy actually presents himself only with his failures. You know, rather than… I’m going to try that in my next talk. I think I noted that down. But I want to try. You know, when you do this talk or presentation, an introduction, and there you would say… “Oh, I’ve done this and I’ve worked there and I’ve worked on that many projects.” And so it’s a good…

MELISA: All your achievements.

ESTELLE: Yes. And then, when you see these TED talks is just like focusing on “No, I’m not the best.” “I failed this, I tried this and it didn’t work” or “I had this company. Well, you know, I had to close it down.” And that’s what I learned. And that’s another way of presenting yourself. But I think that’s so much better. That’s my opinion. But yeah, I really liked it. I was just like… “Yeah, actually, you know, people know about your achievement.” They could just go to your LinkedIn profile and they have your achievements. Because you sell yourself, right? If you send your CV to a recruiter, you might not just list your failures, obviously. But I really like the way of introducing yourself or presenting who you are to an audience and see how they react as well. So. Yeah, in doing other talks I would try to do it.

LARA: I love that. It’s so cool. So I have the final question for you, Estelle. Are you ready for it?

ESTELLE: Oh, yeah, sure.

LARA: What advice do you have for those aspiring to follow a similar path in the video game localization industry?

ESTELLE: Uh, that’s a tough one. You get the tough one at the end. So. Um, my background is translation. Right. So first I was a translator. So, if someone wants to be a translator right now or aspires to follow these kinds of paths, my gut feeling would be to pick another career path, maybe if you still can, or at least be prepared to evolve in your job as quickly as the technology or AI does. You need to work with the machine, not against it, right? Talking about it. Actually, last week I had a realization. Yes. It happens sometimes. Do you know Asterix? The comic books, Asterix and Obelix.

ALEXIS: Yeah.

ESTELLE: Yeah, you know.

ALEXIS: The little guy and the big guy.

ESTELLE: Yes, I was in France, and so the new Asterix was out. I think in English it’s The White Iris. I bought it. I read it in French. And now I’m actually desperate to buy the English version. I need to order it. There are so, so many references, like cultural references, to the French culture. Songs, proverbs, obviously all the names of the characters are puns or references to French persons or culture. So honestly, it’s full of it. So reading it, I was like… “Oh, I hope translators had notes and contextual reference.” I’m sure that they had it for such an important release. But when reading it, obviously I thought with my translation mind. So I want to read it in English now because I want to see which miracles the translators have accomplished, to be honest. I think even for the English version, you would need a British English version, an American English version, an Australian English version to adapt this Asterix properly. I checked. I think there’s only one English version, which is sad, but I really want to see what they’ve done. My point is… my realization was actually Translators: yes, they have a future. Yeah, it’s good? I’m sure you’re relieved.

ALEXIS: That’s a great take away.

ESTELLE: But I mean, yes, because one of the most important aspects of translation is all the cultural and linguistic context of the texts, right? So, yes, AI has made amazing progress in natural language processing. I won’t deny that. I can’t deny it. But AI is still unable to get all the nuances of a culture or language, you know, like idioms, proverbs, puns, jokes. I mean, while AI can be useful in certain fields for language professionals, it cannot replace, I think, the expertise and the cultural awareness of a human translator, at least for now, right? So what I’m trying to say is that most probably my job… because it was a question. My job as it’s been over the past decades or as it’s still today, will keep changing, evolving as new technologies, AI progress are used. So probably for students today, it might be more useful to study linguistic engineering, maybe, if such a thing exists. Or if you’re not really into IT, to focus your studies on the cultural aspects of languages to become a cultural expert because we will keep needing that. And our chance in the video game industry, I think, is that the texts we translate are mainly creative and our human expertise adds a massive value to the final localized products. And, as I said earlier, you need to work with the machine, not against it. So you also need to know where your added value is. And as a video game translator, your added value is most definitely in the knowledge of all the linguistic nuances and the cultural references of your native language.

MELISA: Yeah. I think that’s a great advice, that you can adapt. And there’s a lot of changes happening in the industry, so… we’ll see what the future holds for us.

ESTELLE: I think there are a lot of uncertainties that we are trying to navigate, but it’s still uncertain at the moment.

MELISA: Absolutely, yes. Well, Estelle, thank you so much for joining us. This was a great episode. I’m sure everyone listening will agree. And all your advice is very valuable. So thank you so much.

ESTELLE: Thank you for inviting me. I had a great time. So, hopefully everyone had too.

LARA: I had a great time too, so I bet they have.

ALEXIS: Thank you so much.

LARA: Thank you so much, Estelle. It was amazing.

ESTELLE: Thank you.

ALEXIS: See you, everyone.

ESTELLE: Bye.

Episode Transcription

MELISA: Hi, everyone, and welcome to a new episode of Open World. My name is Melisa, I’m here with Lara and Ale.

LARA: Hi!

ALEXIS: Hi!

MELISA: And today we’re going to talk about different Spanish variants. So we told you guys that our first language is Spanish. But the challenging thing about Spanish is that it’s the official language of 21 countries. So it definitely, like… it raises some questions about which Spanish should you translate your video game, in particular, of course, if it’s, like, European Spanish or… There’s something that we know of like Latin American Spanish, which is not, you know… How would you guys describe the Latin American Spanish?

ALEXIS: One size fits many?

LARA: Yeah, one size that tries to fit all of them.

MELISA: Exactly.

LARA: But, yeah, it sounds weird, it doesn’t sound natural, but it’s something that we are exposed on a very young age. From TV shows, from series, from movies and everything that you’re consuming that is media, you hear this neutral Latin American Spanish that doesn’t actually represent any dialect or any country in particular.

MELISA: Exactly. So it’s like it’s not spoken in any country, but it’s more like it was designed so that everyone can understand it. So you take out all of the like, regionalisms, idioms and…

ALEXIS: Yeah, you’re not gonna hear how you speak, but you’re gonna understand the same thing that a person from Colombia, Uruguay, or Venezuela understands.

LARA: Exactly, yeah. And sometimes it is… they call it the Mexican Spanish and it is not even Mexican Spanish, because not even Mexicans speak like that. It’s just like they try to make it the most… understandable for all the countries in Latin America, and it still sometimes sounds weird for us.

MELISA: Yeah, especially as, like, adults, I think now we can understand it. But when we were kids, I mean, like you said, all our cartoons are dubbed in like this neutral kind of Spanish. I don’t know about you guys, like, if you used this when you were kids, like, playing using neutral Spanish or if you heard like kids speaking this way.

LARA: Oh, my God, yeah. I mean, every time you find yourself with a little kid, you probably might hear them speak in this neutral Spanish, and it’s just like, oh, my God, why are you talking like that?

ALEXIS: Why are you talking like that? It’s neutral.

LARA: It’s so neutral and it sounds so weird. Maybe when it’s coming from like a movie or a video game or something, it doesn’t sound that weird. But when it comes from another human’s mouth, it’s like, “Why are you talking like that?”

ALEXIS: Right, because it’s not your own.

LARA: No, it’s not your own. Yeah.

ALEXIS: In Spain, movies, video games, they sound like they do. So that’s the main difference. I mean, it’s one for everyone, but that’s for them. It happened to me that I was talking to a colleague from Spain, from Madrid, and she told me that it’s very, very important for them.

LARA: I think it is something, it’s even stated by law, they have to have all the media voiceover and subtitled and everything. So it’s just like, it is something that’s very important for them, and we have been consuming their content because of the lack of this Latin American neutral Spanish, right? And both of them sound weird for us, but one of them gets closer to what we understand now.

MELISA: Definitely. I think that the difference between like European and Latin American is really big. They should definitely be considered like two different languages when you’re translating.

LARA: I mean, you can understand each other. Like sometimes maybe, when you, as a Spanish speaker, you might understand something from Portuguese or Italian too, because we share some similarities with the languages, but yeah, it’s just completely different languages.

MELISA: Yeah, and in the case of video games, I mean, we always talk about that immersive experience that you get, especially when you’re playing a game and it’s spoken in your language. Have you guys played any games that were translated into Latin American Spanish?

LARA: Luckily, yes.

MELISA: Or European Spanish?

LARA: Yes. But the thing is, sometimes you don’t get the voiceovers in Latin American Spanish.

ALEXIS: Yeah, just the text.

LARA: Just the text. Which I don’t like, to be honest with you, because the voiceovers sometimes are weird.

ALEXIS: I prefer the voiceovers in English if it’s not done properly, myself.

LARA: Otherwise, it’s just some weird… because if they try to do like a voiceover using neutral Spanish, and sometimes you may have different nationalities in the game or something like that, they might sound a little bit… racist?

MELISA: Yeah.

ALEXIS: They go to stereotypes.

LARA: Yeah, they go to stereotypes. I don’t… I don’t like that.

MELISA: Yeah. I mean, I know, it happens sometimes in English as well, like when they’re making up accents according to that character’s background or something. But yeah, in Spanish it’s used as well, and it can sound a bit strange.

LARA: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, but, like, the first thing that comes to my mind is actually, when you have something to grab, to pick up, and you have the Spanish…

ALEXIS: That’s the easiest… Yeah. It shows.

LARA: Yeah, it’s just like, when you’re going to grab something, in Spanish it says “coger,” but in Latin American Spanish, that means “to have sex.” So it’s just like, how can a word be so different and have these kinds of… ugh!

ALEXIS: Two different meanings altogether.

LARA: Yeah, and I’m not saying to be like, yeah, you should totally make this game in Argentinian Spanish, so every time I have to put on a T-shirt, it will say “remera.” No, it’s okay, I get it. Because not every country from Latin America will understand that this is a “remera” because in Chile, this is called a “polera.” So it’s just like, it changes.

ALEXIS: Or “money” in Mexico is “lana.” We in Argentina don’t call it “lana.” But it’s used.

MELISA: Yeah. I mean, one of the most challenging things when you have to translate into Latin American Spanish is exactly like, you know, it’s just to not have any offensive words that can, you know, be interpreted in very different ways, like that word from Spain. But even in, like, Mexico. I mean, we have very different words that can mean something offensive in other countries. So what do you guys think is the best approach when you have to have like that kind of neutral kind of Latin American Spanish and try not to be offensive?

LARA: Yeah, for me, it’s like to find a common ground, to do your research. So maybe have people from those specific countries working in your team so you have a diverse team that can put their input and their knowledge or their words that maybe you don’t know the meaning behind that specific word. Yeah, for me, it’s a little bit of that, to find a common ground, but also having a diverse team that can put a good input into what you’re trying to translate.

ALEXIS: It needs to be mindful. I mean, Latin American Spanish works, of course, but if you have the resources to do further research and truly, truly tune, you know, everything, it’s gonna make the experience much more enjoyable for everyone.

MELISA: Absolutely. I mean, if it is… I mean, and some people are doing this, like, instead of having this Latin American neutral Spanish, having it localized to, like, Spanish from Mexico or Colombia or Argentina, for example, depending on your audience. And when you do that, you’re definitely going to make a difference on those countries that you’re targeting, because we’re not used to having content localized to our… So, you know, you can connect a lot better, especially, I mean, a lot of video games are full of, I don’t know, like, jokes and, you know, word plays…

ALEXIS: Colloquialisms.

MELISA: Yeah. And all of that is basically missed when you’re having it in Latin American Spanish because it sounds very like washed-up, like a bland version of Spanish without any regionalisms, without… And one example I always think of is Deadpool. I don’t know if you guys have watched this movie.

ALEXIS: Yeah, both.

MELISA: Of course, both. And, I mean, for everyone who has watched it, you know, in English it’s just full of…

LARA: So fun.

MELISA: Yeah, exactly. It’s full of swear words, everything, and, like, actually, when they translated it to Spanish from Spain, they won an important award because the adaptation was so creative and they used so many jokes and so many things from Spanish from Spain. But everyone from Latin America had to sit through, like, a very just generic movie that wasn’t, you know, a lot of references, a lot of jokes were kind of missed.

LARA: Yeah, some of the jokes were not properly targeted. I remember, like, maybe… If I’m mistaken, please correct me, but I believe Luis Miguel was one of the characters of one of the jokes, instead of another famous person. And we were like… Eh…

MELISA: Who can everyone from Latin America know? Let’s just…

LARA: Let’s go with Luis Miguel.

MELISA: Yeah.

LARA: Yeah. It was a little bit painful to watch in Latin America, in the Latin American Spanish. I appreciate the effort, though.

MELISA: Yeah, of course. Of course. I mean, we understand, sometimes it’s like the easiest way to target all of Latin America’s audience. I don’t know if you guys have watched the… There’s a version online that was a fan-dubbed version of Deadpool 2, from Argentina.

ALEXIS: From Argentinian Spanish, right?

LARA: So good.

MELISA: And it’s just so funny. It’s full of Argentinian swear words and references. It went viral, and it still nowadays is like shared, so it kind of shows the impact that can have when you…

LARA: Yeah, the importance and how can you make the movie actually resonate with an entire audience. And you can actually, like, really, really have good amounts of people watching your content and having a good laugh, instead of this Latin American Spanish that the jokes were like… Meh…

ALEXIS: It’s an extra step in your market research. I mean, you’ve done your market research, you know where your movie or game or audiovisual content is gonna work, why don’t you use that research and…

MELISA: Absolutely. Yeah. And to connect a bit more with the audience. And that’s basically what you want when you want to translate or localize your content. And going back to video games, can you guys think of any examples of, like, video games that you played and how that translation worked?

LARA: Um, yeah. I mean, I have… Do you wanna go? Ah, you have your shirt with the game you’re going to talk about. That’s…

ALEXIS: You go.

LARA: Okay. Okay, I’ll go.

MELISA: You’re a patient person, Ale.

LARA: I remember… I don’t know if this is still going, but I remember playing a video game that was called Move or Die. It was such a funny game because, if you stop moving, you die. You have to keep moving.

ALEXIS: Literally, move or die.

LARA: Exactly. And it is actually localized to Argentinian Spanish, and it’s so fun, the voiceover is so good, and everything. I don’t know if they kept going with that because, you know, with the updates and everything, sometimes it’s…

MELISA: Yeah, challenging. Of course.

LARA: Yeah. It’s super challenging. But that’s so good. And another example that is not that good.

MELISA: It’s a bit controversial.

LARA: A bit controversial. It is Grim Fandango, because when you play Grim Fandango, it’s not localized, at least, in Latin American Spanish, it’s just in European Spanish. And they have this bad guy that he’s supposed to be from Argentina, and they hired…

ALEXIS: That accent is horrible.

MELISA: That is such a stereotype like for every… If any of you guys from Latin America are hearing this, you know that Argentinians are sometimes targeted as the bad guy.

LARA: Yeah. And the voice actor, he was from Spain, obviously, because he didn’t speak like an Argentinian person.

MELISA: He was like making up an accent.

LARA: Yeah, he was making up an accent. It was a little bit of a miss. To be honest with you, I didn’t like it, I felt offended. It was like…

ALEXIS: Could we say in their defense that the game was done like in 98 or something?

LARA: Of course.

MELISA: Yes.

ALEXIS: Because it’s a good game. It’s an oldie but goodie, you know? Old but gold.

LARA: Yeah, but that thing, it caught my attention. How can you detach yourself when you find something like that, that it actually kind of hurts your feelings. You’re like, ouch.

ALEXIS: I wonder if it landed the same way in different parts of the world.

LARA: Or maybe you’re gonna hear another Argentinian person talking wonderful stuff about this, but that is something that really bothered me. I mean, maybe there are other people that is bothered too by this same exact thing, so it’s just like, um, yeah.

MELISA: Yeah, and I think it’s just, I mean, what we’re talking about, if you want to connect, that was probably, you know, not their intention. They just wanted to maybe like make it sound a bit more like, you know, people from different Spanish speaking countries in this game, but, you know, if you don’t follow like certain, and, you know, just try to avoid… you wanna avoid like offending your audience. I mean, that’s basically… How about you, Ale?

ALEXIS: I gotta say Batman: Arkham Knight. To me, it was like watching a movie. And if you play the games in English, you have Kevin Conroy playing Batman. Rest in peace. He died just last year. You have Mark Hamill doing The Joker. I mean, so…

MELISA: Insane, yeah.

ALEXIS: It’s a high standard, so it delivers. It delivers what you expect from a game of that quality with those voice actors. But, at the same time, it’s like what we’ve been discussing, it just doesn’t hit right, you know? Because, again, it’s neutral.

MELISA: In Latin American Spanish.

ALEXIS: You have the “bastards,” “bastardos,” and we don’t say “bastardos,” you know? Things like that. And it’s like…

MELISA: It’s like it puts you off a little bit, right? When you see like a really bad guy using a word that you would never hear from a bad guy.

ALEXIS: That’s the thing. I mean…

MELISA: It’s even a little funny sometimes, like…

ALEXIS: It was good. It was incredibly done, but it still doesn’t cut it. I prefer to play it in English because those expressions sound more natural in that language, you know?

LARA: But I’m thinking, we have the opportunity to play in English because we all speak English and Spanish, we’re bilingual, right? But I really, really appreciate when they try to go with Latin American Spanish because I have little sisters and I have little brothers, and they don’t speak English. So being able to localize your game into this neutral Latin American Spanish, it’s like an accessibility door, you know? Because you’re making your game accessible not only for me, and maybe I don’t appreciate that much the Latin American Spanish, at least the dubbing, but the text part of the Latin American Spanish is great, I love it. But the dubbing sometimes sounds weird, but I love it for kids. I love it for kids, and I think that’s a super way to go when you have a video game and you have it localized into Spanish European and you want that same game to have like a really good, successful industry or audience in Latin America, it is not going to work, because we don’t feel connected with that Spanish, we don’t feel the same feeling, you know? When you’re playing. You don’t feel the immersion…

MELISA: You can feel confused sometimes. I mean, some things just sound very strange for us.

LARA: You have a quest, you have a mission and you can’t actually… you don’t understand what you’re trying to do.

ALEXIS: There’s a lot of cases where you don’t really know, ok, what’s this item? I need to check what the item is.

LARA: Yeah. Well, the other day I was playing a video game, I cannot actually remember the name, but it had this specific like paragraph for a quest or something, and I couldn’t understand. I was like, I have to change the language of the game to English to be able to do this quest, because I was stuck, you know?

MELISA: Yeah. And your first language is Spanish, which is kind of insane.

LARA: And my first language is Spanish! You know, I was reading in it European Spanish, and I had to change it to English to understand what this quest wanted me to do. I thought, like, no. You have to make your game into neutral Latin American Spanish.

ALEXIS: I had something happening to me, the same thing. I don’t remember what game in PlayStation 1 days, with a tutorial. I was stuck in a tutorial for like an hour or two, before Google was a thing. I mean, PlayStation 1 days, like 97, 98, I was a kid. And I was like, I don’t know what I have to do. And I had to call my dad, and what he did was, he switched off the game, he reset the console, he put it in English and tried to… he read it in English and told me, “You have to do this.”

MELISA: Wow.

ALEXIS: I don’t remember what it was, like going side by side with a car or something, but he had to turn the game in English to understand, because he didn’t understand either in Spanish.

LARA: Yeah, and I’m actually, like, imagine nowadays with everything being so fast and so instant, having to do that to a game, to go back, change the language, maybe reset the game because you have to start over…

ALEXIS: No, it’s unacceptable.

LARA: It’s just… It’s painful. It’s so painful because… Maybe if I was so, like, tired, had a long day and I just wanted to sit and play and chill, maybe I wouldn’t do it. Maybe I would just turn off my PC and say goodbye for tonight. That’s not my jam.

ALEXIS: Yeah, but that’s not the case when you’re growing up.

LARA: Yeah. But in that specific game, I really wanted to do this quest because I was so immersed and… Well, immersed, let’s just say I was playing, I was having fun.

MELISA: Yeah, you were connected.

LARA: I was having fun and I wanted to do this quest because I thought, “This is going to be so much fun.” And I couldn’t start because I didn’t understand.

ALEXIS: Yeah, nowadays, it’s unacceptable.

LARA: Yeah, nowadays, I think it’s like, no. I wouldn’t do that.

MELISA: Yeah, it’s not like what you want for a game, definitely. So, I mean, I think the point from everything that we’ve been talking is, like, you should really know your audience and know what impact you wanna create on those people, you know? If you want to reach Latin America, you can choose, you know, there’s…

LARA: You have the option.

MELISA: Yeah, you have that option. If you wanna go like the extra mile, you can even, you know, localize it to different variants of Spanish in Latin American countries, which would be great to see more. We would all love to see a bit more.

LARA: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, but I think that’s asking for a lot, because, yeah, nowadays, they only think of Spanish, “Ah, European Spanish.” I just want to bring up to the table that European Spanish is not the same as Latin American Spanish. So please, if you have a video game and you want to make it successful here, go with Latin American Spanish.

ALEXIS: Yeah, know your audience. And if you don’t know how to do it, find a company that can help you and do your research. There are many places where you can just research for free. Just go to Newzoo. I mean, that’s gonna be a game changer for sure. At least in you knowing more where to look.

LARA: Yeah, and it’s a common practice that most Latin Americans will understand, we will understand this Latin American neutral Spanish.

MELISA: And the important thing is, like you said, you’re reaching, you know, if you have a game for kids, you’re reaching that audience, they can play it. Even if it’s not the same, if they don’t connect the same as if it were localized to your country, you can still enjoy it. And I think that’s a great thing.

ALEXIS: And adults that don’t speak English.

MELISA: Yeah, for sure.

ALEXIS: We’re privileged we speak two languages, but there are many, many adults that don’t understand anything.

MELISA: So this is it for today. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. If you have any games that you played in Spanish or if you’re curious about Spanish variants, anything, let us know in your comments.

LARA: In the comments down below. Also, find our Discord channel there, too, so you can reach out to us. Thank you so much for watching.

ALEXIS: Thank you, everyone!

MELISA: Bye, everyone!

ALEXIS: Bye-bye!

Episode Transcription

ALEXIS: Hi, everyone! Welcome to another episode of Open World. In this episode, we have a very special guest with us. We have Nadine Martin from PlayStation, and as always, my lovely co-hosts Lara and Meli. Welcome, everyone.

LARA: Hi, hi!

MELISA: Hello, everyone!

NADINE: Hello!

ALEXIS: So a little bit about our guest today. Nadine Martin has been a Senior Manager for Test Services at PlayStation Studios and she has managed Localization Testing and Functional Testing functions. The teams that she handles are responsible for providing testing support to PlayStation Studios, including games such as Gran Turismo, The Last of Us, Uncharted, Horizon and God of War. That’s amazing! So, Nadine has been working in the game industry and quality assurance for over 20 years, while also being an active in game software development and localization community as advisory board member. I can go one and on, Nadine, but can we start the interview by you doing some sort of professional journey walkthrough for everyone that’s watching the episode?

NADINE: Of course, no problem. Hello, everyone. Yeah, so my journey, like you said, over 20 years in the industry. So I started as a… after studying business, after university, I was looking for temporary jobs, and I started as a humble German Localization Tester in the UK shortly after the PS2 launch in the UK. I came from a non-gaming, non-technical background. I studied business. I didn’t study a game related topic. And… Yeah, really, I found what I thought was a temporary job that really suited my sort of interest in high quality and being that sort of eye for detail. And the industry suited me because it was very young, it was growing, there was always something new happening, always a new challenge. So I progressed in my career fairly quickly because there were lots of opportunities, the team was growing. So I had various roles. I guess some of them, a sort of test lead role, supervisor, manager and so on. And I think, along that journey, one of the things that I really enjoyed in the industry, and maybe it’s more a UK-centric thing, that it wasn’t really about the qualifications you had or what you studied at university, it was really about how well you communicated, how well you collaborated with other people, how you got results done in an effective way. And that really helped me in my career. And ultimately, I moved from, I guess, more localization-centric roles into more managerial roles, and eventually I became Senior Manager. And that was for Localization and Functional Testing. And these days, it only covers Functional Testing.

LARA: That’s amazing. I mean, PlayStation 2 is dear to my whole heart. I have a tattoo of a joystick because I grew up with a PlayStation 2.

ALEXIS: Best console ever.

NADINE: [inaudible] industry, yes.

MELISA: I love it that we keep hearing this about like professional journeys, how they start somewhere, sometimes, like not conventional, or like where people think is the typical path. And we’ve been hearing it in different episodes. So I think it’s a great message for everyone listening, like everything you’re doing, it will be part of, you know, all your learning, like all the experiences, you’re learning something from it, and it can form you to be the professional you want to be in the field that you want, even if it’s not the typical or conventional path.

NADINE: Absolutely.

ALEXIS: And the importance of soft skills too, right? That’s the constant lately that we’ve been hearing from our guests, you know? Be a good person, be a dedicated professional, then also your technical knowledge and everything, right? But that’s lovely to hear, Nadine.

LARA: Yeah. I was wondering how have things changed since when you started to do localization to nowadays? Because you went through, like, a lot from PlayStation 2 and nowadays with PS5, like, oh my God.

NADINE: Oh, yes. Yeah. I mean, it’s a huge, huge change looking back. And I haven’t done that for a long time, actually. So thank you for asking that. I mean, when I started, it was, at Sony, it was French, Italian, German, Spanish only, the localization languages. Now it’s probably about 20 languages as standard. And at the time, it was very sort of… sequential, right? So you had the Japanese game that got localized and then released in another region, or the English game or the American game that was released in one region and then translated and released in another region. And that made the testing that I was part of very sequential. There was a lot of time. I remember, for example, testing GT3, I think. And I think we had three weeks, something like three weeks to actually test the game on one build, not like the whole game in three weeks and then you’re done. It was like one build.

LARA: Oh, my God.

NADINE: So it was a lot of time. Obviously, in hindsight, as a manager, very inefficient, right? It was just very different because there wasn’t that rush for simultaneous release. So things obviously changed, it’s a much more globalized world we live in now, more languages, all the consumers want the content at the same time. So over time, the localization testing time got squeezed, so things had to change in terms of how can we do testing smarter, right? My skills were not in actually games testing, they were on a linguistics side. So at Sony we focused over time on how to use our linguistic skills in a more smarter way, using more tools, using automation, you know, tools, even like project management tools or localization assets management tools so that you can track what you’ve seen. Previously, it was all in Excel, right? That doesn’t work well when you’re a global team or you’re working with external partners. So a lot of the pipeline of localization and localization testing changed over time just to make things smarter. And the turnaround times have to be a lot faster. And that’s where we are now really. So it’s, I think, the more recent changes that I’ve seen, when I was still involved with things, there’s much more emphasis on localization being involved much, much earlier in the game. So it’s not only… not just slotted at the end, but a lot of the project planning or the project management happens at the early stages so that there’s more support and advice to the studios and the developers to make things faster and easier at the later stages and to work more in a partnership, I guess. So, you know, previously, the sequential model really supported a “us and them” kind of relationship in the industry, I guess. And now it’s much more, “We need each other, we’re experts, let us help you.” And, yes, it happens much more early in the discussions at the project planning and… tool planning stage.

ALEXIS: And, sorry, I love that you said work smarter, right? In that process over the years of working smarter, are there any… We don’t wanna break any NDAs, of course, but are there any good practices that you can recommend for a localization team or a testing team that you know that they work?

NADINE: Well, there are… We have presented publicly quite a lot about the proprietary tools we’ve developed to help ourselves. So we have an asset management tool for the text and audio and video aspect of things. And that links into… Also we’ve talked about automation tools that helps… What’s the word? [inaudible] artificial challenges in terms of have a character run through the game, an AI character run through the game and trigger messages. So, as a tester, you don’t have to do that. You can just, you know, fast forward through the footage and, you know, do it in that way.

ALEXIS: That’s like the ultimate, like, the ultimate cheat code.

NADINE: Yeah. It’s things like that. Using AI for multiplayer games so that you have a bot, you know, that populates the number of multiplayers you need to trigger messages and so on. So you don’t need to rely on a lot of people power. So it’s, I think there is a lot of, I would recommend working really more closely with your engineering or development partners. So we invested in creating a QA-centric engineering team that creates these automation tools from a QA platform, I guess. Because the developers will focus on what they need and that’s their focus, right? So we really worked on that. And it was important for us in terms of how our team was structured to have localization and functional as part of that umbrella team. Sometimes I think it’s an organization that’s separate, and they’re separate for good reason because it works for them. But I think, in this case, it really helps that we are all part of the same team. We’re all very aware of those tools and we make sure those tools fit functional test needs and localization test needs and all the, you know, business needs as well. Localization. We work with our localization teams as well. So I think that close relationship is really important. And I think investing in tools and automation where you can is another one. And I understand that, in the industry, it’s very creative, every studio is different, every engine is different, right? There isn’t really that standardization that maybe you see on mobile platforms or PC platforms and so on, but it is possible. And it’s possible not only by a big company that has money to spend on those things. I do get that feedback as well when I talk about it in public. “We’ve got these tools,” and they’re like, “Well, we’re a small company, what can we do?” I think there is a small adaptation you can make from off the shelf systems that will help you be smarter.

MELISA: That’s great. I love it. Like using technology to your advantage as much as possible. So, yeah, great advice. And can you walk us through a day on your work? What are your duties like? And…

NADINE: Okay. So my current role is… Obviously, localization is not really part of our responsibility anymore. But I think in terms of, as a senior manager, my focus is more on, I would call it leadership and people strategy. So it’s looking ahead, what does Sony Studio needs for the future? So, the growth, for example, we’ve seen it in PC and PC testing. My team needs to support that, so we had to come up with processes and resources and equipment needs and getting budgets approved for all of that. It’s the boring management thing. I guess with drawing on those business skills from university over time that I didn’t need at the beginning, I need it now. So it’s a lot more operational in those areas. And in other areas, it’s all about the people really. It’s still making sure that staff are growing and developing. Like I said, we always have new challenges. I’ve been in the industry for a long time and, when I interview people and they ask me about it, oh my God, that’s a long time. It’s because it’s changing all the time. It’s not actually the same, each year is different.

ALEXIS: You don’t have time to get bored.

NADINE: Yeah, you don’t do the same thing. So even as a senior manager, yes, you might have, you know, there’s budget season and there’s goals and annual reviews, and all those things that big corporations tend to have, but it really does change all the time and it’s a different challenge each time. So that’s what I enjoy about it. But I think that, once you get to manage a level at any organization, a lot of it is about your people. And that was a big lesson for me as well actually, that, when I was in localization, it was a lot that I could use my background. That was kind of where I came from. I knew what the processes were or the tools were. And as soon as I stepped away from that a little bit more, it was clear that actually, as a manager, my job isn’t to be the expert. That’s the expert’s job. My job is to help the people become the experts, to work through them and enable them, to give them the tools or the skills that they need to be successful to deliver the services to our studio. So a lot of it is about investing in that and spending time in that. And yeah, I, again, wasn’t at the start of my career able to see that that was gonna be an enjoyable part of the job, but it is.

LARA: I love that.

ALEXIS: That’s inspiring.

LARA: Yeah. That was beautiful. I have a question for you regarding like, your day to day life at work and outside of work. What is your passion? What are you most passionate about?

NADINE: Well, I mentioned that I come from a non-gaming background.

LARA: Yeah, that’s why I’m asking.

NADINE: Yes. So I have to admit, I probably would still class myself more like as a social gamer. That’s not my go-to form of entertainment, you know, when I go home and need to chill. I know the products and, you know, the industry and, when I stay at home at night, I recognize I need that. But then I’m not the expert, I’m not creating the games. I don’t need to, you know, know that this game mechanic is more successful than this one or, you know. So I feel that I’m okay with that. And I think the industry has become more inclusive with that.

LARA: Absolutely.

NADINE: When I started, you know, it was very much about you needed to be a gamer to succeed. And for many years, you know, that was something that I was a bit more quiet about that. Okay, maybe that’s not where my heart is. So I think my, my sort of, I guess, interest outside of the office tends to be coming from the background I’m in. So I’m originally from Germany and I moved to the UK. I studied first here. And that was all about languages and different cultures. So I still love languages and different cultures, and traveling and all of that, you know, reading books about different cultures or, you know, from different authors and so on. So I still enjoy that and everything that comes with that, the history. And I’m still, even though I’m now an UK citizen, I’m still, you know, exploring the UK and love reading about the history of the UK. And the other part that brought me to the UK at the time, the reason why I chose to come in the first place other than the language was the music. So I…

LARA: Oh, my God, love that.

NADINE: Yes, I came here sort of at the prime Britpop era.

LARA: Oh, my God, that’s amazing!

NADINE: So I still enjoy going to see live music. I’m going to a gig tonight. And yeah, so I just, wherever I can, I go and see music.

LARA: Oh, my God, I love it. You know, I asked this question because I met with a lot of translators that are interested in working in localization and video game localization, but they are not gamers and they are like super worried about it. And, no, it’s like you don’t need to be a gamer to work in this industry. You can totally adapt. It’s just a matter of having the technical part in it and then the passion of, like, creative translations and everything, that’s just it. That’s why I asked. I know that you don’t relate to gaming, but, I mean, I love music too. I’m a huge fan. Yeah.

NADINE: Yeah, and I would encourage that as well. I’ve done a lot more mentoring in the last few years, for especially women that are new to the industry. And I would also feel more comfortable challenging sort of attitudes like that. So sometimes, I’m sure you still come across developers or programmers or producers that demand a certain, you know, 20-year background in games and all of those things. And I want to challenge that because you don’t need it in other industries, and it just seems to be very sort of… it creates a barrier to entry, you know, to the industry as well. And, again, we’re trying to be much more inclusive and diverse in the industry to represent our customer base. And I know our younger customer base grew up with games, like you did. And that’s changing now. But there definitely is an element here that’s, you know what? You don’t… You just include people by doing that, you know. We’re welcoming all the viewpoints or the…

ALEXIS: I love that.

NADINE: Or the experience. And I think actually a lot of women, you know, are gamers, for example, maybe the translators that you speak to are gamers on mobile, you know?

LARA: Yeah! And they don’t even realize it. Yeah. Absolutely.

MELISA: All of this is resonating so much with me, too, because, like, I play some games, I’m not such a hardcore gamer, so I always feel a bit of an outsider. But, yeah, it’s a great message to spread, because you can be part of the industry, even if you didn’t grow up playing a lot of games and you’re an expert. And… Yeah. Well, now I have another question and it’s about, you know, we’ve heard all these like really impressive titles that you’ve worked on, and we’re a bit curious if you have any anecdotes or like memories, something that happened during these projects, something that…

ALEXIS: That’s a good question.

NADINE: Oh, wow! Um… I do have just good memories about when I was a tester on projects. I do enjoy getting a first glimpse into games, you know, when they’re kind of not announced yet and so on.

ALEXIS: I imagine, yeah.

NADINE: Yeah, I’m trying to think of a good anecdote. I did enjoy, for example, when Sony was working on the EyeToy games. Do you remember the EyeToy games?

ALEXIS: Yeah! Yeah, yeah.

NADINE: It was really an industry first with the camera, the EyeToy camera and motion…

ALEXIS: Very groundbreaking for the time, yeah.

NADINE: Yes. So I remember it was really fun watching our test floor, which was very male-centric still at the time, testing the… There was a game called EyePet, where it’s a virtual pet. So all these…

LARA: Oh, my God, yeah.

NADINE: …various burly males were testing or jumping around the floor testing the games. I think there was a game with pom poms, where you had virtual pom poms. That was just fun. I think with Sony, sometimes… it doesn’t seem to do those fun games at the moment, right? Where you have more social elements and more fun. I did enjoy watching the test floor test the EyeToy games and the pet game, more the cute games. Maybe it was a good juxtapositioning with the mix of testers that we had at the time.

ALEXIS: Yeah. And I imagine that just picking one anecdote in so many years it must have been… it must be hard. That’s a lovely memory.

NADINE: My anecdotes are really boring, they’re mostly about operational challenges and how we overcame them. I don’t think that’s that interesting, really, to the public somehow.

ALEXIS: Yeah. So we’re coming to a close. Can you share some advice for anyone that’s interested in working in the industry, whether it’s in localization, in testing, in the video game side, in the localization side? I’ll leave it up to you. Can you give it a close with a piece of advice?

NADINE: Hopefully, I’ve got several pieces.

ALEXIS: Please.

NADINE: This is popping, again, in my mentoring, I focus on a lot… we also do a lot of sessions with young people who may be underrepresented in the industry or maybe struggling at school or getting a job, and we’re trying to really encourage to think differently about their career. So some of the things I focus on is like the soft skills that I mentioned earlier. It’s really about articulating yourself and working well with others. But it’s also, I think, knowing yourself and what you’re good at. And I think, when I look back at my career, that’s definitely something that it was a happy coincidence ending up in QA because it suited my personality, how I like to work. And I think that’s something that I encourage young people of any backgrounds, in any careers, any industries. Figure out what you’re good at and focus on that and how you articulate that in interviews or in resumes and so on. And actually, don’t be shy in telling people, “This is how I like to work, this is how you get the best from me in this circumstance.” And to try different things. Most people, when they’re young, don’t know what they wanna do, don’t have this career… Or even those people maybe who are really focused, “I wanna be a level designer in five years’ time.” I think, be open to opportunities. Like you said, there’s many people who have very different paths into the industry, in their career, and sometimes… yeah, be open to that, try different things and don’t, maybe, decide too soon, because you actually will probably figure out what you want and what you enjoy much later on. I think for women, especially, one thing I did learn and I do pass on as well in my mentor sessions is to be mindful of the… when the opportunities arrive, that you don’t need to tick all the boxes, right? I did that early in my career, I would only apply to roles where I can do that, I’m ready, you know? I’ve done it, I’ve got experience in this, I’ve done that, I’m ready, so I will apply and feel confident. And it’s only later that, with more experience and more confidence and encouragement, that I realized that, actually, I have transferable skills. I might not be able to do this, but I have ways to develop skills I have and be able to achieve it in a different way or in the future with different support or experience. So it’s a confidence level sometimes as well to, you know, just go for it and think about what transferable skills you already have that will help you to get there for the next role.

LARA: I love that. I love that, yeah. Just like…

MELISA: Applause, applause!

NADINE: It’s very much a learned experience, it’s something I hope somebody had mentioned maybe earlier in my career. So definitely, anybody listening or watching, hopefully, that helps.

LARA: So inspiring.

ALEXIS: Very inspiring, I imagine…

LARA: Oh, my God, did we lose Ale?

ALEXIS: I know that it did for us three, that’s for sure. What?

LARA: I think we lost you for a minute.

MELISA: Yeah, can you say that again, Ale? Because you…

ALEXIS: Yeah, I disappeared for a second, right? This isn’t live, but it’s been live recorded. I said that I’m sure that it did help our audience and then that it surely helped us. I can’t think of a better way to wrap this up than with your words, Nadine, so I want to thank you for being here. I know that we’ve been trying to schedule this for quite a while, so I’m very happy that we finally did it. Thank you, Meli, Lali, for being here with me today. And you on the other side of the screen, on your phone or in your computer for sticking around. And we’ll be seeing you next time. Don’t forget to follow us on our social media. And see you next time. Bye, everyone. Thank you.

LARA: Bye-bye! Thank you, Nadine.

MELISA: Bye.

NADINE: Bye.

Episode Transcription

ALEXIS: Hi, everyone! Welcome to another episode of Open World. Hi, Lali! Hi, Meli! Hi, everyone from the other side of the world of the screen. Today we are happy to have an amazing guest who considers himself as a happy person and someone with a couple of years under his belt. He has worked in Star Wars, Pokémon, League of Legends, Fortnite, Far Cry. We have today with us Theo Cuny. Theo, welcome to Open World. Thank you for being here today.

THEO: Thank you for inviting me.

MELISA: Thank you, Theo, for joining us.

ALEXIS: A pleasure. So, I think that the first question that we should ask you is, who are you? Can you walk us through a little bit about your career, how you started? What did you study?

LARA: And first of all, yeah, what do you do to be happy? Like, why do you consider yourself a happy person? Because I wanna know, like, for real.

THEO: All right, I’ll try to answer this question first.

MELISA: See what advice we can get from this.

LARA: Yeah.

THEO: I think it’s a very unique thing to each individual. It’s about being able to know the limit between compromise and sacrifice, about being yourself, true to yourself and your values. And sometimes being able to make hard choices, like leaving a company where you’re just not happy because of a toxic environment. Those kinds of things. It takes some time, and it’s not an objective you reach, it’s a path. So you constantly try to change, evolve and take a step back. And for me, being happy is being surrounded with what I call my three F, so family, friends and food. I’m French, so that’s what matters the most. I travel a lot. Yes. And yeah, video games. And try to think what I want to do, where I want to be and try to reach this objective. This is my happiness.

MELISA: I love it. I love it. What a great start for the episode.

ALEXIS: Yeah.

THEO: And to go back to your question, Alexis, yeah, I can try to introduce myself. It’s not an easy question. Never easy. My name is Theo Cuny. I was born in a small place called Monaco, and I grew up between Monaco and Paris. I’ve been working in the video games industry for about 17 years now. My career is a little bit unconventional, I would say, because I have no degree, no diploma. If you ask about the studies, I did not do any. So back in the days, that was synonym to failure. You wouldn’t be able to… or you would be told that you wouldn’t be able to have a career, to be successful, to earn enough money. And with this idea in mind, I worked in a supermarket, in fast food, in a library. I worked in retail, I worked in a toy shop, until I got 23. Twenty-three, this is when my life changed. With the support of my family and my brother, I took a one-year visa to Montreal, which is a city I love, I cherish. And when I got there, I applied to about all video game companies. It’s still a core place for the industry. And I think I worked about 2 to 3 weeks in a bakery. I guess I’m French, so that was easy to get into, bakery. And before… Yeah, Ubisoft called me for an interview, and that was a start. So I worked as a Functional TQA Tester at Ubisoft, and my first project was a Far Cry game. And they kept me …

ALEXIS: What a way to start!

THEO: Well, no. Actually, no. It sounds like it, but that’s the game they buried and tried to make everybody forget. It was Far Cry for the Wii.

ALEXIS: Ah! Yes, I remember that one.

THEO: Nintendo Wii.It was terrible. But I was happy. That was a great start, still. And, yeah, they kept me for the entire duration of my visa. Then I had to go back to France. I worked for Ubisoft near Paris, then I moved to UK. I worked for Codemasters on Dungeons and Dragons online and Lord of the Rings online for one year. Then I moved to Madrid, a city I also love. I worked for Electronic Arts. Great place. And this is when I started my journey in localization. After EA, I got my first permanent contract. I moved to Dublin, I worked on League of Legends with Riot Games for three years and a half. And then I moved to Berlin, I got hired by Epic Games to work on Fortnite four years and a half. I got short contracts here and there because it took me some time to get a permanent contract. So I had like two months in Milan, like three months in Texas. I worked in Malaga for four months. It was a little chaotic journey. And recently with COVID, I got back to France and I worked at Paris Saint-Germain Club for a year, but that’s not related to video games. And I got hired by Tencent Games, I worked remotely like for a year. And now it’s been about four months I decided to take some time for myself and travel around the world and spend some time with my three F. So yeah, that’s about it now.

ALEXIS: Quite a ride so far.

THEO: Yeah, just following my gut, and it takes me to all different places.

MELISA: Yeah. Like different jobs and different places of the world, literally.

THEO: Yeah. And I’m not done yet. I’m about to release a very humble clothing brand this summer, hopefully. So, like, nothing to do. And I’m working on a salad bar concept in my city where I live, so. Nothing to do. I just like, yeah, listen to my guts and follow what seems to be…

ALEXIS: We’re gonna need the links from your websites or Web stores and check them out.

THEO: Of course. Of course. I’ll be happy to share them with you.

MELISA: That’s so cool. Is this something you’ve always been interested in? Like, this is one of your interests that you thought having a clothing brand… How did you come up with this idea?

THEO: It was somewhere in the back of my mind for a while. And the theme is very specific, it’s about skulls. So it’s not for everybody. But I’m a fan. And because I travel a lot, I always try to buy something like a pair of socks or a T-shirt with skulls like everywhere in the world. And actually, I find it very hard to find something that I like. It’s quite often there is this… yeah, stereotypical. So I thought I would try to make myself, like, to make a brand that I would actually be happy to wear and share. And COVID actually made me do it. I had enough time. I wanted to grow, I wanted to learn, I wanted to have challenges. I knew nothing about it, I made a lot of mistakes. It was terrible. But yeah, that’s a learning experience.

ALEXIS: That’s how you learn.

THEO: Exactly. Exactly. And now I’m about to launch a V2. A friend joined me, he’s taking care of the Instagram. We fixed a lot of mistakes and… It’s quite rewarding to see it growing slowly, and let’s see what happens with it. Like I said, it’s very humble. No… no big, big goals, objectives, but still happy to release it.

MELISA: That’s amazing. That’s amazing. I think we can tell from just the short stories that you’ve been telling us, how, like, you’re open to a different life experience and sometimes it’s taking you to different places. Um, and now I’m wondering, and this is like going back to the localization. And I know, you know, you’ve tried different things and in different companies, but in general, what would you say are some of, like, hard and soft skills that one needs to work in video game localization?

THEO: Yeah, the answer may differ depending on who you ask. For some people, it might be a bit technical, about knowing all the tools, the CAT tools. For some people, project management is very important, especially if you are willing to grow from a Localization Specialist Translator to something bigger at some points. But that’s something you can learn with practice if you have the motivation and the passion and the patience. About the soft skills, which I care more about, I’m more interested in the human side of the job. So for me, that would be patience. You need a lot of patience. You need to have some diplomacy, creativity, proactivity. We work in a very fast-paced environment. In localization, things change a lot. Even when you think it’s ready, it might change when you wake up. So you need to be structured, organized, and that’s not something you easily learn. You need some methodology. You should not be afraid of asking people. Like if you see someone doing something good well, you shouldn’t be afraid to ask and say, “Hey, by the way, when you have the time, a couple of minutes to explain to me how you do this.” It’s important to be humble about that, to ask questions a lot. We know that localization context is extremely important, so don’t stay there with just your questions because you might end up with frustration and a not so good delivery. And also we work in a very multicultural environment with people from different horizons all around the world, in all possible time zones with different backgrounds, beliefs, education as well. So it’s important always to take a step back, be humble, to not judge and to be patient. Ask questions. It’s… I see that a lot in my career and it’s very important to take a step back. And you also may interact with the dev team, audio team, video team, publishing. They all have their own priorities. So… It’s okay, leave the frustration aside and be patient, ask questions, and diplomacy a lot. A lot. It’s very important in this, in my opinion, in this environment.

LARA: Absolutely. I couldn’t agree with you more. Like patience, like… The first one, patience, yes, 100%. So what would you say are the best practices that you have acquired throughout your career that you can recommend to our audience?

THEO: Yeah. One of the most useful for me, because I know myself and it will all have, like, pros and cons, let’s say. I know that my brain… my brain goes everywhere, like, all the time. I have a lot of ideas and it’s hard for me to focus and to keep track of things. So one of the things I put in place is methodology with emails, for example. There’s a feature set that I use a lot in my professional life and my private life, it’s Marked as unread feature. Especially when you’re frustrated, it’s very important to… It’s okay. Mark as unread. Get back to it later, when you have the right time to answer. Sometimes, one of the things that is also important is you can actually answer and say, “I’ll get back to you in a minute or in an hour or tomorrow.” Do not let the people believe that you don’t care or anything. So communication is extremely important. As a methodology, you have tools, a lot of tools available everywhere. Marina, for example, is sharing a lot of useful tips and videos about localization on a weekly basis. It’s very important. You can have some videos on YouTube like memoQ, Trados, they post a lot of videos as well. You have forums specialized in localization where you can ask about filters, about how to import a file. So it’s… You cannot master everything. You constantly learn. Even if you have like 35 years of experience, it doesn’t matter. Like the technology evolves, the industry evolves. So there’s always new features. And never be afraid to say, “I don’t know, please explain. I’m not sure I understand.” That’s the kind of methodology I would try to teach to people, if I can.

LARA: And also thank God for Google. Like, you’re gonna Google stuff, you’re gonna… I mean, I’ve been in those situations.

THEO: It’s there. It’s all in your mind. So it’s up to you to be humble, take a step back again and acknowledge that you don’t know or you can be better. So always find the opportunity to grow. And it’s out there, so take it.

LARA: 100%. I agree.

ALEXIS: Yeah. And I love the fact that all of these things are, again, kind of on the soft skills side, you know, and how to make yourself better through things. And the read mark thing, it’s a visual thing. I can relate to that.

LARA: And you have to learn about yourself too, because maybe that doesn’t work for you. But maybe if you’re listening to this and be like, “Hey, that might work for me.” Like, yeah.

THEO: There’s one thing that I learned over time and not necessarily the easy way is, we are in a very competitive environment. I talk about localization, but life is just competitive, about jobs, about everything. Everything is competitive. Instagram makes you compare yourself to people all the time and it’s…

LARA: Oh, my God, yeah.

THEO: Yes, exactly. And in your job, it’s easy to blame yourself or feel bad because you’re not good at something. And it’s actually okay. It’s okay. It’s okay to fail. It’s okay to try. Just try again. Just try again, find a way. Like I’m not good at focusing. I will never be, that’s the way I am. So I found a way to help me go through this. And it’s okay, I don’t have to fix myself. I have tools all around me, filters that can help me do the job without compromising myself or my values.

ALEXIS: I love that. I don’t have to fix myself. I have to find a way to make it work with how I am and how to… Yeah. I love that.

THEO: We’re talking about, Alexis, about the soft skills, this is the most… maybe the most important thing for me. I often ended up in situations where we had to hire people. And you can have on one side a profile with a lot of experience with all the hard skills, let’s say, but you’re not sure that person is gonna be a good fit. And for me, I would… a thousand times, I would most likely pick a person with passion, patience, diplomacy, maybe new to the job and willing to learn, to grow and that would just fit. I would really want to work with that person in a year or in two years and more. So, yeah.

LARA: That’s beautiful.

ALEXIS: That’s beautiful. Inspiring. Totally. Okay, so to move a little bit from work, because we work in localization, we work with video games, right? So this question splits in two. So what are your all-time favorite games and what are you playing right now if you are? And if you’re not, what would you like to play right now that it’s like, “Oh, I can’t. I’m just traveling too much?”

MELISA: I’m traveling too much!

THEO: Actually, it’s true. It’s not easy. Okay. It’s not an easy question. I think I was four years old the first time I got my hands on a video game that was on an Amstrad in 1985. That’s how old I am. And because I have older brothers, I also got the chance to play on Amiga, MO5, Macintosh. I think I owned almost all consoles. So my favorite games of all times, it’s not an easy question, but I would say maybe Secret of Mana was one of them on Super Nintendo. EverQuest because I got the chance to play with my big brothers. That was a big thing for me. Might and Magic VI. Uh… Might and Magic III, Heroes of Might and Magic, Diablo II, The Witcher 3, Borderlands, The Last of Us. Big, big heart to Last of Us I and II. A Plague Tale, Diablo II, Duke Nukem, Doom. Like those old classics. That’s my… yeah, what brought me here.

ALEXIS: Yeah.

THEO: And about the second part of the question… What I’m playing right now, I’m playing Sherlock Holmes. I think, Lara, are you playing it, or…?

LARA: Oh, my God, I finished it. Yeah.

THEO: I think I saw your post…

LARA: I was not expecting that.

ALEXIS: Don’t spoil it for him, just in case. No spoilers, please.

THEO: Yeah. I’m only in like chapter four because I started before the travel and then I came back, I played a few hours and then I left again. I’m a huge fan of Lovecraft’s universe.

LARA: Ah, same.

THEO: And so I had to get my hands on it. I am enjoying it a lot at the moment. That’s the only game I’m playing because, like you said, Alexis, I’m traveling a lot.

ALEXIS: Yes, sir.

THEO: While I’m traveling, actually, I’m playing an old game, Might and Magic VI: Mandate of Heaven, which is like a 20 or 25-year old game, because I can save and quit. I don’t have to commit too much. And again, I would like to play the new Diablo, I think, but I’m gonna wait a bit.

ALEXIS: You should.

THEO: Yeah. It’s harder for me…. It’s harder and harder to accept to spend like 70, 80, 90 Euros on a game. And especially because I know myself. I will play like 20 hours straight and then it’s gonna be gone. So yeah, I’m going to wait for it to be on sale. And yeah.

ALEXIS: By the time that we are recording this episode, we still don’t have, for instance, I don’t know, armor sets, or there aren’t any like the breaches that you could enter in Diablo III, you know, the dungeons. But we’re gonna have new content and updates and new seasons by October, so it can only get better. So if you wait it out, it’s gonna be even better. So you’re on the right track.

THEO: And I’m also traveling so much, I don’t want to start playing and then I have to put it on hold for like three weeks.

ALEXIS: You won’t be able to.

THEO: Exactly,that’s why I’m waiting.

MELISA: Theo, I’m curious, how do you play when you’re traveling? Do you take your computer with you?

THEO: I have my laptop almost always with me because I’m working on this clothing brand that’s taking a lot of time. I’m working on a different project as well, so I need to have my laptop with me most of the time. But I don’t want to commit to… Because I’m traveling, it’s beautiful outside, I don’t want to spend like 10 hours on a roll, so I’m taking like an old game I played, and it’s okay to… this is how I play it. I used to play on mobile. Not anymore. I’m just annoyed with the mechanics and the pay to win.

MELISA: Absolutely. And, Theo, it was great to hear like your, yeah, just what games you like and just hear about your career. And from all your experience, I imagine from when you started to right now, there’s been a lot of changes. How do you think technological advances kind of impacted that from when you started to right now?

THEO: That’s an excellent question. Um, as I told you, I joined Ubisoft in 2006. This is when my life changed, 2006. The Internet was around for about ten years. A bit more. 2006 is the first translation release from memoQ. So I saw it…

ALEXIS: You saw it… You saw it born.

THEO: Exactly. Exactly. The year after, 2007, was the first translation product from SDL and Trados as well. So it’s all… it was all new. Very exciting, very buggy. There was a lot of frustration, crashes, very slow. You had to be careful about how many words you would put in a database because not enough space. But it evolved so fast and so well, nowadays, like you can just take a few seconds to get something translated by a machine, and the result is gonna be very good. And about that, I think it’s natural and inevitable evolution, and I’m actually looking forward for some fields, if you think about… Take me, for example. I lived in six different countries, and we live in a world where more and more you have like migration fluxes between countries, between… It doesn’t matter anymore. You can be Spanish, Chinese, doesn’t matter. You can end up in any country. And it’s gonna be kind of okay. Now about medical, legal, administration, it’s very difficult. As an anecdote, I ended up myself in the hospital, like, emergency unit at, like, two or three some years ago, and I found myself translating the symptoms from a Mexican woman to a French nurse because she couldn’t explain. And now, I imagine, like, what could happen with technology in a few years where, it doesn’t matter where you are, who you are, and the barrier will fall. So I think it’s very important. Now, about localization, video games, it’s a bit different. If there’s one thing that technology will not take away is the difference between translation and localization. If you want a great product, the best product for your audience and for your global audience, you need emotion, you need a joke, you need a synonym better than a different one, you need a cultural expression. And for that you need good people. So it’s a natural evolution, is gonna bring a lot. But for video games and movies and entertainment industry, I think we still have a bright future for localization people.

MELISA: Absolutely.

LARA: I love that.Yeah.

MELISA: There’s so much talk nowadays about AI and how it’s changing our industry, so it’s really interesting to hear your opinion about it from the video game localization side.

LARA: Absolutely. Because it also says that… it shows how much you care about the video game if you are actually putting the emotion, if you’re actually taking care of that kind of stuff and not letting technology be too involved in the process.

THEO: Exactly.I mean, you are Terra Localizations, you work with a lot of developer studios. AI or not, it doesn’t change anything. The companies that does not want to put effort, involve money or provide context, they don’t care. If they don’t care, they don’t care. AI doesn’t change anything. If they care about it, they will provide context, they will do everything they can to make your job easier and to help you succeed, because that’s in everybody’s interest. This is what localization is about. It’s a group of people working on the same objective. It doesn’t matter if you’re inside the company, what role or title you have or… It doesn’t matter. So. Yeah, that’s…

LARA: Absolutely. Absolutely. So I’m going back again with the advices because I think that you’re such a notable person, like, oh my God. What advice would you give to someone who wants to pursue a professional journey in the triple-A industry? Because it’s just like, hearing you speak and all the emotion and all that you’ve been through is just incredible. Like, I’m amazed.

ALEXIS: And before you start, Theo, I love that, when you walked us through a bit about… when you walked us through your journey, you made it sound seamless, but at the same time, not simple, not something that just came easy. So… Sorry, I had to share that. Yeah, it was in the back of my mind from the beginning of the interview.

THEO: Nothing is easy. Life is hard. Whoever you are, it doesn’t matter. Rich or poor, the color of your skin. Nothing is easy, ever. You were not… Unless, okay, maybe you’re the son of, like, Bill Gates and you don’t care about anything. And still, it depends. I mean, the health is important, like, you can still be affected by the world around you, and nothing is easy. The mindset changes everything, how you go through things. At the moment, we talk a lot about gender equality, failure, acceptance of your body, your own body. This is like all in your mind and this is like how you change things. About my career, what you said, Alexis, it’s the same. Like, it was hard, I had tough moments at some points about accepting, taking good takeaways, being surrounded by good people and making the right choices. And most often, most of the time, the right choice is maybe not the most logical, but what you think is the right thing for you, even if it means moving away from what you dreamed about for like ten years. So it’s not easy. But about the advices for your question… There’s a lot of things you can do. A lot, actually. If you’re French, you have AFJV, which is like the French association for video games. They have job offers on a board every single day. You can learn or ask someone to explain to you how to use the filters on LinkedIn. I have a filter with localization, and there’s like hundreds of jobs every day all around the world. Might not fit, but the most important thing in the video games industry is to get your foot into it. So you may be able to… you may have to do some compromises, maybe to relocate, maybe to work in a field that you were not targeting initially. What you can do, you can follow the right people. Like, when I’m looking for a job, which didn’t happen for a while, but I had a browser open, and every single tab, I had like one of the companies I wanted to work with. And once a week, I would go through all the job offers and actually check. That’s also what you can do on top of LinkedIn. You can ask people to check your resume, especially if you work in localization, to avoid a spelling mistake, this kind of thing. Cover letter as well. You have free courses on LinkedIn. You can learn a lot from other people. Like I mentioned, Marina was posting a lot. And she’s not alone. Lara, you’re also like posting a lot. So it is true. It’s up to you to be proactive and to do the steps. It doesn’t guarantee that you will get the job you want, but you’re on the right path. That’s the best thing you can do, you don’t control the rest. But yeah, just do whatever you can to learn, grow, and it’s gonna be… you’re gonna… it’s a win-win situation anyway. Whatever you learn, it’s for you. So. Oh, and one thing I would also mention, one thing that is quite important to me, it’s cultural feedback. It’s not easy. People may think it’s easy, but it’s not easy at all, like in real life, to know when to provide feedback. The timing is very important, who to talk to, and the right words. How to deal with frustration, how to avoid like a negative spiral. So you also have training and courses about that. I think it’s quite important to… learn because communication is key in this job. So yeah.

MELISA: Amazing advice. Thank you.

ALEXIS: Amazing advice. There’s this saying, right? Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’re gonna land among the stars anyway.

THEO: Exactly.

MELISA: I like it. And enjoying the process, going back to the start, trying to be happy during the process. And not thinking, “Once we reach the goal, then I’m gonna be happy.” This is something I liked from what you said at the beginning.

THEO: It’s very important and it’s not something you can easily teach. Like it sounds easy, like to share some wisdom in a way, but at the end of the day, the best way is to try, to fail and try again. That’s how you learn. So yeah, at the end of the day, like if you try very hard to reach an objective because you think this is what you should do, that’s maybe not the best thing. You should think about, “Okay, I want to do that?” Yes. No. Go for it. It’s hard to share, but yeah.

THEO: Yeah, it’s a great mindset. Yeah, I love that.

ALEXIS: Amazing, Theo. Thank you very, very much for taking the time to be with us here today. We could go on. I mean, we had go on talking over dinner in the past. But for today’s episode, this is the end. Thank you very much, Lali, Meli. And thank you all for sticking around till the end of the episode. And please don’t forget to follow us on our social media down below. We’re gonna leave you the links. Yeah, I don’t know where it is. Here, here, here. You know where it is. You know where they are. We’re gonna leave you some links that we’ve talked in the interview, wherever those links are. And we’ll see you next time. Thank you, everyone. Bye-bye.

THEO: Thank you very much.

MELISA: Thank you, Theo! Bye, everyone!

Episode Transcription

ALEXIS: Hi everyone! Welcome to another episode of Open World. As always, I’m Alexis, I’m here with Meli, with Lali.

LARA: Hi!

MELISA: Hi, everyone!

ALEXIS: And in this episode, we’re gonna be talking about localization through the ages. We’ve called this episode “Localization Back to the Future” because the localization industry…

LARA: Because I’m a huge fan of “Back to the Future.”

ALEXIS: Okay.

LARA: Come on, don’t lie.

ALEXIS: I was just gonna make something up… Yes, we’re all big fans.

MELISA: That is the truth. We’re gonna be honest with you.

ALEXIS: So, I mean, nowadays, video games are expected to be well localized or expected to have some… We have standards.

LARA: We have. What a great time to be alive, to be honest, because we have standards.

ALEXIS: We have standards in localization.

MELISA: We’ve come a long way.

ALEXIS: High standards. But that wasn’t always the case.

LARA: No. Dear God, no.

ALEXIS: So we’re gonna take you from the 70’s, 80’s, 90’s, 2000’s to where we are today. But we’re gonna have fun today, we’re gonna show you some memes. With the magic of post-production, you guys are gonna see what we’re seeing on our tablets and everything. So let’s start with the beginning. The beginning of time.

MELISA: Big Ben.

ALEXIS: I think that it’s safe to say that we can start in the 70’s with, like, Pac-Man. Right? I mean…

LARA: The classic example. The example that everyone gives.

ALEXIS: If you guys have seen some of the content that we’ve created over the past few years, we’ve talked about Pac-Man. But, I mean, in a nutshell, not to go too far, not to go too long, Pac-Man, as we know it, wasn’t always called like that, right? When it was invented, when it was created in Japan, the name of this popular character was Puck Man. P-U-C-K MAN. So, when the game was shipped to the U.S., it could get messy, and some wordplay could happen.

MELISA: Like if you changed the P for an F.

ALEXIS: The P for an F, yes.

LARA: Yes, it would change the whole rating of the game.

MELISA: Especially if it’s a kids game.

ALEXIS: It’s a kids game, you don’t want that. “What are you playing? I’m playing… [bleep]”

MELISA: Yes. Let’s not…

ALEXIS: That-Man. “I’m playing That-Man.” Right. So they decided to change the name to what we know today.

MELISA: It was a good call.

ALEXIS: It was a good call.

LARA: It was brilliant.

ALEXIS: It was brilliant. I mean, that was… We could say that it was the kick-off to…

LARA: Yeah, and I believe that nowadays, if you had the option, I don’t think they would make it, because I think they would make it like in purpose to make it sound more fun, to be honest with you.

ALEXIS: But we’ve come a long way.

LARA: But back in the day…

ALEXIS: Back in the day, people weren’t ready for that.

LARA: Now we’re ready. I think we’re ready now. But yeah, back in the day…

ALEXIS: Yeah. Who wants to take us to the 80’s?

MELISA: Yes, I can go. I think the 80’s is when we started to see, like, some localization…

LARA: An attempt.

MELISA: Yes, let’s say it that way. The lead was taken when Super Mario Bros started translating the packaging and the documentation into what we call FIGS, which is French, German…

LARA: Italian.

MELISA: Italian and Spanish. Yeah, so…

ALEXIS: Europe.

MELISA: Yes. This is still called FIGS or EFIGS for these core languages for localization. And some games started translating the packaging, but the video games themselves weren’t yet localized.

ALEXIS: Yes, manuals and…

LARA: Yeah. And I believe it had some sort of evolution right there, because we’ve seen like Super Mario going with a FIGS translation, and the Japanese video game developers wanted their games first in English, so that’s why we have so many funny attempts and jokes to laugh about today because there was an attempt, they wanted that, they tried to copy that.

ALEXIS: It wasn’t professionalized.

MELISA: They were going the right direction. They were like, “Let’s… We want to approach new markets.”

LARA: Yeah, and we want to thank you because, if it wasn’t for them, we wouldn’t be here.

MELISA: Yeah, exactly. When everyone was laughing at their games, and they were like, “Oh, this wasn’t our intention. This was supposed to sound scary, and now everyone is laughing.”

ALEXIS: In a way, we could say that all of these individuals that tried, we can tell them, “A winner is you.”

LARA: A winner is you. Our first cute example.

ALEXIS: Our first example.

LARA: Oh, my God. And yeah, there is like a rendition…

ALEXIS: 86? Something like that?

LARA: Yeah. There is a rendition of 2003 that is called Matrimelee.

ALEXIS: Matrimelee, yeah.

LARA: When you win, there is like this huge thing that reads “A winner is whom.” And I don’t know if they meant, like, to make the joke about “The winner is you.” I wish it was like that.

ALEXIS: I wish it was like that.

MELISA: I wish we could know. Can we, like, contact these people?

LARA: Do you know? If you know, please leave a comment.

MELISA: I’m so intrigued. Is it “A winner is whom” or “A winner is you”?

ALEXIS: A 2003 game, Matrimelee. If you guys know “whom” did the game…

LARA: The winner is whom?

MELISA: Whom is the winner?

ALEXIS: Whom is the winner?

MELISA: And for everyone who is listening and not watching this episode, we are showing like screenshots of these games and their localization. We’re going to explain them.

LARA: Yeah, we’re trying to read them.

MELISA: Yes.

ALEXIS: Yes. And if you get this on the podcast version, we’re gonna talk to our folks who have the transcription so that you guys can see it as well. We’ll try to hook you up to have the same experience.

MELISA: Yeah, exactly. So we have our next example.

ALEXIS: “Conglaturation!”

MELISA: “Conglaturation. You have completed a great game. And prooved…”

ALEXIS: “Prooooved.”

MELISA: “…the justice…” I said, “just ice.” “…the justice of our culture. Now go and rest our heroes.”

LARA: “Rest, our heroes!”

ALEXIS: “Rest our heroes.”

MELISA: It sounds so creepy.

ALEXIS: We need a comma there. Or something. “Go rest our heroes.”

LARA: You need to rewrite the entire paragraph, to be honest, from the “Conglaturations.”

ALEXIS: “Conglaturations.”

LARA: That’s a lot.

MELISA: The funny thing about it is, I mean, you can still understand it, you can still, like, get the message. But, of course, you know, it’s just funny. It sounds funny.

ALEXIS: But the interesting part is that it’s in different platforms as well, because you even had localization in Game Boy. So that was a lot. But you have to remember to “flash the toilet.”

LARA: “Flash.” Do you wanna take a picture, Ale?

ALEXIS: You don’t flush the toilet, you flash it.

LARA: Like when you’re playing Counter-Strike and you throw a flash to blind the enemy.

ALEXIS: Fire in the hole!

LARA: Blind the toilet. Come on. It’s so good.

MELISA: Amazing.

LARA: Yeah. Then we have this example that says… There’s a soldier speaking, and he says, “That’s what you say, but evil is good. Evil is the job.”

ALEXIS: “Evil is the job.” You had one job…

LARA: You had one job, and it’s evil? Oh, my God.

MELISA: It’s so profound. It sounds very like…

ALEXIS: It’s so profound?

MELISA: Exactly. Like, you know, “Evil is the job.”

ALEXIS: Maybe they were trying to convey something.

MELISA: The meaning of life is evil.

ALEXIS: The other one was the culture, “of our culture.” Now “evil is the job.”

LARA: “Evil is the job.” I don’t know, maybe, like, some kind of super-villain came out of this, just like, “Oh, my God, yeah, evil is the job. Yeah, I get it.”

ALEXIS: And then we have a classic, right?

MELISA: Yes. This one is also a classic. “All your base are belong to us.” This is also, I think… Yeah.

LARA: Everyone knows.

ALEXIS: Everyone knows about this one.

MELISA: Yeah. And… I think we’re ready to move on.

ALEXIS: The 80’s, as we said, it started, but it was mostly seen properly done, professionally done in, like you said, manuals or things that weren’t in-game content.

LARA: Yeah, because I believe the thing with this kind of examples that we have, we don’t know what kind of technology they used. We don’t know if they even had the technology…

ALEXIS: If any. Right.

LARA: Yeah. So maybe it was like a huge lack of context. Maybe they were not professionals. Maybe they just knew a few words in the other language. So it’s just like, I believe there are many factors that are involved in these attempts to localize a game. You can understand the meaning… the meaning…

MELISA: Sometimes.

LARA: Sometimes.

ALEXIS: We left out quite a few. When we were doing the research for this episode, we left out quite a few.

LARA: Because there were some… Some ones that we couldn’t show on screen.

MELISA: Yes. Definitely.

ALEXIS: Too painful and too… And not appropriate.

MELISA: Not appropriate.

LARA: Yeah. Yeah.

MELISA: Absolutely. But I think, I mean, it’s good… Of course, we’ve learned from this, like, it has that positive side of, like, you know, you can’t just have a random person that knows a little of a language have your game localized.

ALEXIS: “You speak English? Help me translate this.” This happens nowadays. This still happens, but we know better now.

MELISA: Yes, exactly. We know better now.

LARA: Absolutely. Then we have the 90’s. I mean, we have, like, the demand grows, we have a more sort of like a professional…

ALEXIS: More consoles.

LARA: Yeah, more consoles, the industry is growing, everything is going massive, worldwide. But we still have some funny examples for you.

ALEXIS: Particularly memorable ones, because voiceover was installed, too.

MELISA: Exactly, yeah. That’s a really good point. I think it wasn’t like… You know, it was needed, like, it was needed the localization, but it wasn’t as professionalized yet.

ALEXIS: No, but the notion of that immersive experience and that the voices needed to accompany what you were reading started to appear. Like in this first example. Everyone who grew up in the 90’s knows X-Men. The X-Men was massive. The theme song, everything. The arcades were growing. So we have an example here, it’s a small clip of the X-Men arcade game.

MELISA: We can play it now.

ALEXIS: Yeah.

MAGNETO: Ha, ha, ha, ha! X-Men, welcome to die!

LARA: It’s just like, such a complex character saying something like, “X-Men, welcome to die!” It’s just like, oh, my God!

ALEXIS: That’s a weird way of naming a waterfall, because he’s in a waterfall.

MELISA: Even the setting. Everything’s just makes it hilarious.

LARA: Everything is so confusing, like… “Okay.”

ALEXIS: Memorable for the wrong reasons.

LARA: “Thank you for welcoming me.”

MELISA: To die.

LARA: Yeah, absolutely.

ALEXIS: So the next example that we have is from Dragon Master from 94. When you lose, Gloria just flat-out says that “You are a sucking baby.”

MELISA: There you go!

LARA: “You’re a sucking baby.”

ALEXIS: ““You’re a sucking baby for losing.” Hey, maybe they tried to bleep… the word?

LARA: To make it more accessible to all ages? But it’s just so funny.

MELISA: It’s very appropriate, like, bad words.

LARA: Appropriate for ages, but… No?

ALEXIS: “It’s okay, you don’t get a mature rating, but are you doing it right, buddy?”

MELISA: “Is that something people say?”

ALEXIS: “Gloria, are you okay?”

LARA: Yeah. “Do you wanna talk about it, Gloria?”

MELISA: Oh, this one, I just love it.

LARA: Please, please read it.

MELISA: “What did I had done!” “What did I had done.”

ALEXIS: So, let’s spell this one out for those that are listening to the podcast. “What did I had done.”

LARA: “What did I had done.” And the game is Eight Forces from 94.

ALEXIS: Yeah, it’s an arcade game.

MELISA: It’s an arcade game. Yeah. I wonder if, like, arcade games just have a bit more, I don’t know, like…

ALEXIS: But in the 90’s, the arcades grew. I mean, we grew up with arcade games. We played more in arcades than in our homes, right?

MELISA: Absolutely, yeah.

ALEXIS: Maybe that’s why they were like, “Hey, we need to ship these games to overseas. Translate them somehow.”

MELISA: Yeah, to the arcades in Argentina.

ALEXIS: “What did I had done?”

LARA: The funny thing is that it was more accessible for everyone to get it at the arcade because everyone could play it.

ALEXIS: Just get a couple of chips and go play.

LARA: And you get it. Yeah. So it’s just like, there was this massive need for video games, and they tried to mass produce these kinds of translations. That’s the problem because I don’t think it was something that was well-thought.

MELISA: Yeah, no, definitely. Definitely, it wasn’t on their plans. We get that. Yeah, absolutely. But, Lari, you have to read this one.

LARA: Oh, my God, this one’s my favorite.

ALEXIS: Yeah, you go with this one.

LARA: Yeah. The game is called Touhou Reiiden. I don’t know even the name of the game.

ALEXIS: The Highly Responsive to Prayers.

LARA: The Highly Responsive to Prayers, yes. From 1996. Instead of “hurry,” because you have to hurry.

ALEXIS: Hurry up.

LARA: It says “harry.” Like, are you talking about, like, Harry Potter? Harry Styles? What Harry areyou talking about?

MELISA: Who’s Harry? We wanna know.

ALEXIS: And what it shows on the screen is an intense moment, that you surely need to hurry, and it just says “Harry.” It’s like…

LARA: Is Voldemort back? Um… What do you mean?

MELISA: Harry, please, we need you. Whoever you are, come to our rescue.

ALEXIS: Harry, come sing. I don’t know.

MELISA: Yeah. Then, we move to another moment in history on our time machine.

ALEXIS: In our time machine, to the 2000’s, right? So the localization has kind of established at this point, right? The localizators had tools, right? There were technological improvements made, like, I don’t know, Monkey Island or Baldur’s Gate. This was when the publishers truly realized that they needed to take localization seriously when they wanted to simship their game, which is basically releasing the game worldwide at the same time. They didn’t… they couldn’t patch it up anymore.

MELISA: Absolutely. Yeah.

ALEXIS: But we still have some very good examples of how the dubbing was wrong, when…

MELISA: Yeah, especially at the beginning of the 2000’s.

LARA: Yeah, because, I mean, we know, like, in the early 2000’s, we’re coming from the 90’s and these “harry up” moments. Harry! Are you there, Harry? But…

MELISA: Yeah. We have that example from the 2000’s… Oh, it’s this one. Which is also really funny.

LARA: Yeah, it’s so good.

MELISA: “What a polite young man she was!”

LARA: “What a polite young man she was.” Aha. It’s inclusive!

ALEXIS: It’s inclusive. They were ahead of their time.

LARA: Yeah, but this is showing one of the biggest problems they had in the 2000’s, right? The lack of context, the lack of materials, the lack of…

ALEXIS: Tools given to the translators.

LARA: Yeah, the lack of tools, the lack of opportunities for these poor translators that had to do this job, to be honest with you, because can you imagine being in that situation? You don’t actually know the gender of the person that is speaking. Maybe nowadays, with all this experience from the past, I think that’s so valuable, you know? We can see how much everything has improved, how much you can take the gender out of that sentence, right?

ALEXIS: Yeah. Yeah.

LARA: But yeah, I mean…

MELISA: I think you traveled too far in time. We’re not there yet, Lali.

LARA: I know, I know.

MELISA: No, I’m just kidding.

LARA: It’s just like, yeah, but it’s funny to see these kinds of things because it’s so good to see how we can learn from our mistakes. And yeah, nowadays, something that might have seemed like a real huge problem, we can laugh at it and have a really good time and learn from it and be like, yeah, this was good and this helped us to get here.

ALEXIS: To get where we are. I mean, it wasn’t easy, it wasn’t something that happened… day to night.

MELISA: Overnight.

ALEXIS: Overnight. Thank you. But, I mean, we can laugh at the things that went wrong, and we learn from it. That way also it’s the same, right? Content is king, right? But context is the queen. I mean, you need to have context for translators to work, and professional translators to do the job.

LARA: Yeah, and that’s why sometimes it breaks me a little bit because, with everything that localization has come through, I still sometimes sit myself to play a video game and I still find translation mistakes. And it’s just like, we should be so over this. And it breaks my heart.

ALEXIS: And not only in indie games, in triple A games as well.

LARA: Yeah. Yeah.

MELISA: And just thinking also, like, localization as part of the process, like you were saying some minutes ago. Just know that, if you plan ahead, it’s gonna be easier, it’s just gonna be better.

LARA: It’s going to be faster, it’s going to be natural for the translators that are working on your game. Everything’s going to run smoothly, and I think that’s what you want.

MELISA: Yeah, especially like, you know, because the idea is that you can, you know, have your game played everywhere and that, you know, it has the same impact it has in the original language. And that’s, you know… I think we have the tools nowadays to make that happen.

ALEXIS: It’s comforting to know that, I mean, localization started as a patch, to some extent, you know? To solve a problem, right? Then, as an afterthought. But now we have workflows, we have ways to integrate everything from the get-go.

LARA: Yeah, because I think they realized somehow, in this timeline, that there was a huge need for video games localized in the entire world, not in just these specific countries, you know?

MELISA: Yes, as a business opportunity, you know? It’s just like, you’re gonna be a lot more successful.

LARA: Yeah. So that’s why I think, like, they realized this, and it grew and it’s trying to get better. And I wish someday, like, the localization part, I wish to see more translators in credits, too. I would love that.

ALEXIS: That’s the current issue. Yeah.

LARA: I wish to get localization included in the video game-making process, because it’s so important. And the translators’ job shouldn’t go away.

MELISA: Of course. It’s part of that visibility that we want to support in our industry, you know, and how important it is to have specialized translators in video games.

LARA: And make their work credit, like…

MELISA: Absolutely, yeah.

LARA: You want to know that person that worked on that game because…

MELISA: It’s very valuable.

ALEXIS: It’s a part of the game’s development as well, especially with games having… I mean, they are as complex as movies or even more, so it’s like, you have people working to make the game as you intended it to be in the language of the developer, to be the same experience in every language.

MELISA: It’s an art.

ALEXIS: It’s an art. So the fact that translators are not credited is a shame. But we are in 2023, the discussion is out there, publishers are making changes. Hopefully, hopefully, this won’t be a topic to discuss in the near future.

LARA: Can we make an award for the best localized video game? So maybe they will encourage this.

ALEXIS: Geoff Keighley, we’re talking to you. Game Awards 2023. Best localized video game.

MELISA: It would be nice if our time machine would let us go to the future and see if this is not an issue anymore.

LARA: Oh, my God, I know. Let’s meet here in ten years.

ALEXIS: I don’t have more. But, I mean, in that spirit, I believe that that’s it for our episode today. We’ve come a long way, there’s still room for improvement.

LARA: Room for visibilization too.

MELISA: Absolutely, yeah.

ALEXIS: I’m guessing that, before 2025 —I want to be optimistic— we might get that.

LARA: Yeah.

ALEXIS: Someone has to tag Geoff Keighley to…

LARA: Hey, and if you know some funny translations that we didn’t add to this episode, please leave a comment.

ALEXIS: We want to watch them.

MELISA: We have so much fun seeing these.

LARA: Yeah, we wanna laugh.

ALEXIS: Yes.

LARA: We also have a Discord channel, you can send them there, that is full of localizers and translators that might wanna laugh, too.

ALEXIS: We had a channel especially made for memes, so you can just share them there. Tag us, we wanna laugh with you.

LARA: You can find the link down below. Please.

ALEXIS: That’s it for today’s episode. Thank you, guys. Thank you, everyone. See you in the next episode.