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

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

MELISA:Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of Open World. I’m Melisa. Your other hosts, Ale and Lari. And today we have a very special guest, María Eugenia Larreina, who’s joining us to talk about a very important topic that is accessibility in video games. She is a Ph.D. candidate at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, and her research focuses on the needs and preferences of persons with visual disabilities and the potential applications of audio description. Thank you so much for joining us today, Eugenia.

EUGENIA:Thank you so much for having me.

LARA: Yeah, thank you. It’s amazing. So we met each other… We’re going to be, like, giving a bit of context here. We met each other back in Berlin last year. And I was completely amazed by your talk. I was like, “Oh, my God, we have to have her in Open World because, oh my God, this is amazing.” But can you tell your professional journey walkthrough for those who don’t know you yet?

EUGENIA: Yes, of course. So I started studying translation and interpreting. I did Spanish, English and French. And when I was done, I was very interested in media, film, translation technologies, so I decided to do a master’s on audiovisual translation, and that’s when I had my first contact with accessibility. So we studied subtitling for the deaf and the hard of hearing, audio description, and respeaking. And when I finished the master’s, I had the opportunity to work on a project about audio description called the Rad project, and how to apply it to video games. So this was my Ph.D. topic, that right now I’m finishing the thesis. And I just fell in love with audio description and accessibility in general, and how to apply it to certain medium like video games.

ALEXIS: That’s amazing. And what was that inspired you to pursue a career in accessibility? And maybe, as a follow up question to that, what are some of the key challenges that you have faced in this industry so far?

EUGENIA: So I was very inspired by the fact that accessibility can be applied to anything in real life. So when you use a ramp to enter a building or when you use subtitles to watch a movie, or when you use an audio guide to guide yourself around a museum, all of this is accessibility and we are all users of accessibility all the time. And just the fact that what we do in university can be applied to real life and potentially improve real people’s lives and our lives was very exciting.

ALEXIS: I like that because that’s true. That’s true, right? Everyone is a user of accessibility to some extent at some point, right? Even with translated text.

LARA: Yeah. Don’t you get mad when you see something that is not accessible for some people and you’re like, oh my God, like, this has to be accessible? Like, it happens. Even in the simplest things, it happens.

ALEXIS: Yeah. And when it comes to video games, even some triple-A studios sometimes don’t even… I’m an old guy by now, so I notice that I sometimes need bigger fonts. I do, because I can’t see. And I came across some futuristic first-person shooters that don’t really allow me to make the font bigger and I couldn’t play it. I couldn’t play it.

EUGENIA: Yeah, and it’s really easy to make. If there is awareness about this, it’s not really hard to code or hard to integrate into the planning and the budgets. So it’s really about being aware of it.

MELISA: Absolutely. Absolutely. And, María Eugenia, how would you say the accessibility landscape has changed in the recent years? And also, like what emerging technologies or trends do you see happening? I bet in audio description, in particular, for your research, I imagine there’s been a lot of changes in the recent years.

EUGENIA: Yeah, no, it has changed and I would like to say that for the better. So I hope that it continues improving the whole situation. So I started the project in 2020, and back then there was no audio description at all anywhere in video games. We had audio games, which are games that only have sound. So you have a narration explaining what’s going on, but no audio description really. And now, in only three years, we have game trailers with audio description, we have audio description in some cut scenes in major games, and we also have some gameplay audio description. So it has really evolved very, very quickly and it’s very exciting. And this is also a big challenge as well because you need to be aware of all the new games that are being launched all the time. And there’s a lot of diversity, lots of new things every day, but it makes it very exciting as well. As for new things that I’m excited about, I’m very interested in virtual reality lately. I think that this will have like many cool applications for accessibility if it’s done from the start. So right now we are just like starting with the technology, starting to become more popular for gaming. And if we are thinking about accessibility now, we will make it better for the players of the future.

LARA: Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, I couldn’t agree with you more. And also I think about the recognition that accessibility is getting into the video game industry because there are some awards also that are like awarding video games that are accessible for everyone, right? Do you have like some example where you were like, oh my God, this game has mastered accessibility?

ALEXIS: That’s a good question.

EUGENIA: I have to say The Last of Us part 2.

LARA: Yes! I was hoping for this.

EUGENIA: It was a before and after. Yeah. Yeah, really, a before and after, that such a major triple-A game had so many accessibility options. It’s been like a major break for the industry, I would say. And now other companies are looking at it and saying, “Can we replicate this? Can we make this better?”

ALEXIS: That was something that I was gonna ask. You said that it’s not hard to code, to keep in mind, to implement. So a game like The Last of Us has set the bar too high or is it really just a matter of, okay, let’s include it in the pipeline from the very beginning and let’s go with it and it wouldn’t be too complicated? Or does it really set the bar too high?

EUGENIA: Well, I want to think that not really, that everyone can reach this level of accessibility. But of course, you need to have the resources to do so, and this might not be easy. But it really depends on the type of game, right? So depending on what game it is, you will need some different accessibility options, and maybe the ones that we have in The Last of Us cannot be applied to your game. So if you’re really creative from the start and design it with users, like real users, involving them in the creation and the testing, and then you work with the developers, the artists, the project managers, everyone together, you can really make it accessible, yeah. I believe so.

LARA: Absolutely. Yeah. So this is like the best question I have after this talk. What are some of the best practices for ensuring that websites and all digital content in general are accessible to users with disabilities?

EUGENIA: Well, again, it depends a lot on the app or on the website or things like this, but we already have some guidelines that can give developers some ideas. So, for example, we have the Web Accessibility Guidelines, or the Game Accessibility Guidelines as well, and you can start from there. But then, of course, the best would be to have users… Sorry.

LARA: Yeah, I mean, are the guidelines free to use, open to use for everyone? Like, you can find them online or something?

EUGENIA: Yeah, some of them are, others are not. For example, the information for The Last of Us is not available. We only know the accessibility options we have, but we don’t know how they were developed. We need to look into interviews of, like, people working on the game and things like that. But still, we have very public documents that we can look for. So the Game Accessibility Guidelines, for example, just like this name, is open on the Internet.

ALEXIS: We could share that link.

MELISA: Yeah.

ALEXIS: I don’t know where links live in videos, below…

MELISA: And do you think there should be more, like, communication between gaming studios and companies to share technological advancement or guidelines and things like that? What’s your opinion about that?

EUGENIA: It would be nice if all of this information was accessible as well, so that maybe smaller studios can take inspiration from them. And it would be also very nice if the same company would make all of their games accessible and not only some of them. So this is something that happens as well. I mean, if you have already the protocols developed, you can just apply them to all your games, right? But of course, the workflow in the industry is very opaque, right? You don’t really know much about how the studios work. So maybe they have some constraints that we don’t know about, but it would be nice to have this information for everyone to use.

MELISA: Yeah, absolutely. And with the things that are available now, what advice would you give to organizations and companies that are just starting to prioritize accessibility to digital content and products, games?

EUGENIA: I think that the most important thing is to talk to real users, because sometimes we have companies creating accessibility that then is not usable by the real people. Maybe they think that it will be useful, but then when you get real people using it, it’s not meeting their needs. So if you really involve them from the start, you will cut costs and make it more profitable at the end as well, more usable. And then another important thing that I would say is to make the information about accessibility accessible itself. So if you create an accessible video game or you have some accessibility options on your website, you need to make them very clear and easy to use and not hidden in an endless menu or hidden in the tags, difficult to find. If you have created them, you want the people to use them.

LARA: Yeah. Sometimes it happens to me when I’m like playing a video game, I open the menu, I see the options, and I find, like, some really good things regarding accessibility that I’m like, “Oh my God, this is so useful.” And I’m like, why was this so hard to find in the menu, in the options, in the accessibility section? Oh, my God, why? It’s just like, yeah, it makes total sense. Total sense.

MELISA: Yeah. And also incorporating like the users. I think that’s a great advice because, at the end of the day, you’re assigning resources to make it more accessible. And of course you want to like, you know, make it right. So that’s a really, really, really good point, I think. If you, you know, assign all those resources and at the end of the day, the users are not, you know… it’s not helping them, then…

EUGENIA: Yeah, exactly.

ALEXIS: So looking ahead, right, looking in the future, what are your hopes in particular for the future of accessibility? And… I have a follow up, but I’ll leave you with that first question. What are your hopes, what do you think that accessibility’s gonna come to?

EUGENIA: Ideally, very optimistically, I hope that one day you can play a game and it’s accessible from the beginning. You don’t have to wonder if you can play it or not. You just press Play, you adjust whatever settings you need and then you go. But maybe more realistically or more in a short-term scenario, I would like to see some standardization regarding game accessibility, so maybe some minimum requirements that games should have. So we already have seen this with subtitles, for example. There are many games that now have subtitles by default, so that’s very nice for everyone.

ALEXIS: That’s a given now. We think that… Yeah. I mean, it… Let me jump on that wagon of thinking of things that should be ideal. Maybe you could even have some pre-settings on your console or computer or whatever, and the game can pick that up from the start, right? So you only need to tweak everything once.

LARA: That would be cool. Yeah.

ALEXIS: Right? Like big fonts.

LARA: Like, I don’t know, for example, in your Steam profile, you have like an option to say, “I always want big fonts because I cannot see absolutely anything.” Like me, for example. Or some other, like, accessibility feature on your, I don’t know, profile or your Steam page, PlayStation, Xbox. That would be great.

ALEXIS: Your user, you know? Your user, that games can pick it up from your profile.

LARA: Yeah, so I don’t have all the time to go into the game, into the menu first, setting the options and then…

ALEXIS: I mean, to, again, hop on what you said, María Eugenia, I have an Xbox, it’s my preferred console right now. The games already pick up if I have my console in Spanish or in English. The games already go in Spanish or in English, depending on how the console is configured.

LARA: It wouldn’t be that hard now.

ALEXIS: It wouldn’t be that hard. I don’t know. Maybe someone is watching this.

EUGENIA: No, it would be very nice. Yeah. But at the same time, I think that it’s also important that you can manually set things. For example, for my thesis, I was talking to this woman who was helping me figure out the audio description in games, how to create them, like a player who is blind. And she was telling me, “I was playing The Last of Us 2 with all the presets for visual accessibility, and then, once I had mastered the whole game, I had played through it, then I started checking off some of the accessibility options, and I started making it more difficult for myself, more challenging,” because part of the game, you know, it’s like to complete these challenges. So if you have the option to customize it completely, then you can have a new experience every time you play. So that would be nice too.

ALEXIS: I like this brainstorming. I like the idea. So again, thinking in the future, how do you see your role in shaping it, in shaping this future that we are thinking about? How do you see yourself?

EUGENIA: I would really love to stay researching game accessibility in the future, once I finish my thesis for sure. And I would like to see how all of this develops. So maybe continue doing user research, which I really like. It’s been very nice to follow up with all of these participants who have helped me with my study during these three years. And it’s really nice to have this back and forth with them, like they tell me about their experiences with new games, I tell them about some news that I read about this upcoming game. It’s really nice to have this feedback and to be in touch with them and then to take this information to society. So I really like the whole dissemination part and talking to the industry, talking to the general public, and just raising a bit of awareness about it.

ALEXIS: So in this future, do you have any interest in joining a video game publisher or a company that creates video games? Or do you think of something more altruistic from the outside as a researcher?

EUGENIA: Both would be nice, for sure.

ALEXIS: “Both. I want both.”

EUGENIA: Yeah. Yes. There is this new kind of profile, which is an accessibility consultant profile that some people with disabilities are taking now, which is very, very good. So someone who is there working with the developers hand in hand to make the game accessible. So yeah, it would be nice to do something like that, but as an accessibility researcher. Maybe continuing user research, but from a company. And then I also like university a lot. Maybe I can do everything.

ALEXIS: You can do everything, yeah.

MELISA: I love it. At the same time, you know, it’s always a thing about, you know, when academic work is a bit like, you know, further away from the company work or whatever. So I think it’s great that you’re trying to put them closer and how, you know, they can help each other. And I was wondering, going back to the brainstorming, because I have heard, I mean, some gamers, which is, you know… This is why we like having this episode, you know, so kind of giving a bit more information and insight on accessibility and to other people also because they may not know, but they think that, you know, changing the difficulty level or the story mode is just making games easier, or they complain about that and they don’t know like the real reason behind it.

EUGENIA: Yeah, no, this is a very big criticism that I have heard during these years as well. Because sometimes, when you’re talking about game accessibility, you are met with very enthusiastic people who want to jump on it and be like, “Yes, this is a great creative opportunity. Let’s do it.” And then you have the other side, which would be, “No, this is too hard. This makes no sense. People don’t need accessibility options. We don’t want the games to be easy.” What I try to tell them is that, if the game is completely unplayable for you because it’s not accessible, then it’s not hard, it’s just impossible to play. So we are not making it easier, we are just making it playable.

LARA: Oh, my God, I love that. We are not making it easier, we are making it playable. I want to tattoo that on my skin. Oh, my God! I love that! I’m very passionate… Every time I hear you speak about accessibility, it’s… I don’t know, something lights up inside me. I love it. Can you give us some advice for someone that is interested in working in this accessibility industry in video games?

EUGENIA: Interesting question. Well, something that I have learned in this time is that you should be very open to talk to very different people with very different views from you. So we really need to involve everyone in the process of making a video game into making it accessible. So you need to talk to the developers, to the artists, to the project managers, to the people in marketing who are selling the game and to the players. And all of these people have very different vocabularies, very different priorities, and they will see accessibility in different ways. So if you can really communicate with everyone, then you are winning the game, really. So just to be very open and very flexible to understand all of these roles and then being able to communicate what you want to say. Then it’s also very exciting when you are explaining something to a developer, like what is audio description? So the first time that I did this, it was very hard to explain. It was like, “Yeah, like a narration, like a voice line, like…” And at the end, I ended up explaining it as an additional voice line that you put in the soundtrack. And then they were like, “Oh yeah, I know how to code that.” It’s not that hard.

LARA: Yeah, it’s all about education.

ALEXIS: And you see them… “Oh! Yeah, yeah, I can do that.”

LARA: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

MELISA: Great advice. The whole episode. Thank you so much, María Eugenia. This was great. I think all of us can keep talking about accessibility all day. Of course, we’ll leave links in the description. And, yeah, if anyone wants to contact María Eugenia or investigate a bit more about accessibility, we always encourage you to do so.

LARA: Yeah.

MELISA: Yeah. Thank you so much.

EUGENIA: Sure, you can contact me anywhere. Yeah. Thank you so much. This was really great.

ALEXIS: Thank you, everyone, for tuning in. See you next time.

MELISA: Bye!

LARA: Bye-bye!

Episode Transcription

LORE: Hello, everyone! Welcome to another Open World LocFact. Today’s LocFact is about one of the best-selling PlayStation 3 and 4 games: The Last of Us.

FLOR: The Last of Us is considered among the greatest video games of all time. Set in post-apocalyptic United States, it tells the story of survivors Joel and Ellie, as they journey westward together through what remains of the country in search of a cure for the plague that has nearly decimated the human race.

LORE: We all know that The Last of Us has unique storytelling, captivating characters, and outstanding art design, but let’s get into its localization.

FLOR: The Last of Us was released simultaneously all over the world, achieving what is called a simultaneous shipment, or “sim-ship,” so it makes sense that the name of the game was not translated, remaining “The Last of Us” in every market.

LORE: Yep. The game was fully localized in different stages. It was localized upfront from English into these languages on screen. Then they included this other set of languages. And eventually they decided to explore markets such as… these other languages on screen.

FLOR: Yes, and one of the factions of The Last of Us II is the W.L.F. This acronym for “Washington Liberation Front” makes an easy phonetic leap to “WOLF,” in English, of course, but it was very difficult to maintain this same connection in other languages, though. In Spanish, for example, it was decided to call the group “Lobos,” or “Wolves,” but translate the acronym as “Frente de Liberación de Washington,” since it appears on-screen and the characters themselves discuss its meaning in the game. On the other hand, it was decided not to use the feminine of “wolf” in Spanish, “loba,” for the female characters since it has a pejorative meaning.

LORE: Probably a good call.

FLOR: Yeah.

LORE: Now, let’s talk about the resistance group researching a vaccine for this infection, The Fireflies. The organization’s symbol, a stylized representation of a firefly, is often shown in the game, and the player can collect Firefly pendants with the same logo.

FLOR: The Italian translators, though, chose not to translate the expression literally, as “lucciole.” The problem here was that “lucciola” refers not only to that beloved nocturnal beetle, but it’s also a euphemism for a prostitute.

LORE: Yes. And since the leader of this group is a female character, Marlene, and is even referred to as “Queen Firefly,” the translator thought it best to translate “The Fireflies” instead as “Le Luci,” or “The Lights,” thus preserving the reference to light while avoiding a possible association with prostitution.

FLOR: So we’ve come to the end of this LocFact. Thanks for joining. Is there any other game you would like us to include in this section? Do you know any other interesting facts about any video game in your language? Please hit us in the comment section, and thanks for joining. See you next time!

FLOR: Hi, everyone! Welcome to a new episode of Open World. Today, we have a very special guest. His name is Hugo Miranda. Hugo began working in the video game industry as a translator back in 2006. Can you believe that? Hugo has been part of the Blizzard Entertainment family since 2011 and he’s their Language Specialist for Latin American Spanish. Hi, Hugo. Welcome. How are you today?

HUGO: I’m good. How about you guys? Thank you for inviting me here. Very excited to join you.

FLOR: Yes, I mean, I know that it’s been a while since we’ve been trying to make this happen. And like I said, we’re very excited to get a chance to talk to you and for you to share your knowledge and wisdom in the localization field.

HUGO: Awesome. Great. Thank you.

ALEX: I’m very excited, Hugo. Thank you very much for accepting our invite. So I’m going to kick off with the first question. Now, we know that your first language is Spanish, right? So I want you to let us know, what was your first experience with another language, and why did you study English to begin with? And I also know that you are quite proficient in Mandarin. So if you can give us a walk through your first steps into the languages?

HUGO: Sure. How much time do you have? So anyway…

ALEX: Uhmm, I have about…

HUGO: I first had this intuition to follow languages when I was pretty young. There was a show called Telematch on TV, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen it, and it was a German show. It was a competition show where they had games and they were wearing these big bobble-heads…

ALEX: Big bobble-heads, yes. It was called Supermatch in Argentina. But yes, I know this show. Yes.

HUGO: And the special thing about that show is that they had a countdown in German. And I just picked up on that. I was like… Well, I just naturally picked up on repeating the numbers. I just loved making those funny sounds. But anyway, nobody really noticed anything, you know, like I had the ability to learn languages back in the day, until later in high school. I just got interested in following the lyrics of songs in English. And, of course, we had English classes, which were really easy. And I took French at the time too, which I was not too attuned to at that time. And later, in English… Well, my father, migrated to the U.S. back in the eighties, and later I followed. Well, maybe ten years later, I followed. And that’s when I continued high school here in Los Angeles. Actually, a high school that is very close to Hollywood. And something very interesting happened because at the time, in my native Costa Rican high school, I was a very, very bad student, very poor. I mean, failing a grade… failing a few classes meant that you failed the grade and you had to repeat the whole thing. Well, that happened to me. But then when I got to the U.S., it was all brand new. All of a sudden, I was an A student. And I would tell back to my other friends in Costa Rica, “Hey, guess what? I’m like an A student here.” “Yeah, right.” Nobody believed me. And then I would tell my friends here, “I used to be a pretty bad student.” Nobody believed me. So that was my encounter with English. I picked up my first book from my teacher’s desk. And, you know, it had some skeletons on the cover, and then I just opened it. I picked it up, I opened it, I flipped through the pages and I saw Punta Arenas. And then at the time I thought, well, there’s two Punta Arenas in the world that I know of. I think one is in Chile or Argentina. It’s all the way…

FLORES: Yes, it’s in Chile, if I’m not mistaken.

HUGO: It’s in Chile, right? And so I saw that and I was, “I have to make sure that this… which Punta Arenas it is.” And it was Costa Rica, so I picked up the book and I read it because it said Costa Rica. The title of the book was “Jurassic Park” at the time

FLOR: Look at that.

HUGO: Yes. That got me excited into reading and I did a lot of reading in English. And so of course I excelled in that. I graduated high school and then I did some college until I went back to Costa Rica to become an English teacher. And I did that for about four years until I was pretty tired. Costa Rica is a very small country and there’s very limited opportunities to what you’re exposed to. And I always dreamed of being a sort of Indiana Jones, you know? Remember that scene where he breaks into a foreign language when he’s in India? And I was like, “Whoa! How can he do that? I want to do that.“

FLOR: You keep repeating all of my favorite stories, Jurassic Park, Indiana Jones. Which one’s next?

HUGO: So I wanted to be that, I wanted to speak strange languages and be in foreign lands. And as I was teaching English, during my breaks, I would flip through the newspaper looking for opportunities. And one time I saw this scholarship offer by the Taiwanese government. And I thought that was for me. I applied for it. Out of 70, there were 12 selected. I had a number of reasons to, you know, follow that pursuit. And one might not be that obvious, but I am 1/8 Chinese. I don’t look like it too much anymore.

ALEX: You look like more of a 1/16.

HUGO: Oh, okay. You’re close. During high school, I read a lot of Confucianism and Confucius. I was really curious on the culture. So that took me to Taiwan, where I stayed for about five years. I did three years of language training, and two years of geography in Mandarin. After I finished that chapter, I came back to the U.S. and started in the gaming industry.

FLOR: Which leads us to the next question, because I definitely want to know how you got into the gaming industry. Why games? What do video games represent you?

HUGO: You know, career wise, I started in 2006, but I think it goes way back when my father bought the first console for me, an Atari 5200. It was an upgrade from the 2600, so I was kind of popular in the neighborhood because we had that.

FLOR: Everyone wanted to play with you, right? After school.

HUGO: Yes, I was one of the few…

ALEX: That was in Costa Rica, right?

HUGO: That was in Costa Rica, correct.

ALEX: Okay.

HUGO: And there was a problem, though, not many people to exchange game cartridges with, you know? So I would say, after that, I got to the Nintendos and all the games that came with Nintendo as well. I skipped the Sega, but the Nintendos and the Ataris have a very special place in my heart. And I would say that’s when it all started, understanding, you know, analyzing a game, how to break through different levels and whatnot. So going back to after I came to the U.S., I found this small company that was looking for a Spanish translator. And we don’t have that industry anymore, but they were called Betting Games. And the way they worked, there were games like Tetris or Zuma, if you remember Zuma, or Bejeweled.

FLOR: Yes.

HUGO: And they had, you know, they have kind of hacked the games that were online and you could play for money. If you were good, you could earn money. It was like an online casino for gamers, something like that. So I did that and the company did not last too long. And at the time, I remember my boss telling me, “Hey, you know, there’s this job opportunity for this company out in Orange County.” And said, “Oh, forget it. I don’t even have a car. That’s too far for me, so I think I’m going to skip.” That company was, you know, sold out. And I did a couple of odd jobs in the meantime, like, I worked for a bank and I managed their Chinese site, their Spanish site. And, you know, fate had me where I moved, I had to move to Orange County. So during the 2008 downturn, you know, the economic downturn in the U.S.

ALEX: Yeah, I remember.

FLOR: Yes.

HUGO: I decided to go back to school and finish my degree. And linguistics was by far the easiest thing I could find because I had the languages there already. And so it was actually the minimum number of classes I would take. At the beginning, I didn’t really know much what it was all about, but I fell in love with it right after I did my first class and was like, “Oh, my God, where has this been all my life?” Nobody’s ever told me that linguistics, I mean, with such an unsexy name or sexy name, I don’t know, that was the thing for me. So that was a breeze. I did that for about two years, and before graduation, I started looking for jobs. And a neighbor company was Blizzard Entertainment, and they were looking for a Language QA. And then I remember recalling my old boss saying, oh, my God, this was the company he had told me back in 2006. I couldn’t believe it. I could have been working there since 2006.

FLOR: You belonged there. I mean, it was meant for you.

HUGO: And of course, the rest is history. I went through the ranks, I did QA for about a year, and it taught me a lot about maneuvering inside the games, which is not an easy thing. For example, for World of Warcraft and then StarCraft, that was very different. And Diablo III that, at the time [indistinct 15:10] and it was not out, we were doing QA for D3.

FLOR: Wow. And you were one of the first people to ever play it. Right?

HUGO: Yes. Yes, you’re right.

FLOR: Incredible.

ALEX: You know what? I’ve told you this in some of our previous talks, but I love Diablo III. I love it. And it is till this day that every time that I find any locked doors, I go like the Witch Doctor in Spanish, “Está cerrado (It’s locked).” It’s like in my brain, that’s the sound for a locked door. “Está cerrado.” And for my wife, too, because I say it out loud.

HUGO: That’s so nice to hear. That’s so nice to hear. I don’t hear those stories enough because we make a great effort or I make a great effort to put in the diversity in dialects and accents into the game, because I know that they’re being ingrained in the players, in the gamers’ memory for a lifetime. So it’s so heartwarming to hear stories like that. Thank you, Alexis.

FLOR: Well, it would be great if someone watching this show and as a big fan of any of Blizzard’s franchises, please leave a comment below. If you’ve experienced these games in Spanish for Latin America, in particular, this is the person you want to thank for that. So please leave your love for Hugo in the comment section.

ALEX: Yeah. No, thank you, Hugo, for making such a great job because it leaves a mark. It leaves a mark. I don’t want to stay too much in this because I’m gonna cry, but… I’d like to know, how do you manage nowadays…? Because we’re all busy, but I can imagine that what you do, your position, must book your time pretty, pretty heavily. So how do you manage your time and balance work with your everyday life? Do you still have time to play video games? Do you play video games still? And I’m going to leave another small question for that, because it’s a long one.

HUGO: Okay. So the short answer is yes, I still find time to play games. They are very significant for me. It’s a way to relax. And some people, you know, they read the news. Some people watch movies. Some people play with their pets. Or some people play video games. And it’s a way to find refuge from the day-to-day life to recharge your batteries. So it is very important for me. And of course, it benefits my job and it pays off when you show that knowledge. And it benefits others, too, in your job. Going back to what I do for Blizzard, so I left you at QA, I did that for about a year. I later moved on to Content Editor, which was basically synchronizing with the translators that we have as outsource partners, right? And then because of needs in that department, I moved to Project Management. That was more of a language agnostic position, but still keeping, you know, final decisions language-wise. And now the latest of the evolution is Language Specialist. In my view, I’ve always been doing the same thing. But I just provide people with different services, if you know what I mean. And in terms of how do I manage my time? So there are some things that I have to do for work in video games. I am doing one right now, but I cannot share any details. Haw-haw! And I am…

ALEX: You’re so mean!

HUGO: I am collecting information. I am researching this product for the benefit of the translators that are going to get this product later on to localize. So some of that can be done, you know, as part of my job. And others I do here and there. I would say I play more mobile lately.

FLOR: Interesting.

HUGO: Because it takes a little more time to turn on the console, sit in front of the TV, you know, find the time and the space.

ALEX: Yes, I can relate to that. I have a two-year-old in a small apartment that we live. So mobile gaming is very, very, very comfortable.

HUGO: Yeah.

FLOR: Maybe you should turn to mobile as Hugo.

ALEX: Yeah.

HUGO: That’s a very interesting stage and it has its advantages. I remember when we had newborns, it was kind of fun because you had to stay up through the night sometimes or wake up at odd times, or sometimes you don’t fall asleep again. So guess what? Come on, console.

ALEX: I’m gonna play. Yep.

HUGO: So you just find your time and you adjust to it.

FLOR: Yeah, absolutely.

ALEX: That’s how it works.

FLOR: And you mentioned some of the things where some of the people you interact with as a Language Specialist, but I wanted to know, how does a day in the life of a Language Specialist look like? What are the challenges that you’re facing or that you faced through the years? Because probably they have changed.

HUGO: Yes. There has been an evolution for sure. But when I started, I was not so mature in the position and the team was not either. And so I remember… it’s actually a very endearing memory for me when we would have the… I call them the tomato-tomato discussions. Because for Latin American Spanish, it’s something that is very dear to us in every country, we all have our own nuances, because we grew up in a linguistic bubble, you know? We had marketing, we had TV, we had friends, we had school, we had the university. And someone that comes around from a place that is not from where I am and tells me that I’m not speaking the correct Spanish, it’s definitely an insult because, “Hey, my grandmother spoke like that, my grandfather, my parents, my classmates. They all spoke like that. Who are you to tell me I’m wrong? I think I’m right.”

FLOR: Kind of your identity. It’s what makes you you, right?

HUGO: Right, right. So when you bring on different Spanish speakers from different countries, and they’re just finding out about what others sound like, what others experience is like, you know, it’s a little bit challenging, and it was at the time, to explore our differences. Luckily, I am a descriptivist linguist. I think… Descriptivist? What is the other opposite of descriptivist?

FLOR: Hmm…

HUGO: Prescriptive. So a prescriptive linguist is the one that kind of follows the rules, kind of like the grammar, the language police, and a descriptive linguist is the one that’s just like a scientist, observes the behavior of a certain language, understands why they speak like that, where they come from, and then kind of tries to marry the differences. And that is kind of what I did at the very beginning in our department.

ALEX: More artistic, sort of speak, right?

HUGO: Right. Right.

ALEX: You mentioned scientific, but I imagine like someone that works their art with languages.

HUGO: Mm-hmm. Well, linguistics is a science, a social science. So that’s why I slipped that in there. So it happened when, say, we would decide a name for a unit or an important name for an expansion, and then people would have all these feelings about a certain word. So then I had to explore, you know, where they were coming from, what sounded natural to them, and then do the same thing for the other part and then try to explain, “Yeah, this sounds natural to him or her because of this and that.” And the best thing to do for the game would be based on the trends that we see in all of Latin America, kind of like that. So those are kind of like… I’m kind of deviating from the question, am I?

FLOR: No, but it’s fascinating. I mean, you can keep going for hours. It’s all right. Like I would listen for what you have to say for hours. I mean, it’s super interesting how it can be as simple as, yeah, there’s not one single variant, and that’s it. So you may choose, for example, Latin American neutral Spanish or Mexican Spanish and put it under an umbrella. Or if you dig and you go deeper and you realize that there’s more than just a variant, it’s just the culture behind those variants and the people behind them that speak that specific variant. Right?

HUGO: Right. So the different tasks I get for work, when they are linguistically related, we just geek out so much on them and we could talk on forever about those. I remember one. I’ll give you an example of where we had a bug in an audio in a game and… I don’t want to say that word right now. It’s a Spanish word. And there’s these little creatures in the game World of Warcraft, they’re kind of short, but they’re not the goblins. What are they?

FLOR: We might need Lara’s help here.

HUGO: So, in English, they’re called “gnomes,” okay? They’re called “gnomes.”

FLOR: Oh. It’s “gnomos” in Spanish.

HUGO: Oh, there you go. You said it. I did not say it. Just the way you pronounced it. In a game. And then we got it in Blizzard at HQ, and we all looked at each other and were like, “What are they saying?” Because nobody knew it by “gnomos.” We all said it as “nomos.” So that took me back into a historical [cut-off audio]. And you wonder why some people would say “gnomo” and other people would say “nomo.” And maybe we could talk about this offline.

FLOR: Yeah. For the people that are tuning in, “gnomo,” as I pronounce it in my Argentinian Spanish, is written as g-n-o-m-o, right?

ALEX: Right. Gnomo.

FLOR: So I pronounce it “ñomo” and Hugo, you pronounce it “nomo.” Correct?

HUGO: Nomo.Yes. Yes.

FLOR: And we speak the same language. It’s fascinating.

ALEX: Yeah, but that’s the beauty of it. Hugo, by now, I mean, we know, but our audience must see that you have a beautiful way of seeing life and to see language and to talk about it as well. Right? And I know that you see life as a video game, right? Where you can be either Indiana Jones or someone with special abilities. And you’re an advocate for bilingualism for future generations. What are your thoughts on what’s the potential of future generations for people in the industry, in language and gaming? Take it wherever you think.

HUGO: So, that… My endeavor of talking to elementary school age kids about what I do at work came about because I was once invited at my son’s elementary school to read to the kids. And I was like, “No, but to go there and read a book in English? That not me. Why don’t we go like, you know…” I used to watch in the movies where parents would go and talk about their professions. And why don’t I prepare a presentation, and talk to the kids about what I do at work? And at the same time, I bring the exposure of the idea that speaking languages is okay, it’s natural, because that’s something that here in the U.S. is not so common as you would see it in other areas of the world where multilingualism is more common. Here, there is bilingualism and multilingualism, but it’s kind of like in the shadows still. You know, you keep it at home in a corner or with your friends, and if you’re in public, you whisper it. Or if you go order McDonald’s, and I turn around to my son in Spanish to ask him what he wants, you get all this, you know, it’s kind of like in a movie, all the bright eyes in the darkness staring at you. So I saw that as an opportunity to also show my son that it was okay to talk about that. And of course, I put in comparisons. You know, I pulled one of those Hearthstone cinematics that you could see on YouTube. I couldn’t pull out an Overwatch one, although I really wanted to, but it might have been a little bit too violent for eight-year-olds.

FLOR: Yeah, probably.

HUGO: But I’m sure they see it at home. So I saw that opportunity to talk with them on those topics. And then it just evolved from there. The teacher had a son in a bilingual program at a different school, and he said, “Well, would you do the same thing at this other school for my son’s class?” And then he moved from there to a local library. “Hey, why don’t you do that for that community?” And then somebody else called me, you know, someone that I had met ages before that worked at an elementary school. And then I did it again. So I’m like, you know, happy to offer that. And I sell it as a way to, you know, discover your abilities, like in a video game, like a language is another ability that you could use for a job to, like, work at Blizzard or anywhere you want. Right? And also to give them the idea that playing video games is a way of getting to know yourself, getting to know what you’re good at, what you’re bad at, what you like, what you don’t like. And those are skills that you should know by the time you get out of high school, you should not go into university, you know, listening to others tell you what you should study. You should know by then. So games are a way to let you find out what you like and what you don’t. So I think it’s all connected. I think it’s all beneficial. But of course, you know, some people abuse screen time, right?

ALEX: Yeah. No, but what a wonderful story, Hugo. To think that you thought it just for your kids’ class, right? And it evolved. No, it’s amazing. I’m kind of speechless right now, but just because I enjoyed it so much.

FLOR: Yeah, it’s so nice that you get the chance to give back to the community, right? Through language, which is your passion. So it’s a beautiful story. And talking about passions, and I know you pretty much have the dream job, because Blizzard Entertainment is an amazing company, has incredible games. And we wanted to know if you have any recommendations to translators or linguists that are trying to get out there in the industry and are dreaming of maybe someday working at Blizzard or a company similar to Blizzard, though I’m not sure if there’s any. I mean, what would you recommend to them?

HUGO: Hmm. That’s a really good question. It depends. It varies depending on where you are and what you like to do, right? I think it’s your passion that kind of drives you to a destination, right? And then how do you break into it? Like breaking into the industry at first. There’s so much competition, but then there’s also so much opportunities. We live in a day and age where video games is taking over Hollywood in terms of entertainment. So it’s huge. It’s huge. And guess what? Languages as an industry is also exploding. Is there a lot of content right now, do you think? Well, there’s gonna be a lot more, and a lot more content to translate.

FLOR: Yes. This is not stopping.

HUGO: Right. So if you are a translator, say, and you’re interested in video games, well, if you were to solve it like in a video game, you would try to find the easiest way in, right? If it’s a big wall that you have in front of you, try to find the easiest way in. Find the door, the broken door that no one is looking for. Find the easy way in. For me, the easiest way in was using my languages, using my interest in video games, and that I lived nearby. So if you kinda summarize, putting it on a list, making a list of what would be easy for you. What skills do you have? Some people might have marketing in there. And guess what? We also need marketing people. Lawyers. We also have lawyers, right? Right. They are necessary in our society. So it just depends. And, say, if it’s a specific company that you’re looking into, it might be… it might look like a fortress at first, so find the easiest way into the industry first. Work on a smaller project first. That will build up on your experience. When you go on to the next opportunity, you can say, “Well, I did this and this and this at this other company, and I thought there were better ways of doing it. What are you guys doing?” And that gives you power, right? Just like when you analyze one video game, and I could just drop one here like Mario, right? And when you compare it to Donkey Kong, and you play Mario, we can have a conversation, we can compare it. How is it different? Who made the game? What years they were published? What consoles? And that is all knowledge that you would gain from having that experience, right? So I would say anywhere that you can find, put your foot in the industry would already give you more power to go into the next level, and the next level and the next level. Kind of like World of Warcraft.

FLOR: I love that you’re bringing the fact that you don’t need to have like a specific skill or area of expertise because as you said, we need lawyers, marketing managers, localization specialist and account managers, producers, game developers. You don’t even need to be just a developer to be in the gaming industry, right?

HUGO: We have librarians, we have historians, we have business intelligence people that analyze huge batches of data.

FLOR: Geologists. We had… One of our guests, one of our special guests was Kate Edwards as well, and she has so much background in geography and history, and still she’s collaborating and adding so much value with her background. So everyone has something that can add value to the story, right?

HUGO: Definitely so, definitely so. One example that I always like to bring up is when we worked on Overwatch. And, you know, one thing that I always wanted to do was to use my Chinese expertise in the games where I work, and the opportunity never really came about, you know? I would see it on everyday tasks where I would try to understand the English, to understand the source, and I would look at different languages. And because of Chinese and the way they look at things, the way they describe things in their language, I would understand right away what they’re talking about, okay, this is what it is in Spanish, or this is what it should be for other languages. But never really as impactful as when the Overwatch project came about. And when we were deciding who was gonna be the talent for it, and we definitely wanted someone who spoke the language, and we were just very lucky to find the talent that we found for Mei, who has studied Chinese in Mexico. And she was not a voice actress as a profession, she’s more of a drama professional and a writer.

FLOR: Interesting. And how long did it take you to find her?

HUGO: Well, we had to do it very efficiently, maybe two or three weeks.

FLOR: Well, that’s very efficient for such a special profile, right?

HUGO: We had to we had to move very fast because we didn’t have time. So we found her. And since she had never recorded in Mandarin Chinese before, she looked at the script and she said, “Well, yeah, I can do it, But there’s some words here that I don’t understand.” And when I heard that, I was like, “Wait, wait, I can help!”

FLOR: Your opportunity to shine, right?

HUGO: Yes. So what happened was that I joined the recording sessions remotely, and then I helped her with the pronunciation of certain words, the pronunciation of sentences, and also just, of course, because she is very good at it, just to give her that emotional support.

FLOR: Well, I think it’s about time to go to our meme round. What do you think, guys? Should we do it?

ALEX: I’m down for some memes.

FLOR: All right. Well, this is the first meme. And here I think we’re gonna need a little help from you.

HUGO: Here it is. Yes. This is a… this is not by far a popular meme that you see out there that people share about, because this was an internal discussion and happened about by the time Heroes of the Storm was coming out, because this is the character in Heroes of the Storm.

ALEX: Yes.

HUGO: At the time, we had this discussion of what we would name our demon hunter. And in English we had the name Valla, right? And then there was an issue with that, because if we published it as the way it is in English, people would read “valla,” and that means like “fence” or something. And so something like very uncool. I mean, people are gonna be saying, “Valla, Valla, Valla,” and it’s gonna sound like, “Go, go, go,” or like a fence.

FLOR: Yeah, [it sounds 40:58] forced, right?

HUGO: So, yeah. So what do we do? What do we do? And there was this heated discussion about, what do we name them? And then we reached out to the dev team and they said, “Well, there’s also this other demon hunter in the lore,” and this is public, actually, “and her name is Tyla. Tyla is another demon hunter that is mentioned in the lore. Well, would you guys be okay with that?” So then that was brought on the table and then we started discussing. Anyway, it went on for hours. It was so long, it was so heated and people were fighting over this, that our current director in localization made this meme. They mirrored the image and put Tyla and put Valla and then, go, fight, who’s gonna win?

ALEX: The PvP.

FLOR: Now it makes sense. Yeah, who would win in that story?

HUGO: We were like literally bringing out the popcorn and, “Yeah, you guys keep discussing, keep discussing. I wanna see how this ends.”

ALEX: I love Valla, but I wasn’t aware of the Tyla one.

HUGO: Yes, yes. You know, just to tie the knot at the end… Oh, and there was another issue with Valla because, in Argentinian Spanish, you will pronounce “bala,” not “Vala,” and “bala” sounds like “bullet” in Spanish, but in Argentinian Spanish, “bala” is something of a bad word that we did not want in the game. So yeah, we didn’t want that. We didn’t want “bala.“

FLOR: Yeah. We can also pronounce it as “vaya” as well. I mean, it can mean like a barrier or something and you don’t want that either.

HUGO: Right. Right. Yeah. In the end, we took out one of the “l’s” and it stayed as “Vala,” and there were no issues with the other meaning of the word. It was my guess that, you know, taken out of context, if it’s in the context of the game, you’re not gonna think about it in any other context. Why would you? Why would you, right? And we haven’t heard anything so far, so please don’t go bug it now, I think it’s fine.

FLOR: Thanks for sharing this inside meme, and I love that story. Thank you. This is for all Spanish speakers out there.

ALEX: It depends on who you call, right?

HUGO: Yeah. You’ve got A, B, C, and D, and, you know, the first time I saw this meme, I was like, you know, I’m a Spanish speaker, I should be able to answer this. You know, some monolingual person sent me this and, “Okay, so what is it? What is the answer? I wanna know.” You know, “I probably have the answer.” And then I looked at them, and it was like, “I don’t know.”

ALEX: All of the above.

HUGO: I don’t know what “ahorita” means. I don’t know because it depends on how you use it in your context, in your country, in your atmosphere, in your family.

FLOR: Oh, I love this one. Yeah. And we can probably find even more if we Google, because there’s so many different ways to say “popcorn” in Spanish. You have no idea.

HUGO: Yes. This is one of my favorite ones. I use it at work often, and particularly when I do presentations to my teammates, you know? I do presentations on the Chinese language to explain the difference between traditional and simplified, and why if it’s, you know, if one is simplified, why is not the other one complex? You know, I don’t understand that dichotomy. So I use this one to explain why Latin-American Spanish is so difficult. Why? Because when they, you know, when developers or production sends a query and they ask, “Okay, we want to know what this would be, what the translation would be for your language, because the developers want to implement this in the game.” Okay? And then you see all the languages answering and there’s like German, boom, Spanish, boom, I mean, European Spanish, boom, French, boom, Russian boom, Chinese, done, Brazilian Portuguese, done. And they’re like, “Where’s Latin American Spanish?”

FLOR: All over the place.

ALEX: Working on it.

HUGO: “I’m still discussing with the people, I’m doing my best. I’m still discussing to, you know, marry all the opinions and getting the best answer to you.” And that is because you have to go through all the countries that you have, you know, you can reach out to. Well, this meme is kind of old, at least the picture, right? At the time, I don’t know, I must have made it like six, seven years ago when we started discussing this topic. And for Spanish speakers, it’s a very sensitive topic because it talks about the core of who you are and how you speak. And so, when you hear the first comments of neutral Spanish and, you know, nobody likes it because they all defend who they are. And yes, I see that, I respect who they are. I mean, I am the number one person that, when I visited Buenos Aires, I started speaking like the locals like right away because I wanted to pick it up. And, you know, and then I came… you come back and then you start finding a love for the way things are pronounced a little bit differently. And then it just sounds like music, so beautiful. So I am the first one to appreciate the diversity in accents. And the issue of neutrality comes when you have to publish one product to a huge market. Right? So what do you choose?

ALEX: That’s what I was saying, right? Like teach your kids the ways of video games, then they’ll never have money to buy drugs or something like that.

FLOR: Yeah, it’s a healthy hobby.

ALEX: Yeah.

HUGO: I think so. Yeah, I agree. And World of Warcraft is not an easy game. I mean, I’ve played it and I don’t do… I don’t do like 10% of what you can do inside World of Warcraft.

FLOR: Really?

HUGO: I mean, I’m like questing and sometimes I fish, like, the most boring things. And I don’t do raiding or even battles. Oh, my God.

ALEX: I’ve felt like John Wick every once in a while in this picture, especially because of all the bruises and all the low health.

HUGO: Yes, it happened to me on World of Warcraft, because you have to go pick up your body, right? And sometimes he’s right there. There’s not enough time for you to leave.

ALEX: Yeah.

HUGO: So, yeah, it’s kind of funny.

FLOR: I had so much fun. Thank you, Hugo, for sharing your memes. We like to think of it as a way of getting more personal with our guests, because we like to know what makes them laugh. Thank you for sharing what makes you laugh. It was an absolute pleasure to have you here with us today, Hugo, and to learn more about your incredible journey in Blizzard and in the localization industry. Thank you, Alexis, also. It was lovely having you, everyone. Thanks for tuning in, and we’ll see you in another Open World. Take care.

HUGO: Bye, guys.

Episode Transcription

ALEX: Hi, everyone! Welcome to Open World. Today we have a very special guest, Marina Ilari from Terra Localizations. But before we get to the interview, let’s see what the LocFact of the day is.

FLOR: Hi, folks! How are you? Welcome to another Open World LocFact! Today we are going to be talking about Genshin Impact, one of the most successful game releases of 2020. Published by miHoYo Studio, Genshin Impact was already the game everyone was talking about even a year before its official launch! Can you believe that? Being quite similar to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Genshin Impact still has its own game identity, and is likely to surprise us more than once in the near future. But let’s hold it right there, shall we? Can we start with the title? What does it actually mean? And most importantly, am I pronouncing it correctly? What is a “genshin”? And what can I do with it?

LUCIO: Well, to answer all those questions, Flor, let’s start by talking about the word “genshin” first, which means “primordial gods.” How it’s pronounced, well, this depends on the fact that the developer uses Japanese pronunciation “génshín (げんしん)” for this 原紳 word not only for the Chinese market, but also for the global market. And this is very interesting because this Chinese character’s pronunciation is not “genshin,” but “yuán shén.” And Koreans read this word as “wonshin (원신).”

FLOR: Oh, so I was right, I was killing the pronunciation. Sorry, everyone.

LUCIO: Yeah. We’re all doing it on this side of the planet. Well, this is probably due to the fact that the game’s anime-like style aims to attract Japanese animation fans all over the world, and therefore they chose to localize the game’s name accordingly to their marketing and branding strategies.

FLOR: That’s so cool! However, there is more to Game Localization than the meaning and pronunciation of a name when it comes to successfully launching in a foreign culture, and that includes how you accept and cancel on your joysticks. Did you know that in Japanese culture, the X has a historically negative connotation, whereas the circle has a positive connotation?

LUCIO: Oh, I wasn’t aware of that!

FLOR: Well, now you know. Therefore, players confirm actions with a circle instead of an X, as we are used to doing on this side of the globe. So for those who have already played the game, you might have noticed that the default button to accept is not your typical A or X to accept, and B or circle to cancel. Instead, it has been reversed, as if it was meant to be for the Japanese markets, but for all players all over the world. At first, this might seem a little trivial, but after a few hours trying to survive every single encounter, it becomes some sort of like an extra challenge. Wouldn’t you agree?

LUCIO: Yes, it’s really hardcore to play it like that. But do you think this has a negative impact on the audience of your native language or, on the contrary, is it very much welcomed? Leave us your comments below, and see you next time for another Video Game LocFact.

FLOR: All right, guys. So welcome to Open World. So we have here with us today Marina Ilari. Marina is an ATA certified English into Spanish translator with over 15 years of experience in the translation industry. She’s an expert in translation tools and managing projects in English and Spanish. She has worked as a translator, editor and quality assurance specialist for many companies around the world with a special focus on creative translations and video game localization. She is the Chief Executive Officer of Terra Translations and co-host of the podcast about translations that is called En pantuflas. So welcome, Marina. How are you?

MARINA: Thank you! I’m good. Thank you so much for having me. I’m so excited to talk to you all.

FLOR: So here today with me, we have Alexis, Loretta, and Lucio. So, how are you guys?

ALEX: Hi, everybody!

LORE: Hello. Excited to be here.

FLOR: So we have a couple of questions, Marina, because we are super anxious and excited to learn more about you and your background. So how about Alexis? What would you like to learn from Marina today?

ALEX: Yes. Hi, Marina. Welcome. Well, we are all gamers, so first things first. Which games were the ones that got you into gaming? I mean, there must have been some game that made you say, “I want to translate video games and I want to play more.”

MARINA: Well, I don’t know if I was thinking about that when I started playing video games, that I wanted to translate them. But I do remember very clearly that the first game where I got hooked was Tetris, so I was really good at it. And I was also obsessed about this. And I remember people talking to me and me seeing the little figures coming on their faces. That’s when I knew I was completely obsessed with this game and I couldn’t stop thinking about where they should go. But I actually I grew up in a province of Argentina, in a small town, and we had an arcade game store called Flash, and we used to spend so many hours there with my brother playing The Simpsons and Street Fighter and Pac-Man and all these games. And so I think that’s when I knew that games were a passion. And then my first console was the… in Argentina, it was the Family Game console.

ALEX: Yeah. The old NES, right?

MARINA: Exactly. Similar to that one, but the cheapest option I guess.

ALEX: Yes.

MARINA: And yeah. And so Mario Bros was the first game I played there. Yeah. And that’s when I was completely hooked. And also… and also playing with my brother. Actually, the game that we like the most with my brother is this game that is not so well known. It’s called Snow Bros. I don’t know if you guys know it. You guys know it?

ALEX: I know the Snow Bros.

FLOR: I was also raised in Argentina, so I’m pretty familiar with that one as well.

LORE: You guys, I’m gonna need you to show me this one.

FLOR: We have to play that one with Lore, then.

LUCIO: That game is a destroyer of friendships.

MARINA: Well, it’s not so common. I don’t think people here in the U.S. are so familiar with this game. So it’s just a game about two snowmen. And I was always the red snowman, and my brother was always the blue snowman. And we, like, to this day, we can master this game. In fact, last summer we had… rented an Airbnb house that had an arcade game, and had this Snow Bros game. And my brother and I…

FLOR: Really? What are the odds, I mean, for you to rent a place and for them to have that specific game?

MARINA: Well, it had many games in the arcade and, yeah, one of them was that one. And so, yeah, so we spent… It’s just so much fun reminiscing about our younger days playing this game. And we can still master it, by the way.

FLOR: And did you get to show that game to your kids?

MARINA: Yes.

FLOR: And where they as obsessed as you were back then?

MARINA: Oh, yeah. Yeah, very much so. It’s a fun game. And also the aesthetics are really curious-looking and… It’s a cool game. I really like it.

LORE: Right. Well, after you…

LUCIO: You should try speed-running it.

LORE: Oh, sorry, go ahead, Lucio.

LUCIO: Have you ever tried speed-running that game? I mean, it’s one of the best games to win in as least time as you can.

MARINA: No, I don’t think so. I don’t think so. But I did know all the codes to go into the next level without actually winning. So cheating.

LUCIO: Yeah, that’s not gaming. Or maybe it is gaming.

MARINA: I just really wanted to get to the end. Well, the funny thing about this game, though, is that, of course, is the story of this princess that gets kidnapped. The two princesses. And the two snowmen have to rescue them. But what I like about this game is that, once they rescue them, then this like evil witch kidnaps the two snowmen, and the two princesses have to rescue them.

LORE: Oh, that’s so cool!

MARINA: So you get to play as a princess on the whole second part of the game, which is really cool.

ALEX: I didn’t know that.

LORE: I definitely want to play it now. Well, once you had mastered this game and got more into the professional aspect of it, so how difficult was it to get into the game localization industry when you started translating video games? What was the most useful skill that you had to learn, you know, taking these first steps into the industry?

MARINA: Yeah. I don’t know if I would say it was very difficult, but I would say that working in video game localization was not widely known or it wasn’t popular. So the most useful skill, without a doubt, I think is knowing about video games. So the amount of hours I spent playing the video games were extremely useful when having to translate them. And also being a good communicator and being a good researcher. When I first started out, video game localization was not a common specialization for translators. We didn’t have any books or blogs or videos or webinars on the subject, so you didn’t have any of the resources that you have now. So I would say that was the most challenging part back then. You couldn’t easily check for references online, you know? You couldn’t get all the imagery you get with Google right now. So that was a challenge. And comparing it to nowadays, though, I think that it’s a little more competitive, the markets for translators that are interested in specializing in this domain. When I first started out, there were only two translators of Spanish that were specialized in video game localization, and they were both from Spain. So I didn’t know any Latin American Spanish specialized in this. And one of the first projects I worked on, which was a large triple-A game, we didn’t have anything, so we had to start from scratch, from creating the style guide to creating the glossary to… everything from the game. It was starting from zero. Nowadays, usually, if you will work on a big IP like this, you would probably get a lot more material to get you started with. So that’s a big difference, I guess.

LORE: So in some ways, it’s a little bit easier. But of course those new challenges always pop up.

MARINA: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

LORE: Always gonna be something else.

MARINA: There are other challenges now, for sure.

LORE: Well, thank you.

MARINA: Thank you.

LUCIO: So, Marina, we have another question, and this has to do with something really important and something that has been discussed a long time now. So we need you to answer, to give the ultimate answer to this. Which is best, Star Wars or Star Trek? And please be honest.

MARINA: Okay, so I have to be honest. Lucio, I hope I’m not disappointing you completely, but I do like Star Wars. That’s what I used to watch growing up. I know! But I like Star Trek too. It’s just like I’m a Star Wars fan.

LUCIO: Okay, okay. I’ll get over this.

MARINA: So tell me why you love Star Trek over Star Wars.

LUCIO: Oh, you first. Please.

MARINA: Me, it’s because that’s what I watched growing up. So the first trilogy is what I watched and what got me into, like, the Star Wars world.

LUCIO: Oh. Well, when I was a child, I had a lot of books on science fiction. I read a lot of Asimov, and my grandfather was a fan of science fiction, so I ended up getting into TV science fiction. And the cinema had a lot of influences on me. But I think Star Trek is more appealing to me because of this relation with Asimov and other famous authors. And I think Star Wars is more of a science fantasy fiction. It’s more like Dungeons and Dragons and Lord of the Rings, than as a pure science fiction like Star Trek, in which you get a lot of scientific explanations about what’s going on and you can actually imagine technology advancing to the point.

MARINA: That’s really interesting. Yeah, I totally see your point, though. It’s definitely more tied to fantasy, and I love fantasy. I guess that’s why I like Star Wars.

LUCIO: But I also like the cyber fights. So Star Wars is cool.

MARINA: Yeah. I agree.

FLOR: And I have another question, Star Wars-related, and it’s for Lore and Marina as well, because since you’re both US based, I wanted to know if you ever got to get dressed as any of the Star Wars characters for Halloween, since it’s October already.

MARINA: I didn’t, but I did dressed my daughter as Rey at Halloween.

FLOR: That’s so cool!

LORE: So sweet. I haven’t personally dressed up yet. I’ve got a Vader helmet that I painted very cool for a Christmas gift for my husband, actually, a couple of years ago. But I think I’ve used it more than he has because I’m really pleased with how it turned out. So I wear it more than he does.

FLOR: Now we have to see it.

LORE: That’ll be real for you for the next one.

FLOR: That’s so cool. Now, are you planning on this year’s costume or you have no idea if you’re doing anything?

MARINA: No idea. Is Halloween even happening this year? I don’t know.

FLOR: I mean, at least inside your home, you know, just as an excuse to get dressed.

ALEX: Virtual Halloween.

MARINA: There’s always a good excuse to get dress, though.

LORE: We’re doing an indoor one, too. And actually, Lucile brought it up. We’re doing… Well, mine is Lord of the Rings and my husband’s is Harry Potter, so we’re going full tilt on that fantasy costume.

FLOR: I love it. I love it.

ALEX: That’s so cool.

FLOR: So I have another question for you, Marina. Are you currently playing any games?

MARINA: I am. So I have two little ones at home, and we are playing a few video games. Minecraft, Super Mario Bros, Deluxe Mario Kart, Zelda Awakening. Those are the ones that we’re playing currently. And Just Dance.

FLOR: That sounds amazing.

MARINA: And they play together also, which I really find quite adorable. And yeah, the other thing I really like about games and introducing them to games also when they’re young is that you can also configure the language. So we speak Spanish at home, but they grow up here in the United States, so English is their first language. And it’s another way for me to try to introduce them to more terminology in Spanish and to actually get them more interested in Spanish. So it’s not just me insisting that we speak Spanish, but also, you know, these cool characters also speak Spanish. So that’s one thing I do, I configure the settings on their games to Spanish. And it’s really funny, my son has all these, like, very specific terminology items and objects and worlds in Spanish, which I find quite impressive. So, I don’t know. Some parents might judge me that I let them play video games being so young, but I think it’s educational, so.

FLOR: Definitely.

ALEX: For me personally, I learned English by watching movies and playing video games. RPGs mostly.

FLOR: Same here.

ALEX: That’s pretty cool. I mean, it’s amazing to see that. Till this day, new kids are learning that language is not a barrier for them. I mean, even in gaming, they can play video games that they can learn a lot, not just have fun.

MARINA: Exactly. And it’s such a great tool to have. I mean, I think now it’s just annoying for them, but I ask them to say everything in Spanish. But eventually, I’m hoping that they will thank me, because it is such an amazing tool to have. Especially, I mean, I work with languages, I work in localization, so I understand it can be such a… just an amazing tool to have.

ALEX: Right. Thank you.

LORE: For those of us who are a little bit newer to the industry, like myself, what would you recommend or advice to somebody who wants to get started in the localization industry but doesn’t really know where to get their foot in the door?

MARINA: Yeah. So the first thing I would say is to continue specializing, because once you finish your career, your studies as a translator and you’re so eager to start working and you’re ready for it, and you think, like, this is it, I’m leaving my studies behind and I’m gonna be working. And the truth is that you have to continue studying and you have to continue specializing pretty much all of your career as a translator. So if you want to be on top of the latest grammar, the latest areas of specialization, I mean, it’s a continuous learning experience for you. The second advice I would give is more of a, like, business, practical one, which is to join a professional association. So depending on where you live, you can find translators or interpreters that join different associations. And this is an amazing community for professional development, but also for networking with other colleagues. And it’s super important. I mean, great contacts can come out of this. And even if you’re just starting out, these organizations are always looking for volunteers. So I highly recommend getting involved even as a volunteer, not even in a passive role, but rather like in an active role, like offer yourself as a volunteer and dedicate some time and effort helping the profession and also networking with other colleagues. And, yeah, the other advice I have, the professional advice I have is to always have a bird’s eye view of the localization industry as a whole, because as a linguist, sometimes you get only like a very small portion of what’s happening in the grand scheme of things. And it’s usually like at the very end and with limited access to everything else. And it is important, I think, as a linguist, to know and understand all the different people that are involved in the localization process, from quality assurance to the project management to the account management, what’s happening on the other side, if you’re working on localization on the publisher side. So it really does help you understand how localization works. When I was working as a translator and didn’t know much about the industry itself, it always frustrated me so much. And it… I couldn’t understand why some companies were doing things a certain way. That made no sense to me as a linguist. And then, yeah, looking back and really understanding how the whole localization process works, I can see, you know, why some decisions were being made and why things were a certain way, even though I didn’t like it. But it’s important to know how all the different roles contribute to the global strategy that a brand or a product has, and it adds to your role as a linguist and makes you a better linguist, I believe.

LORE: That’s really great. Thank you. The one about joining the organizations really struck a chord with me, particularly because I finished my studies not too, too long ago, and we as students volunteered for I believe it was an ATA conference that was being held in Milwaukee at the time. And we had a great time volunteering, we met a lot of people, and then were able to attend sessions afterward that we would not have been able to afford as students otherwise. So it was a really good way for all of us to sort of, I guess, be introduced to the world and feel like we were also contributing in some way.

MARINA: I love that. That’s so true. You usually do get a free pass for the events when you’re volunteering. So it’s a fantastic way to get your foot in the door.

LORE: Well, thank you so much for all the good advice.

MARINA: You’re welcome.

FLOR: All right. So we wanted to know, since you’re talking about these organizations that you collaborate, what are the organizations or associations that you collaborate with or that you recommend? It can be either in your area or even in Latin America, for that matter.

MARINA: Yeah. Yeah, I would say to start regional and then you can also go national or even international. I mean, there are so many organizations. It really depends on what your… maybe your niche is or your specialization is. And then, if you start local, which I really like, the smaller regional organizations, it’s gonna be easier to network and to actually get to know the people that you’re working with. Right now, everything is virtual, but before that, you would actually be able to meet them in person. So that helps a lot. And then developing those relationships, really, that’s the most important part. Like the people you meet and the connections that you make in these organizations. So some of the organizations… So I lived in Wisconsin for many years and I was involved in the Midwest Interpreters and Translators Association there. I served two terms as a board member there. It was an amazing experience. I met so many great colleagues, some of whom I still work with. And then, little by little, I started getting my foot in the door in the American Translators Association, which is the national organization for translators and interpreters. And right now, I’m the administrator of one of the divisions, so I’m very involved with this association. And it’s an amazing association. But depending on where you are, I would say go regional first and then try to see what other national or even international organizations you can help with. There are so many out there. Another organization I am part of is Women in Localization, and I’m a chapter manager of the Los Angeles chapter. I was living in Los Angeles then, I recently moved back to Wisconsin. But I told them, my heart’s still in Los Angeles, so I think I can still be part of the management team for Women in Localization Los Angeles.

FLOR: So that means that you’re still there.

MARINA: I am. I am.

FLOR: That’s amazing.

ALEX: You’re still in Los Angeles.

FLOR: Your heart is still in LA.

LORE: We in Wisconsin will try not to take that personally.

MARINA: I’m sorry, Loretta!

LORE: We’ll win you back.

MARINA: The move is very recent, so I’m still like learning to let go of the beach and the palms.

LORE: We’ll win you back. Don’t worry.

MARINA: I love Wisconsin, though. I love Wisconsin. Yeah. No, no, no. Wisconsin is amazing. And there are great organizations in the area as well, like MATI, the Midwest Translators and Interpreters Association. That’s a great one. But, yeah, Women in Localization is a global organization, so depending on when you are… on where you are, you could collaborate and… I think they have 22 chapters worldwide. So there are many that you can join. Yeah.

FLOR: Well, thank you so much for this great advice. So I know that we asked you to bring something today. You had a little homework for us. And you did a great job, by the way. So we’re gonna share some memes with you. Of course, Alex, Lore and Lucho brought some of them, some of theirs, but we’re gonna start with yours, Mari. Okay. So, as I said, Marin, you did some homework for us. Thank you so much. We asked you to share some of your favorite memes, game-related or not, because that’s up to you, of course, what makes you laugh. But I think you’re pretty in line with what makes us laugh, too. So the first one is about Superman. I personally had to Google this one.

MARINA: I’m gonna explain. I’m gonna explain.

ALEX: It’s Henry Cavill. It kind of explains himself.

LORE: Yeah. I think Flor needs to explain why she had to Google this.

FLOR: Because I’m not a big fan of Superman. Sorry, guys.

LORE: I’ve never seen it either.

FLOR: I don’t know. Sorry.

MARINA: He’s The Witcher, also. You have to like the guy.

FLOR: I know! But, I mean, I’m so bad with faces that, like, the minute I saw “The Witcher,” I was like, “Yes, it’s this dude!”

ALEX: And now he’s Sherlock Holmes, too.

LORE: Is he, really?

MARINA: Yeah, that’s right. In “Enola Holmes.”

ALEX: In “Enola Holmes.” Great movie.

LUCIO: He’s becoming everyone.

FLOR: Yeah. That’s kind of weird.

LORE: The Henry Cavill take-over.

MARINA: So I want to explain this one because Henry Cavill bought a PC and put a video I don’t know where, he uploaded a video of him building his own PC. And gamers worldwide went crazy about this. How he was building the PC, and how he was just like us.

LORE: One of us!

ALEX: One of us. One of us. Lucio, you said that Henry Cavill is becoming everyone. Can we be Henry Cavill?

LUCIO: Um, maybe. Eventually.

FLOR: Do we want to be him?

LORE: Looks like a lot of time in the gym.

FLOR: I bet he doesn’t eat much carbs or junk food.

ALEX: No. That’s all protein. Protein and gaming.

LUCIO: Yeah. Gaming mainly.

FLOR: Then we’re on the right track. Well, the second one is also about this guy, I think. There’s a pattern here, because, you’re a bit obsessed with this guy? What’s going on here?

MARINA: No, I just thought it was funny because it broke the internet. Like literally everyone was posting these memes. And I collected…

LORE: No judgment, Marina.

FLOR: Oh, no, not at all. Mr. Business.

ALEX: Okay. Open World, officially… Mr. Business.

LORE: Here’s another guest star. This is Mr. Business.

ALEX: Open World officially loves Henry Cavill.

LORE: Oh, yeah.

ALEX: If you’re watching this, we love you.

LUCIO: Big fans.

ALEX: Still, Batman is better than Superman. But we love you.

LUCIO: Yeah.

LORE: We can save that argument for another day.

FLOR: So this meme is like, cat, “I should buy a PC,” because… Right?

FLOR: Well… Yeah. And the third one, too, is like what we were saying, like every single person feels, like, related.

ALEX: He’s totally like me.

MARINA: He’s totally like me. The whole gaming community is saying that.

FLOR: We need his secret. Oh, yeah. And number four.

MARINA: And then this one. I think this one is hilarious. Yeah, this is a Mac ad of, you know, like cool people saying, “I’m a Mac,” and more traditional, like, button-up people saying, like, “I’m a PC.” But suddenly you have Henry… Henry building his own PC, and then it’s like, “Yeah, you’re done.”

LORE: Poor Justin, must feel so attacked.

FLOR: I would. Well, now we’re going to number five.

MARINA: This is how we gamers picture non-gamers during isolation.

ALEX: How do you get bored indoors? I mean…

LORE: You’re not 200 hours deep into Animal Crossing and just…

ALEX: Trying to get that platinum on PlayStation somewhere, you know?

LUCIO: Yeah.

FLOR: Yeah. It was like every single person, well, from my friends that were asking, “What can I do during lockdown?” It’s like, “Come on, play games.” Just buy a joystick and let’s meet over Steam.

ALEX: Play some Rocket League.

LUCIO: “How do I play games?” Gaming 101.

FLOR: I’m like bringing my friends… Every single time I log in to Rocket League, I bring one new person that hasn’t played.

LORE: Flor the recruiter.

FLOR: Yes. I’m slowly but surely recruiting them all.

LUCIO: You are the Henry Cavill of Rocket League.

FLOR: I wish.

LORE: Join us.

LUCIO: You’re joining all of us together.

FLOR: I wouldn’t need to be so insistent if I looked like that. “Do you wanna play Rocket League?” “Yeah.”

LORE: “Yes, ma’am.”

FLOR: “Where do I sign?” Oh, and the next one. We’re going to number six now.

MARINA: Yeah. It says, “Don’t travel, don’t socialize, stay inside. Coronavirus lockdown rules.” And normal people are crying, and gamers are like Tom Cruise laughing with his insane laughter. Now we’re all crying too, but.

FLOR: Yeah.

LORE: But we’re still playing games.

ALEX: Now we are all Tom Cruise.

LORE: Blue shell!

FLOR: Yes, now we’re more like a crazy laugh instead of…

MARINA: Yeah, it’s like insane.

LUCIO: It’s an evil laugh. You can see he’s evil.

FLOR: Oh, yeah, it’s kind of evil. And we’re going to number seven. And this is so cute. I mean, I bet that… For me, it made me think of all these friends that I’m recruiting and don’t have any idea what to press or how to jump or do any of the tricks. Or even how a joystick works. And I felt so related to this. Why did you bring this one, Marina?

MARINA: It just reminded me of my… So I would be the one, the little one with the sword, and my son, my seven-year-old son would be him teaching me how to play Minecraft.

FLOR: Well, that’s so cute.

LORE: So sweet.

ALEX: It’s very relatable.

FLOR: Yes, it is. And we’re moving to number eight. I believe Lore brought this one, and I think we can all relate to this. Like, come on, can it get any more difficult 2020? Like, I don’t even know if I want to say that aloud.

LORE: Yeah, I was gonna say, let’s not ask…

FLOR: A UFO is gonna go by my window.

LUCIO: There’s still a couple of months, so please be careful.

FLOR: Careful what you wish for.

ALEX: I saw earlier today that some guys found some new mummies, so it’s like Brendan Fraser is prepping up.

FLOR: Why? Why?

LORE: Like, why don’t we just leave that sealed up, at least until the end of the year?

MARINA: Yeah. Definitely not this year.

ALEX: Open it in January, please.

LORE: You don’t need to invite anything, any new crisis.

FLOR: Yeah. There was, like, also a cave where they found some eggs of some sort. Like had been there, kept for thousands of years. And it’s like, no, seal it back.

ALEX: Leave them alone.

LORE: Seal it up.

FLOR: We don’t need that.

LUCIO: This is so mainstream now, so I mean, we don’t need another virus. We don’t need another crisis. Just…

FLOR: Yeah, just leave it as is.

ALEX: We don’t need aliens, we don’t need mummies. Please leave us alone.

LUCIO: Just let me play.

LORE: Just more video games, and it’ll be fine.

FLOR: Oh, yeah. Well, number nine, I felt so related to this.

MARINA: So true.

ALEX: That’s me and Dark Souls right there.

FLOR: Oh, yeah. Well, that’s me in pretty much every single game.

LUCIO: Dark Souls is the exception. Nobody’s good at that game.

ALEX: Nobody is good at Dark Souls.

LUCIO: So don’t worry. It’s designed that way.

ALEX: Thank you. It does make me feel a little bit better. But just a little.

FLOR: You’ll forget when you try to play again.

ALEX: Right.

FLOR: And the next one, we’re going to number ten. The “harmacist.” I mean, it’s the first time I see this, like, pun.

LUCIO: It’s like when the super get curious.

LORE: Definitely stealing it.

ALEX: Yes.

FLOR: Number 11. “When you’re waiting on the loading screen for 10 minutes and realize it says ‘Press any button to continue’.” Yes.

LUCIO: This has happened to me so many times.

MARINA: I’ve been there so many times, too.

ALEX: And you see your reflection on the screen.

FLOR: I don’t read any instructions. It’s like, yeah, yeah, whatever, whatever. And then when I actually have to read it, it’s like, okay, what are you waiting for?

LORE: “This game doesn’t make any sense.”

ALEX: Yes. Tutorial: skip, skip, skip. “How do I play this thing?”

FLOR: Yeah, and then you’re facing a wall and you don’t know what to press or anything.

LUCIO: “This is boring. I’ll play another game.”

ALEX: “Who made this? I can’t play.”

FLOR: Yeah, it’s their fault that they don’t make it so intuitive, right? So now we’re gonna move to number 12. Oh, yes. I felt so related to this one. Every single time.

LUCIO: Like the first time you play PvP and you just lose. There’s no way you can win.

MARINA: No way.

ALEX: No way. And all the cool skins, you know? And you’re like…

LUCIO: Yeah, everyone’s shiny.

ALEX: Everyone’s shiny and golden.

LUCIO: So glamorous. And you’re just a noob.

FLOR: And I think this is the last one.

ALEX: This is the last one, right?

FLOR: Yeah. And everyone is reading this with the Mario voice, of course.

ALEX: Of course. Poor thing.

LUCIO: There’s no other way to read it, so.

FLOR: No, no, no. And they say that pictures don’t have sound. It’s like… No.

LORE: They do.

ALEX: Yes. But you believe Mario? We believe Mario? I mean, it’s not you, it’s me. He really pulled off the “it’s not you, it’s me” to the Princess?

LORE: That’s the classic line, isn’t it?

ALEX: That’s a classic line.

FLOR: Shame on you, Mario.

LORE: Yeah.

FLOR: Well, all right, guys, we’ve come to an end. Thank you so much, Marina. It was an absolute pleasure to have you today and to learn more about your exciting professional career. Thank you, Alex, Loretta, and Lucio. I hope you can join us on our next episode.

ALEX: Thank you, guys!

LORE: Thank you!

LUCIO: Thank you!

MARINA: Thank you!

Episode Transcription

FLOR: Hi, everyone! Welcome to a new episode of Open World. Hi, Ale, how are you?

ALEX: Hi, Flor! Hi, everyone!

FLOR: Today we’re gonna be interviewing Rami Ismail. But before we do that, shall we check the LocFact of today?

ALEX: Hi, guys! Welcome to another Open World LocFact! I’m Alexis and today, Flor is joining us to talk about transcreation.

FLOR: Transcreation is often applied in humorous and pun-intended content. One of the first games with this kind of content that I remember playing is The Secret of Monkey Island.

ALEX: Monkey Island tells us the story of Guybrush Threepwood, who is a pirate wannabe who is in love with Governor Elaine and who would always face Zombie Pirate LeChuck. This graphic adventure takes us across the Caribbean visiting several islands and meeting cheerful and unique characters along the way. The hilarious interactions between the cast along with naming and logic behind this game is something still remembered even after more than 10 years of the release of just the last part! Do you remember Murray, the Demonic Skull that would constantly terrorize Guybrush?

FLOR: Oh, yeah, how could I forget Murray? Yeah. As we said, in The Curse of Monkey Island, you would first meet Murray bobbing on a board along Guybrush’s prison. Guybrush would ask him, “Can I call you Bob?”… which actually made me laugh a lot, but once I could understand it in English, because myself, I’m a Spanish speaking native, and I didn’t get the joke if I read “Bob” right away. Right?

ALEX: Totally. I mean, this joke had to be transcreated for the Spanish-speaking players. I mean, it happened the same thing to me. When I played it in English, I didn’t get it the first time. So even though “Bob” does sound like a name, the pun with “bobbing around” would have been completely lost. So, in the Spanish version, Guybrush would ask him, “¿Puedo llamarte Calvicio?”… which in English means, “Can I call you Boldy?” referring to, well, the skull not having hair, right?

FLOR: Yeah, so jokes are often transcreated due to their cultural nature. Dialects and regionalisms are also worthy of mentioning.

ALEX: As you might imagine, the Monkey Island universe is crowded with disrespectful and violent pirates. So in English, we can hear lots of “er,” “aye!”, “ahoy, matey!” Insults, verb concordance errors and double negatives are also part of their peculiar speech, right? But this is not characteristic in every other language. So, going back to Spanish, this is not so characteristic, but the translator chose to portray this feature through common expressions used in some regions of Spain and Caribbean Spanish. I mean, they had to be careful because this could lead to some really different misleading stereotypes, right?

FLOR: Oh, yeah, for sure. You have to be really careful indeed. But that’s something that is part of the daily job of a translator, actually. Transcreation often requires not only knowledge about the language and the culture, but also the skills and the creativity to convey the intention of the original text in the target language. So, yeah, we would love to learn if you played this game and how the joke was translated into your native language. So feel free to leave us a comment below.

ALEX: Yeah, we would love to know, guys. This has been great, but now it’s time for the interview, so let’s go, shall we?

FLOR: Welcome back, everyone. Well, today we have here with us Rami Ismail. Rami is a Dutch Egyptian industry ambassador and he is an independent games developer with over 20 titles across PC, console, web and mobile. His development of tools like the industry standard presskit().com, his prolific and popular public speaking, and highly regarded consultancy and insights have helped shape industry opportunities for game communities and independent game developers of any kind in any situation and pretty much anywhere. Welcome, Rami. How are you today?

RAMI: Hi! I’m good, yeah. It’s… It’s a day, isn’t it? It’s another day. It’s been many days.

ALEX: It’s the last day.

FLOR: Yeah, I know. 2020 is almost over. Can you believe that?

RAMI: I mean, I’ve literally been running the website is2020over.com, so I’m very aware of the slow, slow march of time this year. It should start counting down very soon. I programmed it to actually count down the last few days, so I hope people are excited for that.

FLOR: Oh, really? I’ve been following that website closely. I’m not sure if you Lore or Ale have seen it, but I’m gonna share with you guys. He’s done a remarkable job on keeping track of the particular events that have happened throughout this interesting year.

LORE: There have been a few.

RAMI: It’s been a remarkably depressing thing to keep up with because, at some point, when I’m…

FLOR: I bet.

RAMI: It started as a joke, but then it started like gaining traction and people started emailing me every day with the worst news of the day, with like, “Hey, should this be on the website.” So for the past year, my mailbox was like, “Hey, you wanna talk about this. Here’s a business deal. Here’s a team that needs some help. Did you read that like 500 people are homeless now?” And I was just like, oh, my God, why did I do this to myself?

ALEX: So you’re keeping optimistic all through 2020, right?

RAMI: Right. I’ve been trying to just be like, hey, it’ll be fine. But, God, a lot happened this year. It’s almost cartoonesque how much has happened in 2020.

FLOR: Yeah, absolutely.

ALEX: The good news is that, when this episode goes live, it will be 2021.

RAMI: Happy New Year!

ALEX: Happy New Year, everybody!

LORE: Guys, we made it!

ALEX: We made it.

RAMI: I hope there are still people to listen to this.

LORE: This video cast playing into a void.

RAMI: Yeah, I just… This is what they find in millions of years when aliens find Earth, and they’re like, “Wow, this was the last culture ever created.”

LORE: This is what they spent their time doing.

FLOR: No pressure, all right?

RAMI: I mean, it’ll be a good podcast, honestly. So they’ll have a good time.

ALEX: It will be cool-looking and interesting, that’s for sure.

FLOR: Absolutely. So, yeah, I mean, we wanted to have you here, Rami, because, well, as you know, I’m pretty active in the indie community, especially in the Latin-American, Argentina community, and through the years, I’m tired of listening to indie developers that close a deal with a publisher and they handle the localization to the publisher. And whenever the their game is launched, they get feedback from their audience and from their gamers saying that the localization is pretty much shit in Russian or in any other language that it’s not English.

RAMI: Right.

FLOR: And so I wanted to know, what are your thoughts on that and what would you recommend for the indie community to do in those cases? Because they are so afraid of bringing this subject because, at the end of the day, the publisher is the one that’s giving them the money and has a lot of power, and they have pretty much no control over what’s going on on the localization front.

RAMI: Right. Yeah. I mean, in general, what I would recommend for indies, especially if localization is important to them or if they wanna make sure the localization is good, is that, when you’re negotiating with your publisher, make sure that there are some checks and balances on the localization done, right? There’s basically two major schools of how to get your game localized in indies. If it’s a small game, you’re a small developer that doesn’t have a lot of funding or might not have a publisher, you see a lot of community-level efforts. And even though those are usually nonprofessional localizers and they miss sort of that ability to translate jokes, to translate specifics, sometimes those actually end up better than the teams that publishers work with, just because the publishers sometimes just don’t really care. And that’s honestly unacceptable, how much good localization talent there is in the world and how many good teams there are that could do that work. So I think, in many cases, it’s just making sure that your publisher can’t get away with just getting it localized and not really checking it, or doing localization QA, right? Like making sure that your localization gets a check. And it’s why so many games still end up with broken Arabic, right? Like Arabic that, on first glance, even to a non-Arabic speaker, is wrong because it’s just written the wrong way or the letters are not connected. It’s just nobody’s doing QA, nobody’s checking for that. So enforcing a localization QA pass in any publisher contract is a good idea. That said, some of the better indie publishers actually have that in their process. And, you know, if you’re looking to work with a publisher, it’s definitely something to keep an eye out for, like, how is the localization received. If that is important to you, if the language is important to you, and it should be, then that should be one of the things that you check your publisher for.

ALEX: Yeah, communication. Just making sure. QA.

RAMI: Right. And that it’s one of those things that makes so much sense, right? I think a lot of people are a little scared, honestly, of localization, right?

FLOR: Yeah, that’s the key, I think.

RAMI: Because they look at it and they’re like, “Okay, we’re gonna get this thing done, and I have no good way of gauging whether it’s good.” Right? Like, I personally… Like, if you speak English, right? And that’s how you speak, and you get back this file in Arabic or, you know, Russian or French or whatever, you look at it, you’re like…

ALEX: How do I know that it’s okay? How do I know?

RAMI: Can I actually verify this? So people kind of, they feel scared to look uninformed. So instead of checking it, they just go like, “Well, let’s copy paste it.” And usually, you end up doing a huge disservice to your game, honestly. Something you work, you know, years of your life on deserves that little extra check at the end to make sure that the language is correct, and the language renders correctly and the language is translated correctly, and the context of every sentence is correct. And I think a lot of that is just process that a lot of indies haven’t gone through and haven’t worked on. For that reason, I think it’s important to talk about how to do it properly, right?

ALEX: Yeah. Totally.

LORE: I mean, if you’re gonna do it, you might as well do it right. So you touched on a couple of these topics in your 2015 GDC presentation called We Suck at Inclusivity, and we’ve all been talking about this a lot.

ALEX: We loved that.

LORE: We’ve really been enjoying it, and we’re super excited to pick your brain about it a little bit more. And I know there’s no single answer to this question, but what would you recommend to those of us like myself, who are really quite privileged to be native English speakers living in a country with, you know, relatively easy access to the education and the resources necessary to get into the gaming industry? I mean, how can we suck less at inclusivity?

RAMI: Well, I think one of the first things is just to, every time you go to anything that requires you to fill out something, just take a moment to see if there’s any other language that is in, right? And, honestly, that is one of the biggest things that I’ve come across. Like over the years, I’ve worked with independent developers around the world, right? And not just in North America or Europe, but I’ve extensively traveled South America, Africa, North Africa, the Middle East, Asia and the Pacific region. I met with developers there that just… I couldn’t necessarily speak to, right? I speak a little French, I speak a little German, I speak Arabic, I speak Dutch, I speak English and some ancient languages that no longer exist out of education. The Dutch teach a lot of languages because we’re a tiny language and nobody speaks Dutch. So instead, we get taught to speak all the other ones. But even then, it was hard for me to communicate in most of those places and I would need translators. And the thing I realized is, you can’t really get a feeling for just how hard it is to communicate anything unless you’ve ever been in the situation where nobody understands what you’re saying. And if you’re an English speaker, that is exceptionally hard, right? To end up in a location where nobody understands what you’re trying to say, and the only thing you have left is like gesturing. Like you could go to the middle of… to the middle of nowhere in most countries and you will still find somebody who at least has a little English and can go like “left” or “right” or “that way” or “sorry.” Well, in most languages, you wouldn’t even be able to… For most people around the world, if they go to a country where they don’t speak the language, they wouldn’t even be able to communicate the word “sorry” across that line. So one of the things that I found is, whenever you type anything into a field on a website or whenever you have to submit anything to… anything at all, just look around to see if there’s any way to do that in a different language, right? Because the reality is that, even though most of the world speaks English at some level, it’s just not high enough to fill out an entire form of complicated questions or to… for talks, right? To communicate what a talk is about. Or for a game, to fill out the requirement form. But it’s like, “Okay, well, what game are you making?” And then we’re just talking about the language, right? Like, these are the language barriers. On top of that, there’s the economical barriers and geographical barriers. There’s a ton of other barriers that are out there. But just language is such an invisible barrier around the world to a lot of people, that just making yourself aware of it is honestly quite fascinating. One thing I always recommend is for people to switch their keyboard to Arabic, and then, at Google, instead of going to Google.com, go to the Arabic Google page and just type something in the… Really, Google? You’re gonna…?

LORE: Guest appearance by Google.

RAMI: Right. And then just browsing an Arabic website, right? Like, I’m sure the Arabic website… Because a lot of those won’t have an English language option either. And then just kind of good luck finding anything, right? Or on the Arabic Wikipedia, try to get to the page for philosophy, right? Like the joke on Wikipedia is that every page eventually leads to philosophy, right? Try and get to the Arabic page for philosophy without ever cheating by looking at the English translation for a page, right? That’s how hard it is for a lot of people to navigate your, you know, diversity page, like to submit to a diversity initiative or to submit to a game or to submit to a grant, submit to a fund, submit to a talk, give a talk. That’s how hard it is. And if it’s that hard, then it’s not fair, right? That’s not how hard it should be. So I think the best thing you can do is put yourself in that situation and genuinely just experience how distressing it is to realize that you are not even a consideration somewhere.

ALEX: Yeah. Equalize the experience for everybody, right?

RAMI: I mean, ultimately, everybody would have easy access to something, right? But the difference in how much… the difference in accessibility is so enormous that it’s not even on the radar for most people. Like most people have never considered language. And that talk, the We Suck at Inclusivity talk in how language creates the largest invisible minority for games… I get a lot of messages from people still that are like, “Yeah, we have literally never considered that. This seems to be a problem. How do we fix it?” I was like, well… that’s how invisible it is. Like even the most well-intended people forget about the world, right? Because English does well enough for them. That’s a shame.

ALEX: Yeah. I mean, it’s five years old and it’s relevant still today.

RAMI: It’s never good news.

ALEX: On that note, on making, I mean, I was thinking about games, but making things more inclusive, right? Let’s talk about games. What would you say that is the most difficult aspect for titles, right? Mostly indie titles. I mean, a bunch of them don’t really have text or conversations or that much words to localize, right?

RAMI: Right.

ALEX: But what about those games that are based on non-spoken or non-written languages? What things they should consider? Or what do you think that it’s the most difficult aspects?

RAMI: So the thing is that there’s two sides to this discussion, right? You’ve got the Western-inspired, Western-based games that need to localize into other cultures and languages. And then you’ve got the non-Western made or inspired games that have to localize into the Western market. And it turns out that the one way is relatively easy, right? If you wanna go from a Western-inspired game about Western mythology, Western culture, or Western history to any other culture or language, that’s relatively straightforward, right? We all know what a dollar means, even without expressing what a dollar is, and we all know what an interstate is without having to explain that this is a big road that people travel large distances on and that it has sort of like this mythology of road trips. Like, we all know that because we’ve seen Home Alone, we’ve seen Die Hard, we’ve watched the movies with, you know, the big dusty road onto the horizon with like a little hay bale like going across. Like, we know instantly what it means, right? You can imagine. Seriously, if I tell you, like, imagine an intersection there and it’s like one interstate with two dusty roads left and right. I can ask you to imagine the mailbox, and I can guarantee you that I know which mailbox you’re imagining, right? And it’s a little rusted and a little crooked, and the door is a little open. And there might or might not be a little flag there. It might have fallen off as well, right? But you can imagine that. If I asked you the exact same thing in the Netherlands… nobody would know, right? So for somebody to use that sort of cultural shorthand becomes really hard for other places. So this question has two sides because you go, okay, how do you culturalize and localize a product made in a culture that most of the world understands and has a feeling with? The question is relatively simple. You make sure that the text that there is communicates well, right? And that there is nothing that is specifically upsetting to the specific culture in there, right? For our games, for example, as an Arab Muslim, we’ve done a lot of post-apocalyptic games, right? And in most Western-based, post-apocalyptic fantasies, alcohol would be a relatively big presence, right? Like an empty bottle, a beer here or something there to deal with the stress of the world. None of my work has ever included that, right? Like none of the games I’ve worked on, even though it was not Arabic productions or Muslim productions. But it just didn’t make sense for me to make a game in which you deal with loss or hurt by including alcohol, because that’s not what I would do, right? So it’s not just language that localizes, right, that has to translate across. So from Western to other places, mostly you just don’t… don’t make people angry. The other way around, though, is much harder, because if you want to translate a certain feeling that is culture-based or locale-based, you want to express a phrase that only works in one language or that only works with the cultural understanding of that language, it’s a lot harder. Like if I told you that there was sort of a slang in Arabic that sort of denotes the poorer part of the population, you would be able to translate that to an English thing, but it wouldn’t be the same. It would be close, but it wouldn’t have that connotation, right? The same connotation that it would have in Arabic. And I think… In Arabic, we have a phrase… [speaks in Arabic]. Like, “I hope you bury me.” Which sounds really dark, like I hope that you bury me.

ALEX: Yes, it kinda does.

LORE: Little bit.

RAMI: But it’s actually meant as a complement, right? Like, I would much rather you bury me than me have to deal with the pain of burying you.

ALEX: Right. Okay.

RAMI: Which is actually meant as, like, a loving statement. Good luck translating that.

FLOR: It’s sweet, though.

RAMI: Like, good luck finding a way to communicate something that is so based on the idea of death and love in a specific culture, a culture that treats those things very different to the Western one that most of us are familiar with, and just realize that we’re losing games there, right? Because those games don’t get made. And the amount of indies I talk to that… Coffee Talk, from Toge Productions in Indonesia, for example. Wonderful game about running a café. It is a Dutch consideration, right? I wanted to say “coffee shop,” but in the Netherlands, a coffee shop sells weed, not coffee. So I stop and go “café.” But like a place where you buy coffee in Seattle, right? Instead of in Jakarta or Indonesia. Because explaining their world was complicated enough without also having to explain their culture or their locale, so I kind of sneaked it in.

ALEX: Right.

RAMI: So many games get set at the safe location because it’s easier. It’s risky enough making games, especially if you’re in emerging territories, especially if you’re in a place where the industry isn’t that strong yet, you know? And it hurts… It genuinely hurts seeing that these developers have to make this choice. And I don’t hold it against Toge to do that because of course you do. It’s hard enough. Come on. But it would be good if there were ways around that. And I think it’s just empowering the developers around the world, like give them the safety and the security to take those risks. Because I can’t wait for those, right? I can’t wait for the small stories from different cultures, right? From the wide variety of cultures around the world.

FLOR: Last week we were talking with Daniel Monastero from Brazil, and he is eager to make a game that is based specifically on Brazil.

ALEX: Specifically in Brazil. São Paulo culture.

RAMI: Right.

FLOR: Yeah. São Paulo culture.

ALEX: Hardcore São Paulo culture.

RAMI: But that’s it, right? That’s the wonder. Like that’s the wonder of our medium is, if you play a game, you become the people in it, right? And you assume that role. That’s the beauty of it. I’ve been in Western boots too often. Like genuinely. And my feet are tired of them. I just want somebody else… You know what they say, you can be in anybody’s shoes. I don’t know, anybody looks a lot like the same people to me. I’m just a little tired of it. And I think that’s… I didn’t realize how tired I was of it when I gave that talk. I was just angry. I gave that talk because I was angry that we were… the industry was so proud of its inclusivity, and I’m like, “Hello! Have you met… all of Earth?” But now I’m just sad because I know that every year that passes, we’ve missed on like dozens of games like that, where somebody set off with that idea. And I hope it works, right? I hope this game works, but usually it gets watered down so much to make it palatable, or in the translation, so much is lost because it gets westernized to be understandable or simplified to not be as dependent on understanding the culture, that it’s a shame. So I hope for a stubborn and brave game that is without excuses and apologies about São Paulo.

LORE: It’d be nice. I’m hearing…

ALEX: I mean, he…

LORE: Oh, go ahead, Ale.

ALEX: No, no, please, Lore.

LORE: I was just gonna say, I’m here in Wisconsin, the United States, and in a rural part of Wisconsin, on top of it. I mean, I’m in an area where people think that even going to Chicago is a giant culture shock. So, yeah, it’s very needed. And it would be refreshing to get something actually different, you know? We are so set in our ways here. Like you said, I mean, there’s just so much out there.

RAMI: Right. And the thing is, like, one of the sad things about this, one of the difficult things about this one is that America is not monolithic either, right? Like the U.S. is… I should stop saying America. I’m making an intentional effort to stop saying America, start saying the U.S. A few years ago, I was doing an interview after a panel I did, a panel called #1ReasonToBe at GDC, where it brought developers from all around the world to talk about the opportunities and challenges of making games in the countries they’re from. And afterwards, one of my favorite journalists was interviewing that group, and he said like, and he asked one of my speakers from South America, “So how does it feel to be in America?” He looks to me, like, “I was born in America.” He said, “You were born here?” He said, “No, I was born in South America. That’s also America.” Like, “I don’t know why you all keep saying America.” Like, “I’m from America.” He shared with me this amazing cartoon of Captain America, I’m sure you’ve seen it, where Captain America… It’s in Spanish, I think, and it has Captain America, right, at a desk with his name tag. And somebody calls and it’s like, “Captain America, Captain America, come help!” And Captain America is like, “What can I help with?” And it’s this old lady, and she’s like, “I’m in Chile, and somebody stole my bag.” And he’s like, “No, you don’t understand. I’m Captain America.” She’s like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Chile, America. America.” The next frame is him looking at the world map, and then the final frame is him sitting at his desk, and now the name tag says “Captain United States.” And he sent that to me and I laughed about it.

FLOR: It feels sad because it’s like that.

RAMI: It is exactly true, right?

ALEX: I don’t know if I should laugh or if I should like be sad about it or something. But it’s funny or it’s sad because it’s true, either way. Either way that it struck you, it’s true.

RAMI: So the United States is not monolithic, right? So even within the United States, there are so many narratives and stories that we’ve never heard that deserve to be celebrated. At the same time, part of me is like, even when it comes to that, there is that cultural shorthand that we talked about before. Part of that still remains in those stories, right? I will 100% champion games from not the usual places in the United States. And there’s so many cultures and so many places out there. But that would be such a minor fix to a major problem, right? Giving those people the ability to tell their stories is important and it should happen, but if that’s where we stop, if that’s where we go, like, “We fixed it,” then… we didn’t. We just did like the simplest fix to the entire problem.

ALEX: It’s a nice first step, right? A nice first step.

RAMI: Right. Every step is a good step. I’ve stopped… I used to think that the only way you fix things is by fixing them. And I’ve come to realize that that’s not how it works. You fix things very slowly, very painfully, very tiny steps. And it’s taken me ten years. Like I’ve worked on this problem for ten years. No, seven years, to be really fair, of going to all these places around the world and I’ve helped set up developer communities and developer associations, I’ve connected people that normally would not be able to go to events with events. I’ve connected them with publishers, I’ve scouted for people. And I’ve made maybe like 1% progress, right? You look back and it’s like the change is minimal. But then, at the same time, in South America, you see that they’ve realized that one of their biggest strengths in the region is that they all understand each other. And you get this amazing collaborative effort across the entire continent of South America, where just people are like collaborating with each other and like help each other. There’s a few countries up in the north of South America, I guess, that aren’t fully included in that. But most of the continent is working together at this huge push, presenting, helping each other. And it just makes me happy to see that, right? Because the first time I went to the continent, it was like cities. Cities have communities, right? And they were not talking to each other. And now you’re looking at it, it’s just like… Wow, the momentum here is incredible. And I could’ve been sad about, you know, only being able to help in tiny cities every now and then, but you see that these small changes create awareness, right? And awareness changes the world in general. So… Awareness is increasing, but a long way, because we’re not talking… Language is one of the most complicated topics on earth. Like for localization, like the amount of respect I have for anybody in localization is just through the roof, right? Like, it’s… I do not understand how you do your job because… the amount of…

FLOR: Well, we can be hours talking about localization, for sure.

RAMI: The amount of weight there is to a word, right, beyond just the meaning of it is preposterous. And it’s so easy to forget that the way people express themselves through language is so soft. It’s so soft, it’s so undefined, it’s so… You know, like using a word in the wrong way can be meaningful. But how do you translate that across, right? How do you do that? How do you translate that to another language?

FLOR: That’s the beauty of localization and the job of every single linguist out there that is working their magic, right?

RAMI: So wonderful. So wonderful.

FLOR: So, yeah, I mean, we could be talking for hours and hours, and I know that you have a super busy schedule ahead of you today and the next couple of weeks, probably for the holidays, but we wanted to close because I don’t know if you’re familiar with this section, but every single episode we close it with a meme round to end on a high note.

RAMI: Oh, I already used my Captain America one!

FLOR: We prepared a couple of good ones that I hope you enjoy, so I’m gonna go ahead and share my screen now.

RAMI: This is the most… Yes, this is me.

ALEX: Yeah. Don’t touch my PC.

RAMI: I mean, I think I was usually the cousin, to be honest, growing up.

FLOR: Oh, really?

RAMI: We never had a… We never had a gaming PC. We were like… I grew up relatively poor, so we never had a console or anything. So whenever I was at a cousin’s place, I would play with their Game Boy or their GameCube, and they would literally do this into the room to make sure I didn’t overwrite their saved game with, like, 149 caught Pokémon, and I just started a new game. And they’re like, “Do not save! Do not save!”

ALEX: “But I chose Bulbasaur.”

FLOR: So, yeah, the next one.

ALEX: How do you handle that?

FLOR: Yeah.

LORE: You can hardly be mad.

RAMI: Yeah. I think this is… I think if my life was video, it would probably just be this over and over. It’s like, “It is… acceptable.” You know? That kinda…

LORE: Begrudgingly allowing it.

RAMI: This is my Twitter.

FLOR: Yeah, I was gonna mention that. This is you over Twitter, right? By the way, if everyone tuning in doesn’t follow Rami over Twitter, you should, because it’s very, very entertaining and it can get a little steamy over there.

RAMI: Right.

ALEX: But it’s full of true things. It’s all true.

FLOR: Oh, yeah, absolutely.

RAMI: I try. For any of the jokes or puns I post, the reaction you’ll probably have to them is on the screen right now. Most of my jokes hit that level, so.

LORE: Oh… Yeah.

RAMI: You know, I literally use this in design talks where I teach design to people. I use this to explain human-computer interaction, or the way our brain brings a certain intent to a game, and then you press a button, the game processes it and then outputs what happens back to your brain so you can have a new intent. I use this as an example to explain the most basic version. You know, a logo comes up on the screen… You’re booting up the game, the logo comes up on the screen, your brain goes, “In most games, I can skip this with Escape.” So what do you do? Your press Escape, and then the logo does or doesn’t disappear. If it does disappear, you go, “Right, I can do that in this game.” And then every time the game starts, you do that. If it doesn’t work, what does your brain do? It goes, “Okay, maybe Spacebar.” And then, you know, like that’s how kind of that loop works. It’s just, in games, it happens 30 times a second. Actually, can you send this to me? Because this could be really helpful.

LORE: Yes.

FLOR: Absolutely.

ALEX: Yeah.

FLOR: Oh, the next one.

LORE: Oh, why is that so true?

FLOR: I know, right?

RAMI and ALEX: This hurts.

RAMI: Yeah, it hurts.

ALEX: You don’t need to localize that. I mean, it’s understandable in every single language in the world.

FLOR: Yeah, absolutely. Oh, this one is one of my favorites.

ALEX: I love this show, man.

FLOR: Yeah.

LORE: Me and my husband playing co-ops.

RAMI: Right.

ALEX: I go for the knee, just to keep it safe. Just in case.

RAMI: I have a friend, and she literally… One time we were playing The Division, and the one thing she wanted to know if she could shoot animals. And she shot a dog and we quit the game, because it was just, it was done. She could not play the game anymore. Like her character had shot a dog, and she’s like, “I’m out. I did not think that would work. It worked. I feel awful. Let’s never play this game again.”

ALEX: First thing?

RAMI: It was literally the first thing she came across. It was like an hour into the game, we’d done the tutorial mission, and she’s like, “A dog! Let’s see if I can shoot it.” And it was like, bam!, the dog went… [yelps]. It just went down. And she’s like, “Okay, we’re done.”

ALEX: Like playing Animal Crossing or something like that.

RAMI: Right. So that’s why I play Destiny, where you can’t shoot the dog.

FLOR: Yesterday we were talking about John Wick, the first one, and I couldn’t go past… I don’t know if you’ve seen it, but I’m gonna do a big spoiler here. But I couldn’t pass the scene where they killed the dog. I was like, “I hate this movie! I cannot watch it anymore.” So I feel your friend.

RAMI: I mean, to be honest, the one thing I will say about John Wick is that the revenge for the dog is very worth it.

LORE: It makes it worth it, yeah.

RAMI: I mean, it’s shit about the dog, but…

LORE: Yeah. I mean, he’s killed hundreds of people and it feels 100% justified, you know?

FLOR: Oh, absolutely. But I had to take a couple of minutes to collect myself.

LORE: I understand.

ALEX: How many people get shot in the face just because they killed the dog?

RAMI: It’s like 100+ people or something.

LORE: There’s someone online that has the number of it.

RAMI: I think my favorite thing is, at the end of that movie, you just genuinely sit there like, “Yeah, that seems fair.“

LORE: Yeah. That’s so right.

ALEX: Sounds about right.

RAMI: It’s really weird. Oh, no. I literally have the bottom controller. So, like, it’s sitting right there off screen. Because I’ve been playing flight simulator so much.

LORE: What?

RAMI: So I have, like, the throttle thing and the steering wheel. I have all of that sitting here, so I feel a little embarrassed by it.

ALEX: So your controller is like the bottom picture?

RAMI: I literally have like maybe like the bottom quarter of that. The left bottom quarter of that setup is just sitting like literally right there.

FLOR: That’s impressive.

LORE: That is impressive.

ALEX: That’s impressive.

FLOR: And this one, for all the game developers out there.

RAMI: Oh, no! No. No!

ALEX: Now you know, Rami. Now you know.

RAMI: I have about 700 unfinished prototypes in a folder, like, that’s… I guess…

FLOR: Only 700?

RAMI: Yeah. Yeah. But I made 20 out of them, right? Oh, no. This is horrifying. You said this was lighthearted, that it would make me feel better. This was fun.

FLOR: It was an absolute pleasure. Yeah.

LORE: So much.

RAMI: Thank you so much for having me.

ALEX: Thank you very much, Rami.

FLOR: I hope you have a lovely holiday season, and hope to see you again next time, hopefully in person, because last time we had a great time in Mendoza, at the EVA Mendoza. So I really look forward to seeing you soon, and take care. Stay safe. Wear a mask.

RAMI: Right. Yeah.

FLOR: And I hope to see you around soon. Thanks, everyone, for tuning in to this episode.

ALEX: Thank you, everyone. Thank you, Rami.