Loctalk 1: 17 November 2012
Ten people attended, mostly video-game translators (both in-house and freelance), but also three project managers and one game developer. Most of the event was held in English, but we had a couple of questions in Japanese too.
All the participants sat at the same, large, table and chatted along, making their own question or picking one of the “rants”, humorously aggressive statements meant to spark controversy.
Some topics covered:
Translators
“What is the usual background for a Japanese to English translator?“
In most cases, Japanese to English translators seem to be bilingual that for a reason or another got in touch with game developers. Former teachers, creative writers, programmers… The paths are many but almost never direct, as Japanese to English translation courses and schools are very rare.
There is a higher number of FIGS localizers with an academic background in translation but, even in this case, few have a specific preparation in narrative.
Project managers
“Why are translator doing this job?”
One of the project managers inquired about the typical schedule of freelance translators, for example if it was better working on long or short projects. The answer was that it doesn’t matter that much, because long projects might give a steady income, but freelance translators still have to accept shorter ones on the side to keep in touch with future clients.
The project manager sincerely wondered what motivates people to become a freelance translator despite this general feeling of uncertainty, and one of the answers was the perspective of improving conditions in the coming years, brought upon by the growing influence of gaming as a mainstream media.
“And what makes a translator prefer an agency or another?”
This tied to the following question, which was about the main qualities freelancers look for in an agency. Besides the obvious desire for timely payments, one of the requests was for educating clients towards a more collaborative approach towards translations or, at least, some sort of protection against the most disrupting situations.
Developer
“Why are developer files so messy?”
The localization process often seems to lack planning, starting with poor directions (non-translatables, character limits, context) and finishing with a constant and unmanageable drip of one line edits weeks or even months after the last delivery.
Unfortunately, in the complex world of game development, this really makes sense as a text may well be finished as far as the writer is concerned, but may still need to be tweaked by the legal department. After all, with the spread of iterative and incremental agile software development methods like Scrum, everything is in a state of flux and small, daily edits are here to stay.
Feedback
After the event, we shared an anonymous feedback form with the participants, 50% of which responded, In their opinion:
The base of the event is good, it just needs to be developed further (80%)
It would be nice having more people, but it’s not essential (80%)
The next event should be more structured, with longer prepared talks (40%) or stay as it was now, with a mix of prepared talks and spontaneous chatting (40% SPLIT VOTE)
The next event should be two hours like this one (60%)
The next event should either be in two months (40%) or in more than three months (40% SPLIT VOTE)
Expenses for the next event should be paid by each participant, up to a fee of 1000 JPY (80%) |
: organizer 
: photos 
: report 
: host 
