Post date: 22-Feb-2014 02:29:04
Here's an interesting thread I followed on the mailing list of the the localization SIG of IGDA, it touches on many of the relevant issues in contemporary localization. It is interesting to note that no similar discussion forum exists for film localization (dubbing), partly because it has been around for so long before the internet that knowledge is distributed along different channels. Also, I suspect, because the economic model of dubbing traditionally relied on proprietary equipment and techniques, which promoted
a atmosphere of trade secrecy and even hostility among post-production houses about an exchange of information. This thread dates from dec. 2013 and can be found in the IGDA localization SIG mailing list archives.
A recurring question here at BioWare, and who better to ask for their opinions, than my learned friends in the Loc Sig
If you are a Spanish speaker, living wherever in the world, what flavour of Spanish do you prefer your games to be localised into?
If you are in South America, are you happy to play your game with European Spanish? Both text and spoken? Or would you rather play the English?
If you are in Spain, are you happy to play your game with a generic flavour of Latin American Spanish (if that truly exists)? Both text and spoken? Or would you rather play the English?
If you were given a choice to play International Spanish (which should be recognizable to all Spanish speakers) would you choose this language? Both text and spoken? Or would you rather play the English?
We have our own thoughts and best practices based on sales data and learned opinions but I want to hear from those that actually buy Spanish versions of video games. Thank you for your time and opinions and please state where you live in the world and what flavour of Spanish you speak J
- Jenny | Localisation Producer | BioWare / Electronic Arts
Hi Jenny,
I live in South America. I definitely prefer Latin American Spanish, especially when it comes to audio. European Spanish sounds a bit funny to us, and I assume the same happens to European Spanish speakers when they hear Latin American Spanish.
There is no such thing as International Spanish in voiceovers. You either do it in European or Latin American (neutral), and I always prefer Latin American.
Being Argentinean, I cannot expect a game to be spoken in Argentinean Spanish. However, that of course would be ideal J
My two cents!
Best,
Julia
Hey Jenny,
First off, good points Julia. :)
I'll add my two cents on this one as well. As a preface, my Spanish is Chilean at is core, but for the last 15 years my core Spanish language communities are US Spanish and Spain. I live in the US presently .
I would argue that trying to neutralize the language does not tend to produce high impact entertainment. Although I do understand that there are sensitivities between the different Spanish-speaking countries, my sense is that a more powerful approach would be to define the "voice" of a game character and then live with that in the game, whether the voice is Madrileño, Argentine, Colombian, Mexican, American. Whatever the case may be I would prefer that a character speak like something (even if I don't love the fact that that voice is not my particular flavor of Spanish) rather than just hearing a voice that does not have any intrinsic character. In my mind, engaging with a game character goes back to a significant degree to suspension of disbelief. My disbelief is at full strength everything time I hear/read a "neutralized" accent.
All of this said, I do appreciate the complexity of placing one particular flavor of Spanish in a context that could lend itself to criticism of stereotyping. For example, if you were to do a football/soccer game and use an Argentinian voice, you may get avid fans from other markets complaining that it plays into a complex set of cross-cultural rivalries. Nonetheless, if during localization planning one were to define each voice as being from a different market there would be an opportunity to create balance and proactively strategize to avoid this kind of negative reaction.
Hope that helps. Happy to discuss further.
Aaron
Hi Jenny,
We recently did some research on this and posted an article on Gamasutra, that you might find interesting:
http://tinyurl.com/moetv7l
[The Regional Differences of Languages and Their Impact on Game Localization: Exploring Spanish Localization across the Americas]
Good luck!
David
Hi Jenny,
Our 2 cents - this is mainly on the Brazilian market, but Mauro talks a little about Spanish too :)
http://www.makinggames.de/index.php/magazin/2435_top_6_localization_tips_for_the_brazilian_market
Cheers
Davide
Hi all,
I totally agree with Aaron’s comment regarding stereotyping, which I think is the main issue we all fear when we consider creating characters that speak as someone from Venezuela, Uruguay or Peru. Some children’s movies have started to do this, and I don’t think there have been any complaints. On the contrary, I believe it has been much appreciated by the Latin American community.
Best,
Julia
Hello, Jenny. Hello, everybody!
I kind of agree with my colleagues. I am from Spain and, even though I think I wouldn’t mind playing a game dubbed in another variety of Spanish, it is true that that I might find myself not understanding some slang or regional words, which will, in the end, miss the whole purpose of localisation: making sure the player understands everything. I will make a few points on this:
1. The so-called “International Spanish” does not exist, not written, not spoken, for the same reason that there is no “International English”, no “International French” and so on. The “fake” language someone along the line invented may be understood by most of the Spanish-speaking community is, again, like Esperanto: something created in a test-lab and is not related to one culture, which is one of the main characteristics to a language. Mexican culture is not exactly the same one as Argentinean culture, for the same reason that US and UK have different cultures (in fact, in the UK, there are many different cultures: Scottish are different from English, for example), therefore, trying to make the whole community happy by localising into this “international” language may end up having the opposite effect, as no one will fully happy with the results.
2. The So-called “Latin American Spanish” does not exist either, for the same reasons mentioned above: even though Chile and Argentina may share more cultural hints due to their proximity than, for example, Chile and Spain, but they are still two different countries with their own history, their own customs and, of course, their own slang. Therefore, there will always be something in this “Latin American” that will sound strange to one of those cultures.
3. Having said that, I agree with Aaron that I rather hear different accents in each character (so, even though the general game is localised into Spanish for Spain, why not having a character from Madrid, another one from Cuba, another one from Mexico, which is what happens in many games in English. The problem we have in Spain, and it is something I really hate, is that dubbing is very much regulated and everything has to be dubbed in this also-fake-standard Spanish, which, as it happens with the International Spanish or the Latin American Spanish, nobody really speaks at home, even though we more or less all can speak it if we want, as we have learnt it as school. To me, it makes dubbed movies lose part of their characterisation. Yes, of course, sometimes there are characters with accents, but they are usually stereotypes, so if there is someone that is, perhaps, less educated, then the Andalusian accent will be used (which is bonkers: it’s like saying that people from Scotland are all non-educated...). And let’s not start with the “dubbese”, which is the “fake” Spanish that has been created only for dubbing, so that the movements of the mouth of the actor are corresponding and synchronised with the Spanish words being pronounced by the dubber, ending in the use of words that the speakers don’t naturally use and thus making it veeeery annoying to hear (especially if you have spent the last 9 years in the UK, watching all movies in Original English VO and realised how fake dubbing sounds. I would love this to change and have richer dubbings with different accents, not only from all over Spain, but also from other parts of the Spanish-speaking world. Perhaps, doing this in videogames will open doors to change it in the movies dubbing world in the future.
I hope it helps
Curri
Hi!
This is definitely a productive discussion. And the article/study posted before was very insightful. When discussing voice-over, we are talking about converting and naturalizing content from a foreign language into another. Unless it is justified by the content itself (i.e. the decision of having Mexican or Puerto Rican accents for a game where characters are US Latin Kings would be verisimilitude, rather than stereotyping), Iberian Spanish will prefer Castilian accents, the same as Chileans will prefer a Chilean accent, or Colombians a Colombian accent and so on. Marketing-wise, such country-bound solution would be a very expensive strategy that would require massive resources, then justified by actual sales. So I guess the question for loc is where to find the balance.
Personally, I can’t speak for Latin-American audiences. But as a native from Spain, I can attest that, historically, Iberian Spanish audiences are accustomed to having everything dubbed into a media standard Castilian register, like Julia mentioned. However, any accent not justified by the content itself, will alienate Castilian players (i.e. Halo 2). In terms of text, the same measure applies, though it is easier to attain a more standardized written Spanish for certain types of text than it is with voice-over, because accents do not come into play. As has been pointed out, through internationalization, the text may lose regional flavor, since made expressions, colloquialisms, etc., need to be kept out. But I’d say, as a rule of thumb, consumers from Spain like to experience games with standard Castilian accents, and Castilian expressions, and will usually be impacted negatively by anything other than that.
Also, English VO with subtitles in Spanish does not maximize the gaming experience, and very many times it interferes with gameplay, as the player is paying attention to the subtitles instead of the action or the cinematics. It also creates situations where the player may disagree with the translation, most commonly where proper names are concerned (WOW’s portmanteaus are a fine example of divided opinions, as pointed out by that fantastic study). Of course, having subtitles is better than no subtitles at all, but as a last resort.
By the way, just to confirm what most of the colleagues have said about how neutral or International Spanish is an impossibility, I wanted to mention that the translation and verbal conjugation for “you” in the singular and plural has no constant that will accommodate all the Spanish speaking countries. “You” can be “tú,” “usted,” “vos,” etc., each with a different verb agreement, but there isn’t a combination that will sound natural to all of the countries that speak Spanish.
Good discussion!
Alejandro
Loving the discussion everyone, keep your comments coming.
Very interesting to read everyone’s thoughts on the “international Spanish” made-up language. That doesn’t go down to well does it J and rightly so as Curri just states - there is no “International English” so how can we pigeon hole another language to try to fit all regions. It dilutes the natural language.
BUT for a BioWare game, how can we please, and appease, everyone in the Spanish community? With so many words in our huge games we don’t have the luxury of localising into more than 1 Spanish language, so those in LA countries and the US just have to rub along with us and play the Castillian version. But then again, say we were to do 2 Spanish SKUs, the natural choices would be Castillian and Mexican. That doesn’t help my friends in Chile or Argentina or Columbia. It’s a tricky one isn’t it. We haven’t taken on a VO project yet, that would open up a whole new can of worms. The drivers are mainly cost, but also the voices. If we recorded in Madrid, you would get mostly Spanish accents with maybe an odd Mexican or Columbian thrown in, whomever the studios can find. AND it would absolutely NOT be correct to stereotype these characters. (I know very many very intelligent Scottish and Irish people J)
There is no solution, but there are many great opinions.
Jenny
Just a quick comment, Jenny:
Columbia is in the US. ColOmbia is the Latin American country. ;-) (unfortunately, I see this mistake too often, so don't worry, you are not alone :-)).
I will answer further once I am on my computer.
Curri
Hey Jenny,
I feel your pain on this. J We here at WB have the same issues on our games, especially as they continue to get larger and larger. The comments made by contributors on this thread mirror what I’ve learned in my own research for the holy grail international Spanish. In short….it’s just not possible, at least if you plan to record the dialogue. Your best bet is to record the Castilian as you usually do and then a Latin Spanish version (which is somewhat neutralized for all of Latin America—not the best choice for reasons indicated below, but it’s widely accepted…that’s how we dub our films and TV series too).
Thankfully, dubbing in Latin America is drastically cheaper than in Europe, and that regions is growing exponentially as a gaming market. If the sales projections are there, there’s no reason not to provide a LAS localization.
Good luck! And I look forward to playing your next game. J
Cheers,
Alex
Awesome correction. All these years I have been spelling it the way I wrote it. I will never make that mistake again. Thank you for educating us J
-Jenny
Really enjoying this discussion, even though I don’t even speak Spanish! (C:
In fact, in German, it seems to be the other way around: anything but Standard German is usually inacceptable for translations, unless, of course, a game takes place in, say Bavaria, Switzerland or on one of the Frisian islands.
I don’t know if you were already with Bioware back in the days of the original Baldur’s Gate, Jenny, but the German version cause quite a stir because some of the characters had voiceovers with Bavarian or even Thuringian dialect, the latter of which many people mainly associate with East Germany. While some players were quite fond of that choice, many argued that the games as such had nothing to do with these parts of Germany and/or their respective people.
Cheers,
Rolf.
Hi Jenny,
I think the best way to (almost) please everyone is to do 2 versions – one for Spain and one for Latin America, especially when you have to do voiceover.
Even though it would be great to have a local version for each country, it’s simply impossible because of the costs. In Latin America, we are used to having a “neutral” version, both in text and in audio. Most TV shows, movies, cartoons, etc., are done in neutral Spanish.
It’s funny but in my country, because cartoons are dubbed in neutral Spanish, sometimes children speak “neutral” when they play with their friends, and they speak normally in everyday life and everyday activities J
It’s not ideal, but it’s the best we can do, and it’s widely accepted.
We can all live with that “neutral” Latin American version, and it feels almost local even when it’s not. However, a European Spanish version sounds just like that – European.
Best,
Julia
This is a very interesting thread and I wanted to jump in with my 2c. I am located in Montreal, where we localize both films and games. The films are principally for local distribution, so the flavour of Fench used is either français international, or québécois, depending on the clients aesthetic preferences. A very few projects are done in français de France, for distribution in Europe. For games however, there is only français international.
I am curious whether you are including in your research any market studies?
Theo
Thank you, Jenny and everybody.
Truly interesting, and a topic we'll probably continue talking about for some time yet.
Everything said is undeniably true, and this information should feature into any discussion on this issue. I would like to add the creativity angle :-)
1- The game world is king. If the story demands a particular accent, that's the right one for all languages, if it doesn't, then any would do.
2- More important than accents/varieties is passionate, top quality performance by the actors and actresses. Voices and performances that inhabit the game world creation to perfection.
3- In real life, we are exposed to a huge variety of accents on a daily bases, national and international. No reason why we couldn't have the same in VGs unless it is against the game world.
4- The homogenisation of accents/varieties on TV can be worse (more boring) than a refreshing variety. Each person has something particular to his/her voice that makes it unique. Best to find the one that fits the character. I wouldn't mind seven or 77 accents/varieties if the delivery is just a great ft for the game.
5- Each nation and each person in each nation decodes accents and varieties in a particular way. What one sees as funny, others may see as insulting and others as irrelevant. If you can't please everybody, please the game world itself.
6- Use the same VO creative considerations of the source/original recording to all languages.
Let VG localisation lead the way in improving TV/cinema VO and dubbing around the world ;-)
Miguel
Salud por eso. Well said, Miguel!
Aaron