speakers and abstracts
speakers and abstracts
both completed their MA in Multimedia translation at the University of Burgundy in 2020. The Spring 2020 lockdown and resultant cancellation of internships led them to collaborate on a variety of multimedia translation-related projects.
Building up a multilingual videogame dictionary
Born as a collaboration between two final-year MA students during the Spring 2020 lockdown, this project stems from the observation that there is no existing glossary nor lexicon, at least in French, offering a reliable list of videogame terms. The few available – unofficial and largely fanmade – resources can only be found by searching on forums, meaning that their reliability for translators and localizers is dubious at best.
Our aim, then, is to provide videogame localizers with a reliable resource consisting of a multilingual dictionary (English to Spanish and French) of terms and expressions related to videogames. The main difficulties are to define the structure of the dictionary, to choose the terminology to put in (general to videogame fields or specific to one kind of game), to verify the reliability of the terminology and the related definitions. We are currently working on both: creating charts and norms for the structure of our dictionary and starting to fill in the blanks. Those norms would allow the dictionary to be expanded with new terms or new language combinations while maintaining structural coherence. An intermediate aim is to develop and test a methodology for researching and adding terms in the context of supervised student projects. The final aim would be to publish the project as a termbase with institutional backing and for it to constitute a useful, freely available resource for translators and localisers as well as students and researchers.
is currently a PhD candidate in language science at the University of Burgundy and the University of Valladolid and teaches Spanish, English, and French translation at the ESIT. Her research interests lie in the area of video game localisation, multimedia translation and accessibility.
The needs of the video game industry make it paramount to focus on the ergonomics of translation in order to define specific solutions to solve the most commonly found issues and simplify the translation process from the first analysis of the source document to QA, including documentation, translation in stricto sensu and post-edition if machine translation is used.
The aim of this paper is the crossed-analysis of part of the results of two online surveys addressed to professionals working in localisation and video game testing, respectively. The first survey, which received 620 complete answers from freelance and in-house professional localisers, was conceived to gather information about business practises as well as the tools they use in terms of project management software, terminology databases, specialised corpora, CAT tools, etc. The second survey received 550 complete answers and was addressed to linguistic testers in order to collect data about the problems they usually encounter when they review the localised versions, as they are the last line of defence before the release of a video game and have access to a WYSIWYG environment.
is a Dijon-based translator specialising in video games and founder of orelitranslation.com. She is an active member of the IGDA LocSIG steering committee and of Women in Games France, and teaches game localisation in the MA Multimedia Translation (T2M) program at the Université de Bourgogne.
founded the Dijon-based software development company Da Viking Code, focusing on interactive and game development.
is a localisation project manager at Ubisoft in Paris, France, with extensive experience in the localisation industry.
is an M.A. cognitive and cultural linguist with a B.A. in English Studies as well as German Media and Human Rights Law from the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich. He currently works at the Goethe-Institut München, developing a video game-based language diagnosis test for primary school children. He founded the blog and ludolinguistics resource page languageatplay.de to further advance the field of linguistics into the game studies. In 2020, he co-founded the anti-fascist network "Keinen Pixel den Faschisten!". Reach him on Twitter as @indieflock and @languageatplay.
What do William Gibson's cyberspace and Tolkien's Gandalf, the drug name Ibuprofen and the Final Fantasy spell name Faia have in common? They are fictional words, constructed for a purpose, or so called pseudolexemes. From fiction, whether in literature or video games, to pharmacy, to advertising: Things and concepts need to be named to be conveyable.
Understanding pseudolexemes often is culturally bound: some evoke meaning by phonetic similarity or graphemic comparison that evoke semantic familiarities. Quite often, comparative and superlative forms either heighten or obscure such familiarities If Faia comes from Fire, then it quite obviously is a heat spell. But how obvious is it that Fiaga is a better heat spell than Faia is?
Being culturally anchored, putting a pseudolexeme through a successful localisation process is especially complex process. When a game is made available to a new country or cultural group, phonetic similarities get lost in a change of main audience language, referenced culture-bound concepts suddenly become unfamiliar and so on. How then, do the localisers of two video game series full of inventive spell names, Final Fantasy and Shin Megami Tensei, translate their games from the Japanese original to their German and English speaking target markets? What processes justify keeping localisations as simple as possible for the audience by changing Faia to Fire and Feuer as Final Fantasy does it, while Shin Megami Tensei takes the opposing route in forcing Sanskrit terms like Agi on an international audience? The talk will introduce the methods of localisation applied by both teams and explain their possible intentions: To domesticate or alienate the game worlds for a new audience, each approach providing a unique dimension to their respective fictional universe.
is a PhD student in French literature at the CIELAM (Centre interdisciplinaire d’études des littératures d’Aix-Marseille) research centre at Aix-Marseille Université. His thesis topic is Théâtre intimiste et théâtre baroque de Louis Calaferte : une poétique du "comique de constat" []. He also teaches literature in a middle school in Lunel (Hérault region, France). Focusing on a seminal example of contemporary MMORPG, his paper for this conference brings together his passion for linguistics, games as an artform and particularly videogames and RPG.
Though toponymy in video games isn’t studied that much, it is worth investigating, since it contributes to the lore construction of these games in a less trivial way than it seems. The purpose of this presentation is to explore this field through the study of one game in particular, Final Fantasy XIV, a MMORPG that focuses on the creation of toponyms. That is not an empty word, as toponyms flourish: more than a thousand places have been named in the game's universe to this day, and as the game continues to expand, the number continues to grow. Although we unfortunately won’t be exhaustive, we will particularly refer to the English, French and Japanese versions of the game to question the meaning and participation in game design of the variety of onomastic finds, whether they are references to the universe itself (which contributes to the immersion of the player), terms borrowed from other languages and ancient cultures that can be confusing, or even rare or obsolete words, or poetic toponyms. All of this testifies to the desire to illustrate, even in a relatively subtle way, the geographical, historical and cultural richness of the game.
specialises in Ludology and Interactive Narratology and is currently enrolled at the Université de Bretagne Occidentale – UBO, Brest, preparing for the Agrégation d'anglais 2021.He obtained his Master's degree TILE (Texte Image et Langue Etrangère) in 2020. In March 2019, took part and co-organised a conference on the theme of Identity, with the subject : "Video Game Avatars: The role of customisation in the creation of virtual identities".
In this presentation, we will study the case of the Deus Ex Franchise and the construction of a posthuman imagery in a video game, based on Gervais' definition of imagery as "a structured system of mediations and selections" between the subject and the world (Gervais, 2018, p.25). The Deus Ex Franchise allows the player to explore a virtual environment set in a dystopian future, taking its inspiration from important cyberpunk works, such as the movies Robocop (1987) and Blade Runner (1982) or the roleplaying game game Cyberpunk (1988). We will see how, despite its influence, the franchise succeeds in finding its own identity with distinctive visuals, complex interactive narratives and creative gameplay options. We will analyse in detail the interface of Deus Ex : Mankind Divided – the second prequel of the franchise –, taking into consideration the ergonomic, narrative and technological imperatives of interactive media, to highlight how the interface of that particular game connects, or disconnects, to the post-human imagery developed by previous cyberpunk works. Furthermore, we will closely examine the balance between image and text and try to identify what strategies can be implemented to accurately translate a multimodal language.
Dr Elena Shliakhovchuk defines herself as an edtech enthusiast, pracademic by education, interculturalist by passion and author by results.
For the past ten years, she has been teaching and consulting offline in Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russia, Spain and France, and virtually worldwide. Currently, Dr Shliakhovchuk is a visiting professor at several universities, a speaker at international conferences, a peer-reviewer in several prestigious journals and an editor of books on the topic of edtech and game-based learning. She is on a mission to help teachers and students to find outside-the-box approaches to education that would help to fulfil their potential in a rapidly changing world. Dr Shliakhovchuk is a great sea lover, she has recently obtained a coastal skipper certificate of competence, and when she is not teaching or writing, she can be found sailing.
Links:
https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B08ML4GJ3K
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-elena-shliakhovchuk-370aa52b/
Play and change the world: video games with a message
Video games have often been thought of as an entertainment-focused medium, but there is growing interest in harnessing their power for social change. During our time together we will discuss video games that are based on the real-life stories of refugees and immigrants that challenge the players
to move beyond known paradigms,
to play with cultural identities,
to experience new cultures and life circumstances,
to reconsider the common misconceptions about them, and
to take actions to help change the situation for better in real life.
Video games about serious social challenges could introduce you an alternative application of this popular medium. Are you up for the challenge?
is the founder of game development studio thepixelhunt.com and developer of the game "Bury me, my Love" in collaboration with Figs and ARTE France. The game is a mobile interactive fiction that tells the story of Nour, a Syrian woman trying to reach Europe, and Majd, her husband who stayed behind and uses a messaging app to provide her with support and advice.