Freelance translation is well known as a career by now. Everyone is familiar with the language-loving, cafe-hopping, possibly-always-blanket-wearing humans that we are. But when I decided back in 2014 that I wanted to be a games translator, I didn't think I'd ever end up in the niche-iest of niches—board game translation. It's a really fun corner of the industry to be in, and I want to share my experiences with you.

So how does a board game get translated and published?

I'll go through the steps I take to actually translate the game, but I also want to bring up a lot of what makes translating board games so intricate. Translating digital games and books are a whole different ball game, where the main focus is creative writing (and game-specific terminology), and sometimes there are cultural nuances and references to get around.

With board games, there's all of that, PLUS things like entire mechanics that don't work as easily in another language. Have you ever played rock paper scissors in a group of 6 people? Have you ever tried to play Shifty Eyed Spies (a game where eye-contact is the whole mechanic) with a group of people that culturally don't do that? Depending on who you are these might be really hard! There's even things English doesn't have to consider that I have no idea about; languages with grammatical gender might pose all new puzzles. I'd actually love to hear about them in the comments below!

There's also the player themselves to think about. I will ALWAYS use they/them to refer to the player. We aren't all he, and we aren't even all he/she. This doesn't affect games or books so much, but in tabletop games it's necessary to refer to the player. Sometimes this means careful construction of a sentence so make sure that it's clear which 'they' I am talking about. In other terms of representation, there's a lot of times where I act as advisor to the designers to remove or change problematic language/terms/art.

The breadth of what this translation niche encompasses is what I love the most about it! I thrive on flitting between projects (you should see me tidy—I start at my desk, find a hairband, take it to the bathroom and start cleaning out the cabinet), so mixing up all the hats to end up with one giant thready mess is great fun. I'm always somewhere between legalese and creative writing, translator and mechanic localiser, graphic designer and representation advisor.

So, where do I start?

1) Get a Translation Request

Well, first of all, my paid jobs come in 2 main ways:

　　1. A Japanese designer asks me to translate their own game

　　2. A western publisher asks me to translate a Japanese game that they will be publishing

These two are relatively similar, except that with Number 1 I'll usually only be talking to the creator in Japanese and the games are usually indie games. Number 2 involves both languages as I speak to the publisher in English and the creator Japanese.

2) Play the Game - Familiarization and Fun

After getting super excited that I have another new project (it's an excuse to celebrate and eat crumpets!), the first thing I do is read the game, play the game, be the game... It's like "EA Sports. It's in the game."

I always try and play the game with the designers before I jump in. This means that I have a basic knowledge of what I can expect when I start unpacking sentences. I will usually still have questions partway through, but like a manga translator becomes familiar with the types of characters in their volumes and what they might say, I like to know what the game is trying to tell me before I try and retell it.

With the current pandemic, online platforms are fantastic for this part. If I can play the game online with the designer it really helps the translation process. Most designers also send me a copy of the game so I can set it up and play or fiddle with components as needed.

Sometimes I have to translate games blind, and while it isn't the end of the world, it certainly makes it a little more of an undertaking. I translated Hegemonia without being able to play it, and I think it turned out all right, but I definitely had a lot of "Ohhhhh, that's where this comes into play..." moments. If the game is simple enough, I'll often print out the rules I translate and make cardboard components to play with and ask my partner if he can "teach" me to play.

3) Do the Translation - the Biggest Part

OK so Step 1: Get request. Step 2: Play the thing. Step 3 is to get the files and start translating!

This is actually the step where a lot of the teething pains happen. Why? File formats are infinite and infuriating.

I've had JPEGs, uneditable PDFs, word documents with pictures instead of text, and just straight up flattened Photoshop files.

　　　Designers: Word is my best friend. Or Google Docs. This makes both of our lives SO much easier. I wont have to ask you for a different format or to save in UTF-8, and you wont have to send me the files over and over.

Now, there are times when I'll be working on more than just the translation. I am also happy to put the text into the rulebook and on the cards, if the designer would prefer. In fact, with publishers it is usually me that does the entire process, from getting the contract signed, to sending it to print in the factory. And sometimes, the files I get for that are perfect, but usually I have to ask for assets, layered files, full-size art, and non-embedded text a few times over. A lot of the time I still have to copy text out of files and make myself a text document to count the characters. (My job might be all about the analogue, but it requires WAY more technical program knowledge than you'd think!)

However, once I have the files, the text, and some plays of the game under my belt, I can start translating. I usually have a good few game-specific terms forming in my mind already by now, and before I used my fancy translation program (a CAT tool; MemoQ), I would make a preliminary glossary at this point. Then I get to it!

Things to bear in mind for board games in particular are:

• Can I add or remove pages for the English version? If not, I have to work within the space limits.

• Can I change the layout? If so, I keep a note on which things might need to move.

• Are there any areas designed from right to left or with vertical text (Japanese style) and can I change them?

• Are there components/terms I want to capitalise for clarity? (I've had one game where the publisher's editor and I discussed about 10 different ways of using caps in the rules to make things as clear as they could be. This was such a small game, but with such pain-in-the-butt rules!) I have a standard way I capitalise things now, but it took a lot of soul (and reference) searching to get there, and there's always exceptions!

• Are there any any culturally specific mechanics or ideas that I'll need to localise, and can I change them if needed?

• Similarly to video games, are there any art or character issues like age/sexuality, or text/stereotypes/microagressions that need to be addressed? And do I know people to ask for advice where I need it, or can I find them? Representation matters. At every stage of the game.

• Do I have a copy of the game to tear apart, spread all over my apartment, and check exactly what kind of component something is or how it looks?

These are all things that, in combination, make translating tabletop into quite the puzzle game. You don't often have to change the layout of a book or a video game for clarity, or watch out for mechanics that might completely baffle western players.

Sometimes I even get jobs that are purely just re-arranging the EN rules for clarity. Sometimes I get proofreading jobs that turn out to be re-translations because the original translator didn't have experience with board game terminology/English.

I'd say that board games take me longer to translate than video games (though not as long as old samurai memoirs!), as the text has to be incredibly precise. If I make a mistake in the rules, it doesn't just change the meaning of a bit of flavor text in a game, it might change the game's difficulty at best, and ruin the experience at worst.

As a result, I spend a lot longer choosing words when I work on a board game. "You may take a card," is incredibly different to "Take a card." and "Your next attack" is very different to "Your next hit." They might sound really similar, but an attack doesn't necessarily count as a hit, and taking a card being optional can heavily change the effect of an ability. I ask a LOT of questions to my designers to make sure that I don't make mistakes.

I also spend an inordinate amount of time rifling through other games I own, plonking boxes everywhere around my apartment while I look for that one example I know I've seen somewhere...

4) Production Ready Files

Now, depending on whether I'm the one doing the final layout or if I'm only handing the client text, different things happen before the files go to print.

• I either send the files to the designers and hope that they'll send me the PDF before going to print so I can look for copy paste errors, formatting weirdness, and other bits and pieces to improve...

• OR, I get the text edited by an editor and then put it in the Photoshop/Illustrator files myself. This is a long but fun process, and often involves a lot of juggling and changing things around

Sometimes it's better for me to do the final files myself, but it does take me time to learn my way around the designer's layers and file style (hehe, file style). This is often where I have to tell the designers that a flattened file won't do, as I usually have to adjust box sizes and shift things around to fit the English. Even some "English" text will need fixing, and without layers this is difficult.

If the designer will be doing the files, I REALLY want to check the PDFs, since the likelihood of copy paste errors is very high, and when I put the text in context there are usually always some things I want to change because it will read better that way.

If I'm working directly with a publisher and am in charge of the production as well, then I have a whole host of new jobs. Everything from sending the final card/rule/component files to a printing factory, receiving and reviewing samples, discussing cardboard thickness, posing ideas for upgrades to the components, dropping all 243 cards and having to pick them up and re-sort them, writing and storyboarding Kickstarter videos, all that jazz! This makes me feel like the whole game is my child, and in the case of 9-month long projects like Tokyo Sidekick, it really is!

5) Finally: I Get the Game!

Once all the translation, graphics, and everything else is finished, I finally get a copy of the thing I helped bring to life in English! I LOVE this part. I never thought I would be someone that makes physical things in the world, but the feeling of holding a wee box full of my words is just fantastic and exciting and makes me squeal like an excited wombat with a carrot.

At the end of the day, the localization sphere is a creative industry and getting to make something feels like nothing else. One day, I will build a box fort (literally) out of all the games I have worked on and I cannot wait to sit in it!