Training game localisers online: teaching methods, translation competence and curricular design

ABSTRACT

Video games have become one of the most popular forms of entertainment in the modern digital society. The global success of the game industry has fostered the development of the game localisation industry, as developers and publishers strive to sell their games in different languages and territories to maximise their return on investment. This, in turn, has been reflected in the increasing demand for trained game localisers who can cope with the different challenges posed by this emerging type of translation and meet the industry’s needs. Based on the long-standing experience of the MA in Audiovisual Translation at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, this paper focuses on pedagogical issues concerning the training of game translators and, specifically, training them online, taking into consideration the specificities of distance education. After briefly presenting an overview of this MA and its online modality, the paper shifts to the teaching of game localisation, focusing on translation competence and curricular design, describing the tasks that students are asked to do. Special emphasis is placed on the teaching resources and tools used to provide a collaborative learning experience to distance education students that prepares them to embark on a career in this fast-paced and technologically-driven industry.

KEYWORDS:

• Game localisation
• online teaching
• distance learning
• translation competence
• curricular design
• teaching methods
• moodle

Acknowledgments

This work has been supported by the Catalan Government project 2017SGR113.

Gameography

Child of Light (Ubisoft, 2014)

Final Fantasy X (Square Enix, 2001)

Hearthstone (Blizzard, 2014–to date)

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.