On English Translation of Game Texts from the Perspective of Functional Equivalence：A Case Study of an Open-world Role-playing Game开题报告

In recent years, China’s gameindustry is booming, more and more popular domestic games have been launched.Under this circumstance, the game companies began to focus on promoting thedomestic game market to expand overseas. To fulfil the requirement of games’export, game developers gradually notice the importance of their translationand have made effort on it. However, in the current studies, more attentionis paid to the localization of foreign games compared to the localization ofdomestic games. Therefore, more research on foreign language translation ofdomestic games should be put on the agenda.

With the development of informationtechnology, today''''''''''''''''s video games gradually pay attention to the constructionof their world view, rather than just a single interface, simple operation ofthe traditional game. The dramatic storyline as well as diversified charactersetting place the player in a vivid and lifelike virtual world. These gamefeatures can''''''''''''''''t be implemented with just few words, they often require a lotof text. This shows that language has played a crucial rolein the experience of a game, affecting how the player interacts with the gameworld and how the game progresses. Therefore, without doubt that propertranslation is a guarantee of the quality of the game''''''''''''''''s global distribution.

Game content translation isbecoming an important part of the translation industry. However, in thecurriculum setting of translation major, the courses on this topic are stillrare, which leads to the lack of knowledge of game translation amongtranslation major students. There are also few practical opportunities forstudents to learn the truth of such translation from practice. And thereality that game industry grows ceaselessly, the development path that stepsinto right track gradually is in front of one''''''''''''''''s eyes. In the future, thedemand for game translation talents will continue to expand. Withoutsufficient reserve talent resources, the quality of game translation will bedifficult to make a breakthrough, which will hinder the development of thegame industry and the translation industry, even become the bottleneck ofintroducing overseas games into the country and promoting the domestic gameoverseas. Therefore, this paper aims to attract more attention fromtranslation professionals and other talents to the localization of games bystudying and thinking about the quality of English translation of domesticgames, schools are encouraged to offer courses on game translation-relatedcontent, and more talented people are encouraged to join this emergingindustry.

(1) Study Contents:

This paper will take the domestic mobile game GenshinImpact, an open-world action RPG, as a case study, using the built-in Chineseand English versions of this game, based on the functional equivalence theory.From the perspective of functional equivalence theory of Eugene A. Nida, thispaper will analyze the quality and strategies of game translation of thefamous open-world role-play game Genshin Impact, and discuss how thetranslator should play a role in such a game translation project, to properlyplay the translators’ abilities to create the same experience in a game forgame players.

Key Problems to be solved:

Generally speaking, the translation of a game involvesdifferent kind of texts, such as character dialogue, item name, backgroundintroduction, skill display, etc.Inorder to allow players to immerse in the virtual world and empathize with themain characters, the game attaches great importance to the interaction of thegame, so the game contains a lot of dialogue text and background stories toenrich the world view. This is what the translation is all about. This thesiswill analyze the translation cases from the perspective of functionalequivalence, and analyze the highlights and effects of the translation. Atthe same time, we should pay attention to the shortcomings and explore how tomake English players understand the game content and domestic players inorder to achieve the same game experience.

(2) Outline:

1.Introduction

1.1Research Background and Significance

1.2Objective and Key Problem of the Research

2.Literature Review

2.1Game Translation

2.2FunctionalEquivalence Theory

3.Case Analysis from the Perspective of Functionalequivalence theory

3.1FunctionalEquivalence at the Lexical Level

3.1.1. Names and Items

3.1.2. Verbs and Phrasal Verbs

3.2FunctionalEquivalence at the Syntactic Level

3.2.1 Dialogue

3.2.2 Indicative Text

3.3FunctionalEquivalence at the Textual Level

4.Advices of Game Text Translation

4.1Acquire the Classic Game Terms and Expressions

4.2Play the Game inPerson

4.3Flexible Use ofa Variety of Translation Strategies

5.Conclusion

Functional equivalence evolved fromthe concept of “Dynamic equivalence” in Eugene A. Nida’s 1964 book, Towarda Science of Translating. Functional equivalence is defined with “receptors’ response” asits core. In order to achieve an ideal translation, translators must find theclosest natural equivalent to the original text. That is to say, the responseof the target readers to the target text should be basically the same as thatof the original readers. Therefore, Nida defines translation as “reproducingin the receptor language the closest natural equivalent of the sourcelanguage message, first in terms of meaning and secondly in terms of styles.”

At present, audio-visualtranslation studies mainly involve film translation, TV translation andInternet translation (Weibo Deng, 2016), but video game translation has notbeen focused. There are few references to video game translation. Among them,several master''''''''''''''''s dissertations are mainly case studies on the translation ofgames from English to Chinese (Liyue Mao, 2014; Juncheng Peng,2020; LinkaiZou,2021). From the perspective of Skopostheorie, Qi Chen（2017） investigates andanalyzes his cases, and studies the strategies of the game text’sSinicization. He mentioned that the game text is information-based text,translation should be to convey information for the purpose of the text inline with the language habits of the target players. In addition, he pointedout that most Chinese players have been exposed to and learn English sincechildhood, and have a little knowledge of English language and culture, so alienationshould be taken as an important strategy in Sinicization, where English gametext is played. Aiming at the characteristics ofher text, Luying Yang(2021) puts forward some strategies to improve thequality of the translation and user experience from three aspects, namely, toensure the conciseness of the translation, to improve the readability of thetranslation from the Angle of language, and to improve the readability of thetranslation from the Angle of culture.

Miguel . Bernal-Merino. (2017)conducted a systematic discussion on the translation of video games in theprocess of global dissemination in his book Translation and Localizationin Video Games: Making Entertainment Software Global. He believes thatthere are both similarities and differences between translation andlocalization. Translation is an important part of localization, butlocalization is not the same as translation. He calls translation linguisticlocalization. In this book, the author first combs the development process ofvideo game localization, From partial localization, to full localization, tothe deep localization that many companies are now pursuing. As the market forvideo games has expanded, Manufacturers have sought to satisfy consumers'''''''''''''''' diverseneeds, and the so-called localization of languages -- translation -- hasbecome a bigger part of the game development process as localization hasincreased. In many cases, translation runs through the entire gamedevelopment process, combining it with programming to incorporate thelanguage features of different countries into various aspects of the game;Translators may even need to work with game developers to provide them withlanguage and cultural information and suggestions for game design.

With the development ofthe online game market, there is more and more demand in the field of gametext translation. Based on Nida’s functional equivalence theory, this thesistakes the popular game Genshin Impact as an example to study and analyze itfrom another angle, which leads to more diverse and more detailed translationstrategies.

2022-11.1—11-30Selecting and identifying thethesis topic

2022-12-1—12-31Finishing dissertation proposal, collecting、 analyzing andorganizing relevant literature and determine the thesis’ outline

2022-1-1—3-31 Writing and submitting the firstdraft of paper, completing topic review and mid-term review

2022-4-1—5-6Revising paper, checkingrepetition rates, finalizing paper and translating foreign literature

2022-5-7—5-15 Submitting the final paper andpreparing for thesis defense