oa Video Game Localisation for Fans by Fans: The Case of Romhacking

The aim of this paper is to show the particularities of the so-called “romhacking”, a methodology developed by amateurs to localise mainly classic video games. In the first section, the concept and origin of the term “romhacking” is presented. The second section offers an overview of the workflow followed by romhackers to localise video games. In the third section, an analysis of the differences between professional and amateur translations is given. The fourth section includes a discussion of the legal aspects of this practice. The paper concludes with a reflection on the impact of amateur translations on the video game localisation industry.

This article is made available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license.