The Journal of Internationalization and Localization - Volume 2, Issue 1, 2012

Over the course of the last three decades the entertainment software industry has become a multibillion dollar industry and a worldwide phenomenon. The United States and Japan have traditionally been the main players in this industry, which owes part of its global success to internationalisation and the associated localisation processes. Due to the cultural distance between Japan and Western countries, Japanese games often undergo extensive cultural adaptation in order to market them successfully in those territories. This paper analyses the localisation of Japanese console games. After presenting a brief overview of the history of the localisation of Japanese games it describes the main internationalisation strategies adopted by Japanese developers and publishers. It also explores the main localisation strategies applied to Japanese games, i.e. domesticating or exoticising, exploring the cultural adaptation processes to which some Japanese games have been subject, and examines how critics and players reacted to the localised versions. Finally, it concludes with a reflection on the extent to which Japanese games should be culturally adapted for their international release in order to strike the right balance between domesticating and exoticising strategies taking into account different factors, such as the genre of the game, the gaming preferences of the target players, and the intended audience.

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

ISO standards for intermodal shipping containers have dramatically improved efficiency within the shipping industry worldwide. The translation/localization industry needs an analogous standard for translation projects and tasks. There are a variety of proprietary translation formats that allow materials relevant to a translation project (the source text, various resources such as translation memory files, etc.) to be put into one or more packages and sent to a translator. The translator can then use the same format to return the requested information, such as the translation. The objective of the Linport Project is to define an open, nonproprietary format for describing translation projects and creating translation packages, plus transmission and remote-access mechanisms needed to support implementation of the format. Linport stands for Language Interoperability Portfolio, where a portfolio is the description of a translation/localization project. An important feature of the Linport Project is structured translation specifications compatible with the system of parameters in recently published ISO/TS 11669.

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

This paper focuses on the localisation and adaptation of one particular aspect of the computer game: the soundtrack. Sometimes bespoke, sometimes selected from commercial releases, it provides a background, supporting role in creating atmosphere and supporting the emotive state of the game space. But how often is the target market considered when selecting appropriate musical content? Is it possible to use this almost subliminal channel into the game player’s consciousness to increase his awareness of what is happening around him, and give him a feel for his character’s emotional and physical wellbeing? This paper presents a novel approach for transforming the soundtrack - via a system the author originally created for the purposes of capturing and recreating emotive content in music.

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

This paper discusses the lack of interoperability between file formats, standards, and applications. We suggest a mapping from the ‘XML Localisation Interchange File Format’ (XLIFF) into the ‘Resource Description Framework’ (RDF) in order to enhance interoperability between a metadata standard and a metadata model. Three use cases are provided (a minimal, a modular and one with alternative translations); each one with a source (XLIFF), an output (RDF), and an ‘Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations’ (XSLT) file. We explain in detail how the XLIFF file elements and attributes can be matched by the XSLT. Believing in the symbiotic relationship for a more effective way of presenting multilingual content on the Web, we developed a conversion tool to translate from XLIFF into RDF in order to automate the process. Our contribution is to translate XLIFF into RDF in order to facilitate ontology localisation, i.e. localise monolingual ontologies and populate Semantic Web approaches with localisation-related metadata.

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