ABSTRACT

The number of official translations of games in the videogame market of Iran is very scant. Additionally, the existing ones contain only dubbed or subtitled menus, dialogues and narrations, and they has left the rest of in-game texts untranslated. Therefore, the translation needs should be analysed, but study of the game platforms has been ignored. In view of this gap, the current study aimed to analyse Iranian videogame players’ needs of the translation of in-game texts. To this end, 5000 gamers’ comments about the translations of in-game texts (i.e. menus, game installer applications, system messages, dialogues, narrations, and game manuals) of eight strategy videogames were collected by adopting the participative role and interviewing the professional gamers. The data were then analysed using an inductive approach via Microsoft Word. The findings indicated that the gamers preferred to play games having translated menus, game installer applications, system messages and game manuals; however, they preferred untranslated dialogues and narrations of the games. The findings of the study have implications for professional translators working in the market of videogames.

摘要

伊朗电子游戏市场上的官方游戏翻译数量非常少。此外，现有的仅包含配音或字幕菜单、对话和旁白，而其余的游戏内文本未翻译。因此，应该分析翻译需求，而忽略了对游戏平台的研究。鉴于这一差距，本研究旨在分析伊朗电子游戏玩家对游戏文本翻译的需求。为此，通过采取参与角色，采访专业人士的方式，收集了 5000 名玩家对 8 款策略游戏的游戏内文本（即菜单、游戏安装应用程序、系统消息、对话、旁白和游戏手册）翻译的评论。游戏玩家。然后通过 Microsoft Word 使用归纳方法分析数据。调查结果表明，游戏玩家更喜欢玩带有翻译菜单、游戏安装程序、系统消息和游戏手册的游戏；然而，他们更喜欢游戏中未翻译的对话和叙述。该研究的结果对在电子游戏市场工作的专业翻译人员有影响。