But LocJAM had gone out of its way to make that as easy as possible, and the workshop did the rest. Undaunted by the prospect of such a literary translation project (literature is one of her main hobbies), her only worry was the technical side of things. Melnikoff had never worked on games either, but was enrolled in Troyer's Games Localization class as part of Middlebury's Translation and Localization Management graduate program. A localisation student, he'd never done any work on games, but had personally experienced many rubbish game localisations. Rossi told us his motivation for attending the workshop was fairly whimsical - it was just something different and fun to do. Olga Melnikoff was crowned a winner in amateur English to Russian translation, and Bruno Rossi took top honours in amateur English to Brazilian Portuguese translation. At the Middlebury Institute of International Studies of Monterey in California, two students wandered into Max Troyer's LocJAM 2015 workshop and were inspired to enter the online contest. The event's aim is to raise the profile of localisation, and so far it seems to have worked. In 2015, the event returned bigger and better, adding Russian and Brazilian Portuguese to the mix and debuting a new localisation platform for Twine, which could be leveraged for almost any existing Twine game.
![the republia times. the republia times.](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/eXvXGDdk1lc/hqdefault.jpg)
![the republia times. the republia times.](https://p7.hiclipart.com/preview/407/546/494/papers-please-national-flag-the-republia-times-sword-art-online-fatal-bullet-please.jpg)
#THE REPUBLIA TIMES. PROFESSIONAL#
A programmer cobbled together a localisation interface, and for ten days anybody, anywhere could submit their French, German, Italian, Japanese and Spanish (European and South American) to LocJAM.ġ6 of the largest game localisation agencies gave up their time to submit anonymous reviews of the 500 submitted localisations, whittling them down to 34 winners across professional and amateur categories. The inaugural LocJAM event spawned seven international workshops and focused on The Republia Times, a short open source work by Papers Please creator Lucas Pope. Translation is almost never word-for-word, there is always a certain degree of adaptation." "It is definitely quite close to being a writer. Later, you submit your work to a jury of professionals from around the world.
#THE REPUBLIA TIMES. FREE#
The idea behind it is simple: you attend a free workshop and collaborate on translating a video game.
![the republia times. the republia times.](https://i.imgur.com/m0ILoXS.png)
Founded in 2007, LocSIG serves as a focus for IGDA professionals involved with "translating, localising, internationalising and in general adapting video games for a global audience".Īnybody can sign up for LocJAM. Now in its third year, LocJAM is an initiative of the International Game Developers Association's Localization Special Interest Group. That said, it's not inaccessible: no matter how much or how little you know about the process, if you have a second language under your belt you can enter LocJAM. Localisation isn't easy translation is a creative act as well as a trained skill, and it's a great deal more complicated than find-and-replace on item names on a spreadsheet.
![the republia times. the republia times.](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/7OsjKpsW1uc/maxresdefault.jpg)
That's probably why we take it for granted, complaining about how long it takes and demanding to know why publisher X doesn't bring such-and-such a niche game over. We rarely think about localisation until it goes wrong - when a sentence peters out into gibberish and special characters, when a tutorial NPC exhorts you to take an incorrect action (do not attack while its tail's up!), when jokes and cultural references feel flat and forced. Welcome to the weird and wonderful world of localisation.