Abstract
The video game industry is growing at a very fast pace. At present, it is the biggest entertainment industry in the world, selling even more than film and music industries. Newly-developed technologies provide video game creators with the necessary tools to develop more complex game worlds, and user interaction is more important than ever. Each one has its own terminology and complexities, which must be perfectly understood in order to deliver high-quality work. Therefore, translators must be deeply aware of how all these technologies and game worlds work. More importantly, they need to be familiar with the specialized terminology they are going to come across while working in the video game industry. This paper is part of a series of studies where a corpus of 300 games is used to analyze the terminology needs of video game translation and interpreting. Specifically, this paper focuses on the relevance of neologisms—as they are one of the basic traits that define a specialized language—and defines the type of neologisms that can be found when localizing a video game with the overall goal of proving that they are common in the video game industry.
Highlights
Entertainment software has often been dismissed as having little relevance and has even been ignored in comparison to film, music or literature
In line with previous studies on an introduction to the topic of video games as a specialized language—e.g. Méndez González (2014b) and Calvo-Ferrer (2012), this study delves into discussing the specific challenges faced by translators when dealing with video game-related texts, before moving on to analyze the importance of neologisms and the problems involved in this field of translation
The results obtained are used in different studies on specialized texts (Méndez González 2014b, 2015, 2017, 2019), and, this paper provides a general outlook of the video game industry as a specialized text, before focusing on the main topic: neologisms
Summary
Entertainment software has often been dismissed as having little relevance and has even been ignored in comparison to film, music or literature. In 2016, the video game industry generated 1,163 million euros in profits (AEVI 2017) in comparison with box office revenues in Spain, amounting to only 109 million euros (Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte 2016). This market growth and constant media improvements—be it in terms of visuals, sound, narrative or even user-friendlier interfaces—have added several extra layers of complexity that could not have been foreseen only a couple of decades ago. This paper seeks to highlight the importance of terminology within the video game industry, as well as the role played by neologisms. In line with previous studies on an introduction to the topic of video games as a specialized language—e.g. Méndez González (2014b) and Calvo-Ferrer (2012)—, this study delves into discussing the specific challenges faced by translators when dealing with video game-related texts, before moving on to analyze the importance of neologisms and the problems involved in this field of translation
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