Translation and Localization: Frequent Arguments through Asymmetric Binoculars

Abstract

The rapid technological developments have led to emerging industries and practices, such as the localization of websites, video games, and software. This has been directly associated with the digitization of products, including their textual content. The relatively rapid evolution in turn might be one of the reasons for the confusion of the related terms in Translation Studies (TS). While the industry introduced most of these terms, TS research adopted them in many cases or contributed to proliferating others. This multiplicity of the terms has led to more fuzziness. Given the different and contradictory points of view regarding localization, from the academia and the industry, this paper attempts to pinpoint key arguments in order to help accelerate the pace of integrating research on localization in TS, to refresh the academic perspective with this regard, and to find out where translation and TS can fit in localization. The paper sheds light on the different points of view in terms of the definition of localization, its process, and frequent arguments on its relationship to or independence from translation, on its process, agents, and other concepts compared with translation. The theoretical discussion is an attempt to contribute to previous research with this regard and to bridge the gap between TS and the industry.