The localization of food- and drink-related items in video games

Abstract

This study examines the localization of food- and drink-related items in The Witcher 3 (2015). It analyzes the original English and Arabic versions using the corpus approach. A list of food- and drink-related lexemes was extracted from the English original game and these lexemes were traced to their context in the English and Arabic versions using the concordance function in Sketch Engine. The concordance analysis focused on the translation strategies adopted to localize food- and drink-related lexemes into Arabic and on the success of the translation in the socio-cultural and religious contexts of the target culture. The data reveals that foreign food-related terms are mostly domesticated, whereas drink-related terms are foreignized. The findings of this study suggest that foreignization strategies can be used for localization purposes to create a target video game that minimizes the cultural gaps between the source and target cultures and provides a less disruptive gaming experience.