Creativity and playability in the localisation of video games

Abstract

Creativity is one of the most highly debated topics in translation not only because of how it relates to authorship but also because of the unavoidable cultural ramifications and the business implications for all the parties involved. Identifying the parameters within which creative translation operates in entertainment media requires a complex process that comprises a large amount of variables beyond the linguistic ones. Semiotics is suggested as a robust analytical tool to study the layering of meaning-making in entertainment products, in other words, their polysemioticity. Multimedia interactive entertainment software (MIES), a. k. a. video games, adds levels of complexity never seen before in translation due to their functional requirements. In order to identify the features that separate other entertainment products from MIES, this article analyses also the translation of novels, comics and films. The concept of playability is utilised as a way of isolating the pragmatic challenges of video game localisation.