Approach Developed in the Thesis

This section will explain the approach developed throughout this paper by adopting an end-user perspective. It will set out the research objectives and hypotheses that will be tested in chapter 5.

3.3.1 From Isolated User Discontent to an Assessment of Generic Gamer (Dis)Satisfaction

It is common for players to complain about the poor quality of game localisation, for instance on forums and in written or video reviews. Furthermore, negative user commentaries on the Internet often seem to relate to the text itself, be it the translation, the subtitles or the voiceover.

For instance, The Game Localization Handbook, by Chandler and O’Malley opens with the example of an Italian gamer complaining about poor localised versions of English games that affect his overall gameplay experience. According to the authors, he prefers buying games in the original version since “the Italian version often seems like an afterthought” and has

“typos, incorrect translations, text that is not translated, voice acting that is out of context, and a variety of other things” (2012, p. 3). The authors conclude that “[t]his attitude demonstrates how important quality versions of international games are to the intended audience” (ibid). This is also echoed by a practice noted by Díaz Montón: sometimes game fans also proceed to

”undubbing” games or even to retranslating them (2011), which shows once again the gaming community’s deep interest and concern for the quality of the games they play.

Yet, negative commentaries, as numerous as they might be, may remain anecdotal, isolated outbursts of discontent and cannot be used as the basis for assessing general player satisfaction. On top of that, one cannot deny that finding a translation “good” or “appropriate”

is also, to some extent, a subjective view that does not always rely on clear objective criteria and/or comparison with the original. Therefore, it is extremely difficult to assess whether they really reflect a view shared by many players or just the opinion of more critical people.

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As O’Hagan and Mangiron argue, video game localisation is a “function-oriented translation”: it is indeed “focused on the user’s satisfaction with the final product”, which explains why “research addressing user reception is well justified” (2013, p. 312). Building on these assertions, this research aims at shedding light on what gamers think of localised games.

Indeed, this aspect of game localisation is critical to the success of the titles but still, it has long been neglected both by scholars and companies (publishers for instance). This is starting to change, as we have seen with O’Hagan’s exploratory experiments (2009a) in section 3.1.2.2 but there is still room for more research on this vast topic.

3.3.2 Research Objectives

Our study aims at unveiling various aspects of the relationship between gamers and video game localisation. It seeks to answer three different objectives:

1. Assessing gamers’ satisfaction with video games localised in French

2. Identifying possible weak spots in French localisations as perceived by the final users

3. Comparing gamers’ linguistic stance upon consuming video games and other cultural and entertainment products

Firstly, it is important to emphasise the fact that the study does not seek to gather physiological information about players, although its main point of interest is player reception.

It focuses on gathering as many individual gamer opinions as possible in the field of localised game reception, especially games played on computers. With this research, we seek to go beyond isolated complaints and, if appropriate, nuance the general idea that the gamer community is dissatisfied with localised versions by collecting the answers of a sample of the francophone gamer community. It will thus lead us to get an overview of the reception of localised video games by francophone gamers, based on a small sample, without necessarily being able to generalise these conclusions, as will be discussed in chapters 5 and 6.

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The study will also point out which aspects of video game localisation into French need improving in order for the target audience to find the product appropriate. We will thus see if there is a pattern in respondents’ answers or if the much-criticized translation is just one aspect among others. The identification of such weak spots in localisation and the effect they have on gameplay may eventually provide welcome feedback for the localisation industry by shedding light on concrete examples of games that respondents deem well or poorly localised. In this sense, the main focus of our study, i.e. player reception, has a practical goal: “provid[ing] useful information to the game industry as well as localisers and translators” (O’Hagan, 2009a, p. 213), offering insights from the angle of Translation Studies and to the area of Translation Studies. It is thus the expression of a will shared with O’Hagan: that of grounding practice on research, as small-scaled as it may be.

Last but not least, hopefully, this research will also shed light on gamers’ linguistic preferences in terms of games. Analysing the language in which they play and their motivations for doing so will provide material for a comparison with results obtained for other cultural/entertainment products. In other words, the results will indicate if there is more reticence towards using the translated or localised version of certain products than of others.

Eventually, the research will seek to assess if localisation is seen as an asset or as a drawback by its primary users. Video game localisation is of the utmost relevance for companies, but does it seem as relevant to the other actors that are directly affected by its quality, namely the gamers? And is there a difference between gamers with a poor level in other languages than French and those with a high level in other languages, especially English? The stated objectives naturally lead to research hypotheses that will be tested in this paper.

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3.3.3 Research Hypotheses

Based on the three research objectives stated above, we have developed research hypotheses that will be confronted with the results of our research.

Main topic (hypothesis 1): regarding overall gamer satisfaction with localised games:

We tended to believe that, contrary to comments that are very present on the Web, gamers are generally satisfied with the localisation of games into French. Our research will investigate if this initial hypothesis can be proven or rejected.

Topic 2 (hypothesis 2): regarding weak spots in video game localisation into French:

Based on our knowledge of the game localisation industry and on the numerous comments found online, our initial hypothesis relies on the belief that gamers indeed complain mostly about text/translation-related localisation issues, whether these affect written or spoken translations, i.e. in-game text, subtitles or voiceovers.

Topic 3 (hypothesis 3): regarding francophone gamers’ linguistic stance towards video games:

Considering that video games are immersive in nature, we tended to believe that contrary to the linguistic stance adopted towards other cultural products (written or audiovisual), and regardless of their fluency in other languages, gamers usually play in their mother tongue (in our case in French) because it is easier for them to understand and focus on the game. We still predict that gamers with a relatively high level in the source language will tend to play more in that language than other gamers, but would still favour their mother tongue when available. We shall see in chapter 5 if this theory can be supported by our results.

To sum up, this chapter aimed at providing an overview of the multitude of research topics that relate to video games. First, we have shown that games are a recent object of study that is highly multidisciplinary given the fact that it possesses characteristics of many other objects. Second, we have seen that a trend started among scholars and the industry to gather data on players and on their reception of localised games. Last, we saw that the approach developed in this thesis builds on this trend, focusing on gamers and more particularly on their satisfaction with the localisation of PC games into French. Now that our objectives and hypotheses have been stated, we can explain in detail the methodology followed in the course of our research.

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