5. Results of the Study
5.3 Section 2: Experience with PC Video Games
5.4.3 Satisfaction Regarding Game Localisation into French
In terms of range, marks expressing (dis)satisfaction ranged from 2 to 6, which means that no one reported to be “very unsatisfied” with video game localisation into French, whereas some respondents (although there were only three, i.e. 5.26% of the sample) said they were
“very satisfied” with it. Actually, most respondents selected a score somewhere in the middle, not very satisfied but not unsatisfied either, as shown by the fractile analysis. Indeed, the first quartile stood at 3, the second and the third at 4 and the fourth at 6. From this analysis, we could not deduct that gamers were very satisfied with game localisation into French, but overall their opinions tended to be more positive than negative, though the number of mostly dissatisfied respondents was significant (26 participants – 45.61%).
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Therefore, our initial hypothesis, i.e. that gamers are generally satisfied with the localisation of games into French, seems to be supported by results, although, as mentioned, the extent of this satisfaction remains small and the opinions are mitigated.
Figure 27. Participants’ satisfaction regarding the localisation of PC games into French Furthermore, in order to see if the same trend was perceptible among the industry professionals present in the sample, their answers have been looked at separately. Concerning translation specialists, opinions diverged: one person did not answer this question, and the marks attributed by the three others ranged from 2 to 4 (one each). The limit between slight dissatisfaction lying between 3 and 4, this would tend to show that our very small sample of translation experts were mostly dissatisfied with localisations into French, although to a small extent. As a matter of fact, the three of them stated they normally played games in their original language. The exact same phenomenon happened with members of the game industry, with an identical repartition of satisfaction answers. Regarding playing language, two respondents stated they usually played in the original version, arguing that the translation or dubbings’
quality in French is generally not very good. On the other hand, one of them declared playing in French to honour the time and effort spent by the localisation team on adapting the game.
This person, however, did not deem the end-products to be of a high quality, attributing only a 3 to the overall localisation into French. Once again, the results were not very conclusive, with dissatisfaction being merely slightly predominant.
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Still, one shall bear in mind that these populations represented extremely tiny parts of our samples (only four people each time, which is 4.35% of the bigger sample). Thus, in order to draw generalizable conclusions, results would need to be based on a much bigger group, especially given the high subjectivity component involved in assessing the quality of a game’s localisation, particularly in terms of translation and dubbings.
Yet, in order to understand what constituted the basis of participants’ satisfaction or dissatisfaction, they were asked to provide examples of games they have played and whose localisation into French they found particularly well managed or problematic. The next subsection examines these instances.
5.4.3.2 Concrete Examples of Good and Poor Localisations
It may be worth noting that the biggest number of good localisations concerned RPG games, ten of them to be precise (17.24%), on top of which one may add four MMORPGs (6.90%). The shooter genre was also represented, with its subgenre FPS mentioned four times (6.90%), and strategy games were quoted three times (5.17%). Yet, on the wrong side of the scale, RPGs were once again the most quoted examples (eight mentions – 13.79%), with other genres being largely minor in terms of mentions (two maximum – 3.45%). Given the fact that RPG was the genre most played by participants (see 5.3.2), it seems only natural to find many instances of games belonging to this genre on both sides.
Upon giving examples of great and poor localisations, respondents were given the option to provide more feedback on why they liked or did not like the localisation of the games they quoted. Many of them made detailed comments on very specific aspects of localisation, in the areas of translation quality, dubbing quality, conveying the atmosphere of the game and technical subtleties. The following table recaps the number of positive and negative mentions for each aspect evoked by respondents. Its design comprehends aspects that were mentioned in both cases but also some others that were more specific either to a good or a poor localisation.
For each category, the most mentioned aspect in each case was highlighted.
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Great localisations Poor localisations
Translation quality 10 9
Typos 2 1
Spelling mistakes, including inversion of letters 3 5
Use of non-existent words 0 1
Grammar or syntax mistakes 3 3
Mix of languages (non-translated passages) 0 7
(In)complete translation 0 1
Literal translations 0 7
Approximate translations 0 1
Faithful translation 2 0
Translation made from a pivot language (EN) 0 1
Omissions 0 1
Adaptation of humour 3 0
Adaptation of puns 2 0
Adaptation of cultural references 1 0
(Lack of) logic or coherence 2 3
Context was (not) taken into account 2 2
(Hardly) understandable (meaning) 2 5
(In)adequate tone or language register 1 1
(Not) Pleasant to read (even poetic) 3
Feeling that (not) enough time was devoted to translation 7 2
Dubbing quality 14 6
Convincing voice acting 5 0
Monotonous voice 0 2
Inappropriate tone (too enthusiastic or not enough) 0 2
Causes to laugh 0 3
Fame of voice actors 1 0
Variety of actors 1 0
Timing of dialogues 1 0
Translation of songs 1 0
Conveying the atmosphere of the game 5 0
Emotions 2 0
Immersion 2 1
Closeness to characters 1 1
Technical achievements or bugs42 0 0
Legibility and respect of spatial constraints in the interface 0 2
Display of special characters 0 1
System integration of localised words 0 1
Integration of previous translations by patches 0 1
Total number of mentions 76 70
Table 13. Positive and negative aspects of games localised into French, according to participants
42 Please note that the numbers written in each big category do not correspond to the sum of all other comments in this category, but to the number of times the issue was identified as such by respondents (for instance “translation was really great”). This is why, contrary to the other three groups, technical achievements or bugs do not feature anything above zero: they were not praised or blamed as such but rather the subcategories were directly addressed.
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When glancing at the chart, one may notice that, in the end, the total number of mentions for positive aspects is slightly higher than that for negative ones, which may show that players also remember positive experiences in detail. Respondents praised more the overall quality of the dubbings – deemed convincing - than of the translation, whereas for poor localisations, they insisted more on the poor translation quality. Yet, these two aspects are both crucial to gamers, as we will see just after.
Before moving on to the most reported common issues in French game localisations, we shall mention that two participants (3.51%) provided links towards videos of games they quoted as examples of poor French localisations. These erroneous translations included inverted letters (for instance “Je vais vous poignerder et voler le chavel" instead of “poignarder” and “cheval”).
Participants also deemed that the voice acting featured was of poor quality, whether too monotonous or too enthusiastic but never quite in the tone of the game, which epitomizes some answers summarized previously in Table 13.
After analysing examples of top and flop localisations into French according to respondents’ opinion, the following paragraphs will explore the issues generally encountered when playing localised games.