Case Study: Grandpa (LocJAM 2) & its Value for Novel Game Translators

As I embarked myself on the journey of building my portfolio as a games translator, I remembered my participation in the LocJAM 5 (2022), and how fun and challenging that was.

After that, also remembered that some games of previous jams were available for translation. That’s why I searched and came up with 𝐆𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐩𝐚, written by Omar Enezi and developed by Abdullah Hamed. This game is an interactive fiction, choose-your-own-adventure, and a bit creepy game (you’ll see why when you play it).

I started translating it, and I realized that, although it is a rather short game (about 1,500 words, and less than 20 minutes to play the whole game), it had its challenges (a lot of them haha). So, I thought of taking down notes of all of them because I think the game may be a good way for novel video games localizers to face these challenges if they want to start working in this field. Let’s see what I found:

𝐓𝐀𝐆𝐒 & 𝐏𝐋𝐀𝐂𝐄𝐇𝐎𝐋𝐃𝐄𝐑𝐒

The source text of this game was 𝐇𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐋𝐘 𝐃𝐄𝐍𝐒𝐄 in terms of tags and placeholders. For a novel games translator, opening the translatable file may seem like a 𝐍𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓𝐌𝐀𝐑𝐄. Let me show you why:

But don’t worry, everything can be learned and polished with practice. So, once you get the gist of these types of strings, you will manage them like an ace. There are some basic tags like “/𝐧,” which places a 𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐛𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐤, and there are placeholders that can be understood by analyzing it, like one that says “𝐢𝐦𝐠” between brackets, which means that in the game, that text will be replaced by an “image.” (But careful, not all text between brackets should be left untranslated). Here you can see an example of how the placeholder works: the string 𝐁𝐀𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐎𝐎𝐌:\𝐧\𝐧[𝐢𝐦𝐠[𝐛𝐚𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐨𝐨𝐦-𝐭𝐨𝐢𝐥𝐞𝐭]]\𝐧\𝐧”𝐍𝐨 𝐰𝐚𝐲.”\𝐧\𝐧[[𝐍𝐞𝐱𝐭 >|𝐭𝐭_𝟓𝟖]]\𝐧\𝐧, in which the placeholder is “[𝐢𝐦𝐠[𝐛𝐚𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐨𝐨𝐦-𝐭𝐨𝐢𝐥𝐞𝐭]],” will display the following:

𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐗𝐓-𝐁𝐎𝐔𝐍𝐃 𝐒𝐓𝐑𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐒

One of the many challenges game translators face in their daily work is lack of context. In this case, there were words that I decided to translate in a certain way, and when I tested the game they made no sense in context. That’s why having the game to see the context was really helpful. If you have access to the game or even to gameplays on platforms like YouTube, take advantage of them!

In this game, there were images for each room, obtainable item, and action performed by the main character, which were really useful to make grounded translation decisions on certain terms or phrases. For example, Emi could find a “𝐩𝐚𝐝𝐝𝐥𝐞,” but it has several meanings in Spanish: is it a bat for playing table tennis? Is it an oar? Is it something else? So, being able to actually see the item in context helped me make a translation decision. The item looked like this, and was part of the sewing machine.

Another curious detail is that the name of this item is “𝐌𝐮𝐝𝐝𝐲 𝐘𝐮𝐜𝐤𝐲 𝐏𝐚𝐝𝐝𝐥𝐞,” but when Emi finds it, the dialogue first says that she found something “shiny,” and then she says that it is old and dirty. So, it is not shiny then. Therefore, seeing all the context allows me to adapt the text to match the images.

𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐒𝐘 𝐒𝐎𝐔𝐑𝐂𝐄 𝐓𝐄𝐗𝐓

This point and the previous one are related. What I mean with “messy” is that the strings were not organized in a chronological order as they appeared in the game; instead, they were all mixed, so sometimes it was difficult to know what string came before and after a given string. This complicated my decision-making process regarding some strings.

For example, a string in the bathroom said “𝐍𝐨 𝐰𝐚𝐲.” which can be translated in many ways. At first, I decided to translate it as “𝐈𝐦𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐢𝐛𝐥𝐞.” However, later on when testing the game, I could see that this phrase came after the string “𝐋𝐨𝐨𝐤 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐨𝐢𝐥𝐞𝐭.” So, although my decision may not have been entirely wrong, it didn’t fit the mood of the little girl, who previously said “𝐄𝐰!” and is not willing to put her hands inside the toilet (I mean, I wouldn’t either haha). So, after seeing the string in context, I decided to translate it as “𝐍𝐨, 𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐬.,” which better portrays Emi’s rejection to performing the action

𝐃𝐄𝐍𝐒𝐄 𝐓𝐄𝐗𝐓 𝐂𝐎𝐌𝐁𝐈𝐍𝐄𝐃 𝐖𝐈𝐓𝐇 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐂𝐎𝐃𝐄

If the translator uses a classic text editor like Notepad (Windows), Notepad++, Sublime Text, or even Word, finding the text within all the code may become really tedious. As you can see in the first picture, the text could become a nightmare to decode.

Since the translatable text is mixed with the code, the chances of making mistakes by translating something that should not be translated, erasing or changing any letter of the code may cause the game to break. For example, within the code, there were strings that contained a 𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐃𝐈𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐀𝐋 𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐓𝐄𝐌𝐄𝐍𝐓 beginning with “𝐢𝐟” like this one:

<<𝐢𝐟 $𝐯𝐢𝐬𝐢𝐭𝐞𝐝_𝐬𝐡𝐞𝐝 𝐞𝐪 “𝐧𝐨”>>\𝐧𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐝𝐨𝐨𝐫 𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐤𝐞𝐝 𝐚𝐬 𝐄𝐦𝐢 𝐩𝐮𝐬𝐡𝐞𝐝 𝐢𝐭 𝐨𝐩𝐞𝐧, 𝐢𝐭𝐬 𝐫𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐲 𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐞𝐬 𝐬𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐚𝐠𝐞𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐛𝐚𝐝 𝐰𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐦𝐢𝐬𝐮𝐬𝐞.

This type of statement establishes that if something is done, then something else should happen (this is just a basic explanation, since this is not about programming). Based on this, the analyzed statement states that if Emi haven’t entered the shed before, then that text should be displayed. However, my CAT tool accidentally changed all the inverted commas “ ” for angular quotation marks « », including those within the code. So, when I went to test the game, the text that was supposed to be displayed was not there, and the condition statement highlighted in red was showed instead:

As you can see, a minimal change like inverted commas can alter or break the game, so it is really important to carefully analyze the source text to spot the translatable and untranslatable text to avoid any mistake.

𝐋𝐀𝐘𝐎𝐔𝐓 𝐏𝐑𝐎𝐁𝐋𝐄𝐌𝐒

If you’re a detail-oriented person like me, you will always try to make the final product look as smooth and clean as possible. In this case, there were some layout problems due to an abusive use of the line break tag “/n,” which generated an excessively long space between strings, causing it not to fit in the whole screen, and therefore, made difficult the reading:

However, knowing how the “/n” tag works, and having the game to test it, it was easy for me to make some changes and to organize some strings so that the layout was correct and clean. Of course, this process was all about trial and error You can see the difference in the layout in my revised version, which fitted perfectly the whole screen without scrolling:

𝐁𝐔𝐆𝐒

There were minimal bugs in the game. They did not make it difficult to play the game, but one as a games localizer cannot turn the blind eye to them. For instance, there were some transition screens which showed “𝐎𝐅𝐅𝐈𝐂𝐄,” when the character was actually in a different room, like the “𝐊𝐈𝐓𝐂𝐇𝐄𝐍.” In some of those cases, there was even an image of the office.

One could pin point the placeholders that were causing these troubles and fix them, or just resort to other solutions like erasing the title and images and leaving just the dialogue (of course, one cannot make such freely decisions in a real translation task, always consult with your client).

You can see, then, that this interesting game can pose a real challenge for those who are brave enough to localize it. Just kidding! It has its challenges, but you can overcome each of them by learning and practicing, because no one is born with all the knowledge.

As I mentioned before, having the possibility to test your translation and seeing the strings in context is really valuable and a great instance for you to hone your translation skills. Besides, you will have a new title to add to your portfolio!

I highly encourage you to put your hands to localizing the game, honing your skills, and entering the fantastic area of video games localization!

If you're up to the challenge, you can download the Translation pack and get down to work from the button below!

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