On Game Localization Translation Strategies From A Functional Perspective

With the massive influx of foreign games into Chinese market,video game translation has gradually become an indispensable part of game localization,and the quality of translation has also tested the level of game localization.At present,however,the quality of translation is uneven,which affects the experience of the game.Based on the Functional Equivalence Theory of Eugene Nida,this thesis makes a comparative analysis of the English,Chinese-Mainland and Chinese-Taiwan versions of the famous basketball game NBA2K19 from the perspectives of lexical equivalence,syntactical equivalence,textual equivalence,and explores the translation strategies of sports games based on spoken texts.Finally,the findings and limitations of this study are summarized.Through the case study,the author found that the translation of this game only used literal translation or machine translation,and some of the translations were verbose and even sometimes separated from the game,which made some of the translations difficult to understand,so easily led to misunderstanding of the game texts.At the same time,this thesis also puts forward related translation strategies: adopting reasonable translation methods,such as the use of the Chinese four-characters words,strong-emotions words,Addition and so on,keeping the language concise to avoid the fussy and playing the game yourself and localize the translation reasonably according to the game experience.Through this study,we hope to provide reference for future game localization translators.