Research On Game Translation Difficulties And Strategies Based On Readability

In recent years,with the rapid development of China’s game industry,more and more local game companies have chosen to enter foreign markets.Also,they have set higher standards for game translation,and regarded readability as a major indicator for the translation quality.With the goal of improving readability,this thesis attempts to analyze game translation difficulties and strategies,based on a case study on the translation of the game Romancing Saga of Beauty and Devil.First,this thesis briefly introduces the game and its translation project.Second,considering the characteristics of the game and its audience,this thesis argues that a highly readable game script should meet three requirements,namely,being concise,credible and culturally appropriate.Third,this thesis concludes that,in the scripts,there are three phenomena violating the abovementioned requirements and causing translation difficulties: translationese,dialogues with few spoken-language features,and a large number of slang words.Finally,this thesis proposes three translation strategies to deal with those difficulties and improve readability: to make translation concise,translators should delete redundant information and split long sentences into shorter ones;to make translation credible,translators can add more spoken-language features,like strengthening logical connections within the dialogues and adding modal particles;and to make translation culturally appropriate,translators should domesticate slang words through substitution,liberal translation and recontextualization.The author sincerely hopes this thesis can help other game translators improve their translation quality.