Video game localization: the transcreative approach in Animal Crossing: Wild World

Abstract

Technologies have graced humans with countless possibilities and functionalities that have crossed all bordersand boundaries of the world. Internationalization and globalization have made it extremely easy to make all products accessible in every single country; however, it has also created the necessity to adapt these products to the rapid growth and demands of globalization in the technological world. For that reason, localization has been an important part in the process, helping in the linguistic and cultural adaptation of products to several countries. One of the most successful domains in localization has been the video game sector, important for its increasingly stratosphericexposure and risen sales. In the many ways of approaching the localization of a product, the most recurrent technique in the video game sector is transcreation, also known asthe creative translation or localization of a product–that is why the center of this study is the game Animal Crossing: Wild World, aquintessential and renowned transcreative video game. In order to test the level of creativity used in the game,an analysis of the English and Spanish version has been made through a combination of two methodologies: the multidimensional ludic-narrative approach in Paredes-Otero (2021) for localization; and the translation techniques approach in Gonzalez de Benito (2017)for translation. Thus, by following a multidimensional and multidisciplinary approach,the analysis has helped reflecting the dominance of the transcreation approach and the creative translation technique used in the version in English and the localized game in Spanish.