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Localization: The process of making a game developed in another country/language retain its cultural relevance and storyline in the country it's being shipped to.
It's a simple enough task in principle, but not in execution. With a game like Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance making sure the deep storyline transfers from Japanese to American audiences is critical. No one notices a great localization, because its integration is seamless. The goal of localization is to make gamers wonder if the game was even done in Japanese. Three of the guys behind the curtain took some time to talk with me about the process.
Rich Amtower and Tim O'Leary, both Associate Localization Producers and Alan Averill, Localization Writer/Editor showed up for the interview, the results are after the jump.
Kotaku: Fire Emblem is a series that in part so compelling because of the punitive character death its characters face. How does dealing with these characters appearing in and out of the storyline change your jobs?
Alan Averill: That aspect of Fire Emblem is one of the things that makes the game unique and makes it different. You have a real investment in these characters because if they die, they're gone. Not only does that force you to think before your actions, but it forces us as localizers to make you care about your characters.
Kotaku: So as localizers, how do you make us care about them?
Rich Amtower: The Key thing for our task, is injecting the characters with enough personality to make their characters lives mean something to you so that their deaths will matter to you. Do we choose their characters because of their personality or what they can bring to the game strategically. I always choose the characters who's personality appeals. There are small adjustments that are made when a character dies, not major splinterings, but when we get these moments to make a character's absence do something. In Path of Radiance there's a trio of brothers, if any of them die, based on who's alive or who is dead the conversations can change. Making sure that their lives matter and making sure that their abscences are obvious too. It means that you've lost more than a character - you've lost a personality.
Kotaku: These personalities can't always translate directly, you guys have to do some work on rebuilding certain characters, right?
Tim O'Leary: Sure. Take the character of Bastion, who, while not a main character does have a lot of speech. We had to do a lot of work with his character. The way he spoke in the original Japanese version just didn't translate here. So I took and made him this sort of type character, if you read through his text you'll see that it's all in Iambic pentameter. That's an example of taking the character and making them adapt, at the core the character is still the same character and fills the example.
Rich Amtower: There's no way to convey that character (Bastion), there's no way to convey what that character's speech means, a lot of that character's speech was cultural assumption, so instead of a straight translation, we have to remap it culturally. Iambic pentameter immediately calls up things to mind, even that subtle nudge pushes things in the right direction.
