In the field of videogame translation, a market that generates worldwide annual revenues of more 100 billion dollars, the role of the translator today as a cultural mediator is essential.
It has been a long time since machines have been limited to literal translations, complete with all the often comical mistakes. Who among us does not recall with tears of laughter that first version of Google Translate way back in 2006?
In this era of globalisation there is more translation work than ever. International businesses reach increasingly greater levels of sophistication, demanding and creating an enormous volume of documents and correspondence and a huge number of web pages, involving partners from all over the world with different cultures and languages.
(...) As we learn to speak we are learning to translate; the child who asks his mother the meaning of a word is really asking her to translate the unfamiliar into the simple words he already knows. In this sense, translation within the same language is not essentially different from translation between two tongues, and the history of all peoples parallels the child's experience (...)
Localisation and translation are terms that often cause confusion. While they may seem similar, there are clear cultural, functional and technical differences between them. To carry on a successful translation, the translator must know the language; however, other skills and a profound understanding of the target market culture are required for localisation.
