Análise dos aspectos de domesticação e estrangeirização na tradução de fã do videogame phoenix wright: ace attorney

Abstract

The videogame industry is one of the world’s biggest industries, and a huge reason for that is localization, the process through which games are adapted for other languages and cultures. There are very few studies on localization, specially from Brazil, and that’s even more pronounced when considering studies on the commonly seen fan localizations. One perspective that can be used to assess translations is Venuti’s (1995) and his concepts of domestication and foreignization. This paper has the objective of verifying occurrences of domestication and foreignization in the fan-made translation for the game Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, evaluating these aspects and checking the recurrence of domestication and foreignization to find which is most prevalent. As a study on translation, this paper is inserted in Holmes’ (2000) Translation Studies as a descriptive translation study. To substantiate this study, we present definitions of localization and game translation, and we develop the concepts of domestication and foreignization. About 1 hour of gameplay was recorded for the analysis, and this recording had its text transcribed to compare the English and Portuguese texts. Post-analysis we noted the presence of domestication and foreignization in the text, with a large prevalence of domestication, which indicates a text that tries to send to the reader the feeling of interacting with a game developed in their native language.