What makes gendered languages hard to handle in game localization?
1. Lack of context
If you’re translating games, you already know that the lack of context is very common and can cause many problems. One of these problems is a lack of knowledge about the gender of things mentioned, like when a character says “look at that!” Translating may appear easy in such situations. However, the word ‘that’ could have diverse meanings, depending on the gender it represents. In Arabic, for example, there are at least 3 options to convey the word “that”, depending on what it refers to and its grammatical number.
2. Space
When your target language has more than one pronoun to refer to the addressee depending on their gender, it could be a nightmare because some games address all genders, and if you’re translating from English, “you” is just a three-character word that applies to all genders of all numbers. This could result in exceeding the character limit.
3. Placeholders
It’s very common to deal with placeholders in game localization. They could cause a problem when your target language requires adding prefixes depending on the gender of the word replaced by the placeholder. So, you need to know that placeholder and its number if it’s needed to convey an accurate meaning of the sentence.
4. Multiple characters in the game
Problems arise when there is a game that has many characters and there is no specific script for which characters will be in a particular situation. Sometimes you can start a mission in the game and some characters die during the mission. The text should be neutral to suit whatever happens in the mission because you will never know which characters survive or their gender and number.
How can such a problem be handled carefully?
The only possible solution is to use a gender-neutral style as much as you can. If your target language depends on using direct speeches and pronouns, try to tweak the sentence to convey the meaning. For some languages, resorting to nouns instead of adjectives is a good option.
By Eman Abdo
Eman Abdo is an English to Arabic translator specializing in localization and transcreation, mainly in marketing and game localization. She is also the author of Egypt Localization Guide and the force behind the localization of so many apps and games in Arabic and a gamer at core aspiring to change the way Arabic is represented globally. You can reach her at [email protected].