On Translation Strategies of Culture-Specific Items in Game Localization

Abstract

Translation is of great importance in game localization. During the translation process, some words may cause difficulty in translation as they are unique in game culture. They are either newly created words, or common words with new meanings in the game. Javier Franco Aixelá defined CSIs as “certain items in source texts whose function and connotation involve translation difficulties in their transference to target texts, because of nonexistence of given items or their different textual status in the cultural system of the readers of target texts”. Guided by his study on Culture-Specific Items, this paper takes the translation of the created words and neologies in League of Legend as examples to study the detailed translation strategies of Culture-specific items in the fictional game context, so as to offer some help to the improvement of the translation quality of game culture-specific items.