Localisation is the process of taking a product and adapting it to fit the culture in question. This usually involves making it both linguistically and culturally appropriate for the target audience. While there are many areas in video game translations where localisation holds a factor, this study will focus on localisation changes in the personalities of fictional characters between the original Japanese version and the English localised version of the video game Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn and its expansion Heavensward for PC, PS3 and PS4. With this in mind, specific examples are examined using Satoshi Kinsui's work on yakuwarigo, role language as the main framework for this study. Five non-playable characters were profiled and had each of their dialogues transcribed for a comparative analysis. This included the original Japanese text, the officially localised English text and a translation of the original Japanese text done by myself. Each character were also given a short summary and a reasoned speculation on why these localisation changes might have occurred. The result shows that there were instances where some translations had been deliberately adjusted to ensure that the content did not cause any problematic issues to players overseas. This could be reasoned out that some of the Japanese role languages displayed by characters in this game could potentially cause dispute among the western audience. In conclusion, the study shows that localisation can be a difficult process that not only requires a translator's knowledge of the source and target language, but also display some creativity in writing ability to ensure that players will have a comparable experience without causing a rift in the fanbase.

In storytelling, one of the most important functions of dialogue is to create characterisation. Character voice is each character's unique style of speaking, which can impart explicit or implicit information about characters, such as their personality, age, or gender. Japanese language texts are known to use gendered language and role language (yakuwarigo) as a way of creating characterisation and character voice.This case study examines the English dialogue and the Japanese subtitles of four characters (Tissaia, Yennefer, Geralt, and Jaskier) from the series The Witcher. The aim was to categorize the strategies used to recreate the original character voice, to mark the differences in the character voices, and to examine their possible impact on the overall characterisations. The study concludes that the main strategy in creating character voice was gendered language and role language. Overall, the English and Japanese character voices were roughly equivalent with each other, and the used gendered language was supported by the characters’ personalities or appearance. The character Jaskier had the most differences between his English and Japanese dialogue, most likely due to the difficulties in recreating his brand of humorous tone in subtitle form.

The book Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, written by the prolific author J.K.Rowling, is a popular piece of fiction that has been adapted into a film as well as severalvideogames. The book has also been translated from its original English into dozens oflanguages, including Japanese. Translations can differ from their original counterparts,especially when the languages in question differ in their syntax and cultural norms. Thesedifferences can potentially alter the original author’s intended character portrayals.This project aimed to evaluate the effect of gendered language and yakuwarigo on charactervoices in the Japanese translation of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Fourcharacters – Hermione, Hagrid, Dumbledore, and McGonagall – were evaluated bymeans of their spoken dialogue in the book. The English lines of dialogue and their Japanesecounterparts were extracted from the book and analysed.The results of the dialogue-analysis show that the dialogue in the Japanese version of thebook was more gendered, and exhibited typical signs of role language. These findingswere corroborated through the use of separate questionnaires for Japanese and Englishparticipants. The questionnaires asked participants to determine the gender and role ofcharacters purely on the basis of certain lines in the book, with no external contextprovided. Japanese participants managed to identify both the gender and role of charactersmore accurately.

Yakuwarigo, or role language, is a Japanese term used to describe different typesof exaggerated spoken languages that are used in Japanese fiction. Yakuwarigo isoften assigned to a character based on, for example, the character’s personality,age, or occupation, and it can be different from how people actually speak in reallife.In the present study, the first research question intended to find out which type ofyakuwarigo was used when translating certain fantasy characters from English toJapanese. This was done by analyzing the dialogue of four characters from thenovel Howl’s Moving Castle (1986) written by Diana Wynne Jones. The aim ofthe second research question was to see if the personalities of the characters couldbe interpreted differently by the reader in the translated novel due to the use ofyakuwarigo.The results show that two witches both used a mix of onna-kotoba and otokokotoba, and additionally one of them used ojōsama-kotoba and the other obāsango. A wizard used otoko-kotoba and shōnen-go/jōshi-go, and a demon used mostlyotoko-kotoba with a hint of Edo-kotoba. The role languages seemed to fit most ofthese characters, but the demon’s personality was deemed to have changed in thetranslation.

This thesis seeks to introduce the concept of role language in translation in the context of video game localisation. There is very little written on the subject of role language in translation from Japanese to English, and none which pertains to role language in video games. There is also a seeming deficiency of reliable literature regarding the product of translation in video game localisation, analysing what was done and what effects it may have had on the finished product. By analysing the particular role language profiles of selected characters from Bokujō Monogatari: Hajimari no Daichi for the Nintendo 3DS, this thesis hopes to serve as a stepping stone towards a new area of video game localisation. Eight non-playable characters, four male and four female, were analysed to create their respective role language profiles. Four scenarios were chosen for each character: the first and last heart event, the love confession and the married life sequence. The translations of each of these scenarios were analysed, along with how the respective characters were linguistically portrayed. The study found that although many characters were found to retain most of their original linguistic profiling in translation, there were instances where misconception of the source text could have been a factor. The translations where this rather than a different linguistic profile altered the character’s perception, the translations were often ST-oriented. In translations where the characterisation had been unaltered, predominantly it seemed the result of a critical distance from the ST and willingness on the translator’s part to take creative liberties. Role language is an integral feature of Japanese popular fiction, and it would seem that the fictional realms of video games are no exception. Although this thesis has studied only a limited sample, it would not be entirely out of line to draw the initial conclusion that to take a step back from the source material and instead focus on conveying a perception of a character rather than follow the written script, seems to result in a character portrayal in the target text similar to that in the source text. / Denna uppsats ämnar introducera översättning av rollspråk som en del av spellokalisering. Det finns inte mycket skrivet om rollspråk i översättning från japanska till engelska, och inget som åsyftar rollspråk i spel. Det finns även en märkbar brist på studier som behandlar översättning som slutprodukt inom sammanhanget spellokalisering. Genom att analysera utvalda karaktärer från Bokujō Monogatari: Hajimari no Daichi till Nintendo 3DS och hur deras respektive rollspråksprofiler ter sig i översättning, är förhoppningen att denna uppsats ska tjäna som ett första steg mot ett nytt område inom spellokalisering. Åtta karaktärer, fyra manliga och fyra kvinnliga, valdes ut och analyserades för att bygga deras respektive rollspråksprofiler. Fyra videoklipp valdes ut per karaktär, första och sista hjärte-händelsen, kärleksbekännelsen, och livet som gifta. Översättningarna av dessa analyserades, tillsammans med hur de respektive karaktärerna framställdes språkligt. Studien fann att trots att flera av karaktärerna i stort behöll sina ursprungliga språkprofiler i översättning, fanns det tillfällen då källtexten kan ha missuppfattats. Översättningar där detta snarare än en annorlunda framställning av karaktären var skillnaden, visade sig ofta vara mer källtextsorienterade. I översättningar där karaktäriseringen tedde sig likartad, verkar det vara resultatet av ett kritiskt omdöme och avstånd från källtexten tillsammans med översättarens villighet att ta sig friheter med källan. Rollspråk är en väsentlig del i japansk populärlitteratur och populärkultur, och det verkar inte som att spel i sammanhanget skulle vara något undantag. Trots att denna uppsats endast har analyserat ett begränsat urval verkar det inte helt omöjligt att kunna dra en första slutsats där att ta ett steg tillbaka från källtexten och istället lägga fokus på att förmedla en uppfattning av en karaktär, snarare än det skrivna manuset, mycket väl kan leda till en karaktärisering i måltexten som är mer lik samma i källtexten.

Denna studie ämnar undersöka rollspråket, det vill säga sättet fiktiva karaktärer talar på, i den japanska översättningen av Pippi Långstrump och jämföra det med den svenska källtexten. Syftet med studien är att ta reda på om rollspråk förekommer, vilken kategori det tillhör samt hur rollspråket förändrar läsarens uppfattning av karaktärerna. Studien bygger på en analys som följer Satoshi Kinsuis teorier om rollspråk. Analysen visar att det finns nyansskillnader i karaktärernas språk men huruvida de ska räknas som rollspråk eller inte är en öppen fråga. / This study intends to investigate the role language, which is the way fictional characters speak, in the Japanese translation of Pippi Longstocking and compare it to the Swedish source text. The purpose of this study is to find out if role language occurs, what category it belongs to and how the readers perception of the characters change due to the use of role language. The study is based on an analysis that follows Satoshi Kinsui's theories regarding role language. The analysis shows that there are nuances in the characters way of speaking but whether it could be valid as role language or not is an open question.

I Japan är s.k. rollspråk, dvs. stereotypt språk kopplat till en viss typ av karaktär, vanligt i material riktat till barn, såsom barnfilmer. Trots att rollspråk som forskningsområde är relativt nytt finns ett antal studier som behandlar rollspråk i litterära översättningar, undertextningar och dubbningar till japanska. Få eller inga har dock jämfört hur rollspråket påverkar karaktäriseringen dels i undertexterna, dels i dubbningen av en och samma film. Denna uppsats analyserar japansk undertextning och dubbning av den svenska barnfilmen Du är inte klok Madicken och finner att båda versionerna använder rollspråk på ett liknande sätt för att förenkla karaktäriseringen och framhäva de kvinnliga karaktärernas femininitet genom bl.a. feminina satsfinala partiklar, pronomen, verbformer och interjektioner. / In Japan so called role language, i.e. stereotypical language associated with a certain type of character, frequently occurs in material for children such as children’s films. Role language is a fairly new area of research but despite this, there are a few studies dealing with role language in literary translation, subtitling and dubbing into Japanese. However, few or none of these examine how role language influences characterisation in the subtitles and dubbing of the same film. This thesis analyses the Japanese subtitling and dubbing of the Swedish children’s film Du är inte klok, Madicken and finds that both versions use role language in a similar way to simplify characterisation and emphasize the femininity of female characters through the use of feminine sentence-final particles, pronouns, verb forms and interjections etc.