“The most frustrating challenge in managing localisation is not being able to speak the languages yourself to verify the quality and how it's going. You're completely at the mercy of trusting other people to know what they're doing or that they’re actually putting care into it. And it was hard to fully monitor this on top of my other work,” says Natalie, who had a particularly difficult time trying to manage the localisation of Kenshi in 8 different languages whilst writing the game.
“There are also so many complications with writing for Kenshi; I have to train new writers for so many months to get into good ‘Kenshi habits’, to understand how wordswaps fit together grammatically, to check sentences flow together nicely (procedural dialogue can fit together extremely clunky due to the many alternative combinations), even just drilling in Kenshi’s themes and consistencies. Kenshi writing is a whole other level of thought process - only half of it involves actual creativity, the other half is Kenshi-specific brain aneurysm level of technical weirdness.
It's hard that I can't check these things myself and properly train our translators to the same level. So I’m really glad to have Meg with us for Kenshi 2, she has more dedicated time and is actually working alongside the other translators ‘on the front line’ herself to communicate these issues and work more closely with them.”
“I got involved in Kenshi 1’s translation after the game was released, so I was familiar with the world and the majority of the dialogue. There was also a wonderful Wiki created by fans both in English and Japanese to refer to.
By getting involved in Kenshi 2’s localisation from the development stage, it allowed me to communicate some thoughts and suggestions that could make the world of difference for translators. With internal wiki, translator notes, and improvements in FCS, the experience of translating Kenshi 2 is now similar to (or even better than) translating fully completed Kenshi 1, thanks to the writing and technical teams that kept localisation as one of the core considerations in the development.
It has also been great working with Paola and Marie from the early localisation stage. It provides us with the opportunity to share the issues that are incorporated in the notes and improvements in FCS. We are sharing whatever difficulties we are facing, however small they might be, with writing and technical teams, knowing that any answers we could find now could help other translators as they come along in the future. “ - Meg
“Translating Kenshi is always a lot of fun but also can be hard work. Luckily the writers have always been very accessible and gave many tips, context and explanations about complicated, made up language, onomatopoeias and other stuff that comes out of their minds.
I made up a word to translate another made up: nipeludo for wedger. It's a word that I use in my own world and now a present to Kenshi players in Spanish.” - Paola
“I love the creative challenges of Kenshi translation, because it makes our brain stretch and is always interesting! One of the most challenging (and fun) aspects is the translation of made-up words and imaginary things, as you have to stay true to the meaning and effect from the original text, while being creative and steering away from literal translation…Catcrawlers Handbook is a great example of this balancing act!
One of my objectives when translating this text was to stay true to the spirit of the original: that is, a text that sounds like a serious handbook for a game, but is actually full of nonsensical and silly (sometimes slightly rude) gibberish. I found a website with the lexicon for card and casino games, and mixed some of these more serious words with nonsensical ones to create associations, actions and images that were as funny and absurd in French as they were in English.
For example, “lick a SPADE” has become “lécher un CARREAU”. I’ve kept the idea of licking something which was funny, but changed “spade” to the French word for “diamonds”, which is both a playing card suit and the word for “window”, keeping the double meaning and creating a comical image (the French word for “spade" didn’t offer this). - Marie
“It’s not possible to play with words in Japanese in this paragraph, so I translated more freely to emphasise the meaning. The second sentence is broken down into two, and as we can’t capitalise words in Japanese SPADE is expressed with『』. Overall tone is typical of any old world handbook you’ll find in Japanese. “ - Meg