Tradução/localização: análise das legendas do game Batman Arkham City (2012)

Abstract

The present academic work had as the object of analysis the game Batman Arkham City, released on October 18, 2011, by the British video game developer called Rocksteady. The game under study is the 2012 Goty Edition version. Therefore, this research seeks to analyze and understand the relevance of the game in question in the 21st-century culture and how its translation may have positively or negatively affected the players' experience. For this, qualitative, descriptive, and bibliographic research was carried out through the theoretical postulates of translation by Rafael Lanzetti et al. (2009) and Antoine Berman (2011). Furthermore, the theory of polysystems by Itamar Even-Zohar (1990) was used, additionally, the article by Rodolpho Camargo (2013) and the dissertation by Ricardo Vinicius Ferraz de Souza (2015) were used, both were investigations focusing on the analysis and translation of game subtitles. Regarding the theme of game localization, once more, we relied on the work of Souza (2015). Regarding the analysis, we used ABNT NBR 15290 (2016) to address the general technical standards for audiovisual subtitling. In the course of the work, we assumed that game subtitles are dynamic and provide details about the plot, as well as information and tips on how to advance through the game for the players. Our focus was on analyzing the techniques used by the translation team of the game to transpose these two requirements between different languages. It was found that the location/translation of the game grants predominantly foreign characteristics to the game. Also, it was found that cultural elements were not transposed to the target culture. Moreover, we detected that part of the presented problems arose from adversities outside the translator, that is, limitations of the game's source code. To sum up, we concluded that the foreignized aspect of subtitling, added to the lack of transposition, localization, and translation of cultural aspects present in the game. This caused strangeness in the Portuguese-language player, preventing the full understanding of the plot and subliminal meanings to the game's plot, as well as offers difficulties to the advancement and completion of the title for the players.