O uso de CAT tools na localização de jogos digitais: da mensuração à exemplificação através de Our Life: beginnings and always

Abstract

The consumption of digital games grows exponentially every year. According to research into games around the world, and in Brazil, almost 70% of the population plays some game, which means that three out of every four people consume this type of content (Newzoo, 2024). As a result, the need for translation and localization of the content of these products is growing proportionally, following industry trends. As demand increases, so does the volume of texts to be translated, while the deadlines for translators to perform their work decrease due to the need to translate into several languages. In parallel, games are expected to be released simultaneously in all the countries for which they are planned to be translated and localized. In this context, and considering the advancement of technology, the use of CAT tools - Computer Assisted Translation Tools - in translation and localization processes is becoming increasingly evident and debated. The question is if these tools have an impact on the final result of the product. So, this Master’s thesis aims to describe, discuss, and investigate the publications in the field of Translation Studies, in English and Portuguese, on the use of Computer Assisted Translation Tools in translating and localizing games. To achieve the purposes of this thesis, a corpus was compiled through bibliometric research conducted on the Publish or Perish tool, which gathers undergraduate conclusion papers, Master’s dissertations, and PhD dissertations, in English and Portuguese, related to the field of game translation and localization and which mention the use of CAT tools. After filtering the data on that corpus, the selected publications were organized and categorized to perform a keyword search and analyze which tools were mentioned by the researchers, and their comments on them. Moreover, parts of the game Our Life: Beginnings and Always were applied to the CAT tool most cited by the researchers to analyze the impacts, positive or negative, of their use in the localization process of this game. The main objective of this Master’s thesis is not only to identify the most cited tools but also to investigate how they impact the translating and localizing process of digital games. I have concluded that despite all the innovations incorporated into these tools, the process still benefits from the technologies that form the basis of a translation memory system, and human factors continue to be essential to the process.