Overusing of capitalization in games. Capitalization trend. Capitalization of general terms.
Thread poster: Sempiro
Sempiro
Sempiro
China
Local time: 20:41
English to Russian
+ ...
Jun 26, 2017

Hello everyone.

I involved in game translation and I am a gamer myself. For past years I see some weird trend in game industry (even AAA games) when general terms (hero, tower, player score, gold etc) being capitalized in the middle of a sentence, especially in RPG, MMO and MOBA games . For example:

En: This Hero does not exist.
Ru: Этот Герой не существует.
En: Battle to earn Gold and purchase awesome Heroes.
Ru: Участвуй�
... See more
Hello everyone.

I involved in game translation and I am a gamer myself. For past years I see some weird trend in game industry (even AAA games) when general terms (hero, tower, player score, gold etc) being capitalized in the middle of a sentence, especially in RPG, MMO and MOBA games . For example:

En: This Hero does not exist.
Ru: Этот Герой не существует.
En: Battle to earn Gold and purchase awesome Heroes.
Ru: Участвуйте в битвах, зарабатывайте Золото и приобретайте куртых Героев.
En: Attacking enemy Heroes within range of an Enemy Defense Tower will cause the Tower to target you.
Ru: При нападении на вражеских Героев в зоне поражения их Башни, она будет атаковать вас!
En: Your Credibility Score is an evaluation of your in-game behavior.
Ru: Ваш Счет игрока — это оценка ваших действий в игре.
...


I personally think that all general terms shouldn't be capitalized, but can be colored. When I translate general terms I do not capitalize them.

What do you think? How do you deal with general terms during translation? Do you follow the source and capitalize them or not? And why?
Collapse


 
Sheila Wilson
Sheila Wilson  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 12:41
Member (2007)
English
+ ...
Does the client have a preference? Jun 26, 2017

You certainly can't just copy the source capitalisation, for no good reason. Everything ever translated from German into English would be a real mess if translators did that.

 
Aleksandra Romanova
Aleksandra Romanova
Russian Federation
Local time: 21:41
Japanese to English
+ ...
Specification Jun 26, 2017

Sempiro wrote:

Hello everyone.

I involved in game translation and I am a gamer myself. For past years I see some weird trend in game industry (even AAA games) when general terms (hero, tower, player score, gold etc) being capitalized in the middle of a sentence, especially in RPG, MMO and MOBA games . For example:

En: This Hero does not exist.
Ru: Этот Герой не существует.
En: Battle to earn Gold and purchase awesome Heroes.
Ru: Участвуйте в битвах, зарабатывайте Золото и приобретайте куртых Героев.
En: Attacking enemy Heroes within range of an Enemy Defense Tower will cause the Tower to target you.
Ru: При нападении на вражеских Героев в зоне поражения их Башни, она будет атаковать вас!
En: Your Credibility Score is an evaluation of your in-game behavior.
Ru: Ваш Счет игрока — это оценка ваших действий в игре.
...


I personally think that all general terms shouldn't be capitalized, but can be colored. When I translate general terms I do not capitalize them.

What do you think? How do you deal with general terms during translation? Do you follow the source and capitalize them or not? And why?


I work in this sphere and in this exact pair, and I'm lucky enough to have my clients either prepare a sheet with projects specs, where they list end client's preferences, or just stick to common sense and rules of Russian language.

I advise you discuss the matter with your clients and maybe consider creating a ТЗ (тех.задание, project specs) to have some technical stuff settled, like capitalization, usage of ё, preferences about quotation marks, string length etc.
I never come to the idea of creating such a thing for my non-gaming clients, but it's really invaluable for gaming projects.

I personally am an advocate of using ё all the time and following Russian rules of capitalization. But at the end of day it's the client who sets the rules.

[Edited at 2017-06-26 19:13 GMT]


 
Christopher Schröder
Christopher Schröder
United Kingdom
Member (2011)
Swedish to English
+ ...
FWIW Jun 26, 2017

It seems these words are capitalised because they are defined Terms and not just entirely random words, so there may be a case for retaining this.

 
Lincoln Hui
Lincoln Hui  Identity Verified
Hong Kong
Local time: 20:41
Member
Chinese to English
+ ...
It's fine Jun 26, 2017

The only one where the capitalization seems inappropriate is this:

En: Attacking enemy Heroes within range of an Enemy Defense Tower will cause the Tower to target you.


 


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Overusing of capitalization in games. Capitalization trend. Capitalization of general terms.







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