Four years of cramming and counting: Localising fictional culture in The Sims 4 Discover University
Mäkelä, Heini (2024)
Mäkelä, Heini
2024
Kielten kandidaattiohjelma - Bachelor's Programme in Languages
Informaatioteknologian ja viestinnän tiedekunta - Faculty of Information Technology and Communication Sciences
This publication is copyrighted. You may download, display and print it for Your own personal use. Commercial use is prohibited.
Hyväksymispäivämäärä
2024-12-05
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tuni-2024120410777
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tuni-2024120410777
Tiivistelmä
The Sims 4 is a life simulation game that allows the player to control the lives of simulated characters in a world that is inherently fictitious. The research focus of my thesis is to analyse how the fictional proper nouns and real-world based cultural references of the game’s Discover University expansion are localised from American English into Finnish, and how the localisation takes the visuals and the immersion of the expansion into consideration.
My comparative analysis of Discover University and its localisation is based on Silvia Pettini’s model of six translation strategies for realia and irrealia: retention, direct translation, explicitation, generalisation and specification, transcreation, and omission. I collected the data first from the American English original version of the expansion and then from the Finnish localisation, and after I had gathered the data as screenshots, I created a spreadsheet and calculated the relevant uses of the aforementioned strategies. According to my analysis, the most common strategy in terms of both fictional proper nouns and real-world references is direct translation. Meanwhile, transcreation is notably more common with fictive cases than with real-world references, and omission is used with real-world references but not with fictional proper nouns.
As a result of my analysis, I argue that the Finnish localisation of Discover University is a combination of domestication and foreignisation strategies that focuses on the expansion being a simulation rather than a true real-world equivalent. As the expansion’s visuals are inherently based on a British setting and represented through the developer’s Northern American viewpoint, the Finnish localisation cannot ignore the university culture that the visuals represent. However, the subtle use of transcreation and omission allow the localisation to creatively highlight the fictitious nature of the expansion, which, in combination with the domesticated language and the foreign visuals, does support the overall player immersion of the localisation.
My comparative analysis of Discover University and its localisation is based on Silvia Pettini’s model of six translation strategies for realia and irrealia: retention, direct translation, explicitation, generalisation and specification, transcreation, and omission. I collected the data first from the American English original version of the expansion and then from the Finnish localisation, and after I had gathered the data as screenshots, I created a spreadsheet and calculated the relevant uses of the aforementioned strategies. According to my analysis, the most common strategy in terms of both fictional proper nouns and real-world references is direct translation. Meanwhile, transcreation is notably more common with fictive cases than with real-world references, and omission is used with real-world references but not with fictional proper nouns.
As a result of my analysis, I argue that the Finnish localisation of Discover University is a combination of domestication and foreignisation strategies that focuses on the expansion being a simulation rather than a true real-world equivalent. As the expansion’s visuals are inherently based on a British setting and represented through the developer’s Northern American viewpoint, the Finnish localisation cannot ignore the university culture that the visuals represent. However, the subtle use of transcreation and omission allow the localisation to creatively highlight the fictitious nature of the expansion, which, in combination with the domesticated language and the foreign visuals, does support the overall player immersion of the localisation.
Kokoelmat
- Kandidaatintutkielmat [8709]