My thesis focuses on the volunteer translators of the browser-based role-playing game Popmundo. In addition, I will give a brief insight into the self-image and background of the volunteer translators.
Game Localisation in Research
O'Hagan & Mangiron argue that game localization involves the concept of transcreation, understood as the greater level of creativity required by game localization compared to other localization efforts. Furthermore, they believe that the concept alleviates some of the tension between the terminological duel between translation and localization because it emphasizes the importance of the creative aspect of game localization.
Game Localisation in Practice
One way of dealing with the consequences of the globalizing world in games is culturalization or cultural localization. Mangiron (2008, quoted in O'Hagan & Mangiron) defines this as 'adapting the cultural content of a game in order to successfully market it internationally'.
Volunteer Translation: Concepts and Contexts
In this chapter I will discuss voluntary translation from different perspectives to provide a background for the translation activities of Popmundo, which fall under voluntary translation. New forms of voluntary translation have sometimes even been seen as a threat among translation professionals (Irjala 2017, 16; Flanagan.
Volunteer Translators’ Motivation
Deci (1972, cited in O'Brien & Schäler) identified two emotions belonging to intrinsic motivation - 'the desire to be autonomous and the desire to be competent' - which Shirky (2010) refers to as personal and social motivation, respectively. Responses to O'Brien & Schäler's (2010, 2010, 6) most social motivation indicate that both were the most present and social motivation. motivating factors and the two lowest motivating factors included factors belonging to both personal and social motivation.
Motivation in Volunteer Translation: Ethical Aspects
Popmundo is a browser-based MMORPG, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game3, although the game could be considered a somewhat atypical representative of the genre. I will discuss Popmundo in more detail first from an organizational perspective in Section 4.1 and then as a game in Section 4.2.
Popmundo as an Organisation
However, I believe this visibility is of little importance to most volunteer game translators. If the 'public' in the previous quote is replaced with 'Popmundo players', I believe that the game and the company behind it have been successful with this, which, in turn, has had a positive effect on the motivation of its volunteer translators.
Popmundo as a Game
One possible way of looking at Popmundo is to think of it as an example of Web 2.0, one of the three stages into which the development of the Internet is usually divided. In other words, the game has some features that appear to belong to Web 3.0, but the vast majority of the game's functionality points to Web 2.0.
Popmundo as a Translation Environment
Languages and Texts of Popmundo
Similarly, the amount of content curated and created by volunteers in the game closely aligns with the definition of Web 2.0. In practice, master tongue refers to the imperfect English written by the Swedish developers of the game.
Translation Interface
In addition to localized in-game text, the game relies on various player-produced texts, such as blog texts, forum posts, song lyrics, and articles in the game's in-game magazine. Like the previous section, this section will be based in part on my personal experiences as a volunteer translator at Popmundo, as well as the understanding I've gained about the process of other volunteers during discussions on the in-game translator forum during my years as a volunteer translator – especially when the text describes volunteer translation on a general in-game level.
Translation Process in Popmundo
Major Characteristics of Translation Work in Popmundo
The issue exists in places such as menu texts, where the space allocated to a specific string of text allows for either a suboptimal translation or truncation of the text - defined by O'Hagan &. This forces translators to rely heavily on their knowledge of the game to try to guess the most likely context for a phrase. This particular sentence appears on the main character page of each character in the game, and the variable '[CharacterFirstName]' appears as the first name of said character, while the other variables are filled with different strings from the database according to the choices the player has made in the game.
For an ordinary user, this sentence might appear in the following form: "Patrik likes to shop in his free time and tries to compose music to get ahead professionally".
Translation Resources and Their Usage in Popmundo
Each game language, on the other hand, has its own forum thread, where the translators have the opportunity to discuss translation issues among themselves, mostly in the language they are translating the game into. Other sources for in-game translation instructions are either given in the translator forum or related to the string to be translated - the developers have the option to add a comment for each line of text they add, but this option is rarely used. Both types of instructions are more specific in nature: In the forum, the developers often provide the translators with information about how an upcoming feature in the game is planned to work as a whole, to provide context for the strings that appear without context in the actual translation interface.
The two senior translators working on the game are responsible for ensuring that all language versions remain up to date.
Operating Culture of the Translation Community of Popmundo
The developers generally don't impose specific deadlines on translators - instead, the translators work as quickly as possible. About the workload of the translators, the developers do not give a specific amount of time, most likely because the workload varies depending on the introduction of new features. While, as mentioned, the developers rarely, if ever, provide feedback on the actual translations, they do have a set of instructions that the translators are expected to follow while translating.
A total of 37% considered that the translators do a good job most of the time, while 15% answered sometimes, 3% rarely and 3% never.
Questionnaires in Data Collection
The starting point of my thesis is sociological in the sense that my main interest lies in the experience of the volunteer translators themselves. There are several examples in TS of using web-based questionnaires in data collection. Many of the studies already introduced in Section 3.2 also used online questionnaires in their data collection – including McDonough Dolmaya (2012), O'Brien & Schäler (2010), Irjala (2017) and Talvikallio (2014).
In what follows, I will introduce the questionnaire I used for data collection in the next section before detailing my method of analysis in section 6.3, with a view to the methodological success of the studies mentioned in this section as well.
Questionnaire for Popmundo’s Translators
I posted the link to the questionnaire on the translator forum on June 16, 2015, where only translators, developers, and community representatives can access the forum. I asked for the character name of the translators in the questionnaire itself to ensure that all answers were by volunteer translators. The questionnaire was open until July 7, 2015, during which time a total of 22 volunteer translators completed the questionnaire.
Regarding the confirmation of the identity of the respondents, for this purpose I asked for their character names in the questionnaire (while ensuring that the names would not be used for any other purpose).
Method of Analysis
As for inductive versus theoretical thematic analysis, my approach falls under the latter, as my analysis is 'driven by the researcher's theoretical or analytical interest in the field' (Braun & . Clarke the area here is the motivation of volunteer translators. This is not my approach as such, but by analyzing the answers given by Popmundo's in the open questions I sent them in the open questions I sent them in the voluntary questions essence, 'identification and categorization of motives based on the discourse of volunteer translators' The data analyzed in this thesis with the above method consists of answers to the open questions in the questionnaire sent to the volunteer translators by Popmundo.
In this section I will present and discuss the responses to the questionnaire sent to Popmundo's volunteer translators.
Background Information
In discussing the results of the questionnaire in this section, I will use the qualitative method presented in the previous section. As far as translation is concerned, the vast majority of volunteer translators had at most a vague idea of what it was all about. A good half of the respondents stated that they had no or almost no experience.
The next section takes a closer look at the answers to the questionnaire, focusing on the motivation of the volunteer translators.
Individual Motivation-Related Issues
The remaining respondent's reason for staying in the position included job satisfaction and lack of replacements: 'Yes. 7 I have edited the language used in some of the quotes I use to preserve the anonymity of respondents. The most interesting finding here is, in my opinion, the fact that the majority of respondents do not indicate organizations that are similar to Popmundo among the organizations that would volunteer as translators, marking Popmundo as a special case for many.
Several of the respondents also considered the question difficult ('I didn't think about it, to be honest.').
Motivation of Popmundo’s Volunteer Translators
- Initial motivation
- Perceived benefits
- Motivation to Work for no Monetary Reward
- Comparison of the Motivational Factors
Finally, seven respondents mentioned enjoyment of the work itself as the most important benefit for them. They were 1) enjoyment of the work, 2) helping users of the game, and 3) desire to contribute to the game. A total of nine respondents mentioned enjoyment of the work itself as their reason for volunteering.
The desire to contribute to the game was a reason for volunteering for seven of the respondents.
Discussion on the Findings
Based on the answers given by Popmundo volunteer translators, it is easy to see that a large part of Popmundo volunteer translators are emotionally invested in the game, as shown by their desire to contribute to the game, often phrased as a desire for it. The expectation of the Popmundo developers, as indicated by Neffling, for the motivation of the game's volunteer translators was to firstly arise from enjoyment and interest in the work and secondly from a desire to contribute to the game and help its players. The initial motivation of the volunteer translators arose mainly from four motivational factors, which were, in the order mentioned in the answers: the desire to contribute to the game or to help, the satisfaction of the work itself, the sense of obligation to the community and dissatisfaction with the previous translation.
It is evident that the voluntary gift package, which respondents clearly identified as a benefit, for example, was not the main motivation for Popmund's volunteer translators.
Questionnaire
Kuten aikaisemman vapaaehtoisten kääntäjien tutkimuksen osalta, McDonough Dolmayan (2012) ja O'Brien & Schälerin (2010) tutkimukset ovat erityisen tärkeitä opinnäytetyölleni. Analyysimenetelmäni valintaan on jossain määrin vaikuttanut Olohanin (2014) kritiikki McDonough Dolmayan (2012) ja O'Brien & Schälerin tutkimuksiin. Taitojen tai kokemuksen hankkiminen oli tärkeä motiivi myös McDonough Dolmayan ja O'Brien & Schälerin opinnoissa, mutta ei Olohanin opinnoissa - tämä ei ollut tuloksissani aivan päämotivaatio hakea vapaaehtoistyöhön, vaan jatkaa tehtävien parissa.
Käyttäjien tai yhteisön auttaminen oli Popmundon vapaaehtoisten kääntäjien neljänneksi tärkein motivaatiotekijä, mutta tämä ei ollut vaihtoehto O'Brien & Schäler -tutkimuksessa.
