Localisation

Blog posts on Localisation.

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Localizing accents without voice acting – Final Fantasy IX

Final Fantasy IX turns 20 this year and, after two decades of success, the game still lives up to its reputation. Almost 10 years ago, I wrote the article below about how the last Final Fantasy game without voice acting managed to render accents and speech without actually speaking. More interestingly, I looked at the […]
June 15, 2020
Joséphine, Ange Gardien – a series under divine protection

Tweet She’s only 4.3 ft. yet she is one of the most prominent TV personalities in France. 58-year-old actress Mimie Mathy has been on prime time on TF1 since 1997 four to twelve times a year! She is the lead characters of the Joséphine, Ange Gardien series, in which she plays
February 22, 2016
Alundra – the game in which hardly anyone survives

I just finished playing Alundra again, a Zelda-like classic released on PSX in 1997. It’s a pretty fun game, developed in a very similar way Landstalker on Megadrive was (I just read it was the same development team) The main difference with Zelda is that you can jump (!) and it actually makes the game […]
November 16, 2014
Grandia II – half as good as the first one

Tweet One of the very few RPGs I’ve ever played on PS2 – after the luxurious choice the PSOne had to offer, the PS2 was quite a let-down. But that’s not the point of this article. So I played Grandia II for the first time some ten years ago and I was
June 08, 2014
Sheila, Johnny, Sylvie, Françoise,… Yeah, yeah and yé-yé

Tweet France, the Sixties. A whole new generation of singers and artists are produced and sent under the spotlights. The tunes are very easy to memorise and to sing along. Simple music, naive texts but a melody that embodies the 60s. Many of those songs also had one particularity:
May 27, 2014
The importance of intuitive gameplay

Megadrive’s Phantasy Star IV: The End of the Millennium was my very first role-playing game (RPG). That was back in 1995 and I was 9. As it turns out I still have the original game and I just played it through last month. 17 years later, probably for the 20-something time. I guess your first […]
August 11, 2013
What if translation did not matter?

Outrageous – how could a trained translator write such a thing? Of course, I want to believe that translation is a noble profession that deserves high salaries and great respect. Unfortunately, sometimes, the translation might not matter so much. The case I have in mind to illustrate my argument is Final Fantasy VII: it was […]
January 17, 2013
15 years later: still playing Final Fantasy VII

Tweet Boy do I feel old writing FFVII was released 15 years ago. I remember watching a review on TV and I feel like it’s not so long ago. Clearly I’m mistaken. When I first got to play it, I must have been about 12 and I remember that the game seemed to be extremely […]
January 10, 2013
So Berlin – so Final Fantasy VII?

I keep hearing here in Hamburg about how this person is “so Berlin” (read it with a German accent) or that this run-down area is “so Berlin” (carry on) or again that such trousers are “so Berlin” (you may stop).
December 08, 2012
Did Desperate Housewives’ credits need localisation?

As I was paying attention the opening credits of the uplifted American soap series, I realised it was a bit more than just a succession of animated classical paintings. For those who don’t know the credits, take some more or less known pieces of art from different times, adapting them to the purpose of the […]
November 10, 2012