A Preliminary Portrait of Chinese to Foreign Language Mobile Game Localizers: Profiles, Perceptions and Possible Integrations into New Sinology

With Matteo Ricci, James Legge or David Hawkes as archetypal examples, the figure of the sinologist is, to a great extent, deeply intertwined with that of the translator. The lives, works and translations of these key figures have nowadays become a fundamental part of sinological scholarship. However, the academic study of “new” sinologists is still in its incipient stages. At present, China is one of the top-earning countries in terms of video games exports, thanks to the power of localization. Video game localizers are striving to transfer Chinese interactive works around the world. However, these actors at the core of such a key process remain greatly underresearched. Following the viewpoints of New Sinology, combined with Translation Studies, this paper explores a reconceptualization of video game localizers as a pool of potential sinologist-translators. Through netnographical methods, the present piece of research attempts to provide a description of foreign localization specialists and their perceptions in relation to several aspects of the localization process. Finally, this study calls for more research in the field and discusses the possibility of integrating foreign localizers into New Sinology.