原作者：Tiff Liu 译者：Willow Wu

2017年1月13日，在一个寻常的黑色星期五，我们的首个2D心理恐怖游戏《返校》在Steam平台上架了。发行之际，我们收到了广大媒体们和玩家们的热切关注。人们都很好奇，本地媒体们想知道，是什么促使我们制作了这样一个恐怖游戏？另一方面，国外媒体对游戏中的台湾民间风俗文化十分感兴趣。

一周之后，我们6个人一起坐在办公室里，暂时地远离那些外界的喧嚣。几个人安静地坐着，脑袋里回想着刚刚到底发生了什么？我们之前绝对不会想到这游戏竟然会引起这么强烈的反响。毕竟，我们只是一个享受制作游戏的小团体。回溯之前，我们制作《返校》耗费了很多的精力，也遇到很多挫折。但是我们觉得这是一段值得和Gamasutra分享的故事。故事的开头要回到在若干年之前。

《返校》是Coffee Yao想出来的点子。如果你了解Coffee的话，你就知道他是一个喜欢在深夜散步，有一点点乡愁的人。有时候，1990年代的回忆就像凶猛的潮水一样把他卷入其中。道观里飘出来的焚香，新浪潮时代的台湾电影，街边小吃的味道，布袋戏的声音和画面，还有其他在他学生时代的东西。那个时代，台湾文化大放异彩。

游戏伴他成长，他玩过许多以日本文化为中心的游戏，角色都是忍者或者武士。然而，还没有哪个游戏是围绕台湾文化展开的。出于一种想要把台湾环境展现给世人看的渴望，他想：“为什么不做一个和台湾民俗文化相关的游戏呢？”那个时候，Coffee还没有可靠的计划，也没有足够的技术来开启这个项目，但是这个想法从此在他脑袋里扎根。3年后，在2014年，他作为一个独立开发者，开始制作《返校》的原型。在那之后一个接着一个，我们6个人组到了一起，开始合力制作《返校》。

在制作游戏期间，有个问题一直在我们脑中萦绕。“西方玩家会怎么看待这个游戏？他们会不会对这样一个基于台湾/东亚文化的游戏感到很迷惑？”我们的目标是全球市场，所以西方玩家能不能理解和接受是个很关键的问题。本地化对我们来说就是关键所在，因此我们对关卡设计和翻译格外注意。为了成功地把东亚文化移植到游戏中，《返校》在2年的制作期里经历了4次大调整。这几次大调整几乎是重塑了原始设定，让团队的每个人都快疯掉。然而，粉丝们的反响让我们意识到我们为本地化做出的每一次调整都是值得的。接着，让我来跟你分享一下我们经历过的挣扎，还有经验。

制定策略——把文化元素压下来

首先，关键事情之一就是要让每个人都享受游戏，就算不是中国人也一样能玩得开心。为了达到这个目标，我们决定把文化元素都压下来。

这么做是有原因的。在制作游戏的早期阶段，我们曾经争论过有关于游戏谜题设计中的文化理解问题。对于宗教仪式，我们每个人的意见都不一样，像是要不要先烧香或者烧纸钱这类的问题。这次争执让我们意识到了，即使我们6个人拥有相同的文化背景，在文化理解上还是会有争吵和分歧。仅仅是在我们之间都已经有争吵了，那我们怎么能让西方玩家理解我们的文化呢？我们不想让文化壁垒成为游戏剧情和玩法的障碍。我们充分意识到了，要让玩家在3-5小时的游戏历程中理解台湾文化是不太可能的事。顺便说清楚，文化理解也并不是我们的目的，我们只是想要做一个有台湾文化元素的游戏。所以，我们遵循了“少即是多（less is more）”的黄金准则，决定不要把传统文化习俗嵌入到谜题设计中，而是在逻辑思维上多下功夫。

此外，通过把文化元素转化为不同的文化象征，有点像是把它们藏在游戏设置中，我们成功地把这些文化象征转化成解开谜题的道具、字条、背景音乐、设置等等。最终，这些视觉和声音象征能够更好地把玩家带入剧情，创造了更好的游戏氛围。如果玩家喜欢我们创造出来的氛围，那么我相信一旦他们开始玩了，他们之中的有些人会自己去查阅相关的文化和历史背景。
游戏的服装设计和建筑设计也对塑造1960年代的台湾有所辅助。

好了，理论说够了，让我们往实际例子深入。

关卡设计的注意事项

例子1: 把日记当作是整体文化设定的介绍

一般来说,在各种各样的游戏里,笔记本是经常出现的道具,《返校》也不例外。在《返校》中，我们创造出了“日记”这个道具来跟上游戏进程，来帮助玩家达到下个关卡，而且最重要的是把文化背景用图文表现清楚。

日记在游戏中有两个功能：充当线索，记录笔记。在游戏中，玩家会见到一张又一张的字条。有些字条是线索，帮助玩家活下来或者解决谜题，其他字条则是辅助呈现整体文化以及游戏剧情。

日记中的线索：有关于魍魎的信息以及如何在面对魍魎时活下来

例子2: 游戏机制中关于民俗/当地人的信仰的应用

开始的时候，我们决定要做一个恐怖游戏。就像其他同一类型的游戏，游戏中总是有些跳杀场景（游戏邦注：jump scare scenes）或者可怕的怪物。这次，我们问自己：“要怎么把文化和恐怖游戏机制结合起来？”这就让我们往回研究起了东亚民俗和神话，怪物和鬼怪在其中都是很常见的题材并且描述的很详细，这让游戏机制中关于它们的改编工作轻松了一些。

魍魉

骨瘦如柴的外表，食人，这就是魍魉，在众多亚洲民俗故事中，魍魉是广为人知的一种鬼怪。我们把魍魉的特征实体化，变成游戏中玩家会遇到的一类攻击者。为了给游戏机制增加亮点，我们加入了两种生存技巧，也是来自台湾民俗文化。

传统意义上，给逝者供上食物是告别。在《返校》中，食物可以分散魍魉的注意力，让玩家脱离追逐战。

在东亚民俗故事中，面对僵尸，你可以屏气来假装你不存在。类似的，要逃离魍魉，玩家必须做同样的事，静悄悄地走开。

黑白无常

当地人相信，黑白无常是冥界的信差。传说中，他们手中分别拿着羽毛扇和木令牌，这些物品也成了解决谜题的道具，能够拿到钥匙去往下一个关卡。

门锁住了，缺少了某个东西。把谜题空缺补全后，门终于开了。

例子3: 游戏剧情中的宗教仪式

仪式也是文化的组成部分。要把仪式风俗加入到剧情中，我们打算把它转化成游戏中的道具。起初，我们以为这应该挺容易的，只需要把我们以前的经历移植到游戏中，然后做个图文讲解清楚应该就够了。但是我们大错特错，我们忽视了仪式的复杂程度。尽管如此，我们还是从错误中学到了教训，并且在此基础上进行修正。

纸钱

道教的丧仪有很多严格的规则和固定的步骤。刚开始的时候，我们作这个图文来描述宗教仪式。

然而，当我们在进行demo测试的时候，我们发现这种图文还不够有效。文字描述在某种程度上太复杂了，应该还有比这更好的选择。因此，我们进行了一点头脑风暴，然后你看，答案就有了。

首先，还是要把“少即是多”的黄金准则记在脑袋中，我们抛弃了原始的计划，不打算把整个仪式都展现出来。取而代之的是我们把注意力放在某一部分的仪式上——展现烧纸钱的过程，并且把它融入到剧情中。

掷筊

在道教寺庙中，掷筊的木块通常被看作是向神灵寻求意见的工具。《返校》中，我们利用掷筊作为剧情的催化剂，体现Ray对爱情、前途和家庭的担心。

为了让你们大概了解掷筊是怎么一回事，我们一开始是这么做的：

就像之前的那些例子一样，本来是有很多文字表述的。我们把这个图文给一个台湾的朋友看了，他花了好一会儿才理清楚其中的意思，这时我们就意识到这样不行，必须改掉。

我们再一次地应用了“少即是多”的技巧。我们把文字表述减到最少，并且用交互视图场景来代替。

例子4: 关卡中的通俗文化乐趣

文化认知差异是本地化过程中一直存在的窘境。一开始制作游戏的时候，我们就知道我们面对的有两组玩家。本地玩家能够理解游戏中的文化，国外玩家不能。把通俗文化融入到关卡设计的过程中，我们遇到了同样的问题。经过了无数次争吵和讨论，我们得出了结论：理不理解得了文化，只要玩家们享受这个游戏，里面的相关流程对他们来讲是说得通的，那么应该就没多大问题。

四月望雨

《返校》中，用传统亚洲乐器演奏的电子lo-fi音乐成为了文化氛围的制造工具。除此之外，声音元素也是关卡设计的关键所在。

有个关卡，玩家需要进入Ray的3段不同记忆中，我们就把收音机当作转换场景的媒介，把四月望雨组曲当作是玩家转换不同时间地点的链接。

1930年代的四月望雨是由4段广为人知的日据时期的台湾歌曲组成的，在之后的戒严时期就被禁止了。

其中3段歌曲被应用在电台谜题设计中。调到的正确频道，对应的歌曲片段就会放出，然后忽然之间，玩家就转换到了另一个时间。

望春风

第一个电台的背景音乐是望春风（试听），向我们传达了Ray的破碎家庭的样子。

四季红（试听）

原本，这首欢快的音乐是表达的是含蓄的调情。我们用这首歌来揭露Ray的爸爸对她妈妈的不忠之事。

月夜愁（试听）

第三个电台，伴随着伤心之人的忧郁乐曲，让Ray回忆起了她的恋情。然而，最后余留的只有无知和仇苦。

每首歌都是刻意放在特定的时间中，来加强渲染Ray对家庭和爱人的情感。为了增加游戏的复古感觉，我们有意在歌曲中了应用lo-fi声效。熟悉这些歌曲玩家可能会了解歌曲的含义，对于其他的普通玩家，从另一个角度可能会觉得这些歌曲具有异国风味，感到很新鲜。他们也许不了解歌曲背后的故事，但是肯定能感受到歌曲隐含的感情。

布袋戏

布袋戏是早些年最重要的娱乐项目之一，即使在今天，它在某些特定观众群体中还是很受欢迎的。然而，1950年代开始，权力机构把他们的爪牙伸向了布袋戏，把它变成了政府的宣传工具，宣扬所谓的“爱国主义”。

把这个通俗文化元素引入到关卡设计中，布袋玩偶就成了解决谜题的工具。

戏台上的布袋玩偶不见了

一旦完成谜题，钥匙就会从被砍头的玩偶中掉出来，玩家就可以继续到下一个关卡了。

除了关卡设计的两难困境，还有翻译也是制作《返校》另一个棘手的部分。曾经我们都玩过一两个翻译质量低劣的游戏，给享受游戏的过程大打折扣。糟糕的翻译可以毁了游戏，这绝对不是我们的意图。因此，让我们转换焦点，聚焦到翻译部分，分享一下我们的小小经验。

翻译错误和对策

我跟你说，为了对应1960年代的台湾，《返校》的原脚本是混合了文言文，现代文和方言，翻译难度简直难以想象。作为一个独立工作室，我们并没有那么多的资源。对我们来说，要把《返校》翻译成多种语言，那么费用将是无法承受的。因此，我们的目标并不大。我们宁愿把注意力都放在翻译质量上。所以除了游戏本身的中文，就剩下英文作为《返校》的目标语言，进行本地化。我们希望游戏在英文环境中也能顺利运行。幸运的是，我们的共同创始人Vincent Yang是个中英双语者。有Vincent来检验翻译质量，加上与译者的交流，我们成功发布了能够顺畅阅读，接近原文意义的英语版本。

例子1: 适合场景的对话翻译

把一种语言翻译成另一种语言，有个问题也许是译者常常遇到的：没有和原文意思对应的词汇。就《返校》来说，要在英语中找到对应词汇更是难上加难。因此，我们不采用逐字翻译的办法，而是注重原文字里行间的氛围/情感。

老妇人的对话

《返校》中，我们创造了老妇人这样一个角色，只会说台语（游戏邦注：闽南语）。除了普通话，台语是在台湾用得最多的方言。把她的话语翻译成英文，我们当初的想法是把它翻译成某种英语方言。但是，鉴于不同国家有很多不同英语方言，要选择一种对玩家都通用的还是比较困难。

然后我们考虑把它翻译成古代英语，但是很快我们就发现这主意不好。第一版草稿出来的时候，我们之中，包括Vincent，没有人能读懂。可读性太差了。最后，我们有了想法，把原文中的气氛反映出来就好了。所以，这就是我们最终的结果。尽管做成诗性对话可能不是最完美的翻译，但是至少能够接近原文

撰写话剧

游戏的第三章中，逐渐变成故事引导模式，出现越来越多的情节叙述来体现Ray对家庭和爱人的情感。因此，我们在游戏中加入了话剧元素。话剧部分是用中国现代诗歌体裁撰写的，和古代诗歌比起来更容易翻译。然而，我们还是在了英文翻译中做了一点点改动，为了加强玩家与Ray情感之间的联系，我们在行间加了重读。

这就是描述Ray父亲酗酒问题的话剧片段。这里原文中的“棕色玻璃瓶”是酒精的隐喻。当翻译成英语的时候，为了强调父亲的酗酒是导致Ray家庭分裂的主要原因，我们把上述部分替换成了“A glass cup of nauseating color.（一个颜色恶心的玻璃杯）”另外，这也能表达出Ray对他父亲行为的厌恶态度。

例子2: 译顺口头对话

在某些情况下，尽管翻译和原文意思相同，但这并不意味着这就是好翻译。好的译文必须考虑到原作品的设定和读者的背景。《返校》的东亚背景参考是设定在1960年代左右，我们做了一些更改让现代的西方玩家更好地沉浸在游戏中。

学校用语

当Wei和Ray一起回到教室的时候，为了表现对Ray的尊重，Wei称呼她为“学姐/female senior classmate”。在西方，不管年龄有没有差别，同学之间基本上是称呼对方的姓。然而，在亚洲国家，年级不同的学生之间是有特定称呼，这在英语词汇中是找不到的。

第一次尝试翻译的时候，“学姐”翻译成了“Senpai”。尽管意思很贴切，但是这个词是从日语中借用的，在英语国家并不常用。考虑到这个词并不在日常里用到，我们决定把“Senpai”转换成“Miss”，一个很常用的词，包含了尊重。

脏话

有些场景里，为了表达惊讶，Wei就会无意识地说出脏话，例如“靠/what the heck” 。一开始，我们打算把它翻译成跟原文一样的意思。但是，再想一下，“what the heck” 的意思更接近现代的某个四字母词。非常不幸，这和《返校》的时代背景设定对不上。所以，后来就改成了“What…!”，加上感叹号，也突出了Wei自然流露出的惊讶。

例子3: 决策，要创造一个新词，采用现有的翻译，还是音译？

在《返校》的原稿中，包含了大量从台湾民俗和当地宗教里提取出来的词汇。有些词汇能在英语中找到对应，有些则没有。我们不得不选择创造一个新的英语单词。但是接着，更多问题出现了——我们是不是应该就直接简单地音译过来？还是根据意思创造一个新词？

大多数时间，我们都面对着决策两难的境地，要使用现有的翻译呢，还是采用音译，还是创造新词。经过一段时间的挣扎，我们最终定了一套准则。把我们当成玩家本身，假装不知道任何有关于台湾文化的事情。这样的话，能够帮助我们更好地制定策略，解决翻译问题。

现有的翻译

在我们决定要不要采用现有翻译之前，我们都会问问自己：“这些现有的翻译是所有人都认可的吗？”我们认为，不论文化背景和语言，只要这些翻译是大家都能理解的，那么玩家就能明白其中的意思。就比如佛教习俗吧，佛教的基本思想全世界都知道，“南无”和“金刚经”这种词汇就可以直接用在游戏中，不用更改。
造词

玩游戏的时候，玩家经常会遇到魍魉。就如之前所说，它的灵感来自中国民间传说中的一种食人怪，叫做“魍魉”，在英语中是“Mōryō”。在《返校》中，我们抛弃了现有的英文翻译，用我们自己创造的词汇代替，我们想让这个词记起来容易点。相比较起来，“Mōryō”这个词对于大部分玩家来说难读又难记，我们创造了“the Lingered”这个词，比较好读而且也体现了这种食人怪喜欢徘徊在人世的特点。

音译

有时候，某个词的文化色彩特别强烈，也找不到现有的适合翻译，也没办法用简单的一两个词来描述，那么音译就成了我们最后的选择。音译的特点就是译词的发音跟原词几乎一模一样，所以在大多数情况下，光靠读是没办法理解它的意思的。

除此之外，词语本身就包含特定的文化意义也无法复制到在另一种语言中，我们认为最好是在音译词之后补充上对应的解释。例如，“HeiBai Wuchang”，日记本中的信息就可以作为补充解释。结合“HeiBai Wuchang”的图文描述就可以帮助玩家更好地理解它的背景，中国人相信他们是冥界的信差。

简而言之

好了，这就是我们为《返校》这个游戏本地化所做的努力，还有我们的失败经历。在制作游戏之前，我们之中谁都没想到有这么多的细节和想法需要研究。在这段经历中，我们学到的一大教训就是要考虑玩家的反应是怎么样的，时刻把玩家放在第一位。每次我们觉得事情不对劲的时候，这个教训就能提醒我们，帮助我们改掉错误，回到正确的轨道上。

后来，《返校》发布，我们从玩家那里收到了各种不同的反馈。有些玩家觉得谜题设计太简单了，需要再复杂一点。还有，英语国家的玩家指出了游戏文本中出现的若干语法错误，告诉我们需要再次校对。尽管如此，我们还是有些积极的反馈，告诉我们正式版的英文翻译质量比demo版本的好很多了。在我们收到的所有反馈中，有一条是让我们感触很深的。一位西方玩家玩过《返校》之后，他说：“我很庆幸我们没有活在那个时代。”这种反应就是我们想要的。我们很高兴语言和文化屏障在《返校》中被打破了，希望世界各地的玩家都能知道这个消息。

作为我们工作室的处女作，《返校》给赤烛游戏开了个好头。尽管还有提升的空间，但是我们还是觉得能够向世人展现我们的作品是一件很幸运的事。反馈也能激发我们对未来作品的灵感。以后，我们还是会继续争取做到最好，希望能够为玩家们带来更多沉浸式的游戏体验。

本文由游戏邦编译，转载请注明来源，或咨询微信zhengjintiao

Tiff Liu In one ordinary black Friday on January 13, 2017, our debut title 2D psychological horror game Detention was launched on Steam. Upon the release of the game, we received overwhelming attention from the media and players. People were curious. The local media wondered what triggered us to created a horror game like this? The foreign media, on the other hand, were intrigued by the Taiwanese folklore in the game.

A week after, 6 of us sat in the office temporarily drifting away from all the chaos. We sat still and wondered, what just happened? Never did we know that the game will draw such response. After all, we were just a group of developers who enjoy making games. Thinking back, it took lots of effort and failure to make Detention. But we feel that this is a story worth sharing on Gamasutra. And to begin with, it all started years ago.

Detention is the brainchild of Coffee Yao. If you know Coffee, he is a man that enjoys late night walk and somewhat a bit nostalgic. Sometimes, memories of the 1990s flow back to him like a wave. The incense smell from the Taoist temple, the Taiwanese movies in the New Wave era, the taste of the street food, the sound and visuals of the glove puppetry show, and other stuff he did as a student back then. It was a time when Taiwanese culture blossomed.

Growing up as a gamer, he played plenty of Japanese cultural-centred games with characters like Ninja or Samurai. However, there had yet been a game that centres around Taiwanese culture. Feeling an urge to show the Taiwanese ambient to the world, he thought, “Why not make a game with Taiwanese folk culture?” By that time, Coffee hasn’t had a solid plan nor enough skills to initiate the project, but this idea has since planted in his mind. Three years later in 2014, he finally started making the prototype of Detention as a sole developer. Then one thing came to another, 6 of us got connected and started working together to pull off Detention.

While developing the game, a question kept haunting us. “How will the Western players take it? Will they be confusing with a game based upon Taiwanese/Eastern Asian culture?” We aimed at the globe, so the understanding and acceptance from the Western players are crucial. The localization is the key to us, and in our case, we paid extra attention to the level design and translation. To successfully transplant the Eastern Asian culture into the game, Detention underwent 4 times of major adjustments throughout the course of 2-year development. The adjustments almost reshaped the original setting and made everyone in the team insane. Yet, the response from the fans let us realize every adjustment that we made for the localization was worthy. And in the following, let me share our struggles and experiences to you.

Set the Strategy – Flatten the cultural element

First thing first, since one of the crucial thing was to make a game that everyone would enjoy, even for the non-native Chinese speakers. In order to achieve this, we decide to flatten the cultural element.

There is a reason behind this. At an early development stage, we were having arguments about the cultural understanding we input in the puzzle design. Each of us has different opinions about the applied religion ritual, things like whether to burn the incense or spirit money first. This argument let us realize that, even if 6 of us share the same cultural background, there are still agreements and disagreements toward the cultural understanding. When there are already disputes among us, how can we even get Western players to understand our culture? We don’t want to let the cultural barrier be in the way of the storytelling and gameplay. As we are well aware that it is unlikely for the players to understand Taiwanese culture within a 3-5 hours gameplay, and to clarify, cultural understanding is not our intention as well, we just want to make a game with Taiwanese elements. Therefore, we followed the golden rule “less is more,” and made the choice not to apply the traditional cultural rules to the puzzle design, making them more about logical thinking instead.

Additionally, by transferring the cultural elements to different symbols, and sort of hiding them in the game setting, we managed to transform these symbols as the tools for the puzzles, pieces of note, background music, the setting, and etc. Eventually, these visual and audio symbols became the reinforcers to lead the narration and create the ambient in the game. If the players like the atmosphere that we created, I believe that some of them will look up the cultural and historical background on their own once they tried the game.

The visual design of the costume and architecture help build up the atmosphere of the 1960s Taiwan.

Alright, enough with the theory, let’s dig more into the actual examples!

Dos and Don’ts for Level Design

Case 1: Journal as the introduction to the general cultural setting

Normally, the notebook is constantly seen as a tool in various kinds of games, and it is not an exception for Detention. In Detention, we created the tool “journal” to keep track of the game progress, to help players reach the next level, and most importantly, to illustrate cultural background.

The journal serves as two functions in the game: the cues and notes. Throughout the gameplay, players will come across pieces after pieces of notes. Some of them are cues that assist players to survive or solve the puzzles, and others are notes that help shape the general cultural and storytelling of the game.

Cue in the journal: Information and survival skills when facing the Lingered

Note in the journal: The school announcement depicting the martial law period

Case 2: Folklore/ local belief application to the game mechanism

In the beginning, we set up our mind to make a horror game. Just like every game that falls into this genre, it always come with some jump scare scenes or terrifying monsters. This time, we asked ourselves the question, “How can we combine culture with horror game mechanism?” It got us to dig back to the East Asian folklore and mythology in which monsters and evil spirits are common and well descriptive, making it easier for us to adapt them into the game mechanism.

The Lingered

The man-eating skeleton figure, the Lingered(魍魎), is a well-known ghost spirit appearing in numerous Asian folktales. We embodies the Lingered’s characteristics in the game as one of the attackers that player encounters. To give additional touch to the game mechanism, 2 survival skills, originating from Taiwanese folk culture, are added.

Traditionally, food offerings is served for the dead as farewell. In Detention, it helps distract the Lingered from chasing you.

In East Asian folklore, you can fake your existence in front of the zombie(jiangshi) by holding the breath. Likewise, to escape from the Lingered, the player must do the same and silently walk away.

HeiBai Wuchang

HeiBai Wuchang(黑白無常) are the death messengers in the local belief. Legend says that each of them holds a feathered fan and wooden token in hand, and these items become the tools to solve the puzzle, holding the key for players to reach the next level.

The door is locked, and something is missing. With the completion of the puzzle collection, the door is finally unlocked

Case 3: Religion rituals embodiment in game narration

Rituals are a part of the culture. To add ritual practice to game narration, we intended to transfer it to in-game items. At first, we thought that it shall be an easy task, and we could simply follow suit from our past experience, making a depictive illustration to explain it all should be enough. But we were completely wrong. Neglecting the complexity of the ritual was a big mistake. Nonetheless, we managed to learn from the mistakes we took, and correct them accordingly.

Spirit Money

For the Taoism praying process, there are rigid rules and steps to follow. Initially, we came up with this illustration to depict the religion ritual.

Yet, when we did the demo testing, we found out that such illustration was not effective enough. The literatural description was somewhat too complicated. There should be something better than this. Thus, we did a bit of brainstorming, and voila.

First, keeping the golden rule “less is more” in mind, we got rid of our original plan to showcase the whole ritual. Alternately, we only focused on a part of the ritual – the representation of the spirit money burning process, and transformed it into the game narration.

Ying Yang Poe

In the Taoist temple, the wooden pieces ying yang poe(擲筊) can often be viewed as a tool to ask advice from the god. For Detention, we utilized ying yang poe as the plot accelerator to pinpoint Ray’s concern towards love, prospects and family.

To give a bit of idea how ying yang poe works, here was what we did at first.

Just like the previous example, there were lots of wording in it. When presenting this illustration to a Taiwanese friend, it took him a while to understand the whole saying, and that’s when we realized changes must be made.

Again, the same “less is more” technique is applied here. The literature description was minimized to the least and replaced by the interactive visual graphics.

Case 4: Pop culture employment to level design

The cultural cognitive difference is the constant dilemma for localization. From the beginning of the game development, we know that we would be facing two groups of players. The local players who understand the culture, and the foreign players who don’t. When dealing with the use of pop culture in level design, we encountered the same problem. After tons of arguments and discussions, we came to the conclusion: Cultural understanding or not, so long as the players enjoy our game and things make sense to them, it will be fine.

April Rain

In Detention, the electronic lo-fi music played with traditional Asian instruments is used as the cultural atmospheric creator. Apart from that, the audio element also holds the key to level design.

In one level that requires the player to travel to Ray’s 3 distinct past memories, we designed this radio as the transformation port, with the musical suite April Rain(四月望雨) acting as the connection for players to shift to different time and space.

The 1930s April Rain is the combination of 4 widely-known Taiwanese songs during the Japanese Occupation Period, that later banned in the martial law period.

3 of the songs are employed in the radio station puzzle design. By tuning in the right radio stations, the melody of each song appears, and all of a sudden, the player is in different time zone.

Bāng Chhun-hong(望春風)
The first radio station’s background song Bāng Chhun-hong(望春風) tells us how Ray’s broken family is like.

Sù-kùi-âng(四季紅)
Originally, this cheerful melody is the implication of firting. And we used it to reveal Ray father’s unfaithful affair towards her mother.

Goa̍t-iā-chhiû(月夜愁)
For the third radio station, along with the melancholic melody of the heartbroken people, it brings Ray back to the romantic memory. Yet, only the emptiness and bitter remain in the end.

Each song is deliberately placed in that specific time zone to emphasize Ray’s emotion towards her family and lover. To enhance its retro feeling, we purposely applied lo-fi sound effect to the songs. While some local players might be able to recognize the songs’ meanings upon hearing the familiar melodies, for the general players, on the other hand, may think that the songs are foreign and fresh. They may not know the background story of the songs, but for sure they could sense the emotions implied.

Puppet Show

Puppet show is one of the most important recreation in the early days, and even in nowadays, it’s still popular in certain group of audience. Yet, starting from the 1950s, the authority has spread its force to the puppet show, turning it into one of the government propagandas to promote the “patriotism.”

To bring in this pop culture to the level design, puppets are served as the tools for puzzle solving.

Puppets are missing on the stage

Once the puzzle collection is completed, the key drops from the beheaded puppet, allowing the player to move on to next level

Apart from the level design dilemma, translation is yet another tricky part to deal with in the making of Detention. Once in awhile we all came across 1 or 2 games with cheesy translation that distracts you from enjoying the game. Bad translation can ruin a game, and that is certainly not what we are looking for. So let us switch the focus to translation and share our humble experience with you.

Translation Mistakes and Strategies We Took

For your information, to correspond with the 1960’s Taiwan, Detention’s original script is a mix of classical Chinese, modern Chinese and local dialect. The degree of difficulty to translate the script is beyond imagination. As an indie, we didn’t have much resources. For us, we couldn’t afford to have Detention translated into multiple languages. Therefore, we didn’t aim big. Rather, we focused on the translation quality. Thus, besides the original context in Chinese, English is the only localization we did for Detention. And we intended to make it work out well. Luckily, our co-founder Vincent Yang is a English-Chinese bilingual. With Vincent taking the role to examine the translation quality, and communicate with the translator, we managed to release the English version that met the readability standard and close to the original context.

Case 1: Dialogue translation to fit the scenario

When translating one language to another language, one problem the translator might often encounters is that, there is no corresponding vocabulary that fits the original meaning. In the case of Detention, it is even harder to find the exact words in English. Thus, we decided not to do word-by-word translation but to focus on the atmosphere/emotions of the original script.

Old lady’s dialogue

In Detention, we created a character of an old lady that only speaks Taiwanese. Besides Chinese, Taiwanese is the most common dialect used in Taiwan. When translating her dialogue into English, our initial thought was to translate the dialogue to a specific English dialect. However, given that there are a wide variety of English dialects out there from different countries, it is relatively hard to pick up one that is universal to every player.

We then considered translating it into Old English but soon found out that it was a bad idea. When the first draft came out, none of our team member including Vincent could understand. The readability was simply too bad. Finally, we came up with the thought to reflect the ambience of the original context. So, here is our final result. Though it might not be the perfect translation, by making the English dialogue poetic, at least it provides a close approximation of the original context.

Stage play writing

In the third chapter of the game, as it gradually shifts to story-driven, more narration is needed to describe Ray’s feelings towards her family and lover. Thus, we decided to add a stage play in the gameplay. The stage play is written under the structure of modern Chinese poetry, which is relatively easy to translate compared to ancient Chinese poem. Yet, we did a bit of alternation for the English translation, adding emphasis in between lines to best connect players to Ray’s emotions.

This is the play describing the alcoholism problem of Ray’s father. Here, the original context “棕色的玻璃瓶/ brown bottle” is a metaphor of alcohol. When translating into English, in order to emphasize the cause of father’s alcoholism leading to Ray’s family falling apart, we translated and replaced this part with “A glass cup of nauseating color.” Additionally, it also points out Ray’s disgust feeling towards her father’s behavior.

Case 2: Making sense of oral conversation translation

In some cases, although the meaning of the translation is the same as the original context, it does not necessarily mean that it is a good translation. A good translation must also takes the original work’s setting and reader’s background into account. Considering Detention’s East Asian reference set in the 1960s, alternations was made in order for nowadays western players to better immerse in the game.

School term

When Wei and Ray went back to the classroom together, as a way to show respect to Ray, Wei called her by “學姊/female senior classmate”. In the Western world, schoolmates tend to call one another by the last name no matter the age difference. However, in Asian countries there are specific terms, for juniors and seniors to call each other, that cannot be found in English vocabulary.

For the first try of the English translation, “學姊” is translated as “Senpai”. Though the meaning is cohesive, this term is a borrowed word from Japan, and is not commonly used in English-speaking countries. Considering it is not a word that we say on daily basis, we decided to switch the word “Senpai” to “Miss.” A much common word that carries the meaning of respect.

Foul language

In some scenarios, as a way to show surprise, foul language like “靠/what the heck” slip from Wei’s mouth. At first, we intended to translated the word just as its original meaning. However, on the second thought, “what the heck” is more of a modern four-letter word. Unfortunately, it didn’t match the time of Detention’s setting. So, it’s then replaced by “What…!” , by adding the puntuation, it also highlighted Wei’s astonishment in a neutral way.

Case 3: Decision-making, to coin a word, use existing translation or convert into transliteration?

In Detention’s original script, it contains a great deal of vocabulary deriving from Taiwanese folk culture and local religion. Some of the words can be found in English, while others don’t, leading us having no choice but to create a new word in English. But then, more problems occurred – Shall we simply convert the word to transliteration based on the pronunciation? Or coin a word by its meaning?

Most of the time, we were faced with the decision-making dilemma whether to use the existing translation, adopt the transliteration or coin a word. After a period of struggle, we finally came up with a standard rule. To put ourselves in the player’s shoes, and pretend we knew nothing about Taiwanese culture. In this way, it helped us to better identify the strategy and tackle with the translation.

Existing translation

Before we decided whether to apply the existing translation to the game, we would ask ourselves, “Is the existing translation recognized by everyone out there?” We felt that as long as the existing translation is universally understood by the public regardless of the cultural background and languages, the players won’t have problem interpreting its meaning. Take buddhist practice as example, since its basic idea is widely-known to the world, vocabulary like “amitābha” and “diamond sutra” appear in the game dialogue without any alternation.

Coin a word

When playing through the game, the players often bump into the Lingered. As mentioned in the previous paragraph, its inspiration is a man-eater from Chinese folktale called “魍魎”, or known as “Mōryō” in English. In Detention, the existing translation is abandoned and replaced by a new word we created, for we want to make an impression that can be easily remembered. Comparing to “Mōryō” that may be hard to pronounce nor remembered for most of the players, we coined the word “the Lingered,” which is catchy and showcases the feature of the man-eater lingering around the human world.

Transliteration

Sometimes, when the word is too culturally unique, and there is not a suitable translation existing out there, nor is it easy to be depicted in a word or two, transliteration tend to be our last resolve. The feature of the transliteration is that its pronunciation is almost or exactly the same as the original word, so most of the case, it is impossible to understand the meaning of a transliteration word by reading it alone.

Despite that, for words carrying specific cultural meaning that cannot be replicated in other languages, we feel that it is best to convert it into transliteration word with additional explanation as supplement. For example, for “HeiBai Wuchang,” the journal is functioned as the supplement. With the illustration and description about “HeiBai Wuchang”, it helps players better understand its background as the death messengers in Chinese local belief.

In a nutshell

And here you go, this is all the errors and effort we did for the localization of Detention. Before developing the game, neither of us knew that there were so many details and thoughts to attend to. Throughout this journey, one big lesson we learnt is to consider how the players will react and to always put them in the first place. Each time when we felt that something went wrong, this reminder helped us to adjust the mistake to the right direction.

Later, once Detention is released, we received different kind of feedbacks from the players. Some players felt that the puzzle design is too simple and needs more thought into it. Also, native English speakers pointed out a few of the grammar errors in the text, and said that proofreading is needed. Nonetheless, we also received some positive feedback, saying that the English translation quality of the official launch version is much better than the demo version. Among all of the responses we got, there is one that touches us deeply. After playing Detention, a western player told us, “I’m glad that we don’t live in that time anymore.” This is exactly the response we look for from the player. We were happy that with Detention, the language and cultural barriers were broken, and that the message could be delivered to the players around the world.

As the first title of our studio, Detention marks as a fresh start for Red Candle Games. Though there’s still room for improvement, we feel blessed that we get to showcase our work to the public. And the feedbacks we got inspire us for the future projects. In the future, we will keep striving for the best, hopefully we could bring more immersive gaming experiences to the players.（source:gamasutra.com ）