Translating videogames. The case of "Primate: Father of Universe"

Audiovisual Translation (AVT) is a fairly recent discipline in Linguistic Studies and it deals with the translation (both interlinguistically and intralinguistically) of audiovisual texts. Even though at the beginning Audiovisual Translation only applied to the translation of products such as films and TV shows for either dubbing or subtitling, nowadays AVT has changed and is constantly evolving. Audiovisual Translation can now refer to many different and new fields, such as the translation of online videos, tutorials, conferences, websites and videogames. This paper, in particular, analyses the process of videogame localization, its typologies and the different stages that eventually lead to the complete translation of a videogame. The paper also presents a practical example of videogame localization, with the translation from English into Italian of the demo version of the independent game called Primate: Father of Universe together with an analysis of the different challenges encountered during the translation.