Title
"Dungeons and dragons" as a source of video game terminology
Conference name
Fun for All. 6th International conference on game translation and accessibility
City
Country
Spain
Modalities
Date
02/02/2023-03/02/2023
Abstract
With its predicted revenues of 197 billion US dollars in 2022 (Statista, 2022), the video game industry is dubbed the “ideal commodity of the 21st century”, because within video game development and consumption converge “[…] a series of the most important production techniques, marketing strategies, and cultural practices of an era” (Kline et al, 2003: 24). Because of the economic importance and ubiquity of the medium, the influence of video games has permeated language. The words used to describe and develop video games have evolved with the industry and its productions, creating new terminology to address the constant need for novelty in a field that is impacted by constant technological innovation. While there is a case to be made regarding video game terminology as requiring new words to describe new concepts, I assert that video games and the language that defines them are not the product of isolated technical and historical events; that they cannot be disentangled from other commodities and processes that have evolved in parallel and intersected with this digital medium.
Through corpus analysis and Descriptive Translation Studies (DTS) I argue that it is possible to investigate video game terminology by studying an ur-text, an original and seminal work that can be used as a point of comparison. In fact, the usage and the translation of some video-game-specific terms predate their use in video games themselves, as they have been translated in analogue games, by professional translators and hobbyists alike, before being adopted in digital format. The ur-text that I have identified is the Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) role-playing game franchise (1974 to today) over the course of its five main editions. I hypothesise that because D&D has been dubbed “fantasy fiction through actuarial science” (Macris, 2011 in Zagal and Deterding, 2018: 235), its mechanical framework, and the associated terminology, can be imported easily in video games, considering that digital game systems rely on similar probabilistic models to simulate interaction between specific machine states and humans.
Following an introduction to my theoretical framework, this communication will present a parallel history of D&D and video games along with some pivotal points between the analogue world of Table-Top Role-Playing Games and video games. Then, by comparing the English original and the French translations of D&D-based terminology and their evolution, I will discuss three examples of terms and their definitions that have been widely adopted in video games in both languages but that have originated and evolved through the five editions of D&D. My conclusion will return on the theoretical framework first established to reposition D&D as an ur-text for translated video game terminology.
Through corpus analysis and Descriptive Translation Studies (DTS) I argue that it is possible to investigate video game terminology by studying an ur-text, an original and seminal work that can be used as a point of comparison. In fact, the usage and the translation of some video-game-specific terms predate their use in video games themselves, as they have been translated in analogue games, by professional translators and hobbyists alike, before being adopted in digital format. The ur-text that I have identified is the Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) role-playing game franchise (1974 to today) over the course of its five main editions. I hypothesise that because D&D has been dubbed “fantasy fiction through actuarial science” (Macris, 2011 in Zagal and Deterding, 2018: 235), its mechanical framework, and the associated terminology, can be imported easily in video games, considering that digital game systems rely on similar probabilistic models to simulate interaction between specific machine states and humans.
Following an introduction to my theoretical framework, this communication will present a parallel history of D&D and video games along with some pivotal points between the analogue world of Table-Top Role-Playing Games and video games. Then, by comparing the English original and the French translations of D&D-based terminology and their evolution, I will discuss three examples of terms and their definitions that have been widely adopted in video games in both languages but that have originated and evolved through the five editions of D&D. My conclusion will return on the theoretical framework first established to reposition D&D as an ur-text for translated video game terminology.