Title
Translating "Night City"
Conference name
XXI KäTu symposium on translation and interpreting studies
City
Country
Finland
Modalities
Date
19/04/2024-20/04/2024
Abstract
Cities are complex translation spaces. They encompass many layers of translation, e.g. across historical linguistic divides or within new immigrant communities (Simon 2006). They are not only spaces of translation but can become themselves objects of translation. Cities can be translated in other cities (and Shanghai becomes the “Paris of the East”, Wang 2014) in an effort to domesticate them, or in novels, attempting to recreate the complexity and variety of urban spaces in another medium (Poposki & Todorova 2023). After all, cities are semiotic objects: they have been described both as texts and discourses (Barthes 1986). In this presentation I will engage with a particular case of urban translation: that of the simulated virtual urban space of Night City.
Night City is a fictional city state and the setting of the digital game Cyberpunk 2077 (CD Project Red 2020). It is a complex virtual construct, extending for circa 50 km2 , rich in content and freely explorable by the players. Following the success of the game, in 2022 CD Project Red produced an anime series, Edgerunners. The seriesreproducesthe environments of Night City in detail, with drawings extremely faithfulto the source. These efforts allow us to approach the anime – or at least the representation of the city in it – as a case of intersemiotic translation.
However, there is an additional layer that makes this particular translation unique. Asthe Cyberpunk 2077 game is regularly updated, after the release of the series some elements of the anime have begun to appear in the digital game. Graffiti made by the protagonist, as well as objects left behind by other characters, are now available in the virtual city, translated back to the game. We are witnessing, therefore, a two-way translation circuit, in which Night City is first translated in Edgerunners, and then elements of the anime are translated back in Night City. The original source text does not exist anymore, and the target text becomes source of another intersemiotic translation.
While complex translation networks are not necessarily new, in this presentation I will argue that digital games are becoming hubs of translation practices, and therefore neuralgic points of interest for translation research. To do so, I will showcase the features of the translation circuit of Night City, contextualised within concurrent mediatic trends (Jenkins 2006), and reflect on the possible role of Translation Studies in engaging them academically.
Night City is a fictional city state and the setting of the digital game Cyberpunk 2077 (CD Project Red 2020). It is a complex virtual construct, extending for circa 50 km2 , rich in content and freely explorable by the players. Following the success of the game, in 2022 CD Project Red produced an anime series, Edgerunners. The seriesreproducesthe environments of Night City in detail, with drawings extremely faithfulto the source. These efforts allow us to approach the anime – or at least the representation of the city in it – as a case of intersemiotic translation.
However, there is an additional layer that makes this particular translation unique. Asthe Cyberpunk 2077 game is regularly updated, after the release of the series some elements of the anime have begun to appear in the digital game. Graffiti made by the protagonist, as well as objects left behind by other characters, are now available in the virtual city, translated back to the game. We are witnessing, therefore, a two-way translation circuit, in which Night City is first translated in Edgerunners, and then elements of the anime are translated back in Night City. The original source text does not exist anymore, and the target text becomes source of another intersemiotic translation.
While complex translation networks are not necessarily new, in this presentation I will argue that digital games are becoming hubs of translation practices, and therefore neuralgic points of interest for translation research. To do so, I will showcase the features of the translation circuit of Night City, contextualised within concurrent mediatic trends (Jenkins 2006), and reflect on the possible role of Translation Studies in engaging them academically.