Due to my choice of language pair, the (sometimes sad) state of game localization scene in Taiwan/HK/China and how games in general are perceived here, I have never really felt like I was part of the “real” game localization industry until maybe 2 weeks ago.
Up until then, I have met and communicated with a good amount of translators, because some of my job duties at my last job (a cloud translation platform maker / game translation agency hybrid start-up) overlapped with vendor management. But most of them took on many genres and I’ve only met a handful that were full-blown game localizers like myself, and only a few that work in the same pair as I do (Chinese-English).
So it was great that I got to meet a legion of them in Tokyo over the course of 3 evenings – first night was IGDA’s Localization SIG Roundtable, followed by 2 nights of drinking and mingling with people from the industry. Since this was in Tokyo, most of the people I met were E-J or J-E translators, but we spoke the same language in that we understand the unique challenges in game localization, and discussed how we overcome those challenges. Everyone spoke candidly (as much as our NDAs would allow) and generally had a good time talking trash about poorly written source texts, unrealistic character limits and other inside jokes.
I have always thought that people who come to these events are experienced/veteran translators and that I’d be at the bottom, but it turned out that I am now considered to be one of the “experienced” (4.5 years and counting), and I was very happy to meet localizers new to the industry and share my experiences with them. I will never forget how I got started and all the advice I received, and will do my best to pay it forward.
With that said, now I finally feel like I’ve arrived and I’m ready to make an impact.