The armies in the shadows | An overview of the working conditions of French translators

Par Ellen Replay | le 3 février 2020 | Modifié le 25 mai 2021

In the last edition, we tried to explain how games are translated, and why some of your favorite AAA games are likely to contain at best some typos, at worst huge mistakes – and how we’ve moved on from terrible translations made by developers to generalized professionalization of the localization process. After talking with French translators, freelancers and employees alike, several facts soon emerged. The fact that their working conditions haven’t really improved over the years. And, like many other small cogs in an industry which favors the culture of silence, they haven’t always had the opportunity to make themselves heard, to express their joys and their frustrations. It is certainly not because they are short of things to say.

You are reading an English version of an article published in the French magazine Canard PC. The article was translated by Nikki Kopelman, on the initiative of Lucile Danilov.