Localization and Humor Translation in The Secret of Monkey Island and The Curse of Monkey Island

Academic Paper from the year 2019 in the subject Interpreting / Translating, grade: 11.0, University of the Republic (Uruguay), language: English, abstract: This essay analyzes whether it is possible to localize humor maintaining equivalence in the target language. The issue will be applied to the case of the video game saga Monkey Island, since humor has always been an important element of it. The English and Spanish versions of two titles of the video game saga were selected in order to answer the question: Are both video games The Secret of Monkey Island and The Curse of Monkey Island good examples of successful localization and humor translation? Those titles are The Secret of Monkey Island and The Curse of Monkey Island since humor constitutes a substantial part of their dialogues and because they earned great popularity among the gaming community. Dialogues containing humorous elements, such as puns and wordplay, were extracted while playing those games in both versions, comparing each other and observing anisomorphisms. Regarding the issue of localization and transcreation and their challenges, research conducted was based on articles and books written by game localization scholars, who also deal with the issue of localizing humor in video games and its challenges. The analysis conducted in this paper consists in comparing each version of both titles and stating whether translators managed to maintain humorous effects in puns and wordplay, or if they failed to meet the challenge. Research shows that, indeed, humor in The Secret of Monkey Island and The Curse of Monkey Island was successfully localized despite challenges translators faced, and that the target player experiences the same humorous elements as the original source.