I videogiochi tra professionismo e dilettantismo: proposta di localizzazione di The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind

Since the 1960s, the video game industry has experienced an exceptional growth, and is currently a mainstay of the international cultural scene. The globalization of video games has led publishers to invest in the accessibility of their products in foreign markets, consolidating game localization as an independent sector. Since the beginning, video games have been marked by a dualism between professional and non-professional, both in programming and in translation. This dissertation focuses on two different aims: on the one hand, it tries to illustrate the process of professional game localization, highlighting both difficulties and strategies; on the other hand, the amateur contribution in the translation of video games is analyzed, drawing attention to the difference with the professional sector in terms of skills and methods. To this end, the semi-professional localization of some assets of the role-playing videogame The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind was carried out, which was then compared to the translation produced by an Italian amateur translation group, the Italian Translation Project. The comparison showed that non-professional and professional translation are based on different principles: in the first case, the goal is to favor the understanding by the user, and the lack of expertise is balanced by the knowledge of video games; in the second case, the aim is to create a natural text in the target language, which favors not only comprehension but also the transmission of certain feelings. The two ways of confronting the text result in the contrast between a formal (amateur) and a dynamic (professional) approach, each one leading to certain terminological, syntactic and stylistic choices.