Translating gender in video games

Abstract

This article investigates the role of localization in the representation of different gender and sexuality profiles in video games. Using Sara Ahmed’s queer phenomenology as a methodological framework, it analyzes the ideological and cultural limitations that restrict the rewriting of minority sexualities and genders when the original versions are transferred to other languages. The article begins by considering the generative capacities of translation as an agent that can discursively construct the subject, before focusing on the implications of localization for the shaping of identities from a phenomenological perspective to describe what conditions may lead to the appearance of translated queer paradigms in video games. The theoretical approach is applied to selected examples and conclusions for the practice of localization and its academic study are drawn.