The Unsung Kingdom Translation Project Designing an Effective and Sustainable Classroom Activity for a Japanese Video Game Translation

This paper presents the experience of the design of a didactic activity for the translation of a Japanese video game in Italian, carried out in 2020 during the first year of the Japanese language course of the Master’s Degree Programme in Language and Civilisation of Asia and Mediterranean Africa at Ca’ Foscari University. The described protocol allows the design of video game translation sessions as a teaching activity, overcoming some typical technical and organisational problems. One important issue this paper addresses involves the possibility of reviewing the translation within the game, which is fundamental to understanding how to translate texts for this medium. The paper will also give an overview of the translation issues that students encountered during the activity and of how they solved them. Finally, the results of a survey will show whether the implemented protocol and classroom activity were satisfactory for the students and how they can be improved.