Insights into blending game localisation in the Arab world: Arafiesta as a case study

In the field of translation studies, game localisation is considered a growing branch of audiovisual translation in which localisers translate and adapt game content for successful circulation across foreign markets. This paper sheds light on the process of localising religious content and obscene references in the game Fiesta Online by comparing it to the Arabic-localised version Arafiesta on the basis of a corpus of 740 dialogue strings. Drawing on the frameworks developed by Delabastita (1989), Zitawi (2008) and Al-Adwan (2015), the analysis scrutinises game elements that are considered controversial in the Arab world. These items were omitted, mitigated, or adapted to isolate the theme of Paganism from the original content. Visual features were retained except for a few instances. Finally, during the process of localising interactive aspects of the game, retention, deletion and adaptation were frequently used. The paper highlights how blending game localisation, a prominent localisation approach changing the intersemiotic channels (the verbal, pictorial and interactive layers) of video games, plays a pivotal role in promoting and marketing game imports in the Arab world, which is now one of the largest growing markets.