2020-06-12
As we mentioned last time, we have been introducing our passionate and inspiring staffs in Musai and their story through ‘Muse in Musai’.
Musai has built a reputation not only for the game sound but also for the game localization. Musai L10n team has proved their professionalism through the representative AAA titles and led tons of favorable feedbacks from various Korean media and players. Today’s muse is the one who is the youngest member of L10n Studio. She is new in this industry, but eager to learn and love her job at Musai. Let’s listen to more stories from Nam Eun-Ja, the game linguist and project manager at Musai.
Would you introduce yourself?
My main position is a game linguist and I also working as a project manager at Musai Studio.
What is the role of your position?
I translate, review, and edit the text in games and marketing materials from English to Korean. In the case of the games with voice-over, I take part in the script adaptation during the recording session. Most of translators working on only in-game text may be not used to the script adaptation and its necessity, but that is a very important step. Even though the translated script sounds natural in writing, it can be awkward in speech. I find better expressions for those lines and modify them with the artistic director of the session.
As for a project manager, I started to learn the process in January. I communicate with the clients, manage the schedule with freelance translators, and check out the quality of work before delivery.
How did you get started in the game localization industry?
I studied both interpreting and translation at college but was more interested in translation. Since I love playing games, I spent time watching cinematics and play videos of big titles and practiced by translating them.
However, it was not easy to get in the professional pool. When the time to graduate came, I looked for a job and found out that most of job opportunities were in Seoul which was far from my hometown. Even though I passed all the tests and interviews, I couldn’t avoid the message ‘We are sorry’ due to the distance from my hometown.
I was not intentional but was in tears because of those memories during the interview at Musai. Thankfully, Director Yu waited for me and gave me opportunity to keep talking. (I know it’s shame crying during the interview though..) That’s how I stepped into the game localization industry.
What do you like about Musai?
Actually, Musai Studio is like a university of the Ivy League for me. Musai is a famous studio for their historical and various references, and that means there are a lot of people I can learn from. I’m learning what I have wanted to learn here at Musai and working with the right people full of experience and knowledge.
Furthermore, I like we have both sound and L10n studio not like the normal L10n companies in Korea. That is a huge benefit as a linguist, I think. When I participated in a recording session, I can learn the feeling such as intonation, stress and mood from voice actors’ acting and artistic directing. For example, I was thinking ‘oh, her acting style is this way. I should make the script this way’ and tried it from the translation process.
What is your dream?
I’m happy with my job that can help the players to experience the immersive gaming experience. One day I wish I can hear the feedback like “the best localization’ from gamers though the title I participate in. I will never cease learning and improving as a linguist for myself and for the people who helped me so far.
Here is the whole interveiw. (Korean Only) https://youtu.be/rs–WsTq9js
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