Throwback to a year of localisation classes in the ELLIT department

As part of the renewal of our Master’s programs, localisation classes have been introduced in all FTI-EII language departments, and more specifically in the compulsory programme of the first year of Master’s (fourth year of our translation curriculum).

Our ELLIT department is, of course, no exception! Jesse Marion and Loïc de Faria Pires have put together a busy and varied program for this new class at the FTI-EII 😉. Over the course of the teaching sessions, our students had the opportunity to get acquainted with the theoretical foundations and translational constraints of localisation, to try their hand at linguistic adaptation of software and video games, and much more.

With a view to familiarising our fourth-year students with the professional practice of localisation, we invited several speakers from the localisation industry to present their respective professional localisation practises (from their working language into French). The presentations by Pauline Forêt, localiser at Audible, and Jean-Manuel Roy (ULB), who localised the Final Fantasy XIII game into French, gave our students the chance to discover new professional horizons they may not have been aware of before.

But that’s not all! Apart from the weekly peregrinations of our students when localising contents and struggling with reformulation constraints, character limits and sometimes capricious client files, they were allowed, for their final work, to choose a piece of software or a video game to localise in groups. They were also required to get in touch with the translated document’s developers to obtain their official permission. As a result, two groups of students were lucky and talented enough to have their production embedded into the game and becoming the official French-speaking localised version of the game on the Steam platform, no less!

The  students are Souheir al-Jammal, Maoua Baidouri, Louise Fontenelle and Yasmina Graindorge, who localised a game entitled “Looking Up I See Only A Ceiling” (https://store.steampowered.com/app/1742930/Looking_Up_I_See_Only_A_Ceiling/), and Clémentine André, Laura Badalamenti, Morgane Bertieaux and Julia Rugbur, who localised a game entitled “Lock(ed)” (https://store.steampowered.com/app/2267810/Locked/). They were, of course, credited by the developers, both in the game and via social networks… Well done!

Localisation is off to a flying start at the FTI-EII, and contributes to modernising the courses taught in our Faculty, anchoring the Master’s programs ever more firmly in the modern world and the evolution of professional practices.