Japanese video games have existed for decades now; however, the early games often lacked cultural elements and were thus easy to localize in other countries. As video games gained popularity and became more advanced, more of Japanese cultural elements started appearing in the games, which brought rise to translation problems. The localizers had to face the issue of whether to preserve or delete foreign culture elements within the game when these games were released in the West.
As game localization of (Japanese) cultural elements is under-researched, this paper focuses solely on cultural terms. It attempts to see whether there is a change of translation techniques and if there is a shift regarding foreignization and domestication from the first game to the latest release within the game series Fatal Frame. The games were played in both their original form (Japanese) and the English localization in order to gather data which consists of cultural terms that appear in-game. Their translation was then analyzed to see if they were deemed to be foreignized or domesticated, followed by a comparison to see if there was a shift in the 22-year gap between the first and latest release.
The result indicates that both games used the adaptation and equivalence (paraphrasing) techniques to a similar extent. The latest release preferred using the omission technique compared to the first, while the first game favored equivalence in conjunction with the borrowing technique. However, against expectation, the first game is considered more foreignized compared to the latest release, which goes against the trend seen in other mediums where translations are becoming more foreignized in modern times. This was also the result of a previous study within this area.