All the World’s a Stage - Localizing the Merchant of Venice
ANNOUNCE 11/2/2011 2:58:13 PM
The people of Nexon’s localization team are the oft-unsung heroes of Mabinogi. It’s this group who takes the Korean text and translates it into English. They have the monumental responsibility of making sure the language maintains and imparts the essence and flavor of the stories of Mabinogi. We asked them to discuss how they were able to bring out the true “Merchant of Venice.”
…And All the Men and Women More than Players
While adapting Shakespeare to fit into the world of Mabinogi has always been a challenge, The Merchant of Venice took it to another level. This was due to the fact that in previous Shakespeare content updates, Shakespearean language and quests only took place inside the Globe Theatre dungeon. In contrast, the story of the Merchant of Venice takes place in Erinn itself. To make the two fit together seamlessly, our team had to get creative.
As much as it hurt to lose the poetic beauty of the Shakespearean language, we decided to stick to our past localizing process. As the storyline would be taking place outside of the Globe Theater, this meant that we had to “translate” some of the original lines into modern English.
For example, when Bassanio is choosing between the gold, silver, and lead boxes at the end of the play, he says:
The world is still deceived with ornament.
In law, what plea so tainted and corrupt,
But, being seasoned with a gracious voice,
Obscures the show of evil?
It’s pretty, but we knew that Alissa in Tir Chonaill would scratch her head if she heard that.
Here’s what we changed it into:
Is our world so shallow, that a hint of gold can still fool so many? Even in court, a vile and guilty criminal can hide behind a sweetly-worded plea, hiding the true evil.
Not as poetic perhaps, but it helps preserve the world of Erinn as a coherent place with a consistent culture.
Old Faces, New Friends
We continued the process by re-shaping Shakespeare’s characters. In one instance, we presented Portia as an elf and made her much friendlier than you might remember from the original text, in order to make her as memorable as possible.
Shylock was our biggest challenge. To avoid a spoiler, we will just say that we drastically altered the motivations for his actions. We also wanted to make him a little more sympathetic, so instead of being a cruel, miserly old man, our Shylock does charity work. He’s still not very nice to Antonio, though.
