You can thank Honkai: Star Rail’s localization team for its memes

Honkai: Star RailIts world has an incredibly silly feel. Players can flirt or rummage through trash while playing the game. Flavor text for achievements or items might reference anything from games like Pokémon to popular media like Breaking Bad. Developers told Polygon that its internet-savvy voice and sense of self brought a certain flavor to comedy. It turns out this was partly due to the latitude given to localizers during development.

Honkai: Star RailHoyoverse’s sci-fi RPG, titled “Back to the Future”, is available for free. Genshin Impact; it’s already available on Windows PCs and mobile devices, and it was recently released on PlayStation 5. Polygon spoke to the game’s developers about how they brought a unique voice to its sci-fi world. The developers gave us an in-depth look at the way the game has been translated to the US, including how localizers are empowered to include memes and cultural references.

Hoyoverse is a global company with offices in many countries. Honkai: Star RailThe team creates the first Chinese script. The team told Polygon that there’s a methodological approach to the localization process with “creative text,” a category of text that includes dialogue options, character lines, interactive dialogue, mission names, Eidolon names, and more. The team told Polygon that localizers have the flexibility to introduce new terms and references. This allows them to produce a faithful adaptation for English speakers of material originally written in Chinese.

“Our goal is to empower our localization team with a higher degree of creative freedom that they need to not only preserve the original flavor of the authorial intent but also to craft a reading experience that feels authentic and natural to our audience as if all the texts were originally composed in their native language,” a member of the development team told Polygon in a written Q&A.

Hoyoverse image via Polygon

Localizers are often forced to replace memes and pop-culture references based on their context in the game. The team could replace Chinese references with those that are more familiar to English speakers. Writers can also add additional jokes and references they believe will amuse players.

A member of the localization team shared an example with Polygon: “For example, there is an in-game achievement named ‘All the Way Northwest’ in Chinese. The Chinese title is an allusion to a popular Mandopop tune by a well-known pop singer, which Chinese speakers are familiar with. This reference is not clear to non-Chinese speakers if it were translated literally. After some research and contemplation, I drew inspiration from Guns N’ Roses’ ‘Sweet Child O’Mine’ and created ‘Sweet Child O’Mine’ as a tribute to the classic rock song. This name not only mirrors the original authorial intent but also hints at this specific achievement’s connection to Pom-Pom.”

Localization teams need to look beyond just content and references when they approach their tasks. The localization team should also consider the overall feeling and rhythm of the script. This allows localizers to give the English language version a unique flair, which would otherwise be lost when translating directly from Chinese.

“Another idiosyncratic feature of our game writing is the prevalent use of Classical Chinese, often found in a wide variety of forms, such as ancient Chinese classics, poems, lyric poetry, prose, and so on,” said the member of Honkai: Star Rail’s localization team. “Classical Chinese is known for being rhythmically harmonious, stylistically elegant, contextually laconic, and thematically evocative. It is almost impossible to simultaneously translate these beautiful qualities into English. Thus, instead of translating word-for-word, we have to think outside the box and find new innovative ways to infuse our English writing with the same stylishness.”

Hoyoverse image via Polygon

Developers gave a sample of the flavor text that was used to describe Jing Yuan in Eidolon. The developers used ancient Classical Chinese to write all of Jing Yuan’s Eidolon description lines in the original text. In the original version of the text, the developers wrote all six of his Eidolon descriptions with poetic lines using ancient Classical Chinese.

The localization team member who spoke to Polygon explained how they handled this: “To achieve the same level of stylistic elegance as the original Chinese, I employed the literary technique of alliteration in naming all six of Jing Yuan’s Eidolons. Each name consists of three words, resulting in a total of 24 words, all starting with the letter ‘S’ for the entire set of Eidolons. This was a time-consuming and creatively demanding process, but the end result is a well-arranged symphony that not only stands on its own but also remains true to the essence and flavor of the source material.”

You can read the entire book to see how it is written and its many delightful quirks. Honkai: Star RailNow, you can play it on your mobile device, Windows PC and PlayStation 5