New special issue of open access journal Analog Game Studies on translation and analogue games

Translation is central to the spread of board and other analogue games internationally. It’s impossible to imagine board gaming in the last twenty years without games such as Catan or Carcassone or Puerto Rico, all translated from German, and it’s also very difficult to imagine role playing games without the influence of Dungeons and Dragons, often played in translation outside of English speaking countries. In recent years, there has been an increase in the number of games produced and translated, meaning that game production is increasingly polycentric and games are experienced more and more in translation. Yet scholarship in game and translation studies has often overlooked the translation of tabletop and other analogue games.

This new special issue of Analog Game Studies aims to start filling this gap and encourage more research in this important area. Essays focus on the importance of translation and adaptation in gaming culture globally while highlighting the intergenerational function of translation, on the sociocultural aspects of translation and translanguaging in RPG communities in Colombia, and on translation as a space of social translation. Contributors include Jonathan Evans, Laura Mitchell and Enrique Uribe-Jongbloed.