Linguistic issues in the localization of English video games into Arabic

What is it about?

The global growth of the video game market demands high-quality Arabic localization, yet the process faces major linguistic, cultural, and technical challenges. This study examines the difficulties encountered when localizing popular English-language video games into Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and, occasionally, Arabic dialects. Using a qualitative descriptive approach, the study analyzes a corpus from diverse commercial games, focusing on user interfaces, subtitles, and in-game texts. Drawing on translation studies, localization theory, and contrastive linguistics, the paper identifies issues such as terminological inconsistency, structural differences (e.g., word order), orthographic problems (e.g., disconnected letters), lexical-semantic challenges (e.g., collocation accuracy), and cultural adaptation. Arabic examples with transliteration illustrate how these obstacles affect naturalness and clarity. The findings emphasize how linguistic typology, cultural factors, technical constraints (e.g., limited UI space), and workflows (e.g., blind localization) intersect.

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Why is it important?

The study calls for greater linguistic expertise, cultural awareness, and improved industry practices to enhance Arabic game localization quality.