Red Squirrel, Italian Translator

1. Tell us a bit about who you are, your background, and how you came to work on translating Forgotton Anne?

I'm an Italian guy with the fondness of videogames and manga/anime, so it's easy to understand how a game with the style of Forgotton Anne has attracted my interest since the announcement. After the release, however, I had the sad confirmation that the game was not available in Italian. Considering that I undertook several projects of Italian translations in the past (videogames, manga, anime and novels) I didn't think twice about starting the project of an unofficial Italian translation for this game too. Then when I asked to the developers the permission to release a first version of my unofficial translation, they asked me to work on an official translation patch and of course I immediately accepted and, well, here we are xD

2. There is a lot of text to translate in Forgotton Anne. How did you approach the task?

To tell the truth, I have dealt with much longer translation projects in the past, which have also required periods of months, so the text to be translated into Forgotton Anne did not seem so much to me xD First of all I translated the secondary things (menus, character names, diary's pages and Anne's thoughts) and only then I threw myself headlong into the dialogues. All the translation process required only three weeks.

3. What are some of the specific challenges you faced bringing Forgotton Anne into your native language?

There are some English phrases and expressions that in Italian you can not replicate in an identical way, so I had to improvise a bit trying to change those expressions where possible.

4. Were there any word or terms that proved particularly awkward or humorous to translate?

Well, to tell the truth there was one in particular. The word "pump" that is often used in the game and that in Italian if literally translated it has a vulgar and sexual double meaning xD And since the protagonist is a woman, the double meaning was often even more pronounced. So I had to work hard on it to try and translate it so as to minimize that double meaning.

5. What do you think about Forgotton Anne and translating/editing it?

Forgotton Anne is one of the best games I played this year, I loved its anime style, story and gameplay, the only flaw I found in the game (in addition to the absence of Italian translation of course :P) is that... it ends xD

Translating this game was fun for me (because it allowed me to discover ramifications that I had not discovered just by playing it), and knowing that my name will always be linked to the Italian translation of this game is a great honor for me.

6. How do you expect your culture will take to Forgotton Anne in your language?

Actually, I really don't know if my culture will take anything to Forgotton Anne, but I can assure you I tried to be as faithful as possible to the original while translating.

7. Any message you want to enclose to players in your language?

Now you people no longer have any excuse for not enjoying this wonderful game and exploring it in every last corner ;)