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Nintendo UK Interview: Localising DRAGON QUEST VII

by rawmeatcowboy
13 October 2016
GN Version 5.0

Sixteen years after it was originally released in Japan, DRAGON QUEST VII: Fragments of the Forgotten Past has finally reached the shores of Europe and brings with it a brand new English language translation courtesy of UK-based localisation specialists Shloc Ltd. In an exclusive interview, Oli Chance of Shloc details the process involved in this mammoth undertaking and some of the creative choices needed to make DRAGON QUEST VII's stories stand out.

Nintendo: Please could you tell us a little about Shloc Ltd and how you become involved in the localisation of DRAGON QUEST VII?

Oli Chance: Shloc essentially began when the three original members (myself, Mark and Geraint), who were working as freelance Japanese-to-English translators, decided we wanted to offer ourselves to clients as a team so that we could ensure that we would be working together to offer the best quality and most fun localisations possible.

Oli and Morgan have been working with Square Enix on the DRAGON QUEST series in various capacities since it got its big Western reboot with DRAGON QUEST VIII back in 2005. It was on that game that we got our first experience of a fully-featured, all-bells-and-whistles localisation job under the tutelage of Richard Mark Honeywood, and our experience there went a long way to laying the groundwork for how we do things now.

We’ve since been involved in the localisation of all the post-reboot DRAGON QUEST titles and quite a few of the spin-offs as well, handling the entire localisation for several of them, and contributing team members to the rest. Given our long history with the series, it’s very close to our hearts, and when we knew there was a plan to finally dust off DQVII and give it the remake treatment, we were honoured and excited to be asked to do it. And then we remembered how big it was...

Full interview here