The localization of video games into less widely spoken languages that share a common history

Abstract

Even though video games are highly popular, localization into Slovak is rather rare and the language struggles to maintain a presence in the video game industry. This is partly because Slovak is a less widely spoken language, and also because it is mutually intelligible with the more dominant Czech language, having a common history. Our paper examines the Slovak-Czech parallels in the respective language-, audiovisual- and multimedia- related legislation as well as market practices. A similar comparative analysis is conducted with other less widely spoken European languages, namely Serbian, Croatian and Slovenian. Our results show that among the examined languages, Czech is by far in the strongest position as a supported language in video games on various platforms whereas Slovak, Serbian, Croatian and Slovenian are hardly present. We hope that the results of our research will stimulate the discussion on this issue.