The GamiShT project is designed and structured around an innovative deliverable: a serious games. Indeed, it allows a varied audience to explore issues related to gender, insults and humor from texts and french translations of william shakespeare. The interdisciplinary collaborations necessary for this gamification of the profession of translator will bring a range of scientific and educational applications, while consolidating a research network under construction and initiating future research projects.
Context and issues related to the gamification of translation
First of all, the GamiShT project continues to question the translation and Iare video games, in TIL laboratories or ELLIADD. In addition, days organized in 2020 and in 2021 at TIL have enabled researchers, trainers and practitioners to lay the groundwork for an inter-university network focused on the localization of video games. Thus, the "gamification" of content represents an abounding project, as evidenced by a project such as Agent 001 at Notre-Dame-du-Haut Hill. It is T Hulin who framed and published on this game.
In addition, we can cite the adaptation of James the Fatalist whose developers represent potential future collaborators. Inspired by this momentum, the GamiShT project aims to reverse the question of the translation of video games. It aims to create a game focused on texts and their translations. The interactions of the future game will be based on the modeling of questions and choices with both scientific and educational applications. Some publishers have already adapted Shakespeare in an interactive version (book Where video game). The choice of the author for this project is linked to theatrical translation workshops. C. François-Denève organizes these workshops, the 2022 edition of which will allow the recording of exchanges which can then be integrated into the future game. The focus on questions of gender, insult and humor aims to give this first version of the project a thematic coherence.
Research objectives
However, beyond the creation of a game and the gamification of certain translator processes, the main objective of the GamiShT project is to open up an interdisciplinary project. This allows questions of genre, insult and humor to be explored in texts and translations from a diachronic perspective. It also proposes the development of a system of interactions designed as video game representations of specific issues. This system can be applied to other texts, other themes and other types of content.
In addition, the second objective of the 2022 project is to deploy scientific applications. For example :
- the analysis of interdisciplinary connections;
- or the analysis of the data of the choices and routes taken by the players.
- or pedagogical analysis: for the teaching of translation, languages, theater or even gender studies.
The involvement of students in the different phases of the project is part of the professionalization of the training courses concerned. It also develops a dimension of research training through research.
Methods and interdisciplinarity
Nevertheless, the organization of the project and the expected deliverable reflect its interdisciplinary nature linked to gamification. A first phase consists of defining a corpus of texts and identifying potential interactions. This involves taking into account the disciplinary approaches and issues identified by the team at the start of the project. We will be testing these examples in theater workshops scheduled for spring 2022.
In addition, alongside other textual and multimodal elements, we will integrate the recordings of the participants into the game. A second so-called development phase, in the spring of 2022, will consist of producing an interaction model. We will populate this template in the fall, based on content provided by team members. A linguistic and functional test phase will allow an initial analysis of the usage data. This will be done in parallel with the preparation of teaching aids and other resources. These resources will accompany the publication of the game on a dedicated site.
Shakespeare's gamification: what results?
However, this project goes beyond the development of a game and its publication on an institutional site accompanied by explanations and additional educational resources. Indeed, the 2022 project on gamification will produce scientific publications on
- on the process of creation and collaborative development and
- on specific or disciplinary questions, in the form of a collective work and separate articles.
We should add that planned meetings, during and at the end of the project, will make it possible to concretize and expand the inter-university network. In the process of being created, this fabric promotes interdisciplinary and inter-site networking, in order to define the continuation of the operation in the form of a regional “Envergure” project. Or ANR, with a broader thematic and technological scope. We will assess the results of the game developed in 2022. Thus, we will consider a commercial partnership for a future edition.
Project leader: Will Noonan, TIL laboratory, University of Burgundy.
Responsible for the design of the serious game: Thibaud Hulin.
