Gender in Game Localization: The case of Mass Effect 3’s FemShep

Gender in video games has been a topic on the media radar for decades. In particular, women’s stereotyped and hypersexualized underrepresentation (Cunningham 2012: 407-409) has provided Game Studies scholars with ample opportunities for significant contributions (Consalvo 2012: 245-246). On the contrary, the linguistic and textual dimension of gender issues is still an underexplored area in Game Localization research (O’Hagan and Mangiron 2013, Bernal-Merino 2014). This paper attempts a preliminary examination of the gender-related challenges language professionals must deal with in game localization and focuses on the translation from English into Italian of Mass Effect 3 (Electronic Arts 2012). In this blockbusting science fiction action role-playing game, players assume the role of Commander Shepard, a human elite soldier who must save the Galaxy from alien invasion. Interestingly, the protagonist’s customization includes gender and, given the series’ overall success and the (controversial) social media marketing campaign focused on female Shepard, “FemShep” is one of the most popular heroines in gaming history (Cobbett 2012: online). In this light, this paper compares parallel excerpts from in-game dialogues and analyzes gender-variable text strings in order to show FemShep’s linguistic and textual representation which, as first findings suggest, may be observed in grammatical and stylistic translational phenomena.