It’s said that we all have a double somewhere in the world. It’s a haunting thought, but almost comforting compared to the harrowing tales of identity theft we hear on the nightly news. But, hey, we live in the age of fingerprints, DNA and CSI, right? The post-911 world of ever-more Orwellian identification requirements? Surely we’ve left cases of mistaken identity firmly in the past.
You know where this is going …
Video game localization has come a long way since a sub-par port of Zero Wing gave us the classic “All Your Base are Belong to Us” meme. As game companies have gone international, and as their products have ballooned from small-batch text-and-sprite diversions to interactive blockbusters, the industry that makes those games accessible to other cultures has done its best to keep pace – despite too often being treated as an afterthought by game companies .
Find out how this process has evolved from basic text translation to fully embrace cultural norms, preferences and taboos as I explain …
How Video Game Localization Works
4-D printing remains in its early stages, It’s certainly too early to tell if it’s anything more than a buzzword, let alone if its promise will translate into practicality. But the sorts of people who bet on these kinds of things are betting on it.
And why not? Suppose a structure could unfold itself, like origami. Imagine if walls could flex or stiffen in response to shifting loads, or if a buried pipe could change shape to accommodate varying water flows — or to pump water via peristalsis, like your digestive system. Through 4-D printing, nothing is set in stone unless you want it to be.
Zika virus is spreading through a hemisphere with plenty of mosquito habitat and no immunity to the disease, and summer is on its way. But what really chills the blood and drives our dread of what was once considered “dengue’s wimpy cousin” is the virus’s horrifying, yet unproven, link to infant microcephaly.
And so, even as epidemiologists struggle to contain and understand the problem, the news swarms with disturbing images and calls for wiping out the offending mosquito vectors. Clearly, if we’re going to get through this, we need to do our homework. Why not start with my article, in which I cut through the buzz to explore …
Our clothes-care-labeling system is a wonder of efficiency — if you speak the language. But can you honestly say that you know what every single one of those triangles, exes, squares and squiggles on your tags are telling you? If you answered “no,” then you’re in good company. You’re also in luck, because I’ve broken them all down for you in a brief and handy-dandy article called (descriptively enough) …
What’s the deal with those laundry symbols, and how do I tell them apart?