Episode 318: EwK318 Board game localisation and how games can help us to learn languages 2/2

This two-part content came out of a discussion at one of my meetings, when one of the participants shared about her work as a board games translator. I thought this was interesting,both to learn more about this work and to see how people are using board games for language learning – in terms of adults improving their skills, parents with multilingual children, and teachers in the language classroom.

It’s not a topic that I know a lot about. As someone with a visual impairment, it’s hard to find accessible games for me in English, my first language. It’s even harder in my additional ones. So I put up a poll on LinkedIn to see what others thought about the topic and then asked if some of them would like to come on the podcast for a group discussion. In the end, we had 6 people who wanted to take part, so I made two groups. This is the second one, with Sónia, Gwen, and Helene.

You can listen to group 1’s episode here.

In this session, we talked about:

• “Different ways in which my guests use board games – with friends, to meet new people, and in the language classroom
• How games can be a useful tool to reinforce what children have already learned
• How the goal of playing a game takes some of the pressure off useing the additional language
• Games that may not work so well if you know the language and not the culture
• Word games that can be played in other languages
• Board game cafes and meet-up groups for playing games and meeting new people – including speakers of other languages
• Game localisation – the balance between educating people about an existing culture and adapting the experience so that everyone can participate

Find out more about the guests and which games they recommend on the show notes page: https://englishwithkirsty.com/podcast/episode318/