William Trinen (born August 21) is the Senior Director Product Marketing of

Nintendo of America is a Japanese multinational video game company headquartered in Kyoto, Japan. It develops video games and video game consoles. Nintendo was founded in 1889 as by craftsman Fusajiro Yamauchi and originally produced handmade playing card ...

. He is also a professional

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

-to-

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

translator Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. The English language draws a terminological distinction (which does not exist in every language) between ''transl ...

who has worked on the

localization Localization or localisation may refer to: Biology * Localization of function, locating psychological functions in the brain or nervous system; see Linguistic intelligence * Localization of sensation, ability to tell what part of the body is a ...

of numerous Nintendo-published

video game Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device to generate visual feedback. This fee ...

s and often acts as an interpreter for various Japanese developers, most notably

video game designer Video game design is the process of designing the content and rules of video games in the pre-production stage and designing the gameplay, environment, storyline and characters in the production stage. Some common video game design subdiscipline ...

Shigeru Miyamoto.

Education

Trinen began studying

while in high school and continued at the

University of Oregon The University of Oregon (UO, U of O or Oregon) is a public research university in Eugene, Oregon. Founded in 1876, the institution is well known for its strong ties to the sports apparel and marketing firm Nike, Inc, and its co-founder, billion ...

, where he majored in Japanese and minored in Business. He also studied international business, international management, economics, and translation a year overseas in the

Aoyama Gakuin University is a private Christian university in Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan. Originally established in 1874 by missionaries from the Methodist Episcopal Church, it was reconfigured in its current form in 1949 as part of Aoyama Gakuin. Aoyama Gakuin University ...

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and List of cities in Japan, largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, ...

, Japan, and lived in

Shibuya Shibuya (wikt:渋谷, 渋谷wikt:区, 区 ''Shibuya-ku'') is a Special wards of Tokyo, special ward in Tokyo, Japan. As a major commercial and finance center, it houses two of the busiest railway stations in the world, Shinjuku Station (southern ...

Role at Nintendo

Trinen began work with Nintendo translating bug reports on '' The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time'', and was then hired full-time for the Nintendo Treehouse, its

game localization Video game localization (American English), or video game localisation (British English; see spelling differences), is the process of preparing a video game for a market outside of where it was originally published. The game's name, art assets, ...

division. He described his responsibilities in the Treehouse as "helping explain to people at Nintendo what the cool new features of the games are and points to focus on in PR and

marketing Marketing is the process of exploring, creating, and delivering value to meet the needs of a target market in terms of goods and services; potentially including selection of a target audience; selection of certain attributes or themes to emph ...

". Trinen's first translation project was ''

Mario Party is a party video game series featuring characters from the ''Mario'' franchise in which up to four local players or computer-controlled characters (called " CPUs") compete in a board game interspersed with minigames. The games are currentl ...

'', a

Nintendo 64 The (N64) is a home video game console developed by Nintendo. The successor to the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, it was released on June 23, 1996, in Japan, on September 29, 1996, in North America, and on March 1, 1997, in Europe and ...

game first released in Japan in 1998 and in western regions in 1999. He became the interpreter for Shigeru Miyamoto six months into the job by request of former NOA software engineering manager Jim Merrick. Trinen has also presented in various North American Nintendo Direct presentations, and is a significant public figure of NOA's Nintendo Treehouse division.

References

External links

Bill Trinen profile at N-Sider
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Trinen, Bill Living people American translators Nintendo people Year of birth missing (living people)