Translating the Hobby through Player Translators and Fanzines in Spain from 1981 to 1991

Abstract This article reconstructs how tabletop role-playing became linguistically and materially playable in Spain between 1981 and 1991. It focuses on a Barcelona-centred network of clubs, specialist magazines, fanzines, translators, and small publishers whose work exerted influence beyond that local setting. The study combines close reading with a purpose-built database of 94 documented appearances: 79 case-normalised English labels, 89 English–Spanish pairings, and evidence drawn from MS, Líder, Troll, early rulebooks, published errata, and retrospective testimony. Rather than treating chronological priority as proof of influence, the analysis distinguishes documented appearance, probable continuity, acknowledged transmission, and interpretation. It shows that basic terms such as juego de rol, personaje, campaña, director de juego, hoja de personaje, and puntos de vida circulated before or alongside the first licensed Spanish editions. It then follows selected forms into Joc Internacional’s Call of Cthulhu, RuneQuest, and Middle-earth Role Playing, where player-translators combined literary precedents, knowledge of other games, and practical experience at the table. Translation therefore included lexical choice, source criticism, rules repair, interface design, and the coordination of terminology across game lines. Errata in MS, Líder, and Troll further show that publication redistributed authority without closing the text: translators and readers continued to test and repair books through the print networks that had first made the hobby accessible. The article conceptualises this work as cultural infrastructure with lexical, material, and institutional dimensions. The Spanish case offers a print-based genealogy of participatory translation in which commissioned and non-commissioned roles overlapped, while also showing that not every early solution survived standardisation.