You might be wondering where the exotic name Soshiden comes from. It was an epic ordeal to encapsulate all the nuances that we wanted to convey into a single word, and since we couldn’t find the very one that represented us, what do you think we did? Of course we made up our own word.

The name Soshiden is an abbreviation of “Soshite densetsu e” (そして、伝説へ), which is the subtitle of one of the best videogames ever created: Dragon Quest III. The phrase can be translated as “and so the making of a legend began”. This subtitle was lost in the original American English localization, known as Dragon Warrior III: The seeds of salvation. If you come to think of it, that might as well have been “the seeds of translation”.

In Soshiden we have a strong background in Japanese titles and RPGs’ localization, and since our parent company is named Shinyuden (another made-up word meaning “the legend of the close friends”), we were looking for a brand that could be easily linked to it.

We wanted to keep the word “legend” and we took the opportunity to play around with Japanese kanji, that normally have different readings depending on the context and combination with other kanji. Therefore, because “densetsu” (伝説) means “legend” in Japanese, we decided to take the “den” (伝), which is also used in “tsutaeru” (伝える) meaning “to communicate”. This reflects perfectly the aspirations of a localization company so we merged it with the first part of the DQIII sentence and the rest is history.

As it happened in DQIII when the heroes started their journey, we are still unaware of the dangers and adventures that await us. We just know we are on our way and we hold the conviction that, whatever the future has in store for us, we will be part of a legend. A legend we are building together with those kindred spirits that want to push the localization industry forward and reach new quality standards.