Please help. I feel like I have to play League of Legends before I will be able to even touch an e-sports novel (translation wise). Are there any special terminologies I have to look out for? Thanks for your support.
I don't play League of Legends, but some gaming terminologies that are good to know are probably the common ones that are used a lot, like: ~instakill (killing someone instantly) ~AOE (area of effect- so those attacks that cover a large area) ~AFK (away from keyboard) ~RPG (role playing game) ~NPC (non-player character) ~quests (like tasks you do to get rewards, exp, etc.) ~MMORPG (or just MMO- massively multiplayer online role-playing game) ~APM (actions per minute, refers to how fast you can type, I believe) There's probably a bunch of LoL specific terms that I don't know of, but these are some basic ones~ Hope they help!
Though if you plan on translating an e-sports novel, it might be better to read some novels in the e-sports genre first. That'd probably help you get a feel for things a lot more. I recommend The King's Avatar!
Take a look at some Qing Mei novels. They're shorter than TKA, TKA is about an MMO and not a MOBA, and Qing Mei's novels feature a little bit of LoL in between in for example You're Beautiful When You Smile.
A list of a bunch of League terminology off the top of my head: top/mid/bot lane, ADC (attack damage carry), Gank, Jungle & Jungler, rotation, laneswap, orbwalking/stutterstep, AA/auto attack, base race/base trade, engage, tower/turret, first blood (first kill in the game), kda (kills, deaths, assists), cs (creep score = number of minions killed), early/mid/late-game, red/blue buff, dragon, baron/nashor, backdoor, baron/dragon steal, ks = Kill Steal, gg = good game, wp = well played, power spike, item spike, push, slow push, creep wave, freeze, wave management, creep/minion block, jungle camp, inhibitor, nexus, last hit, skillshot... By the way, which language do you plan to translate from, Chinese? I know what a few things are called in Chinese but no clue about KR. +1
Some understanding of how moba games in general will make it easier to translate imo. Aside from reading some moba oriented novels, I would also recommend watching a game or two if you haven't already. Slangs in LoL differ through the regions. Like I've heard that "raptors" are called "chickens" in the LCK (Korea), "drafting"(?) is called "bp" in LPL (China). MOBA jargons League terminologies Chinese Lol terms -not updated: no new champs Chinese lol 2
raptors are called chickens in English as well, iirc it was because of some april fools patch that changed them into looking like chickens. and bp probably stands for ban-pick as in the pick & ban phase (aka drafting) with that said, there's probably a lot of terminology that don't have English equivalents