Pokemon And Localization

Due to the Pokemon phenomenon spanning multiple continents not only has a change in regional and national audiences led to change in the way in which the franchise is represented through themes and ideas but it also causes a more significant change on a much more basic level. This is particularly clear when we look at the animated tv series being an audio-visual text it requires a large amount of localization on several levels; most notable being the diegetic dialogue spoken within the show but continues on to aspects such as linguistic and nonverbal signs transmitted visually (Katsuno & Maret 2004). Whilst through this localization we contain the main theme of the narrative it is still subject to a certain level of transformation in the way grammatical understandings change throughout the world of linguistics. However what must be the most interesting form of localization is the opening theme songs and how they differ between the original Japanese and English dub. Not only does it get translated but also the words must be altered completely to allow it to still attribute musical value in the chosen language, in this case English, to the song. However this edit then causes us to avalanche into altering the instrumental aspect to the theme song as to still coincide with the new lyrics, therefor leaving us with a final product of a completely new and different song all as a result of localization.