Leiden University Student Repository

Bloem, Ralph (2016)

Samurai, Ninja and Little Monsters: The influence of the audience on anime localization

Master thesis | Linguistics (MA)

Since the anime boom of the 1990s and 2000s, the popularity of anime (Japanese animation) in the Western world has increased tremendously. Even though Western localization companies used to view anime as ‘just another form of Saturday morning children’s cartoons’ at first, as popularity increased, they came to the realization that it is a wholly different genre and business entirely. And as fans started demanding localizations that stayed as true as possible to the original versions, localization companies started paying closer attention to the way they translated these shows. But just how much does the audience influence the localization of anime? This research attempts to shed some light on that matter by comparing three anime series aimed at different audiences and looking at the different approaches localization companies have when tackling these shows.

anime

domestication

foreignization

localization

Author

Bloem, Ralph

Faculty

Faculty of Humanities

Specialisation

Translation in Theory and Practice

Supervisors

Dorst, A.G.

ECTS Credits

20

Language

en