The art of reversioning

When it comes to international distribution, the flipside of speechless series that require no translation is the art of reversioning dialogue-driven shows for new audiences. Often a great show, even one with universal kid appeal, needs a strong dose of reversioning before it settles into different territories. And this can require more than simple translation and dubbing - sometimes, producers have to go so far as to rewrite scripts and digitally edit visual elements.

For example, reversioning 4Kids' Yu-Gi-Oh! from its original Japanese incarnation into a series suitable for North American broadcast required all of the above, and then some. Besides the obvious translation from Japanese to English, 4Kids EVP Brian Lacey explains that one of the first steps was editing the 25-minute scripts to fit a 22-minute format, as well as editing to reflect creative storytelling that jibed with U.S. and Canadian sensibilities. Lacey says that meant tweaking the script to play down violence, sexual references and aggressive behavior that were just fine in Japan, but would have caused an uproar in North America.

"The common mistake many people make is believing it's just dubbing; but it's not, it's adaptation," says Lacey. Adhering to strict US broadcast standards, for example, might mean putting a helmet on a character who's riding a motorcycle or softening the high stakes in a script to let kids know that when a character falls, he might not necessarily be falling to his death.

But by far the most onerous reversioning that Yu-Gi-Oh! had to go through was changing the Japanese graphics on the trading cards that are part of the storylines and laced throughout the episodes. This transition required rotoscoping the Japanese-language characters out and re-inserting graphic images that worked for not only North America, but worldwide distribution as well. Lacey likens rotoscoping to a surgeon slicing out a torn knee ligament and patching the joint. "I don't care whether it takes 30 seconds or two minutes to do a rotoscope, multiply that by the six million we've done, and that's a lot of work," he says.

The team of producers at 4Kids also had to keep track of the series' 1,200 monsters and translate their Japanese names to neutral monikers meant to work in any language. Lacey says several worldwide broadcasters acquire the program directly from 4Kids, based on the vigorous reversioning the company does, and these deals include a master grid of monsters to which the broadcasters can refer.

Nick Jr. UK went through a less onerous, but similar process with Out of the Blue/Decode Enterprises' Super Why!, which also required going in and changing visual elements. In this case, the words spelled out during this language-driven series had to be changed when the vocabulary skewed too North American. For example, sidewalk had to be changed to pavement, and the channel's VP of programming, Debbie MacDonald, says other translations that come up from time to time include biscuit for cookie and rubber for eraser.