This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Archived Discussion from old title:
Lale: Why the page quote? That's an example of Do Not Want? It makes sense as is. What is it supposed to mean?
this visitor hails from China, the ancient land of dvd piracy, i've watched like a hundred of (pirated) movies in english sub, and only one or two has wrong sub from other film (the War of Worlds with sub looks like came from one about mexican gangs or something), not sure why so, maybe the bootleggers reserve all funny stuffs for export...
There's a store in Melbourne that sells anime DV Ds that had Japanese subtitles translated to Chinese and then translated to English.
Whoever included this, please, tell me which store this is. I live in Melbourne and would love to know.
John Z: I wanted to do the Laconic version of the page to read "Five pounds of flax." but I don't think anyone would get the joke.
This page is currently under discussion for a rename or merge. Join in the debate on the forum thread
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As per the decision of the above, this page has been rewritten. The following examples were removed. They might make a good Darth Wiki page about bootleg experiences.
- This editor recalls seeing a Chinese bootleg of Inu Yasha which called Sesshoumaru "The Killing Pill" and referred to Miroku (a Buddhist monk) as a "rabbi." (Well, if Nuns Are Mikos...)
- How about one where Kikyo had her name inexplicably rendered as "Jugen"?
- The kanji of "Sesshoumaru" literally means 'killing people pill' or 'murdering pill', especially when read in Chinese. The kanji of 'maru' originally meant 'pill' in Chinese, but after the Japanese started incorporating Chinese characters into their language, 'maru' came to mean 'circle', and was often used to end male names back in the day. As for Kikyo, the kanji for her name can be read in several different ways, and "Jugen" is one of them.
- Except of course, when the subtitles go with the voiced dialogue that CLEARLY refers to her as "Kikyo".
- How about one where Kikyo had her name inexplicably rendered as "Jugen"?
- This troper is aware of a bootleg of One Piece from before the series was licensed outside of Japan that actually replaced every single character's name with Jack.
- This troper discovered a somewhat less-mangled subtitle quirk involving names. Every name was translated into a un-namelike English word that sounded similar. The best of which were "Sanji" translated as "Sunkist" and "Crocodile" translated as "Clock Dell."
- This troper was amused by the bootleg for Sonic X, translating Sonic himself as "Sonic Rat" for about the first couple of episodes and constantly calling Dr. Eggman "Machine King" which arguably sounds pretty cool.
- This troper has a bootleg of the Sonic OVA which also uses "Machine King", and transcribes Tails' name as "Dillus".
- This troper saw Mobile Suit Gundam Seed bootlegs once. While the quality varied from episode to episode (in some cases being astonishingly good), the shining moment was when they called Mwu la Flaga, general badass and counterpart to the Char clone, "Florida".
- There's a store in Melbourne that sells anime DVDs that had Japanese subtitles translated to Chinese and then translated to English. They have never, ever correctly spelled a character name, sometimes just giving up and giving them a random English name instead. Hayate, the male love interest of Pretear, started out being called Sarah, then Jingje, then finally Hayate. The same DVDs also translated all the male characters as female but kept all references to female characters as female, except for the main character, who was apparently the only male.
- This troper saw the same thing happen to the characters of Sister Princess in the English subtitles of a grey-market Hong Kong release of the series that he purchased. None of them were called by their actual names, and the names changed several times during the course of the series.
- This Troper once saw a Full Metal Alchemist fansub where a group of characters named after the Seven Deadly Sins included the names "Rust" and "Blatnee" (Lust and Gluttony) for several episodes before the translators apparently caught on.
- Some Yu-Gi-Oh fansubs have quite a few obvious errors. Some names are changed and others are completely wrong; for example, "Black Magician" and "Exodia" are switched around. They also use some odd grammar, especially in the opening song translations, and make some strange changes to the words. In Yugi's duel with Pandora, they call the buzzsaw a "gummer," and sometimes refer to the cards as "pokers". Possibly the most hilarious was translating "Millennium Puzzle", and "Millennium Rod" into "Thousand Year Bricks" and "Thousand Tin Stick".
- In a couple of episodes in the second season, they also call Kaiba "Seahorse" for no apparent reason. They also usually mistranslate Anzu's name as "Kyoko", and on one occasion, Mokuba as "Wooden Horse".
- Kaiba does literally mean seahorse. And Mokuba does mean wooden horse. God knows what the author was thinking when he chose those names for them. The kanji for Anzu's name might be misread as Kyoko, as there are different ways of reading the kanji. Also, the original kanji for the "Millennium Puzzle" literally translates to Thousand Year Toy Bricks/Puzzle Bricks. Remember that millennium means a thousand years anyway, so that part of the translation isn't that off.
- In Japanese 'Seahorse' literally means baby dragon...
- Perhaps worst of all, even some Gratuitous English names are wrong; "Revival Slime" becomes "Revival Mud".
- In a couple of episodes in the second season, they also call Kaiba "Seahorse" for no apparent reason. They also usually mistranslate Anzu's name as "Kyoko", and on one occasion, Mokuba as "Wooden Horse".
- In one scanlation of Naruto Pain(also known as Pein) tells Kakashi to "Know Pein!", making it seem like he's referring to himself instead of his namesake.
- In a more egregious and less humorous error, Sasuke says that he wants to kill all five Kages after learning about Danzo becoming Hokage, when he should be saying that he just wants to kill Danzo at the summit. Granted, Sasuke has recently jumped off the slippery slope, but that is an exaggeration of how far he's willing to go or how much he thinks of his abilities.
- In a more egregious and less humorous error, Sasuke says that he wants to kill all five Kages
- There was an Ask Dr Rin subbing (I think of Chinese origin, because it was using Chinese names for everyone) that had Tokiwa call himself a "lovable sex maniac." Now, ostensibly true as that may be for character description purposes, understanding Japanese, I can definitely say that he was calling himself a "shikigami user" instead, which makes a lot more sense.
- This Mazinger Z sub. Tall Evil God. Doctor Hill. Asla. It just... it just keeps going.
- This troper recalls a translation of xxxHoLic in which every time Watanuki's surname appears, it always appears as its literal translation ("April 1").
- This troper saw a Fist Of The North Star snapshot that had subtitiles that translated Raoh's alias Ken-Oh as "Lord Boxing Champion"
- Not a bootleg, but one issue of the UK "Sonic The Comic" had a misprint where one page had the same word balloons from the previous page. And the balloons still kind of fit in terms of page layout.
- Similarly, in one translation of One Piece Chapter 504, Kizaru says "Clearly it would not be right for us to remain idle" a second time instead of saying "Sengoku-san..."
- Gary Larson reported a couple of times having his captions swapped with those of Dennis the Menace, vastly improving both, in The Prehistory of The Far Side.
- On the subject of toku, this troper has a bootleg of the Ninja Sentai Kakuranger movie which translates "Kakurangers" as "Cuckoo Rangers" and contains the line "Go to Sam Hill, Cuckoo Rangers!"
- Similarly, in one translation of One Piece Chapter 504
- Another infamous example by Hong Kong Subs was Kamen Rider Ryuki, in which in one episode, someone said, "Don't Molest the Lawyer". This too became a minor meme within the fandom.
- One Final Fantasy X fan, dissatisfied with the English voice dub, was hoping to play a subtitled copy bought on eBay. Instead that person got something else entirely. The "Guado" race is now the "Chubby" race, "Jyscal" is "Jessica," and Walter(Wakka) is a good egg.
- There's also a surprising amount of Ho Yay in the translation, such as "I feel happy that Walter wants to arouse me".
- Parodied in episode 119 of Not Quite Daily Comic, complete with Bilingual Bonus in (broken) Chinese and explicit use of "Do not want."
Tokuiten: I just moved these to "Blind Idiot" Translation; if they don't fit the new Do Not Want, they still fit "Blind Idiot" Translation.
ccoa: I hope you cleaned up all the first person stuff out of them, This Troper is generally not considered acceptable outside of Troper Tales, Darth Wiki, or Sugar Wiki.
Caswin: Wasn't there an X-Men example? Something about Wolverine being "Gold Silver Wolf" and Stryker becoming "Striker Graph". It made me seriously consider pursuing this kind of translation.
Beginning three day countdown on rename.
What is the page quote, and what does it mean in "proper" English?
I'm a little confuse, guys, why would a bootleg DVD of an American movie have English subtitles? If the dialogue is foreign dubbed why would the subtitles be of use to anyone watching it?
Crowley: The revisit to the original "do not want" dub explains this:
- the dvd menu looks pretty normal, aside from a rather evil-looking yoda...to experience backstroke of the west one has to go to the subtitle menu and select 'english'.
Woolie Wool: What is the new "improved" version of the page header translated from? It looks like a machine translation of English—>Italian—>German—>English.
DONOTWANT: However, the Pirates instead of the common language, especially "Rokarizeshonchimu" orders, which can be translated into bit budget, incentives are the following translation. that's "This is especially common in bootleg translations, where the "localization team" has little budget, less incentive, and may not even speak the language they're translating to" Ran through translation party
