History BlindIdiotTranslation / LiveActionTv

Internal message of the television-group of the phase (Live Action TV)

[[Main/BlindIdiotTranslation Clicks on here redistribution and in the main page]].

* ''Film/FugitiveAlien'' Several dials/meters on the ''Bacchus 3'' are labeled hilarious things, such as: Space Speed, Cabin Air Presser, Tenperature, Sunny Side, and Other Side, while members of the ''Bacchus 3'' wearing jumpsuits emblazoned with the badge "Security Guard". The computer actually shows ''a shipping manifest''!
-->'''[[Series/MysteryScienceTheater3000 Servo]]:''' Hey, that truck is going to Utah!

** In another episode, when Sheldon and the others are talking about ''Franchise/TheLegendOfZelda'', they translated all the titles into Italian. There are two obvious problems with this: first, the titles of the Zelda games were never translated into Italian. Second, ''[[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTwilightPrincess Twilight Princess]]'' was translated as "La principessa di Twilight"... as in "The princess of ''Literature/{{Twilight}}''", rather then "La principessa del crepuscolo", which is the proper translation of the monicker used in the Italian translation of the game itself.

*** Examples: "Klingon" became "Klingoon" (why?!), "Warp" became "Krommingssnelheid" (good for scrabble!) are among a few of the more memorable idiotic translations.

* Another episode featured a paper in Russian entitled "Examinations of a Super-Asymmetric Model of the Universe", or as Google Translate put it, "Examinations of Moose Chowder in Lemon Parachutes."

** Another instance appeared to be more a case of the translator not listening, but Leonard meets Sheldon's sister in a season one episode and fumbles his words, saying "Nice to meet you...as well... also." The latter words in Norwegian got translated to "You smell awesome."* In ''Series/BreakingBad'', Gus Fring runs a fast food restaurant chain called "Los Pollos Hermanos", which translates as "The Chicken Brothers" - not brothers who cook chicken, as was intended, but brothers who actually are chickens. Given the logo, it seems this was an intentional move, as "Los Pollos Hermanos" is catchier and easier to remember than the grammatically correct "Los Hermanos Pollos".

** The German dub of ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' saw a few of those. One of the more interesting ones would be Dr. Crusher, sitting on the bridge on the Enterprise, alone in an empty ship in a shrinking warp-bubble in the episode [[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS4E5RememberMe "Remember Me"]], asking the computer "What is that mist out there?". This was translated to "Was ist das für ein mist da draussen?", keeping the Word "mist" of the English version, thus having her ask "What kinda manure (/crap) is that out there?". Works in spirit, but is still not quite right. The correct translation for "What is that mist out there" would be "Was ist das für ein Nebel da draussen?"...mist in the sense of "fog" is "Nebel", which is to many syllables to fit into the lip movements. Sometimes its not the translators fault..but just not possible any other way.

** The Dutch VHS release of the ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'' episode "Shattered" translated "A poet and a philosopher? Your intelligence file doesn't do you credit." to "Your IQ test doesn't do you credit."

** The German dub of ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' saw a few of those. One of the more interesting ones would be Dr. Crusher, sitting on the bridge on the Enterprise, alone in an empty ship in a shrinking warp-bubble in the Episode "Remember me", asking the computer "What is that mist out there?". This was translated to "Was ist das für ein mist da draussen?", keeping the Word "mist" of the English version, thus having her ask "What kinda manure (/crap) is that out there?". Works in spirit, but is still not quite right. The correct translation for "What is that mist out there" would be "Was ist das für ein Nebel da draussen?"...mist in the sense of "fog" is "Nebel", which is to many syllables to fit into the lip movements. Sometimes its not the translators fault..but just not possible any other way.

** This is discussed in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMr831Ro2-k a segment]] on ''Series/FullFrontalWithSamanthaBee'' about the Deaf community's relationship with law enforcement. The segment shows a clip of an officer providing sign language interpretation to another officer's parole rights explanation, and the signer interprets "If you have an address and you live in a house" as "If you have an agressive house in house". The segment even shows an untrained sign language interpreter translating ''a local emergency evacuation broadcast for Hurricane Irma'' in Manatee County, Florida.

** This is discussed in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMr831Ro2-k a segment]] on ''Series/FullFrontalWithSamanthaBee'' about the Deaf community and law enforcement. The segment shows a clip of an officer providing sign language interpretation to another officer's parole rights explanation, and the signer interprets "If you have an address and you live in a house" as "If you have an agressive house in house". The segment even shows an untrained sign language interpreter translating ''a local emergency evacuation broadcast for Hurricane Irma'' in Manatee County, Florida.

* ''Series/PrincessAgents'': The [=YouTube=] subs lag behind the dialogue, sometimes appearing only after a character has finished saying the line they're translating. Worse, the subtitles often fall victim to misspellings, grammar errors, and just plain inexplicable translations.

** The Italian dub of the first episode of the series was done on a rush according to the director, and many lines were translated badly. In the most blatant example, the whole thing of Sheldon and Leonard playing Klingon Boggle all night and having no company becomes "playing Risk all night and having a lot of people around in the house, hosting giant tournaments of Scrabble". ** In another episode, when Sheldon and the others are talking about ''Franchise/TheLegendOfZelda'', they translated all the titles into Italian. There are two obvious problems with this: first, the titles of the Zelda games were never translated into Italian. Second, ''[[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTwilightPrincess Twilight Princess]]'' was translated as "La principessa di Twilight"... as in "The princess of ''Literature/{{Twilight}}''", rather then "La principessa del crepuscolo", which is the proper translation of the monicker used in the Italian translation of the game itself.

** Another one can be found in the [[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS7E22Chosen final episode of the seventh season]] where Buffy slices [[spoiler:Caleb]] in half and jokingly proclaims that [[spoiler:he]] "had to split" before cracking up at her own pun. The Swedish subtitles says "He had to leave", which not only ruined the pun but made it look like she is laughing at the sight of the dead [[spoiler:priest]] instead.

** Another one can be found in the [[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS7E22Chosen final episode of the seventh season]] where Buffy slices [[spoiler:Caleb]] in half and jokingly proclaims that [[spoiler:he]] "had to split" before cracking up at her own pun. The Swedish subtitles says "He had to leave", as if she was laughing at the sight of the dead [[spoiler:priest]].

* A channel showing ''Series/{{Sherlock}}'' in Norway had such ridiculous translations you'd swear they put a machine translator to the job. An example had Mrs. Hudson referring to Sherlock, saying "Who knows what's going on in his funny, ol' head." which got translated literally, making no sense in Norwegian, unless Mrs. Hudson thought Sherlock literally had the head of an old man. Another had John asking if Sherlock's "had a girlfriend, boyfriend, anything?". In Norwegian, the word for boyfriend/girlfriend is gender neutral, literally translating to "dearest", leading John's sentence to be translated to "Has he had a dearest, dearest, anything?"
* A bootleg box set of ''Series/{{Sherlock}}'' had the following description on the back:
--> Detective Sherlock! Rejection of 125 years ago, the editors did not think, young doctors of Portsmouth, a detective story written in his spare time, for the history of world literature, dropped a bombshell; two screenwriter did four years ago in the English countryside on the train expected, the Victorian detective moved to London in the 21st century will be such a warm welcome, not to mention two BAFTA and a variety of audience Choice Award; 17 months ago, we did not expect to start in a burst of machine gunfire the story will be in our hearts painted on how gorgeous one. Sherlock Holmes, but always one miracle. Deductive method of the site has been from lack of updates, in 180 countries, millions of viewers hope in their eyes, I do not know the second quarter of Baker Street, Scotland Yard and Whitehall can give us what kind of adventure?
* The German dub of ''Series/StargateSG1'' translated the iconic "[[TheSimpsons Burns]] as Goa'uld" line literally, as "brennt wie Goa'uld" which means "burning like Goa'uld". Not only is the joke lost, the conversion refers to "animated characters" after it regardless, which of course makes no sense by then.
* A somewhat legendary Finnish translation of ''Franchise/StarTrek'' interpreted the line "The odds are against us", as if the Odds were a species. That's the whole reason for the existence of the ''WebAnimation/StarWreck'' spoofs, which use a lot of the mistranslated terms from this.
* The Dutch VHS release of the ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'' episode "Shattered" translated "A poet and a philosopher? Your intelligence file doesn't do you credit." to "Your IQ test doesn't do you credit."

* Speaking of ''Star Trek'', the German dub of ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' saw a few of those. One of the more interesting ones would be Dr. Crusher, sitting on the bridge on the Enterprise, alone in an empty ship in a shrinking warp-bubble in the Episode "Remember me", asking the computer "What is that mist out there?". This was translated to "Was ist das für ein mist da draussen?", keeping the Word "mist" of the English version, thus having her ask "What kinda manure (/crap) is that out there?". Works in spirit, but is still not quite right.
*** The correct translation for "What is that mist out there" would be "Was ist das für ein Nebel da draussen?"...mist in the sense of "fog" is "Nebel", which is to many syllables to fit into the lip movements. Sometimes its not the translators fault..but just not possible any other way.
** Oh heck, ''Star Trek'' in general when broadcasted in the Netherlands on ''any'' of the commercial stations. Extremely convuluted translations for setting specific words were used. While completly correct in both form and context, the translations which appeared on stations [=RTL5=], [=Net5=] and [=SBS6=] were ridiculed among Dutch ''Trek'' fans to no end.

* Interestingly, ''Franchise/StarTrek'' sometimes suffers from this even in the original English - regarding the *Klingon* dialogue. The Klingon language is rightly celebrated for being a fairly good attempt at a plausible alien language, as the grammar was devised by an actual linguist, Marc Okrand, who went out of his way to make it very different from Human languages and especially different from English. Unfortunately this meant that later Trek writers have had great difficulty making sense of Okrand's dictionary and have often opted for the BlindIdiotTranslation option instead. For example translating "you honor me" as ''[=SoH=] batlh jI' '' (sic), which literally means something more like "I am an honor you are" (the correct Klingon would be ''choquvmoH''). Ronald D. Moore, the writer credited with creating much of the Klingon culture seen in the Next Generation era, has admitted to finding the original Klingon dictionary "cumbersome" and that he preferred to make up words as he went along instead.
* One 1st season episode of ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'' had, in the Norwegian subtitles, mistranslated "Worm hole" into "Varmehullet" (i.e., "The warm hole")! Quite apart from the... squicky image, it's funny because almost all Norwegians younger than about 65 are essentially bilingual...

* The German dub of ''Series/GameOfThrones'' translates ''crone'' (one of the Seven) as ''Krone'' - e.g., ''crown''.
* Likewise, every now and then the Spanish (Spain) translation of ''Game of Thrones'' will make some unexplained mistake that will render the otherwise great voice acting useless:
** Translating Stannis' line about always giving traitors "their just desserts" literally, even though the idiom does not exist in Spanish. Is Stannis a pastry enthusiast?
** Using "Lysenne" as if it was the name of a place, rather than someone from there, in the second and third seasons, when Lys had already been mentioned correctly in the first season.
** Bronn calling Littlefinger "Lord Twatbeard". ''In English''. Viewers might as well think that it was actually some new lord we had not met yet.
** Calling Yara Asha (like in the book) in the second season, then using Yara in the third.
** Translating Meereenese as "Merinense" in the second season and "Mireno" in the third (the books even use a third version, "Merinés").
** Changing Ramsay's line about his mother teaching him to "not throw stones at cripples" to the idiom ''no hacer leña del árbol caído'' ("not make firewood of an already fallen tree"), which more or less means the same, but then keeping the second line "but my father told me to aim for the head!" intact, even though it now comes out of nowhere.
** Changing Sansa's line during the siege of King's Landing from "Stannis will not harm me" to "Stannis would kill me". She's supposed to ''refuse'' an escape offer from King's Landing before Stannis takes it.
** Confusing Daenerys' "Horde?" before the gates of Qarth with "Hold?", and rendering it as "Do we wait?"
** Possibly the last straw that broke the camel's back regarding this was during season 8 episode 3 when Daenerys does not see the signs from Ser Davos from the ground, which she asks him to set fire to the trenches with her dragon. In the original English, Davos says "She can't see us", but in the European Spanish dub, the voice actor, which doesn't know English to check the mistake, pronounced the phrase mostly phonetically from English as "Sicansios". Not only the whole thing turned into a MemeticMutation in Spain (and beyond), it also affected the voice actor's career and also cause an intense discussion about the working conditions in the voice acting industry in Spain.

** Partially [[JustifiedTrope justified]]. While the "bee queen" and similar definitional confusions are clearly errors, many of the grammatical "errors" are intentional. The producers are trying to avoid accidentally naming a monster after something real. By constructing the names in ways that actual German speakers never would, they reduce the risk of unintentional references. In-universe, the concept is that while the names ''sound'' like [[GratuitousGerman German]], they're actually from a language related to German but implied to be much, much older.

** In the Hungarian dub the [[Recap/DoctorWhoS29E10Blink "Fascinating race, the Weeping Angels"]] line had become "Lenyűgöző verseny a Síró Angyalok". The problem is the "race" word means same as "verseny", but as "competition", "contest" or "tournament", while the corect translation would be "faj"[[note]]race, species[[/note]] or "teremtmény"[[note]]creature[[/note]]. [[spoiler:Due to their nature, it boggles the mind what a "Weeping Angel race" would entail]].

** The Italian dub of the first episode of the series was done on a rush according to the director, and many lines were translated badly. In the most blatant example, the whole thing of Sheldon and Leonard playing Klingon Boggle all night and having no company becomes "playing Risk all night and having a lot of people around in the house, hosting giant tournaments of Scrabble".

** In another episode in the Italian dub, when Sheldon and the others are talking about ''Franchise/TheLegendOfZelda'', they translated all the titles in Italian. There are two obvious problems with this: first, the titles of the Zelda games were never translated in Italian. Second, ''[[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTwilightPrincess Twilight Princess]]'' was translated as "La principessa di Twilight"... as in "The princess of ''Literature/{{Twilight}}''", rather then "La principessa del crepuscolo", which is the proper translation of the monicker used in the Italian translation of the game itself.

** The Latin American sub also translated "String Theory" to "Teoría de Primavera" (Spring theory, spring the season).
** The dub was awful bad, things like "The Big Bran Hypothesis" to "La Hipotesis del Gran cerebro" (Big Brain Hypothesis), "transgendered" to "transgesores" (transgressors), it seemed like they rushed making the translation and never check if it was accurate (aside changing many jokes to something completely unrelated)
** The Italian dub of the first episode of the series was done on a rush according to the director, and many lines were translated in a very wrong way. In the most blatant example, the whole thing of Sheldon and Leonard playing Klingon Boggle all night and having no company becomes "playing Risk all night and having a lot of people around in the house, hosting giant tournaments of Scrabble".

* In cultures where most people speak fluent English as a second language, BlindIdiotTranslation can be used to create easy, deliberate comedy. For example, one of the most famous sketches by the Finnish comedy troupe {{Kummeli}} involves a band (Kornit Murot, which in itself is a BlindIdiotTranslation of "corn flakes" into "corny cereal") taking the lyrics to ''Every Breath You Take'' and blind-idiot translating them into Finnish (the seminal ending line "I'll be watching you" becomes "Mä tuun kellottaan sua", or "I'll come and clock you").

** Another instance appeared to be more a case of the translator not listening, but Leonard meets Sheldon's sister in a season one episode and fumbles his words, saying "Nice to meet you...as well... also." The latter words in Norwegian got translated to "You smell awesome."
* ''{{Series/Bones}}'': In “The Prince in the Plastic”, Angela is trying to assemble a baby walker with directions like this. She gives up and says she’ll go back to the store and pay them to do it.
* In ''Series/BreakingBad'', Gus Fring runs a fast food restaurant chain called "Los Pollos Hermanos", which translates as "The Chicken Brothers" - not brothers who cook chicken, as was intended, but brothers who actually are chickens. Given the logo, it seems this was an intentional move, as "Los Pollos Hermanos" is catchier and easier to remember than the grammatically correct "Los Hermanos Pollos".