Line #77 BlindIdiotTranslation/WesternAnimation


1	[[BlindIdiotTranslation Animation to the west]] (Western Animation)
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3	[[foldercontrol]]
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5	[[folder:Arabic Translations]]
6	* The Arabic dub of ''WesternAnimation/SpongeBobSquarePants'' calls the Chum Bucket "Dalw al-Ṣadaqa", or "friendship bucket", but "chum" in this context is a sort of shark bait made of fish parts and not a synonym for "buddy". Just remembering [[BigBad which character runs this restaurant]] should have clued the translators in that they had the wrong definition.
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9	[[folder:Brazilian Portuguese Translations]]
10	* ''WesternAnimation/TheAmazingWorldOfGumball'':
11	** In "The Club", during the scene where Gumball tries to join Richard's fantasy club, the latter asks him, among other questions, "Be you orc?". In the Brazilian dub, Richard asks Gumball if he's a whale; apparently, the translators thought he said "orca" and didn't know what an orc is.
12	** The episode "The Vegging" was translated in Brazil as "Os Vegetais" (The Vegetables) because the words are similar, but "vegging" actually means "relax to the point of complete inertia". Other translations either preserve the english word vegging, or use more accurate translations such as "not doing anything". Something similar happened when "The Castle" was translated into "The Box" [[TrivialTitle despite not having anything to do with a box]]. Later, there was an episode actually called "The Box" which does have a box as an important object.
13	** The dub actually had ''two'' episodes from Season 1 to have the same title: Both "The Ghost" and "The Poltergeist" were translated as "O Fantasma" in Brazil. While the translation makes sense for the former episode, in the latter a more fitting translation would be "Assombração" (lit. "haunting"). [[note]]Though this is partially excusable as the word "poltergeist" was never used in the episode itself besides the title.[[/note]]
14	* The Brazilian dub of ''WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender'' has a shaky translation -- never getting incomprehensible or changing any plot point significantly, but constantly mistranslating small details here and there. The biggest problem is that it mistranslated a certain portion of the OpeningNarration: "He has a lot to learn before he's ready to save anyone" became "he has a lot to learn before he can say 'I am Aang'", which, of course, makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Yet this was never corrected, so it was a translation mistake you had to hear in every single episode.
15	* ''WesternAnimation/TheGrimAdventuresOfBillyAndMandy'': In "Skeletons in the Water Closet", Billy asks Grim if he's done showering because he's "gotta go" (as in, use the toilet). The dub translated the line as "ir embora" (lit. "go away"), which becomes awkward when Billy is seen sitting on the toilet seconds later.
16	* ''Animation/{{Pucca}}'': In the 2006 series episode "The Shirtless Avenger", Abyo refers to Slamma-Ramma Swordsman (or rather, a manifestation of him) as his "sidekick". In the Brazilian dub, "sidekick" was translated as two separate words instead of a single one, so Abyo just randomly tells Pucca to fear his "lateral kick".
17	* ''WesternAnimation/RegularShow'': In "The Power", Mordecai and Rigby use the phrase "give us a raise, loser!" several times to many characters, but when saying to Pops, they decide to say "give us a raise, Pops!" instead to not make him cry. In the Brazilian dub, however, they do call him "loser" in that scene as well, making their conversation to not hurt Pops' feelings pointless.
18	* ''WesternAnimation/ShimmerAndShine'': Brazilians don't have a gender-neutral word for "Genie". When two-part episode "My Secret Genies" was advertised in Brazil, the masculine equivalent was used for the translated title in spite of the titular genies being girls.
19	* ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'':
20	** The Brazilian dubbing of an episode translated "I miss America" as "I am Miss America".
21	** When Martin Prince mentions ''Series/SavedByTheBell'', the dub has him call the series a literal translation of the title, ''Salvos pelo Gongo'', instead of what the series is actually titled in Brazil, ''Galera do Barulho''.
22	* ''WesternAnimation/SpongeBobSquarePants'':
23	** "Barnacles" are always translated as mussels, even in the episode "Barnacle Face", where barnacles actually appear on-screen.
24	** The Chum Bucket was originally translated to "Balde Camarada" ("Friendly Bucket") in an early episode, because the translators used the wrong meaning of "chum" in this context. The name was later changed to "Balde de Lixo" ("Trash Bucket") which remained as the official translation, despite "lixo" not actually meaning "chum", and it resulting in Plankton calling his own food "trash". When referring to the chum itself, the translators alternate between calling it "lixo" (to keep consistent with the restaurant's name) and "salmão" (which actually means "salmon").
25	** In "Naughty Nautical Neighbors", Squidward tells Patrick that he'll play a song on his clarinet called "Solitude in E Minor", which is translated literally in the Brazil dub, instead of the much familiar term "Mi Menor". Later in the same episode, [=SpongeBob=] asks for an "A" note from Squidward in both langauges instead of "Lá" in the dub.
26	** In "Algaes Always Greener", [=SpongeBob=] gets promoted to cashier by Plankton. In the Brazilian dub, the "you're in register now" line was translated to "you're on the list" for some reason (maybe because neither characters use the full term "cash register" on that exchange).
27	** The Brazilian title for "Party Pooper Pants" became "Festa do Calça Saltitante" (Skipper/Hopper Pants' Party), making it apparent that the translators were unaware that the "Party Pooper" slang meant "someone who ruins all the fun for everybody else"[[note]]its equivalent on Brazil being "estraga-prazeres", although the mistranslation is a bit justified as the term doesn't have any wordplay with "party"[[/note]].
28	** The episode "Shuffleboarding". The title sounds very unnatural when translated literally (becoming something like "klutzy boarding"), as the sport doesn't have a Portuguese name. Within the episode, [=SpongeBob=] and Patrick call it "wooden disks [biscuits]" instead, which makes the scene where they say that the word is funny to pronounce much more nonsensical in the dub.
29	* It isn't unfair to say that the dub of ''WesternAnimation/TransformersPrime'' seems to have been made using machine translation with no regard for context.
30	** Optimus Prime says that the race for the Iacon Relics is one they cannot afford to lose. "Race" was translated to "raça" (appropriate translation for "race" in the context of "racial") instead of "corrida", which would have been the correct word.
31	** In "Crossfire", Starscream reveals to the Autobots that he had lost his T-Cog, the organ that allows Cybertronians to transform. Without it, he was unable to transform into his jet mode. To this information, a surprised Bulkhead asks if he is grounded. "Grounded", in this context, was translated as "castigo", the appropriate translation for the word when it means "punished" not "unable to fly". Bulkhead basically asked Starscream if he was put in a time-out.
32	** Although the third season is reasonably better translated, "Unicron's blood" is CONSISTENTLY translated as "unicorn blood". Megatron claims to have forged his sword out of unicorn blood and Knock Out warns Starscream of the side effects of injecting unicorn blood. Megatron's abuse of the substance is probably the reason we don't see many horned horses around.
33	** Soundwave is the Decepticons' surveillance chief. In "Minus One", Jack says that Soundwave is the "Decepticons' chief" period.
34	* The Brazilian Portuguese dub of the ''WesternAnimation/VeggieTales'' episode ''The Star of Christmas'' has "dental wax" translated as "creme dental". "Creme dental" actually means "toothpaste", while "cera dentária" is the proper term.
35	* ''WesternAnimation/ElChavoAnimado'': The Brazilian dub for Season 3 almost got one after the translator for the first two seasons got replaced, though this thankfully got fixed before the episodes themselves were put on air. According to members of the dubbing team, the person responsible for translating Season 3 seemed to not have been familiar with the franchise at all, or at least not with its dubbed version, as the original translated scripts they received were overly literal rather than preserving the same adaptations used in the previous seasons and [[Series/ElChavoDelOcho the original series']] dub. The ''series name itself'' was literally translated to "O Garoto Animado" (while "chavo" does mean "boy", the character El Chavo was always known as "Chaves" in Brazil, and the use of "Animado" in this context implies it's referring to him as cheerful, rather than the correct meaning that it's an animated version of ''El Chavo''); the vecindad the characters live in was named "comunidade" rather than the usual "vila" ou "vizinhança" used by the dub; Doña Florinda was called "Senhora Florinda"; Profesor Jirafales' catchphrase he shouts when angry, "Ta ta ta ta ta!" was translated to "Ai ai ai ai ai!" when the catchphrase had always been remained untranslated and didn't need to; and Quico's catchphrase, "Callate, callate, callate, que me desesperas!", which since the original series' dub was always translated to the faithful "Cale-se, cale-se, cale-se, que me deixa louco!" was changed to "Para com isso! Cala a boca! Para! Que você me desespera!" ("Stop this! Shut up! Stop! Becayse you are despairing me!").
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38	[[folder:Chinese Translations]]
39	* In the Chinese dub of the ''WesternAnimation/USAcres'' cartoon "Sleepytime Pig", the song name "One, Two, Three, Snore!" was changed to "一二三四" (One, Two, Three Four), due to the dubbers possibly mishearing "snore" as "four" or just expecting a "four".
40	* Both variants of the Chinese subtitles (Cantonese and Traditional) for ''WesternAnimation/PhineasAndFerb'' on Creator/DisneyPlus may occasionally fail to understand a word or sentence's context in translation; one example is during Perry the Platypus's theme song, where the Traditional subs translate the word "bill" (in the context of the body part on an animal) as "banknote", mistaking it for a ''dollar'' bill.
41	* The Chinese dub for ''WesternAnimation/TheSuperHeroSquadShow'' on Creator/DisneyPlus mistranslates the name of the character Misty Knight. As the show only refers to the character as "Misty", the translators mistakenly thought that "Misty" was her superhero name (al la Iron Man, Wolverine, etc.) and not her real name, which is short for Mercedes, and translated it as such. [[NonIndicativeName Which makes it funny that a superhero with the codename Misty is never shown using mist-based powers]].
42	** The episode "Oh Brother!" has another example. In the episode, Wolverine is turned into an actual wolverine. Since the Chinese name for the character has always been translated along the lines of "Wolf Man", the characters instead say that he's turned into a wolf, even though he doesn't actually look like a wolf.
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45	[[folder:Croatian Translations]]
46	* ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'', while otherwise sensical and grammatically correct, has some instances that fall into this, both with dialogue and character names.
47	** One example is the names of Scootaloo and Queen Chrysalis, both of whose names were transliterated; their names are "Skakutalo" and "Kristalina" respectively, with the former basically translating back as "Skippy" and the latter as "Crystalina" - neither of which make a shred of sense for the characters that have them.
48	** Another is in the dub of the Flim Flam Brothers song, where Flim and Flam claim that they came to "see miracles" as opposed to offering said miracles to solve the problem of cider demand outweighing cider production.
49	** In "The Cutie Pox", Scootaloo asking about Apple Bloom's hoop cutie mark is slightly different; in the original she asks "Is it an 'o'? Is your talent spelling?", while in the HRT dub she instead asks what the "zero" means and if that's her grade in spelling, making it seem like Scootaloo is asking Apple Bloom if her talent is being bad at spelling (which is anything but a talent).
50	** In "Friendship Is Magic Part 1", the introductory narration ends off with a rather confusingly translated sentence. During the part where the narrator says that Princess Celestia took responsibility of both the moon and the sun, the word "moon" somehow got replaced with the word "herself". So in essence, the narrator says the princess took responsibility of her own person, which doesn't make any sense.
51	* An interesting instance of this occurs in the Croatian dub of ''WesternAnimation/TheSmurfs1981''. In "St. Smurf and the Dragon", during the scene where Handy presents his Azrael-catching contraption to Grouchy, "Handy" somehow became "Hefty" in translation, not just within the dialogue but also ''the identification itself''; not only does Grouchy refer to Handy as "Hefty", Handy himself is also voiced by Hefty's VA despite Handy already having his own voice actor, making it likely that Handy was in fact accidentally confused with Hefty during the dubbing process.
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54	[[folder:English Translations]]
55	* The English dub of ''WesternAnimation/IlEtaitUneFois'' refers to UsefulNotes/TheAmericanCivilWar as "the War of Secession", a literal translation of what the French call it (''La Guerre de Sécession'' -- although [[StillFightingtheCivilWar some Americans]] might prefer that name). It's not unheard of for the war to be called that in English (such as in the writings of Creator/WaltWhitman), but it's extremely dated.
56	* The initial English dub of ''WesternAnimation/FrankeldasBookOfSpooks'' by BKS referred to the titular group of monsters called Spooks as "Scares".
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59	[[folder:European Portuguese Translations]]
60	* The European Portuguese dub of ''WesternAnimation/TeenTitansGo'' uses the wrong translation for the word referring to the shape of the Titans' base (letter), instead referring to it as a piece of mail.
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63	[[folder:Finnish Translations]]
64	* ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'': The Finnish subtitles for one episode translated Kang and Kodos as "Kag" and "Cordos" respectively.
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66
67	[[folder:French Translations]]
68	* ''WesternAnimation/TheAvengersEarthsMightiestHeroes'': One episode had Fury warning Stark that an alien ship about to fire on Earth was going to "prendre feu" (take fire) any moment now.
69	* A minor case, but the French dub of ''WesternAnimation/TheMrMenShow'' used the exact same translated title (Supermarché) for two different episodes: "Superstore" and "Supermarket". Unsurprisingly, both episodes focus on the exact same topic. They also somehow translated the episode "Driving" as "Leçon de conduite" (Driving ''Lesson'').
70	* ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'': Bizarrely, the dub retains the name Owlowiscious in "Owl's Well That Ends Well," but in "May The Best Pet Win!" he's called "Chouette Délicieuse," literally "delicious owl." This totally ignores that Owlowiscious' name in the original English has absolutely nothing to do with the word "delicious," but is a homophone for the name "Aloysius" that also includes the word "owl."
71	* ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'':
72	** Some references in the European French dub aren't translated at all. We get horrors such as calling Ecuador (the country) Ecuador and not Équateur, its proper French name, or calling [[Literature/WheresWaldo Waldo]] Waldo, and not Charlie (which is the name everyone knows in France).
73	** In "Fat Man and Little Boy", "[=ScratchBob ItchPants=]" is translated to "Scratchy Bob l'éponge." "Bob l'éponge" is the correct name of WesternAnimation/SpongeBobSquarePants in French, but the translator must have missed that the character depicted is Itchy, not Scratchy.
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75
76	[[folder:German Translations]]
77	* ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'': The German translation by Ivar Crombrinck is infamous for misunderstanding American colloquialisms, mistranslating scientific terms, and not getting pop cultural references, even if the thing referred to is well known in Germany.
78	** If a word has more than one meaning in English, Crombrinck would often pick the wrong one, e.g. translating “novelties” (in the sense of joke articles) as “Neuigkeiten” (new things), “vets” (veterans) as “Tierärzte” (veterinarians) or calling teddy bears “ausgestopfte Tiere” (taxidermy mounts) instead of “Stofftiere” (stuffed toy animals).
79	** If he was not familiar with a word, he would translate it literally e.g. “laughing stock” as “Lachaktie”, “cat burglar” as “Katzeneinbrecher” or “urine cake” as “Urinkuchen”. Correct are “Gespött”, “Fassadenkletterer” and “Klostein”.
80	** Sometimes he did not hear right so “minced meat pies” became “Pfefferminzfleischpasteten” (peppermint meat pies).
81	** "Don't Fear the Roofer" has Creator/StephenHawking's explanation about having discovered "a tear in the fabric of space-time" translated as "Träne" (as in teardrop) instead of "Riss".
82	** "Wild Barts Can't Be Broken": After a victory by the Springfield Isotopes, Homer barges into Moe's bar and proclaims "Isotopes rule!". Mr. Combrinck translates this as "Isotopen-Spielregel" ("Spielregel" is the literal translation of "rule" as in "the rules of the game"). In the same episode, the "Game of Lent" (Lent being the Christian festivity) is translated as "Das Leihhaus-Spiel" ("The Pawn Shop Game"). "Leihen" is the German word for "to lend".
83	** "Sorry Donkey Kong, you're just not a draw anymore" (from season eight's "The Springfield Files") became "Pardon, you King Kong donkey, you're sadly no longer a drawing."
84	** Some jokes however are simply difficult to translate. A good example is on the episode "Bart's Girlfriend" where Bart is having dinner with Jessica Lovejoy's parents (Reverend Lovejoy and his wife, Helen) and recounts a time where he watched ''Martin'' and gets kicked out for his "gratuitous use of the word 'butt'" (with Bart saying "But, but, but..." and Helen freaking out over it). In German, "Hintern" means "buttocks" while "aber" means "but" (as in the conjunction). Since it's impossible to translate the pun correctly, they just went with Bart saying "aber Hinter Hinter Hinter Hinter...".
85	** A particularly hilarious and stupid example occurs in "My Big Fat Geek Wedding", where Matt Groening made a short appearance. The original dialogue was something like "Look, it's Matt Groening, creator of ''Futurama''! Could you sign my Bender doll?" It came out as "Look, it's Matt Greening, creator of ''Futurama''! Could you sign my transvestite doll?" Slightly understandable, as "bender" in some dialects is a slang term for a transvestite[[note]]though Bender's name actually comes from the slang term for "a long period of time where one indulges in a vice or addictive habit, such as drinking alcohol or doing drugs". Well, apart from how he uh... [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin bends things]]...[[/note]], but still, it's a far cry from what the English version actually means.
86	* ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'' was also translated by Ivar Crombrinck. Highlights were translating “cryogenics” as “Genetik” (genetics), “debugger” as “Entwanzer” (remover of insects) and the key combination “Control-Alt-Delete” as “Alternativkontrolllöschung” (alternative control erasure).
87	* ''WesternAnimation/SpongeBobSquarePants'' is generally a very good translation, but still manages to have a few errors. For example, in "Idiot Box", the "boxing" pun is lost in translation (The German word for "box" is "Schachtel" and "boxing" is just "boxing") ''despite the fact that "Box" is an actual German word that means the same thing.''
88	* ''WesternAnimation/StarWarsTheCloneWars'': In the dub of "Duchess of Mandalore", Dooku says "I will send an assassin to Coruscant", while Pre Viszla is seen to send him out ''in the same moment''.
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91	[[folder:Greek Translations]]
92	* ''WesternAnimation/BenAndHollysLittleKingdom'':
93	** In "Ben's Birthday Card", Nanny Plum says "milk, flour, egg and sugar". In the dub, it was changed to "γάλα, λουλούδια, αυγό και ζάχαρη", and "λουλούδια" means "flower'''s'''" in Greek.
94	** Not to mention the literal translations of characters' names, like how Mrs. Cookie became "Κυρία Μπισκότο" (''Mrs. Biscuit'') or Miss Jolly turning into "Κυρία Κεφάτη" (Miss Cheerful).
95	* Both Greek dubs of ''[[WesternAnimation/LittleLulu The Little Lulu Show]]'' have quite a few examples, but the episode "Beautiful Lulu" takes the cake (due to a bad case of DubInducedPlotHole). In the original version, Tubby says "homeliest" in a muffled voice, because he's eating chocolate, and Iggy says his toe is prettier than Lulu while they're making fun of her. The first Greek dub makes the mistake of having Tubby ''blatantly'' say "The most popular girl in the neighborhood" (counts as {{Woolseyism}} because "popular" and "ugly" sound alike in Greek) and Lulu says "he said I was 1 metre with my hands up" as if Tubby said that instead of Iggy. The second dub makes no mistake on the muffled voice, but still gets the toe thing wrong because Iggy's line is omitted.
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98	[[folder:Hungarian Translations]]
99	Many Hungarian translations tend to be half-assed and riddled with mistakes. This stems from a general trend of translators/localizators being not educated, well-informed professionals, but [[{{Nepotism}} relatives]] of some people, with minimal knowledge of foreign languages and a bad dictionary (this is especially true with English as most of the people who went to school after the UsefulNotes/ColdWar learned ''some'', but not much, English).
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101	Many of these entries are the works of an extremely prolific translator couple, László Katona and Zita Csányi, who take pride in being able to churn out over a thousand dubbing scripts under a month. While a lot of their translations are perfectly adequate, their cartoon scripts (especially those credited solely to Csányi) tend to suffer from the same general issues: painfully literal, word-for-word translations of English phrases and wordplay, choosing the wrong interpretation of expressions that have more meanings, mishearing and confusing vaguely similar sounding words, not having the faintest regard for consistency, ignoring basic principles of grammar, randomly alternating between past, present and future tenses, as well as plural and singular, placing emphasis on the wrong part of a sentence, greatly simplifying (or in some cases, needlessly overwriting) dialogue, leaving out expressions that are tricky to translate, and simply not understanding the subject matter they're working on. Characters in their translations often contradict themselves and each other, say the complete opposite of what they actually mean or spout nonsense that has nothing to do with the original dialogue.
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103	* ''WesternAnimation/{{Ben 10}}'' was handed over to a translator who had a fondness for translating everything word-for-word without taking the context into consideration. Thus we got gems like "Beats me" becoming "It's hitting me". The "plant" part of the word power-plant also proved to be too tough of a nut to crack--so these facilities became patches of vegetation in the dub.
104	* The ''Toys/{{Bionicle}}'' movies, also in Hungarian. Tenses constantly change no matter what the original dialog says (or what's on screen), the translator made the words "duty", "destiny", "responsibility" and "task" interchangeable, and they shoehorned the word "destroy" into the dialog as many times as possible (in place of "defeat", "strike down" or "fail"). Some examples:
105	-->'''Norik, original:''' Unity, duty, destiny. It ''starts'' with unity.\
106	'''Dub:''' Unity, responsibility, duty. Starting with duty.
107	-->'''Matau Hordika, original:''' You're our leader, Vakama. You're my leader.\
108	'''Dub:''' You're our leader, Vakama. [[DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment Our leader]].
109	-->'''Nidhiki, original''' ''(to himself, lamenting Krekka's stupidity)'': Why do I bother?\
110	'''Dub''' ''(to Krekka)'': What does it matter?
111	** The fourth movie, ''The Legend Reborn'', got a new translator, for better or worse. "Glatorian" simply became "gladiators", while the giant Skopio beast was called a "scorpion". As for the dialog:
112	-->'''Metus, original:''' l told you, Raanu, pitting Vastus against Tarix would pack them [the audience] in.\
113	'''Dub:''' I told you, Raanu, pitting Vastus against Tarix is a big mistake!
114	** At certain points in the third movie, "yes" and "of course, we can say" were translated respectively as "no" and "perhaps nor can we say", with the context of said words remaining unaltered. The entirety of the dub is filled with clumsily written, horribly mistranslated dialogue, with characters often saying the exact opposite of what they said in the original version.
115	* From the ''WesternAnimation/RegularShow'' episode "Butt Dial", Mordecai's line "Margaret and Eileen [came] over for Game Night and nothing went wrong" somehow turned into "Margaret and I leaned over at each other and everything went well" in the Hungarian dub. Which is quite a change, and also messes up Rigby's response, "Except for Eileen and I whipping your butts"... at "leaning over", that is.
116	* The official dub of the ''WesternAnimation/SamuraiJack'' episode introducing the Scotsman provided the viewers with a serious head-scratching moment. In the episode, Jack and the Scotsman meet on a bridge where he is playing his bagpipe and Jack is grimacing over the sound. The Scotsman looks at him and says [[HollywoodToneDeaf "from the look on your face, I can tell you like my pipes, me laddie"]]. By jumping through some insane BlindIdiotTranslation hoops, they managed to translated the line as "by looking at your face, I am as familiar with you as with my bagpipe".
117	* ''The Simpsons'' in Hungarian is downright infamous. Name translations tend to change within the same episode, sometimes within mere ''seconds''.
118	** One of the most infamous examples is when one CouchGag features a newspaper with the headline "COUCH GAG THRILLS NATION" -- translated as "Coach Gag is a threat to the nation." Another episode had PETA translated as Alcoholics Anonymous, "murder of crows" as "crow killing", the Holy Land as Hollywood, "My bad" as "Me bad", license plate as dinner plate, the sign "Marine home for Christmas" (in "We're on the Road to D'ohwhere") as "Christmas sea house"... and it's pretty much a miracle if any of Bart's chalkboard gags make sense. See: "I am not Charlie Brown on acid" -> "I am not the grouchy Charlie Brown".
119	** Some errors are even the result of the translators thinking they know better. There's a scene where Principal Skinner says it's a cheat for Lisa to rename her found cat as Snowball II and act as if it was the same animal as the real Snowball II, to which she replies "I guess you're right, Principal ''Tamzarian''." This silences Skinner, and he walks away embarrassed -- the joke being that Skinner's an impostor himself, and his real name's Armin Tamzarian. The dub has Lisa calling him Skinner, so the gag's lost.
120	* ''WesternAnimation/StarWarsTheCloneWars'':
121	** "Fighter" (as in the small spacecrafts used by Jedi and clones) is consistently translated as "harcász", whereas the Hungarian word for a fighter jet is "vadászgép" ("hunter jet"). "Harcász" actually means "tactician" in Hungarian. Esspecially jarring because the translators of the movies, and the various novels/comics from the ExpandedUniverse, got it right.
122	** "Storm over Ryloth" has Anakin's line "The Twi'leks on that planet can't wait forever, Master." translated as "We can't wait for the Twi'leks any longer."
123	** "Children of the Force" has Anakin's line "The Gungan child was screaming" translated as "the Gungan boy was screaming". Two minutes later, we find out that the child in question is a '''girl'''.
124	** They translated the "Nightsisters" as "Daughters of the Night", despite "Éjnővérek" (a literal translation of Nightsisters) already being established in the ExpandedUniverse.
125	* ''WesternAnimation/StevenUniverse'''s Hungarian dub is ripe with stilted dialogue, word-for-word translations, inconsistencies and a host of amateurish mistakes. The {{crossover}} episode with ''WesternAnimation/UncleGrandpa'' fares worse, with the translator being unfamiliar with the names of characters and objects from different cartoons, randomly renaming them or leaving them in English -- unsurprising, given how the dub tends to forget what its own characters are called.
126	* Both of the Hungarian ''[[WesternAnimation/TheTransformersTheMovie Transformers: The Movie]]'' dubs are treasure-troves of baffling, nonsensical translation work. Just one example from the 2nd dub: Astrotrain's "Jettison some weight, or I'll never make it to Cybertron!" line became "Gettison, the ship is too heavy, we'll never reach Cybertron like this!" The bizarre [[DubNameChange name changes]] (like "Unicorn" for Unicron or "Fishing Rod" for Hot Rod) also went memetic.
127	* ''WesternAnimation/WorldOfQuest'': "Carnies" (as in, carnival people) became "Carnivores". Often, the lines fail to make even grammatical sense.
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129
130	[[folder:Italian Translations]]
131	* ''WesternAnimation/BatmanTheBraveAndTheBold'': In one episode, a "two years ago" panel at the beginning of a flashback was translated as "two years ''later''". [[note]]Well, maybe if it was directed by Creator/DavidLynch...[[/note]]
132	* ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy'': A [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgJUbmGDc6k cutaway]] from the episode "Grumpy Old Man" mocks the quality of pizzeria-provided salad, showing the staff haphazardly throwing together various vegetables into a colander. The phone then rings and the manager answers it by saying "Hello? Every pizza place!" Ironically, the Italian dub misunderstood this last refrain and translated it as "Pizze per tutti gusti!" (literally "Pizzas for all tastes!"), mistaking "Every '''pizza place'''" for "'''Every pizza''' place".
133	* ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'': The Italian dub obviously did not understand that the werecar from the episode "The Honking" was a reference to a werewolf. They went with the other kind of "were" as in "they ''were'' very bad at translation." In other words, "The Car That Was."
134	* ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'': In the episode "Milhouse of Sand and Fog". Maggie gets chickenpox, and Homer hosts a chickenpox party so other kids can catch it. Except that the Italian translators misinterpreted the "chickenpox" on the sign as "pox-flavoured chicken".
135	[[/folder]]
136
137	[[folder:Japanese Translations]]
138	* In the Japanese dub of ''WesternAnimation/{{Ninjago}}'', in Season 12, the name of a video game named "Unfinished Adventure Game I" is translated in two different ways. This gets even worse when [[spoiler:this becomes a major plot point, as the game's name, when shortened in a specific way, becomes Unagami, the main villain of the season's name. Neither of these translations fit that double meaning, so the plot twist comes across as forced in the Japanese dub.]]
139	* In the ''WesternAnimation/SpongeBobSquarePants'' episode [[Recap/SpongeBobSquarePantsS2E10NoFreeRidesImYourBiggestFanatic I'm Your Biggest Fanatic]], Kevin the sea cucumber is called "Umi-kyuri"（海キュウリ）, which literally means "Sea Cucumber," instead of "Namako"（ナマコ）, a proper name for the species.
140	* ''WesternAnimation/ThomasAndFriends''
141	** "Break Van" is called "Kankyūsha"（緩急車）in real-life Japanese railways, but the translators literally translated the word as "Burēkisha"（ブレーキ車）, which is not used in real life.
142	** Also, The Great Western Railway is referred to as "Dai Seibu Tetsudou"（大西部鉄道）, literally translating each words. In real-life, the "Great-Western" part is written in Katakana and not translated. This is fixed when the Season 17 is aired in Japan.
143	** In the CGI series, the term "Tender Engines" is translated as "Yasashii Kikansha"（優しい機関車）, which means "Kind Engines." The Japanese word for "Tender" for the engines is "Tansuisha"（炭水車）, and the term "Tender Engines" is called "Tendā　Kikansha"（テンダー機関車）, keeping the English word intact.
144	[[/folder]]
145
146	[[folder:Norwegian Translations]]
147	* In an episode of ''WesternAnimation/PhineasAndFerb'', Doofenshmirtz talks about how he likes to give people nicknames and mentions that his nickname for Perry the Platypus is Mr. Duckbillface. In the Norwegian version of that episode, this is translated as "Ande-regnings-tryne". Apparently the translator somehow failed to realize that "bill" in this context referred to... Well, a duck's bill, and so the bill part got translated as the kind of bill you have to pay.
148	* The Norwegian subs for ''WesternAnimation/StarWarsTheCloneWars'' translate "gunship" as "artillery ship".
149	[[/folder]]
150
151	[[folder:Polish Translations]]
152	* The Polish title for the ''WesternAnimation/AdventureTime'' episode "Lady & Peebles" for some reason is dubbed as "Lady and Something". It's clear the dubbers did not realize "Peebles" is actually a nickname for Princess Bubblegum.
153	* The overall decent Polish translation of ''WesternAnimation/TheAdventuresOfJimmyNeutronBoyGenius'' tends to be either brilliantly spot-on in some places or incredibly stupid in others. The latter include:
154	** The "Win, Lose and Kaboom!" special includes a spoof of ''Series/WhoWantsToBeAMillionaire''. Like in many other countries, the local Polish version of the British show was extremely popular in its day and many of its trademarks and catchphrases have become part of everyday speech. So at first it appears downright incomprehensible that the spoof's "lifelines" (which are 100% in accordance with the RealLife format) are translated as regular "lifelines" ("linie ratunkowe") instead of "life rings" ("koła ratunkowe"), which have always been a staple of the Polish edition. It's probable that while the translator was aware of the Polish show's terminology (it would be hard to find anyone who wasn't, really), they didn't know that it was somewhat different from the original, and so they thought this particular spoof parodied the concept of "life rings", not realizing that those were in fact a Polish creation from the very beginning.
155	* ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'': The Polish dub of [[Recap/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagicS8E1SchoolDazePart1 "School Daze, Part 1"]] has Thorax suggest that Twilight ''agrees'' with Neighsay's racism, and that he's grateful not everyone does so.
156	* ''WesternAnimation/CampCandy'': John Candy's name was changed to John Karmel, probably due to translators not realizing he was supposed to be a real-life person.
157	[[/folder]]
158
159	[[folder:Romanian Translations]]
160	* ''WesternAnimation/TheAmazingWorldOfGumball'': In the episode "The Secret", Darwin has a dream in which he encounters a catfish in the ocean, which confuses him since most species of catfish live in freshwater. The Romanian dub translates "catfish" as "sea cat", the Romanian term for a stingray, something the fish clearly isn't and which ''does'' live in the ocean.
161	[[/folder]]
162
163	[[folder:Russian Translations]]
164	* The Russian dub of ''WesternAnimation/FantasticFourTheAnimatedSeries'' was overall decent, but made a rather embarrassing mistake in the episode featuring Black Panther. The dubbers apparently did not realise Wakanda was a fictional country and thought it was the authors of the original cartoon who mangled the name of some real African nation. And so Black Panther became [[HilariousInHindsight king of]] ''[[UsefulNotes/{{Uganda}} Uganda]]''. Considering the release of the [[Film/BlackPanther2018 Black Panther]] movie coincided with the Uganda Knuckles meme, the Russian public was quick to notice.
165	* One bootleg Russian translation of Creator/RalphBakshi's [[WesternAnimation/TheLordOfTheRings animated adaptation]] of ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings'' is full of hilarious mistakes. "Great elven kings" was mistaken for "Great eleven kings"; "To Helm's Deep!" became something akin to "Let's put on our helmets a bit deeper!". Also, Sauron is consistently called "Prince of Darkness".
166	* ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'': A statue is called a tree in "A Bird in the Hoof", the Grand Galloping Gala is referred as "the Magnificent Gala concert" and is said to be annual, Luna is said to be corrupted by the [[DarkSide dark side of the moon]] (and only has one name, the Moon Pony; if multiple names were used in the original, they just repeated the one used in the dub); the Cutie Mark Crusaders search for a [[DrivenToSuicide handgun]] after failing to get their cutie marks (where in the original they searched for a cannon), et cetera.
167	--> [English] I know who you are. You're the Mare in the Moon – Nightmare Moon!
168	--> [Russian] I know who you are. [[ShapedLikeItself You're the Moon Pony – Moon Pony!]]
169	* The Russian dub of ''WesternAnimation/SonicBoom'' contains a typo in the intro, saying: "A [=Sega/OuiDO!=] Presents" instead of "[=Sega/OuiDO!=] Presents" or "A [=Sega/OuiDO!=] Production". Then there's Shadow, whose name is literally translated, as opposed to transliterated. Metal Sonic suffers a similar fate, becoming Iron Sonic.
170	[[/folder]]
171
172	[[folder:Spanish Translations]]
173	* The Spanish dub of ''WesternAnimation/GravityFalls'' translated the title of the episode [[Recap/GravityFallsS2E15TheLastMabelcorn "The Last Mabelcorn"]] into... ''"The Last Corn of Mabel"'', missing the ShoutOut to ''Literature/TheLastUnicorn''. In addition, on [[Recap/GravityFallsS1E19Dreamscaperers "Dreamscaperers"]], '''[[TheOmniscient Bill Cipher]]''' refers to Grunkle Stan once as "Stanford" instead of just Stan, [[spoiler: [[DubInducedPlotHole contradicting one of the]] ''[[TwinSwitch biggest twists on the series.]]'']]
174	* ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'':
175	** One episode has the chorus of Music/BarryManilow's ''Copacabana'' featured. The person in charge of doing the Spanish song subtitles for the otherwise dubbed TV airing in Spain obviously misheard it as "At the Copa, Copacabana, ''the heart español of Havana''" and translated it accordingly.
176	** When Homer enters a Catholic school in "The Father, the Son, and the Holy Guest Star", he writes "God = Good" and "Devil = Bad" on his left arm. The dub failed to notice "God" and "Good" were different words. Technically it's still accurate. [[ShapedLikeItself God is God, after all...]]
177	** In one episode, when Homer mentions the ''Film/PoliceAcademy'' movie series, he calls them "Academia de Polícia" instead of "Locademia de Polícia".
178	** In "Dude, Where's My Ranch?", the Simpsons listen to Moe's song on the radio, introduced by an announcer. In the Spanish version, both the announcer and Moe's song play over each other, leaving only the last line of the song clearly audible. The family listens to the instrumental for about six seconds before they turn it off.
179	** In "Girls Just Wanna Have Sums", Lisa (under the name Jake Boyman) introduces herself to the class as liking "the Hardy Boys, Boy Scouts, boy bands, and Chef Boyardee." The Spanish version vaguely and literally translated everything, making it "the Hardy Boys, the explorers, music bands, and Italian food", leaving the question of what most of these have to do with boys.
180	** In "Lisa the Drama Queen", Bart helps Lisa pick out a candy for her to bring to her new friend, Juliet's, house. He first suggests [=M&Ms=], and Lisa worries that Juliet might have a peanut allergy. Apu advises her to buy an Almond Joy instead. In the Spanish dub, [=M&Ms=] are translated to "chocolate" with nuts, but Almond Joy remains intact. It makes the scene confusing, basically being that Lisa doesn't want to buy a chocolate with nuts, but then she does so anyways. Additionally, Bart tells her to buy Charleston Chew, to which Lisa says, "What is this, Brooklyn in the 50s?" (referring to the Charleston dance). In Spanish, this is changed to "chewing gum", and Lisa's response is the same, even though it makes no sense anymore.
181	* Pepito does this multiple times in the Spanish translation of ''WesternAnimation/{{Madeline}}'' by replacing "vosotros/vosotras" with "Ustedes". His uncle Pablo, who is not familiar with the girls, is technically an aversion to this. (InUniverse for the English dub.)
182	--> '''Pepito:''' "¡Vengan, muchachas!" (Proper translation: "¡Venid, muchachas!")
183	* The Castilian Spanish version of ''WesternAnimation/SouthParkBiggerLongerAndUncut'' botches the gag about Brian Dennehy in a way that only makes sense if the dubbing team didn't get it:
184	-->'''Original:'''
185	-->'''Dennehy:''' Someone say my name?
186	-->'''Kyle:''' Who are you?
187	-->'''Dennehy:''' I'm Brian Dennehy.
188	-->'''Kyle:''' What? No, not fuckin' Brian ''Dennehy''!
189	-->'''Stan:''' Hey, get the fuck outta here!
190	-->'''Dennehy:''' Oh. Bye-ee.
191	-->'''Adaptation:'''
192	-->'''Dennehy:''' Do you know my name?
193	-->'''Kyle:''' Who are you?
194	-->'''Dennehy:''' I'm Brian Dennehy.
195	-->'''Kyle:''' What? No fuckin' way you are Brian Dennehy!
196	-->'''Stan:''' Now go fuck yourself!
197	-->'''Dennehy:''' Oh. Sorry.
198	* ''WesternAnimation/USAcres'':
199	** In the Spanish dub of "Wanted: Wade", rooster crows are called "rooster songs", Wade mistakes the law label for a newspaper, and instead of "What harm can it do?" being repeated three times before and during the song (except for the ending, when it is cut off by Roy arresting Wade), that phrase is repeated twice, followed by a phrase meaning "I don't want to do this", which he's supposed to sa after the fantasy ends as the dub's equivalent of the line "No! I don't want to go to prison!".
200	** Even worse than that are the Spanish DVD subtitles, which don't match the actual Spanish dialogue most of the time and are direct translations of the English dialogue. One time, they even use the word "condenado" for the word "doomed" in the subtitles, which also means the F-word, even though it wasn't used like that.
201	* ''WesternAnimation/TheFairlyOddParents'': In the Spanish dub, the episode "The Big Bash" (which revolves around Cupid throwing a party) is translated to "El Gran Golpe." The translators must have got the wrong definition of "bash", because "golpe" means "hit" or "strike" instead of "party."
202	* ''WesternAnimation/SpongeBobSquarePants'': The title of "Gary's Playhouse" got translated as "Gary's Theater"... even though it's literally a ''house for playing in'' that he gets and theater is not involved in the episode at all.
203	[[/folder]]
204
205	[[folder:Swedish Translations]]
206	* In the Swedish dub of ''WesternAnimation/BatmanTheBraveAndTheBold'', the English line "I feel invincible" was translated into "Jag känner mig osynlig", meaning "I feel invisible".
207	* ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'', while not completely terrible, seems to have had little to no effort put into the Swedish translation.
208	** The worst examples include translating "the Wonderbolts" into "Underskruvarna" ("the Wonderscrews") in the pilot episode and translating the episode title "Applebuck Season" into "Äppelpengssäsong" ("Apple Money Season"). There are various other things to complain about, but most of them are due to lack of effort rather than misunderstandings.
209	** Perhaps even more disastrous is how they translated the line "You don't wanna get a tummy ache" into "Du vill väl inte ha ont i tummen?", believing that "tummy" meant "thumb". As the context is about eating too fast, this is basically inexcusable. Humorously enough, the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QF-X0kGhhWs reaction shot]] that follows can easily be interpreted as targeted at the translation itself. Another case of plain idiocy is how "pet alligator" was translated into "leksakskrokodil" ("toy crocodile"). Not only there's a change in species, but they called something that's obviously alive (and in fact attempts to attack one of the characters mere seconds later) a toy. And further more, in the Winter Wrap-Up song, Twilight wonders how she's going to be able to help without using her wand; apparently the word "magic" was somehow too hard to translate, and they decided to ignore the fact that said magic clearly does not involve a wand.
210	** They turned "Well, we can't just leave Rarity like this!" to [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PD448WfqGoM "We can't just leave Rainbow Dash like this!"]], ignoring that Rainbow Dash was with them.
211	* ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'': One Swedish subtitler managed to confuse "fry" with "freeze" in "Bart Sells His Soul", thus translating "I got this deep fryer on loan from the US Army. It can flash fry a buffalo in 40 seconds" into "I got this deep freezer on loan from the US Army. It can freeze a buffalo in 40 seconds."
212	[[/folder]]
213
214	[[folder:Ukrainian Translations]]
215	* The Ukrainian dub of ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'' actually messed up the [[MemeticMutation 'blackjack and hookers']] line. 'Hookers' was translated into 'booze', and while it is one slang meaning of the word, it's a ''very'' outdated one.
216	[[/folder]]
217
218	[[folder:Other/Multiple Languages/Unsorted]]
219	* For the longest time the Norwegian translators of ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy'' couldn't decide how to translate the opening theme, having the line "Lucky there's a Family Guy" translated differently every time. Frequent errors include "Walter is a Family Guy", "Peter is a Family Guy" and even "Lucky is a family guy", leaving the word "Lucky" untranslated as if it was the name of a character. The Swedish translator made the same mistake. It took ''years'' before they understood that "Lucky" was not the name of a character.
220	* The Swedish dubs of Creator/DingoPictures movies (originally German) were quite obviously translated with something like Google Translate. Some lines are translated literally and make absolutely no sense in Swedish. In "''Animal Soccer World''" for example, they translated the line "Are they seriously injured?" to "Is it difficult?". The English dubs are not much better.
221	* ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'':
222	** In the Chinese/Taiwanese translations, arguments caused by whether to translate their names phonetically or by meaning has made a lot of naming quite funny, most people resort to using English names during discussion.
223	** The title of the season 4 episode "Rainbow Falls" is translated to European Portuguese as "A Rainbow Cai" and to Brazilian Portuguese as "A Queda de Rainbow", which in both cases considers the word "Falls" in the title to be a verb and not a noun (the title actually refers to the rainbow waterfall featured in the episode, and has nothing to do with the character Rainbow Dash). Both Serbian dubs make the same mistake of interpreting "Falls" as a verb, and as a result the title was translated to "Pad Rejnbou Deš" ("The Fall of Rainbow Dash") in the Minimax version and "Šarenlota je pala" ("Rainbow Dash Fell") in the Mini version.
224	** In the Croatian and Serbian Mini dubs of "The Art of the Dress", Twilight calls the Canis Major constellation an ''Ursa Minor'', and proceeds to compare it to the Ursa Major. [[http://www.seasky.org/constellations/assets/images/canis-major.jpg The Canis Major]] and [[https://galacticimages.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/SanibelDippersChumackLRblog-750x576.jpg Ursa Minor/Major constellations]] are completely different and thus impossible to confuse for one another.
225	* ''WesternAnimation/ThePatrickStarShow'': "Family Plotz" is an episode about the family visiting the cemetery, so the title clearly uses "plot" as in "burial plot". The Serbian dub missed this and translated in a way that basically means "Family Scheme" or "Family Plans".
226	* ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'':
227	** Strangely enough, the Norwegian or Swedish translator (the exact same errors are often present in both translations) often gets the names wrong, resulting in everything from minor oddities such as Ben Flanders and Crusty [=McClown=], to weirder ones like Mark Grimby (Mayor Quimby). One of the worst (non-name) errors made by the translator is mishearing "Percodan addiction" as "perky Diane Dixon". Obviously, the translator is just casually listening to whatever they're supposed to translate, not knowing anything about the series itself.
228	** Infamously, when Creator/LucyLawless made a guest appearance, the Spanish translator ''translated her last name'', so she was Lucy Sin Ley (literally, "Lucy Without Law"). Frustratingly enough, this same mistake happened in the Brazilian dub, wherein she was Lucy Sem Lei.
229	** Of course, ''The Simpsons'' sometimes plays in-universe examples for laughs. The best example is the [[http://www.videovat.com/videos/2407/the-simpsons-japanese-commercial-mr-sparkle.aspx Mr. Sparkle commercial]] from "In Marge We Trust", with such gems as "I am disrespectful to dirt! Can you see that I am serious?" "Get out of my way, all of you! This is no place for loafing! Join me or die, can you do any less?" "For lucky best wash, use Mr. Sparkle."
230	* ''WesternAnimation/SpeedyGonzales'': In the episode called "WesternAnimation/ThePiedPiperOfGuadalupe", one of the mice carries a "Loco El Gato" sign. While this does technically translate as "Crazy Cat" it's incorrect in that, in Spanish, adjectives are supposed to come ''after'' the noun they're modifying. (So technically, the sign was saying "Crazy. Cat." as if they were seperate concepts, or worse "Crazy. The Cat.") The sign should have said "El gato loco", or, even better "¡El gato está loco!" ("The cat is crazy!") or "¡Qué gato tan loco!" ("That cat was crazy!").
231
232	[[/folder]]

Context BlindIdiotTranslation / WesternAnimation