Bilingual Bonus - Television Tropes & Idioms

Video Girl Ai is a double-language pun, with the titular "Ai" meaning both love and Artificial Intelligence.
In Japanese TV shows and films, Ominous Latin Chanting is often Ominous English Chanting, which has the same effect for the Japanese but sounds a little odd to people who watch subs rather than dubs...
- Try to recognize the Britannian national anthem from Code Geass as English. Go ahead, try. (For the curious: Foreign-language consonsant sounds have an annoying habit of getting messed up by any choir: the typical choral insistance on "pure" vowels doesn't help, especially when the language being sung is English.)
Neon Genesis Evangelion: in the North American dub, Asuka holds an entire telephone conversation in German in the background of one scene; there are allegedly several in-jokes in her dialogue for German speakers who ignore the foreground action to concentrate on her.
- The original Japanese track also has Asuka speaking German in a hilariously obvious Japanese accent.
- The English dub's Asuka's voice actress is fluent in German and does much better. There's a bilingual bonus in Asuka's phone call home too, she's lying about the fantastic time she's having in Japan.
- And after being Mind Raped by an angel in episode 22, German words appear on the screen - "Tod", "Nein", "wahnsinnig" (meaning: "death", "no" and "insane" respectively).
- There's an even better one in the title of an episode, although it's not clear whether it's intentional or not. The very last episode is titled "The Beast That Shouted 'Love' At The Heart Of The World", after a short story by Harlan Ellison. However, in Japanese, the word for love is "ai", which is pronounced the same as the English pronoun "I". Thus, an alternate translation of the title could be "The Beast That Shouted 'I' At The Heart Of The World", which gives an intriguingly different spin on the events of that episode.
  - It's intentional. The "ai" is in katakana.
  - Katakana is used sometimes to empathize certain words. Alternatively, "Ai" is an On reading, which is a pronunciation borrowed from Chinese(or in the case of Death Note, English)
  - It would appear that UK TV Guide Radio Times had the same argument- known for including episode names for even obscure programmes on arse end of nowhere channels nobody watches, during NGE's late-night run on Sci Fi, this episode was simply referred to The Beast That Shouted.
- One episode features a GEHIRN report in English. Freeze-frame on it to reveal that GEHIRN is the production company behind such anime series as Otaku No Video and Nadia The Secret Of Blue Water.
  - As another aside, "Gehirn" is the word for brain in German. Other organizations in the same series are NERV and SEELE ("nerve" and "soul").
- Yet another in the Japanese episode 24 title: "Saigo no Shisha" — the "shi" is in katakana, leaving it ambiguous whether it stands for "messenger" (that is, angel) or "casualty". Disregard the kanji 者, and it's a pun for "preview."
In Wolfs Rain the signs are all written in Russian, and several jokes are there for the Russian-speaking audience. For instance, the "X" on Hige's collar is actually a Russian Kh (pronounced like the "ch" in "Bach", like his name). Hige is later referred to by Lady Jagara as "Number 23" - ie, the 23rd wolf to wear one of her collars - and the Cyrillic X or Kh happens to be the 23rd letter of the (modern) Cyrillic alphabet. Coincidence?
In the anime Last Exile, most of the on-screen text is actually in English, but written phonetically in the Greek alphabet. Viewers familiar with the alphabet can get some extra clues as to what is really going on. For example, the flying machines in Exile's world are powered by a mysterious substance referred to as "Cloudia"; if you look carefully at the instrument panels and transliterate the writing, you discover that it's really "Antimatter".
Galaxy Angel does this in an episode where Forte is turned into a guy. Ranpha gives Forte a love letter in English. When Forte reads out loud in Japanese it sounds perfectly normal, however, the text on the letter itself is nothing but stock reports, making the joke much funnier.
In the Full Metal Alchemist anime, all books are written in English. If you ignore the occasional alchemical array, they are copied verbatim from Dungeons And Dragons player's manuals. Specifically, articles concerning alchemy.
- Actually, in the anime and the manga, almost every piece of text has to do with cooking...
- Also, the insert song that plays in several episodes, Bratya (Brothers), is a Russian song, about the Elric brothers, and contains lyrics like "It's forbidden to try to return one taken by the earth."
Similar to the Full Metal Alchemist example, Gundam Wing has two such instances of random English text. In the first, a medical readout on Heero is actually the readme file for Photoshop's TWAIN plugin. In the second, the blueprints for Sandrock contain a number of Shout Outs to Mobile Suit Gundam, including references to Gundarium and the ALICE AI system from Gundam Sentinel.
In Suzumiya Haruhi, one of the last scenes has Mahler's Eighth Symphony in the background. The subject matter of the symphony matches up very well with that of the show.
The main character in The Prince of Tennis, Ryoma Echizen talks in English when he enters his State of Self-Realization (need Japanese name).
In a Filler Arch in the Bleach-animè, some vampiresque creatures called the Bount worked with Spirit Familiars in fights. One Bount tried to create a Spirit Familiar out of chemical components, which he chanted the names of in German while working.
- Bount spirit familiars have German names in general, and the incantations to summon them appear to be German as well.
- Similarly, the various classes of Hollow and the attacks they use tend to have Spanish names, as do Sado/Chad's augmented arms when he powers up.
- Ishida's sole melee weapon Seele Schneider (lit. Soul Cutter) could be considered a german translation of Zanpakto (lit. Soul Cutting Sword).
  - Considering the historically bad blood between Quincies and Shinigami, it's quite possible that the name is an intentional Take That to the Shinigami.
The operatic singing that accompanies a particular emotional high point in Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann—as background for a rap, no less—is actually of a passage sometimes included in the Requiem of the Latin Mass. The lyrics express the soul's fear of destruction along with the world at the Last Judgment, which fits in well with the themes of the story arc.
In one point in the Master Mosquiton OAV, Saint Germaine is trying to convince Schrödinger (of Schrödinger's cat fame) to join his cause. Schrödinger throws a die, which rolls over the book he's reading; it is, verbatim, a page from a 3D modeling software instruction manual.
In the second season of Emma, episode 3, when William's father summons him to his study, there is a brief establishing shot of the account book he's been reading over, with entries all in English. All of them are Beatles songs.
Strike Witches shows in one episode Eila's calendar with a day circled and marked, in Finnish (or rather Finnrish - they used the wrong inflection), "Sanya's birthday". This detail wasn't subtitled in the official release.
The three Zentradi spies from Super Dimension Fortress Macross are named Warera, Loli, and Conda, which put together reads as, "We have a Lolita Complex" in Japanese...whether or not they actually do is open to debate. In the Robotech version they are called Bron, Rico, and Konda instead.
In Macross Frontier, the on-screen displays populated with English filler text use completely irrelevant excerpts from, for example, the Adobe Flash Player (or Adobe CS?) EULA and an article about the appearance of Oakley sunglasses in some bicycle or motorcycle event.
In Pumpkin Scissors Episode 24, in a document shown onscreen written in amazingly accurate English, we find that the name of "Machs" is "Martis." (Normally on-screen Engrish is to be taken with a grain of salt, but considering the sheer quality of these it gives pause. The website... well... they're more typical, using English more as a style or fashion rather than a language. The on-screen documents on the other hand are impeccable.)
The Miyazaki-directed Porco Rosso features the Mamma Aiuto Gang, one of the many seaplane pirate gangs that the titular character hunts for a living. "Mamma Aiuto" translates roughly as "Mama, help!", which is appropriate, since the Mamma Aiuto gang is about as evil and terrifying as a box of kittens.
G Gundam has Schwarz Bruder, Neo Germany. His last name is German for "brother," his first name is German for "black," and near the end of the series it comes out that the Schwarz that everyone's been talking about has been a DG-cell clone of Domon's brother Kyoji.
The english dub of Hellsing Ultimate has once instance of this: in the 3rd episode when Seras is escorting the Japanese tourists, the tourists have been redubbed in Japanese, and are apparently saying very rude things about the english staff working on the episode.
There's quite a bit of English in Serial Experiments Lain. For example, in "Layer:06 KIDS", while the scientist is explaining the KIDS project, a lab report in English describing the procedure scrolls past the grainy recording of the experiment.
The ED song for the first season of Spice and Wolf may seem genuinly cool to an all Japanese audience. But to anyone fluent in English, it's just Narm.
- "Sebbun appers on da witches tree"
- I think it's cute! Planting seven seeds inside of me! [1]...
REAL bilingual bonus in Spice and Wolf: I'm nearly through and it seems all written matter is scripted in German... =)

Close Anime

Nearly every major Eddie Izzard DVD features a bit in French or German that, without an understanding, is funny only in its inflection and the audience response.
- Actually, they are funny because he is retelling bits from earlier in the act, so the listener is actually able recognize a lot of it.
- Also, understanding it leads to hilarity. He summarized the movie Speed in french and I was like. "Quoi?"

Close Comedy

In issue 13 of Joss Whedon's Astonishing X-Men, two panels feature dialogue in Japanese between one of the students and Wolverine. The gist of it comes through in the art, but readers of Japanese can get the full meaning of the words.
- Japanese girl: "Isn't it quite shameful that a murderous gorilla passes for a teacher here?" Wolverine: "Isn't it shameful to your ancestors to do nothing but whine all the time?"
The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen comic books never translates foreign languages, whether they are Arabic, Chinese or Martian. Like the X-Men example above, the artwork (and English responses) give context. Jess Nevins has translated (or has received translations) of all instances—in the case of the Martian language, it's mirror-flipped English.
Runaways features Spanish once Victor shows up. Most of it's pretty easy to guess from the context.
Author Hergé wrote most of his Tin Tin series during World War Two, and was involved in several resistance movements. In The Blue Lotus, a lot of the Chinese background characters are calls for speakers of Chinese to boycott Japanese goods, as they were currently occupying China.
Asterix comics frequently contain snippets of Latin, all of which make sense. (The Egyptian hieroglyphics don't, if you're wondering.)
- The Egyptian heiroglyphics don't make literal sense, but they do make sense, of a sort.
  - The background ones might be comic relief, the foreground ones are usually puns (and fairly untranslateable).
- The hieroglyphs make perfect sense, actually, but they are a combination of pictographs and rebus and mostly can only be read by French speakers.
Immortal Iron Fist has various Chinese words peppered throughout the issues' artwork. For example, the Chinese symbols for "Iron Fist" that are part of the logo, and in one page where the table at which the Immortal Weapons sit at each have a symbol for their clans animal; dragon, crane, monkey, tiger, dog, spider, and turtle. Also, the symbols tattooed across Fat Cobra's body say "fat cobra."

Close Comic Books

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom has the extended scene with Amrish Puri. First he says "Kali maa, shakti de, bali chadaoon tere aage", which means "Mother Kali, give me strength, so I may sacrifice in front of you." Later when they are whipping Indy, Puri says, "Maro maro sewer ko, chamdi nocho, peelo khoon", which means "Beat the pig, tear his flesh and drink his blood." Lastly while the kids are escaping they say "Bachao!" Which means "Help me!" And Amrish Puri says "Pakdo! Isse jane mat dena!" "Grab him! Don't let him go!"
Johnny English has one scene in a sushi restaurant. Johnny toasts with "May your daughters have tiny penises". I can remember at least one version having completely different subtitles as well.
"May all your daughters be born with three bottoms."
In The Blue Angel, there's a really subtle one that doesn't translate well. The professor's name is "Rath" (pronounced "rot" in German). His students mockingly call him "Unrat", which means "junk" or "garbage". Even with the subtitled or dubbed version, this joke/PunnyName/ foreshadowing is mostly lost on the English speaking audience.
Every last non-English line of the The Lord Of The Rings films' many background choruses is not only sensible but relevant, either in Tolkien's Elvish or in another Middle-earth language. The group enters the Mines of Moria; the chorus recites dwarven lore in Dwarvish. Nazgûl swoop down; they bellow "Death has taken wing" in the Black Speech.
- Given that Tolkien only gave two phrases of Khuzdul in any of his works, I think someone is telling meat pies.
  - The linguist responsible for Tolkien's languages in the Jackson-films (David Salo) took the existing stuff and extrapolated from there, creating "Neo-Khuzdul". Happens a lot with Tolkien's languages, as people have been creating new vocabulary for the Elven languages for some time, resulting in Neo-Eldarin languages.
- ~~Viggo Mortensen also threw in some of his native Danish when Arwen rides away with Frodo in LOTR:FOTR, calling her "Min elskling".~~ Be iest lîn. Also part of David Salo's Sindarin dialogue.
In Shaun Of The Dead, Shaun exits an Indian-run deli, which has a radio tuned to a station playing songs from Indian movies. The song stops and a newscaster begins speaking in Hindi. ("People are waking up from their graves.")
At one point in Independence Day, Julius Levinson (father of David), who had heretofore not been "on speaking terms with" God, leads a group in the sixteenth benediction of the Shemoneh Esrei, though there's a cut to the next scene only a few words in.
Little Odessa has people burst into random Russian or Yiddish which are not susbtitled; however, occasionally Russian is spoken so badly it's barely understandable even to native speakers.
The recent Iron Man movie used this to good advantage: early on, Tony Stark is kidnapped by vaguely Middle Eastern terrorists, who record a video message in Urdu that is not subtitled. At the time, the precise content of what they're saying doesn't seem important, but later, when Pepper Potts discovers a copy of the message and translates it, it turns out that the terrorists were hired by Tony's business partner, Obadiah Stane, and the recording was a complaint that they hadn't been told it was Tony they were supposed to kill.
- The actor playing the terrorist leader Raza said in an interview that he made it a point to use multiple languages in the film. In this case it's not what he said that's the bonus; he Threw It In to add the context that the terrorists aren't just Middle East religious zealots but an international organization in it for power (a point made even clearer when Raza is shown attempting to drink a glass of scotch; alcohol is a major no-no under Islamic law).
The Hunt For Red October has a spectacular Bilingual Bonus in the Ominous Russian Chanting of the opening theme — the lyrics are all about bidding farewell to the motherland (Russia), and the call of the sea. Thematically perfect, and completely awesome.
This one hardly needs mentioning, but the chorus of monks in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, while whacking themselves in the foreheads with wooden planks, are singing the Latin phrase "Pie Iesu Domine, dona eis requiem." This is a snippet from the Requiem Mass, and translates to "Lord Jesus, give them rest". Some wiseacre fans have translated it (very loosely) as "Oh Christ, make it stop" or "Oh Lord, give us a break".
A Fish Called Wanda contains several funerals for small yapping dogs, featuring a choir that sings "Lord have mercy, the dog is dead" in Latin.
- Even funnier the Russian that Archie uses to arouse Wanda, according to a Russian friend who hurt himself laughing when he saw it, is a poem about the glory of the worker that children in the Soviet Union learned by rote.
The Black Cat, (Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, d. EG Ulmer, 1934, and not actually based on the Edgar Allan Poe story of that name) features a stock-phrase-derived satanic invocation offering unintended laughs for anyone who understands Latin. Cum grano salis indeed!
In The Passion Of The Christ, the Roman soldiers quip to each other in untranslated Latin. Admittedly, it's Church Latin, but this troper was still able to catch the soldier about to whip Jesus declaring "I shall make music," leaving him laughing at a very unfortunate moment in the theater.
In Transformers, one of the surviving soldiers speaks Spanish. This troper's brother's friend was the only one laughing in the theatre when he was about to be attacked by Scorponok, as apparently he yelled out something ridiculous, even if it was in context.
- Also, in the initial conversation in which he appeared, he first joins the conversation, albeit in Spanish (about eating alligator meat, he says "he'd eat some with rice and beans", a common dish in the actor's home country of Puerto Rico) and upon being berated begins ranting about it, cursing along the way.
- This troper was also the only one laughing at that joke in the movies. Odd, considering how full the room was. And how she lives (and watched it) in Puerto Rico. Oh, the irony!
- In the Spanish version the soldier instead speaks English in this scene.
Ladyhawke also does this, when one of its characters, escaping from prison, finds himself in a sewer below a cathedral during Mass:
Mouse: Lord, I'll never pick another pocket as long as I live, I swear. But here's the problem: if you won't let me live, how can I prove my good faith to you? If you've heard me, this ledge will remain steady as a rock and that thing coming at me won't be what I think it is. If it is, there'll be no hard feelings, of course... but I'll be very disappointed.
(Ledge remains steady, "thing" is revealed to be a cow skull.)
Mouse: I don't believe it.
Ominous Latin Chanting: Credo in unum deum... (I believe in one god)
Mouse: I believe it! I'm coming, Lord!
Slightly subverted in Inside Man. The police are listening in to what the bank robbers are "saying" on the radio, but when they get help translating it, it transpires that they're hearing a recording of a public address by a former Albanian president.
This is arguably the entire point of the French/English Canadian film Bon Cop, Bad Cop.
In Shrek 2, when Puss in Boots is knocked off White Stallion Donkey he shouts "You piece of meat with legs!" in Spanish.
In the Jackie Chan version of Around the World in 80 Days, the Chinese man tied up in the "jail" is actually yelling "my butt really itches!" in Chinese.
River's "safe word" in Serenity is "Eta kuram na smekh." It's never mentioned in the movie, but that's Russian for "That's for chickens to laugh at" or "That's ridiculous."
- That said, Simon's accent is so terrible that it is quite hard to hear.
In the opening scene of True Lies, as Arnold Schwarzenegger's character is trying to enter the castle, the two German guards below him offer a peek into the daily life of the Mook:
Guard 1: Do you have any cigarettes left?
Guard 2: Why is it always my cigarettes?
The Golden Compass movie has (badly mispronounced) Icelandic dialogue among background characters in one part (ironically, they are in Trollesund, Norway, although being an alternate universe, this could be waved off). Subtitles are provided for a couple of lines, but not all.
- Utterly randomly, in one scene while they are in said city, a background shout in (perfectly pronounced dialectal) Swedish is heard.
Accidental famous example: "Vader" means father in multiple Eastern European languages. Word Of God says this is entirely unintentional.
- Also in Dutch.
- Actually only in Dutch. And it is quite Western European.
- Actually only in dutch... is the spelling correct, but the english "father" and the german "vater" also sound very much like "vader". Where it gets screwy is that they do not sound alike in english, since "Vader" is pronounced in dutch with exactly the same "a" as father in english. Also, I can remember an old interview with George Lucas where he actually explained where he got "Vader" from - "it is the dutch word for father". Luckily Tv Tropes is not like The Other Wiki, or this statement would get a Citation Needed slammed very hard to it's end. It was on an old VHS tape of one of the old films, before the remakes.
The German lines in Die Hard: With a Vengeance are notoriously poorly pronounced but generally on topic. Hilarity ensues, however, when Jeremy Irons' character enters the Federal Reserve Bank as "Mr. Vanderflüge". Both his last name and the language he is speaking appear to be an odd and entirely fictional mix of Dutch and German.
- English is a mix of Dutch and German now?
  - With a bit of french thrown in, but sure.
In The Mission, the locals were given free reign to say whatever they wanted in their own language. Apparently they hardly ever kept to the script and kept throwing out funny non-sequitors or just cursing up a storm.
At the beginning of John Carpenter's The Thing a Norwegian scientist is trying to kill a dog. When the dog runs up to the Americans the scientist gives (in rather broken Norwegian) a pretty accurate summary of what the dog actually is.
In eXistenZ, in one of the opening scenes, the hologram projected by the ID card reader is in akkadian cuneiform. This troper hasn't been able to read it, however he is interested in transliterating it as soon as he can find a clean shot.
In The Russians are Coming, there are obviously many joking lines spoken by the Russian soldiers. One example of this is, when the Russians are in an American garage, one thinks a bag is filled with grain and offers it to another. the other tastes it and proceeds to exclaim "This is SHIT!"
In The Lost World, Peter Stormare plays a minor character that gets attacked by the tiny "Compy" dinosaurs. When his lip is bitten, he rips the offending lizard off and exclaims "Fan I Helvete!", a rather popular Swedish curse.
- Speaking of Peter Stormare, in Minority Report he plays a doctor who performs an eye transplant on Tom Cruise. Stormare speaks in Swedish with his nurse, and the nurse sings the Swedish song "Små grodorna", which contains the line "they have no ears, they have no tails" - except she changes it to "they have no eyes." It's both funny and disturbing for the Swedish viewer.
Whenever Sacha Baron Cohen speaks 'Kazakhstani' in Borat, it's actually Hebrew, with a few bizarre touches and inside jokes. This was a wink to the Israeli audience in light of the character's OTT antisemitism. Borat's partner, Azamat, speaks an Eastern dialect of Armenian. The commonly used phrases Jak się masz? and dziękuję mean How are you? and Thank you in many West Slavic languages, such as Polish and Czech.
In Chicago, the Hungarian prisoner speaks Hungarian when she's telling Roxy what she's in for. This is to put the point on her innocence, but if you know Hungarian, you can still tell what she was convicted of - decapitating her husband (apparently with the aid of a celebrity).
- Not really - the actress' pronunciation is terrible to the point of being near unintelligible. This Hungarian troper had trouble understanding words, let alone entire sentences.
In the exodus scene of The Prince Of Egypt, which is chock-full of Crowning Music Of Awesome already, the song "When You Believe" involves a section in Biblical Hebrew which, roughly translated, means, "Let us sing to God, for he has redeemed/saved our nation." This is sung by a children's chorus, which adds, in a sense, to the awesomeness.
- Link to complete translation. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBgV0DK_FP4
  - Er, that link just leads to the Hebrew version of the song.
- The Hebrew is supposedly based on the prayer/song Moses offers up in the Bible/Torrah for the occasion.
  - It is. The words are from the "Song of the Sea" in the Bible/Torah (said after the splitting of the Red Sea).
  - I will sing to God because He is mighty. Who is like You in the Heavens, O Lord? Who can compare to your holiness? You have delivered your people because of your love — we will sing, we will sing, we will sing!
- Another example: In the opening song, "Deliver Us" Yocheved (Moses' mother, voiced by Ofra Haza) sings several lines to Moses in Hebrew which mean "My good and tender child, don't tremble and don't fear."
In the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, after Shredder tries to get Splinter to reveal the identities of the Turtles, an angry and frustrated Tatsu is heard to say "Kuso" (roughly translated as the Japanese equivalent of "shit") quite clearly, making it an amusing addition to a kids' movie. (At least for this troper it was!)
The farce Top Secret is set mostly in East Germany, and has a lot of fun with characters speaking "German". Mostly they're actually speaking in either gibberish or irrelevant Yiddish curses, although there is some German as well, including this classic exchange between villain and henchman:
Streck: Make sure they leave no marks.
von Horst: (severely) Ich liebe dich, mein schatz.
In The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, during the scene where the good-guy undead are stumbling around, one knocks another's head off while waving a weapon and cheering. He then proceeds to bend down and attempt to locate the head, while saying apologetically to the first guy (in perfectly intelligible Chinese): "Your head's over here, your head's over here!"
The Mexican restaurant in Anchorman The Legend Of Ron Burgundy is called "Escupimos en su Alimento," which is Spanish for "we spit in your food."
At one point in Police Academy 2, a Russian swear word, "хуй" (read as "huy", like "dick" or "wiener" in English, only much more offensive) can be seen written on a phone booth.
The Swahilli chanting at the beginning of The Lion King essentially says, "Here comes the lion, look it's a lion." The name Simba also means lion.
The Goonies. Chunk says "Baruch atah Adonai" (Hebrew for "Blessed are you, Lord") when he suddenly realizes he's bumped into Jake Fratelli, one of the murderous villains. Jake responds by singing a part from Madame Butterfly in Italian ("Bimba dagli occhi pieni di malia"). Earlier in the film Jake was again singing in Italian, from L'elisir d'amore.
In The Princess Bride, there is a scene where Inigo (a Spaniard) is confronted by a member of the brute squad, who addresses him with, "Ho there!" Inigo's response, in his very thick Spanish accent? "Keep your ho dere." In Spanish, "joder" (pronounced just like how Inigo says "ho there") means "to fuck" or "fuck!"
Deaf people often laughed when they watched silent movies. They had the Bilingual Bonus of being able to read lips. The actors often did deliberate mismatches.
- A particularly famous example is a passionate embrace and kiss on screen, with the actress making it clear what will happen if the actor drops her.
Played straight, in the indie stealth-musical "Once." One line — which entirely resolves the protagonists' ambiguous relationship — is delivered in untranslated Czech. Guy asks (via a weirdly passive-agressive maneuver) whether Girl loves her estranged husband, and she answers "no, I love you."
The Godfather features a conversation in which Al Pacino says a few sentences in Italian that weren't subtitled on-screen.
An unintentional example occurs with the majority of Yiddish cinema. Yiddish as a language is very rant-friendly, with characters in Yiddish theatre and film often adding entire tirades onto simple sentences for extra laughs. Unfortunately, when Yiddish cinema is subtitled into English it is usually done through [[Woolseyism dynamic equivalence]] at its most bare-bones level, only expressing the minimum of what each character is saying. Have fun going to a Jewish film festival and watching an old classic Yiddish film with a bunch of older Ashkenazi folk, and marvel at how a simple sentence like "I won't let you marry my daughter" (in English) brings the house down by those who can understand the original Yiddish.
Many old Westerns have a Bilingual Bonus for Native Americans, because they weren't concerned with whether what their Native actors were saying correlated with the subtitles, or was even the right language.

Close Film

In Mortal Engines, a variety of languages are used and Bilingual Bonuses in Chinese, French and German (as well as fairly authentic use of the languages) crop up, especially in the cities' names.
The 1961 novel Catch-22 by Joseph Heller features the aptly named character Lieutenant Scheißkopf, whose surname translated into English is an obscenity (Shithead, to be precise.).
- The no-doubt unintentional but somewhat amusing part is that Scheißkopf is actually rather nonsensical if USED as an insult to a German. It would probably offend them to the same degree as calling someone a "spoony bard" would in English.
  - Not.
While most of the foreign language phrases in House Of Leaves are provided translation, some are not. The phrase Muss es sein? (Does it have to be?) is in between Johnny Truant's introduction and the text of The Navidson Record, for starters. There's also a particular German phrase, a quotation of Rilke's, that Johnny was planning on asking Kyrie about, but never got around to it.
Thomas Harris' novel Hannibal includes several lines in Italian that provide context for several characters. This troper found it frustrating and didn't know about Babel Fish at the time.
Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco uses untranslated quotes for some of its Encyclopedia Exposita; the English translation has quotes in French, Latin, Spanish, Italian, and Hebrew, and at least one of the English quotes is from Shakespeare, and is in English even in the Italian original.
- Which is not really that of a shocker: Eco always seems to assume that ~~most~~ all readers actually know French, Latin, Spanish, Italian and Hebrew.
In the Whateley Universe, the story "Quoth the Ninja, Nevermore!" has a Bilingual Bonus. The superpowered ninjas raiding the school (as a Yama Dojo graduation exercise) form a Five Man Band, and their names are all jokes in Japanese. Their given names are all types of food, as in tons of anime, while their last names all have hidden meanings.
This article wants a Discworld example, and this troper is happy to oblige. Pratchett occasionally includes a few of these, though several of them are explained or translated later. Some of them are not, however-for example, in Soul Music, the main character Imp y Celyn talks about and later plays a song he wrote himself, titled "Sioni Bod Da." Since Soul Music is almost in its entirety a completely awesome Discworldization of the entire rock music movement in general, it should come as no surprise that there's a couple of hidden reference there. One is indirectly explained: "Imp" means Bud and "Celyn" means Holly, hence "Bud y Holly." On the other hand, Sioni Bod Da is mostly unexplained: It's Welsh for Johnny Be Good. (Read: Johnny B. Goode.)
- In the French version, Patrick Couton translated the pun in Breton: Imp y Celyn became Kreskenn Kelen and his song was called Yannick Bez Mad.
- A Discworld example from Making Money: "Jikan no Muda", the Discworld equivalent of Sudoku, translates in Japanese to "Waste of Time".
- Another example from Maskerade, is the famous Aria mentioned the translation of which boils down to something along the lines of "The door is stuck, the damn door is stuck, it says pull and indeed I am pulling, perhaps I should push".
- Recurring example: The Sto Plains. "Sto" is "hundred" in Polish. Thus there is the town of Sto Lat, which translates to "a hundred years". Sto Lat is also the name of the Polish equivalent of "Happy Birthday to You." ("May (s)he live a hundred years") This troper has no idea what Sto Helit could be.
  - "Sto Helit" == "Stole It", if you read it aloud
- Don't forget "Liber Paginarum Fulvarum" the proper name of the Necrotelicomnicon (Essentially a phonebook for the dead) which translates, loosely as "The Yellow Pages".
- In The Truth, Gaspode is disguised a poodle at one point. The dog beauty salon that gave him a poodle haircut is called "Le Poil du Chien", which is French for "Hair of the Dog".
- Also see the motto of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch, "Fabricati Diem, Pvnc" — which the narrator translates as "to protect and serve", but which would more accurately translate to "make my day, punk", with some leeway on pvnc and punk.
  - In Discworld's Ankh-Morpork City Watch Diary 1999, it's stated that the motto was originally "Fabricati Diem, Pvncti Agvnt Celeriter", or "make the day, the moments pass quickly".
- This troper's personal favourite is 'Uberwald', which so happens to be German for 'Across the Forest'. Translate this into Latin and you'll see WHY it sent this troper into cackling fits when she finally figured it out.
  - beyond/across is "trans", forest is "silva"
- In "Feet of Clay," several of the Golems (golems originally stemming from Hebrew stories) have yiddish names. This Troper was laughing his pants off when he read that one golem's name was "Crazy" and one's was "Cloth used for cleaning."
- More German: In The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents, there were the city guards Knopf ("button" or "knob") and Doppelpunkt ("colon", of the punctuation kind).
In Dune, Herbert uses a lot of Hebrew. For instance, "kwitzat hadarach" means "skipping ahead in the path", and "bene gesserit" is actually a (double) trilingual bonus, meaning "children of connections/bridges" in Hebrew and either "(s)he who has behaved well" or "(s)he will fight well" in Latin.
- However, Frank Herbert took quite a lot of liberties with Hebrew pronuciation, or maybe he just messed up the transliteration from Hebrew script: e.g. in proper Hebrew it is kfitzat haderekh. That phrase is the name of a magical feat — being in two places simultaneously — that some Hassidic holy men supposedly are able to carry out. Mainstream author Chaim Potok's second novel about Asher Lev has a good description, when the Ladover rebbe (holy man) bi-locates himself to both New York and Paris. A piece of magical realism in a Jewish context.
- May be unintentional. Frank Herbert is known to have used Arabic in the novels. Arabic and Hebrew are related languages and some phrases might carry over.
  - Possible Justification: Since the books are set at least several thousand years in the future, the pronunciation might simply have drifted somewhat compared to today's (read up on the Great Vowel Shift, for example)
In The Ashes of Alladag by Michael Schweitzer, the spells cast by Ritchar occasionally sound like Hebrew phrases. However, they are badly mangled in terms of vowels, but that sort of makes sense when you consider that in Hebrew, the consonants make the root word while the vowels (and sometimes an additional consonant) conjugate it. Although there are Jewish parallels throughout the book, so this isn't surprising.
In the Temeraire series, brief snippets of French dialogue are sometimes included, such as in the dragon Temeraire's brief quips with French combat dragons in the middle of battle, or when he introduces himself (and his captain) to a French dragon. This troper has found herself curious enough to Babelfish at least one such phrase.
In Anathem there is a bilingual bonus in a round-about manner; the foreign language is expressed phonetically in English. I'm not going to say any more due to spoilers and my lack of knowledge of spoiler tags.
The whole of Finnegan's Wake is a multilingual bonus.
The heavily-used slang throughout Antony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange is in fact poorly Romanized or sometimes shortened Russian words. For example, khoroshaw (good) becomes "horrorshow" and chiloveck (person) becomes "veck."
In Elizabeth Bear's Jenny Casey novels, the love interest of the main character is a Québécois. During the sex scenes between him and the protagonist, he speaks apparently quite dirty and very much untranslated Quebec French.
In I Claudius, Robert Graves obviously assumes everyone's classical education is lacking - he provides no translations for the latin, but translates any Ancient Greek that occurs.
Any novel by Vladimir Nabokov will be packed to the brim by this sort of thing. Unsurprising, considering the author is fluent in English, French, Russian, and German.
Cormac Mc Carthy's Blood Meridian has numerous lines of untranslated Spanish throughout.

Close Literature

Heroes has a few bilingual bonuses in relation to the Japanese-speaking Ando and Hiro. Though they are subtitled, the subtitles are only general-sense translations, and the actual Japanese dialogue is often somewhat different from the subtitle, particularly when the translation loses some of the connotations of the original language. For example, Hiro often uses slightly childish figures of speech — a habit which is mostly lost in translation. The subtitles are the lines as written by the show's writers; Masi Oka (Hiro) translated the lines into Japanese, adding in the nuances and in-jokes himself.
- Mostly lost in translation, but not totally. There's a clip of Hiro squealing "Yattaaaa!", used to promote the series on G4. Gamers will also recognize "Yatta!" as Chun-Li's giddy exclamation after winning a fight in Street Fighter II.
- While it is missed in the subtitles Hiro changes pronouns from "boku" which is rather boyish and polite, to "ore" which is more manly after travelling to ancient Japan.
- When Matt Parkman tries to read the mind of someone thinking in japanese in season 1 and season 3, the Japanese can be heard, but no translation is given, since Matt can not speak the language.
Hogan's Heroes, being set in Germany and including a French prisoner, has a few of these. The oft-seen "VERBOTEN" sign posted around the camp translates as the following:
1. Strict orders have been given to German troops around Brussels to shoot any civilian cyclist.
2. People who, after the fifteenth of December, are still in possession of carrier pigeons, as well as all other persons, who by signals or any other means, cause annoyance to the German military interests will be judged by courtmartial.
Brussels, December 13, 1944
The Chief of Military Police
H. Heinrichs, Captain
Everyone in Firefly and Serenity curses quite inventively in (badly pronounced) Mandarin. Firefly's Wikiquote page translates most of it for those who can't translate it themselves, but This Troper prefers this site.
In episode 8 of Band of Brothers, the translator tells some German PO Ws (in German, of course) "be good, and you will get a cookie!"
Catalina, the Latina maid in My Name Is Earl, occasionally goes into what sounds like an angry stream of Spanish, which is taken by non-Spanish-speakers to be a blistering insult (usually aimed at Joy). In fact, she is speaking directly to the audience and has on different occasions thanked Latino viewers for tuning in, congratulated non-Latinos on learning a new language, explained that a more expensive scene had been cut, bid farewell for the end of the season, and apologised for continuity errors in that night's show.
Dr. Radek Zelenka in Stargate Atlantis is known for making humorous asides in Czech, including a case of No Fourth Wall where he commented "I can't work with these actors".
- When the writers want Zelenka to say something in Czech, they'll just write his dialogue in english and put at the end 'say this in Czech'
- The Asgard Hermiod does similar asides in his own language, which turns out to be English played backwards.
- The Russian dialogue between sailors on a Russian submarine in the Stargate SG-1 episode "Small Victories" slid into No Fourth Wall as well, referring to "these bugs from the first episode". Allegedly, the actors were asked to just say anything in Russian. The Russian dub overwrote it with sane dialogue.
lonelygirl15 occasionally includes untranslated Spanish dialogue.
On 30 Rock, a depressed Liz Lemon starts eating a brand of tortilla chips named Sabor de Soledad, which in Spanish translates as "Taste of Solitude", appropiate for a character who's Married To The Job.
Lost: in the episode "D.O.C.", Naomi says something in Portuguese, unsubtitled. Mikhail translates it as "Thank you for helping me," but Portuguese-savvy viewers knew she actually said, "I am not alone."
- Also, much of the Korean spoken on the show is left unsubtitled to convey that the characters in the scene do not understand each other. However, most of this dialogue is bonus-free (they're saying roughly what we would imagine they're saying.)
  - However much of the Korean is very poorly pronounced. While one of the two actors is famous Korean Actress who moved to the US, the other is born and raised in the US and can not be understood by native speakers.
The live-action Sailor Moon series has a trilingual bonus. In this version, Sailor Venus, or Sailor V for short, is also an idol singer. One of her most popular songs is called "C'est La Vie", the French phrase for "that's life" (more or less). However, to a native Japanese speaker, this phrase would be pronounced exactly the same as the words "Sailor V". So the Japanese pronunciation of a French phrase and an English name provides a clue to the secret identity of the character.
When the Dalek ships are revealed towards the end of the Doctor Who episode "Bad Wolf," the soundtrack features a male choir chanting. Apparently they are singing "What is happening?" in Hebrew.
- Also, the Judoon converse in their native language until assimilating "Earth-English" through a translator device. Why their speech isn't translated by the TARDIS' telepathic field remains a mystery.
  - In an unused scene written for "The Stolen Earth", the Doctor said it was because the Judoon are so thick their language can't be translated.
- The recent season finale has a couple of scenes that are much more entertaining if you can speak German.
The opening for Mr Bean involves a haunting Latin choir piece, singing 'Behold the man who is a bean'. At the end of the programme, they sing 'Farewell, man who is a bean'. The Eye Catch contains them singing 'End of part one' and 'Start of part two'.
In a recent Top Gear challenge segment, the hosts were competing against the hosts of German car show DMotor, who often spoke in their native language. Let's just say that the translations from German were often incomplete (or left out entirely) for decency reasons.
Scrubs has Elliot speaking German a few times throughout the show, which is especially hilarious for German viewers. One episode also featured a German patient. Unfortunately, this patient couldn't really speak German, so even actual Germans couldn't understand him. Another instance in season 7 had Turk and Carla speak in unsubtitled spanish about J.D and Elliot.
- To be fair, Elliot's german is much better than you usually hear on american television.
  - In the german dub, Elliot speaks danish. Which renders the joke of JD imagining communicating to the german patient via dancing to 99 Luftbaloons completely absurd, as he is now a Dane.
In The West Wing episode "The Two Cathedrals," President Bartlet rants at God in untranslated Latin.
- There's also an episode where Sam gets into an argument with a Latino politican who breaks randomly into Spanish for a minute, and Sam follows suit. And some of the Yiddish in "Holy Night" is left untranslated.
Battlestar Galactica 2003. While Baltar is mind-frakking Number Six at the end of "Tigh Me Up, Tigh Me Down" an opera plays whose Italian lyrics translate thus:
Woe upon your Cylon heart
There's a toaster in your head
And it wears high heels
Number Six calls to you
The Cylon Detector beckons
Your girlfriend is a toaster
Woe upon your Cylon heart
Alas, disgrace! Alas, sadness and misery!
The toaster has a pretty dress
Red like its glowing spine
Number Six whispers
By your command
- Meanwhile, since season two, the lyrics of the opening credits (sung in Sanskrit) translate as...
  Oh God! Thou art the Giver of Life
  Remover of pain and sorrow
  The Bestower of happiness
  Oh! Creator of the Universe
  May we receive thy supreme sin-destroying light
  May Thou guide our intellect in the right direction
- And of course, there's the leitmotif broadly known as the "Adama theme", given lyrics in one episode in Irish Gaelic and titled "Wander My Friends".
  - And there is the Baltar's Cult leitmotiff from Season 4 which is essentially a prayer to "Our Lord and Saviour Gaius Baltar".
Kyle XY is full of bilingual bonuses for Hungarians. Latnok society (Látnok=seer), the Hungarian books in Adam's office, "viz allati" (misspelled, but still counts), "Kövesd a fényt"... - obviously someone from the creative team is Hungarian.
iCarly's iGo to Japan movie is even funnier when you know that the reason the Japanese security guard slapped Spencer is that he called his mother fat. In the episode iGo Nuclear, a bonus joke for Russian speakers is that Cal's case of illegal uranium is actually labeled plutonium.
In (modern) Star Trek, even though they have a universal translator that should mean we never, ever should hear anything other than the language of the television station, Klingon's inexplicably say "K'plah!", which characters (who also have universal translators) sometimes don't understand so Worf, Jadzia, Sisko, or other Klingon expert translates as "Victory". Similarly with any Klingon Opera, Klingon chants, or Bajoren chants, are never translated by the universal translator.
- It should be noted that to a native speaker of french, The Next Generation episodes tend to be pretty grating when Picard and Q attempt to speak french with the terrible pronounciation. It quite throws out the window any suspension of disbelief that Patrick Stewart is supposed to be of french origin. Was it really that hard to find a single french speaking person to teach John De Lancie how to correctly say the word "Capitaine"?
Inspector Morse features an example in morse code (of course) - the opening bars of the theme music are supposed to spell out Morse, but some fans argue that one of the .s is slightly too long and so it actually spells ttorse. Also the opening theme sometimes tells you who the murderer is, but it has been known to lie.
In a Buffy episode about Anya's origin story, she and Olaf speak some Scandinavian language to each other. (With such poor pronunciation that this troper can't make out which Scandinavian language it is.)
- It's Swedish, allegedly. Completely incomprehensible though.
  - This situation is something of a good work coming back to bite them in the rear; originally, the actors were supposed to just say random sounds and it would be dubbed over with Swedish, but they made the effort of actually learning the proper Swedish words for their scene so that the dub would match their movements. When the producers heard that they decided not to bother with the dub, even though now apparently nobody can understand them anyway.
True Blood has as a main character Eric the Viking Vampire, played by a Swedish actor. He occasionally speaks Swedish with some of the other characters. The dialogue is perfectly sensible and usually very well pronounced even by the non-native speakers. Slightly funny in that an actual viking from 1000 years ago would not have been speaking modern Swedish, but there you go.
- Sadly, once his dialogue become important, they stared to ~~dub~~ sub it. And regarding the understanding thing: Maybe he kept up with the lingo. Remember, he mused that a song he listend to would have been much more poingiant if you understood ancient swedish. And yes, this swedish watcher didn't understood a word of that.
  - Don't explain his siering scene.
  - Umm...
This troper recalls an episode of Friends where Ross attempted (key word here) to learn Dutch. The barman happened to be Dutch (and played by a rather famous Dutch person - country bonus?) and asked "Ben jij ook Nederlands?" (Are you Dutch too?). Ross quickly paged through the booklet to see what he said, and the barman muttered "Jij bent een Ezel." (You're a donkey / ass.). Cue frenzied looking through the booklet in an attempt to see what he said. He discovers the meaning several days later and says back "Jij bent zelf een ezel." (You are an ass.), to witch Gunther replied "Jij hebt sex met ezels." Take the word sex and just imagine what the rest of the sentence is.
- Earlier in season 1 or 2 Monica gets her identity stolen and meets up with her and gives her name... Moni... Moniman. The lady that stole Monica's name asked "Unusual name, where's that from?", "It's Dutch." and she replies with "Oh, mag ik deze dans van u?" (May I have this dance?), Monica quickly changes it to Pensilvania Dutch.
Likewise Bay Watch had Matt save a girl from drowning once, her being a "rural" European meant she had to spend the rest of her life with him. Because the actress was Dutch, they went with her saying: "Hij heeft mijn leven gered, ik moet de rest van mijn bij hem blijven!" in an excited tone to her Dutch best friend.

Close Live Action TV

"Push the Button", Israel's entry for the Eurovision 2006 song contest, requires knowledge of three languages - English, French and Hebrew - to get the full effect.
In the 1986 hit, Kyrie by Mr. Mister, the phrase "Kyrie Eleison" is Greek, meaning "Lord have mercy." That's right. This number one hit song is, at base, a Christian worship song.
- "Lord have mercy down the road that I must travel" isn't a specifically Christian notion, though.
- Twenty-odd years earlier, Tom Lehrer used the phrase in his song The Vatican Rag: "Everybody say his own kyrie eleison!" Lehrer also dipped into Russian and/or pseudo-Russian gibberish in his song "Lobachevski".
The song Die Eier von Satan, by Tool is sung in German, and set to heavy, militaristic music and a roaring crowd. To those who don't understand German, it may sound like a Nazi rally, but in reality it's simply a man reciting a recipe for hash cookies... WITH NO EGGS! Die Eier von Satan translates to The Eggs of Satan.
- Except that in German, "Eier" is also slang for testicles...
- Also, "Die Eier von Satan" isn't correct German. The next best thing that would have been at least grammatically correct is "Die Eier vom Satan," but even that is shaky German. What it should have been is: "Die Eier des Satans"
  - If you use 'Satan as a proper name instead of a title, "von" is perfectly correct German. And by 'shaky' you mean colloquial, as the genitive case is on the way of being absorbed by the dative.
- On closer observation, the crowd noises sound more like a sports game than a political rally. The vocals are a parody of certain German sports announcers, but sound much more menacing to someone not in on the joke.
"The Macaronic Carol" by Shari Ajemian and Sarah Newcomb alternates between lines in English and Latin. The English lines are all about how much fun it is to carol gaily in fields of snow; the Latin lines are things like "my feet hurt", "it's cold", and "I want to go home".
"Lady Marmalade" is about a Creole prostitute from New Orleans. And the chorus is "Voulez-vous coucher avec moi, ce soir ?" bit, which as far as this troper knows her French means "Would you like to come to bed with me tonight?" with the nuance of being in formal language. This troper was still annoyed to hear them playing it incessantly at the skate rink for passles of eight-year-olds.
- Imagine all the poor French teachers who probably had oodles of students clamoring up to them asking "Monsieur, what does voulez-vous couchez avec moi mean?"
- Not to mention people using it as a chat-up line because Everything Sounds Sexier In French. When the target of such an advance is actually French, Hilarity Ensues.
  - I always replaced the first c with a d to work out who actually spoke French.
  - FYI, doucher is a false cognate. It means to shower. Not to douche oneself.
  - Well yes, the invitation is to take a shower together.
Beck's song Hotwax has the following chorus: Yo soy disco quebrado / Yo tengo chicle en el cerebro. It translates to "I am a broken record / I have bubblegum in my brain."
Rie Fu's "Life is Like a Boat", also the first ending song of Bleach. It's in part Japanese, and in part English. If you understand only one of the languages, you get a decent ballad. In English, it's about someone who's alone in the world and feels like no one understands them, but soon finds a lover/Heterosexual Life Partner. In Japanese, it's about how hard life is, but you must endure to another day if you want to get anywhere. But if you speak both (or get subtitles), the true meaning of the song becomes clear - You can't go it alone, no matter what, we all need someone to lean on. Thus, the ending lines, which are basically the opening lines in Japanese, with the following at the end- "It's a beautiful journey, they're all beautiful journeys".
"In These Shoes" by Kirsty Mac Coll is in two languages, English for the verses, Spanish for the chorus.
Before forming the Super Furry Animals, members of the band were in another band called Ffa Coffi Pawb. Many fans will tell you this means what it sounds like to an English ear: "Fuck Off Everyone". Welsh-speaking fans will tell you it actually means "Everybody's Coffee Beans".
"Psycho Killer" by Talking Heads has part of the chorus and a bridge section in French.
- The chorus part means, "What's this?" And if I remember correctly, the bridge part means something along the lines of, "This is the game of the night. This is the hunt of the night. Realizing my hope, onward I hurl myself toward the glory." The part about "the night" should be "la soir" instead of "soir la" but David Byrne knows how to manipulate language in general so that it has a nice phonetic ring to it so I imagine that this is deliberate.
  - actually, the chorus means "what is it", and the bridge translates to: "what I did that night/what she said that night/realizing my hopes/I hurl myself towards glory." (ce soir-là = that night).
New Zealand band The Headless Chickens had a local hit with the song "Donde Esta La Pollo" (excuse me not having the spanish punctuation on that). It appropriate translates as "where is the chicken?"

Close Music

In the card game Chez Geek, the flavor text for the card "Caesar's Gallic Wars" says, in Latin, "Gaul is now divided into three parts. I believe Elvis is alive."

Close Tabletop Games

W.S.Gilbert wrote a Latin chorus for the monks that march mysteriously through the opening song of ''The Mountebanks''. However, the lyrics are, in fact, grumbling about how awful it is to be a monk. The Mountebanks is from 1892.
Cirque Du Soleil had the English-language show "Wintuk", in which there is a character who is perpetually afraid and who screams repeatedly, apparently nonsense; however, at one point he is actually screaming, "Skygge!" It's Danish for "Shadow", which is precisely what then attacks the heroes.
In Paint Your Wagon, one of the minor characters is a Chinese Laborer who gets to sing a few lines in Cantonese.

Close Theater

Super Mario has Waluigi, which may seem like a dumb name, but in Japanese it's a pun. "Waru" means bad, thus "Wario" by comining Mario and Waru, Waluigi seems to be the same, but with L-R conversion, it's "waru iji" which is "ijiwaru (mean person)" backwards. Crosses over with Incredibly Lame Pun.
The FPS Medal Of Honor features some funny conversation between enemies. They are spoken in German without subtitles. One of them features a meta-joke in which a soldier wonders aloud whether he is real or a character in a work of fiction.
Resident Evil 4 features enemies that talk amongst themselves in Spanish. This was explicitly done in order to make them seem more alien from the perspective of the player; the main character is presumably supposed to be unable to understand them (which is weird, as a government agent who's been under intensive training for six years should be expected to know a few other languages), but a knowledgeable player is able to gain some additional information from listening to them. Hispanic players can find this helpful: every time a farmer yells "¡Detrás de ti, imbécil!", you have to turn around and shoot, because they're literally saying "Behind you, you idiot!".
- Done again in Resident Evil 5, except this time they're speaking Swahili; good luck finding a friend to translate that...
The circa-1993 Finnish game Stardust named its Distressed Damsel after a local brand of margarine and the final dungeon after the makers' hometown.
A variation occurs in World Of Warcraft, with in-game languages. Every character knows two languages: their faction language and their racial language (except for orcs and humans, whose languages are used as faction languages for the Horde and Alliance respectively). Since some enemy NPCs in the game speak exclusively racial languages, only players of the corresponding race will have the Enemy Chatter rendered into English via Translation Convention — others will see gibberish.
- Hostile Troll NPCs in the Dwarvish starting area will shout out "Don't be stealin my weed" in Trollish.
- "LOL" (Laugh out loud) when spoken by a Horde to Alliance always appears as "KEK". "BUR" is what the Alliance appear to say when speaking "LOL" to Horde.
  - This troper has heard that it is either a Shout Out to Star Craft, where Korean players dominate the field often celebrating their victories by LO Ling the losers (and LOL analog is "kekekekeke" in Korean), or just a very funny coincidence.
- Very few players in World of Warcraft can understand Draconic, courtesy of the Ahn'Qiraj Scepter quest chain from Vanilla World Of Warcraft. Following the Wrathgate event in Wrath of the Lich King, those players were able to understand a conversation between Alexstrasza and Korialstrasz that possibly foreshadows the fate of an important character.
Can be combined with Ominous Latin Chanting for a big win.
- Final Fantasy VII used Latin spuriously, Advent Children and Final Fantasy VIII with proper hidden meanings.
  - Spuriously? If you're talking about "A One-Winged Angel", those lyrics were very apposite, albeit stolen from various parts of Orff's "Carmina Burana".
- Starcraft's Expansion Pack's teaser movie was filled with Latin chanting about preparing for battle and praying for victory, as well as even-more-ominous French chanting about how victory is sure—just as the soldiers are callously abandoned by The Cavalry to be devoured by the Zerg.
The Trope Has Been Modified: In the FPS Half Life 2, the "transhuman" Combine Soldiers' Enemy Chatter is in code phrases. Players interpreting the code can decipher the enemy squads' status or planned actions. For example, when the player has killed every member of the squad but one, the sole survivor starts chattering "Outbreak! Outbreak!" over his radio. Grenade throws are accompanied by countdowns ("3, 2, 1, Flash, Flash, Flash!"), and other tactics are open for revelation to the attentive player. Similarly, barely-audible female voices can be heard over PA systems promising "reproduction privileges" and similar bribes to soldiers who succeed in capturing or killing "Anticitizen One" (you). If the player turns in-game subtitles on, he will get messages such as "Combine: requesting backup" or "Combine: Grenade Alert!"
- In the beginning of Portal, the first hint that you get that there is something wrong with GLaDOS is a burst of static, during which the line "¿Porqué fallecemos? [Why do we die?]" is uttered.
  - I thought the line was "Por favor bordón fallar. Muchos gracias de fallar gracias." which is really awful Spanish for "Please support by failing. Many thanks for failing thanks."
  - It is, and G La DOS shorts out briefly, which is why it's messed up, but the more ominous line is played underneath.
The much-delayed FPS S.T.A.L.K.E.R. features this extensively. The game was originally made in Russian, complete with plenty of incidental chatter. The English version has the most important speech in accented English, and has no subtitles for the rest (unfortunately for the player, as some of the banter is quite witty). Also, there are many signs that are untranslated.
In Oregon Trail 2, a player who speaks Spanish can converse with Spanish-speaking NPCs. You are also given the option of using skill points at the beginning to learn "Spanish," (in which case all conversations will be in English), but those who already know the language can talk and trade without the option.
Recent games in the Legend Of Zelda series have included Hylian text, which is based on Japanese or (in Twilight Princess) English script, and can actually be read; however, the translation charts are only in the Japanese manuals. Also, because the Wii version of Twilight Princess is a mirrored version of the Game Cube one, all the text is backwards in that game.
All can bow down to Super Robot Wars, which takes this trope to an extent never seen - most of the names of mecha and enemies are in either German or Hebrew, most of which are either amusing, or sets up a rather hidden meaning to how things fit together.
- For example, Kyosuke's robot is called "Alteisen", which is german for "scrap metal". His upgrade is called the "Alteisen Riese", which translates to "scrap metal giant".
Final Fantasy X contains an entire language, Al Bhed, that is represented by a simple substitution cipher. The "translation" for the language is hidden throughout the game, one letter at a time. This gives the game a good replay value, as the translation can be retained. It is also possible for an enterprising player to successfully decipher the code well before actually receiving all 26 letter translations.
- A straighter example of Bilingual Bonus is the "Hymn of the Fayth"/"Song of Prayer"; its lyrics seem like nonsense, but if you write the lyrics in kana horizontally then read it vertically it's appropriate Japanese.
The Fire Emblem theme was also made into Latin when brought to America, with lyrics corresponding to the original English.
The arcade game Metal Slug 2 starts out in a Middle-Eastern desert town filled with Arabic signs. At the end of the level, where the first boss is fought, two massive banners dominate the street in the background, stating (in Arabic) "I have diarrhea" and "I need medicine."
In Crysis, on higher difficulty levels all the in-game enemy dialogue is spoken in Korean, which provides a handy advantage to players who happen to be fluent in the language. On lower difficulties, all enemy battle calls are spoken in English while the standard enemy chatter remains in Korean.
- By changing a line of text within the game's ini files, even the lower difficulties can have all-Korean enemy dialogue.
Mercenaries has each of the three playable characters speaking English and a different foreign language. One speaks Korean, one Russian and the other Chinese. This means that, depending who you play through the game as, some of the foreign troops will be understandable while others will not be.
- In some cases, understanding the dialogue gives a significant advantage, so players who could actually speak one or more of the languages would do well.
La Pucelle is hilarious if you know a bit of French. La Pucelle, meaning "The Maiden", was the nickname of Joan of Arc. "Pot a Feu," the name of the city, roughly means "fire pot" and is a type of pyrotechnics (a bit like a small mortar cannon); alternatively it could be a misspelling for "pot-au-feu" ("pot on the fire"), which means "boiled dinner". Prier is the verb "to pray". Culotte means "female panties." Alouette means "skylark". Croix means "cross". Eclair means "lightning", but is also the name of a pastry. Homard means "lobster". Papillon means "butterfly". Salade means, well, you guessed it, "salad". Noir means "black." The funniest part, though, is the Goddess Poitreene, a misspelling for "poitrine", which means "chest"... And the main character is a young female.
Freedom Fighters had some odd and/or awkward Russian-to-English moments. "First Hitting Brigade, GO!" being probably the champion. The funniest, however, was probably a poster, in parody of the famous Uncle Sam Wants You posters, stating that "The Red Army offers you wonderful opportunity." Small Cyrillic print in the bottom left corner of said poster revealed that said opportunity mainly consists of "Russian vodka".
The Commander Keen computer games featured a language named the "Standard Galactic Alphabet" that was just coded symbols corresponding to English letters. In the first game, you'd run across signs that, when decoded, said things like "This is neat" and "Behold the holy pogo stick". To this troper's knowledge, the coded alphabet remained consistent throughout the entire series.
- Players who had learned the code could read a letter left behind by Keen's archrival at the end of the fifth game. The complete translation to the code was only available in one level of the third, making this somthing of an easter egg for long time players.
  - This user deciphered it just by looking at the encoded letter.
  - The code is also found in Commander Keen 6, in a secret part of a hidden level. And yes, it stays unchanged throughout the series.
- Something similar was done in The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind with the "Daedric" alphabet. A key was provided in the manual for a previous game, Battlespire, and on the CD of the PC version (in the form of a Windows font) but nowhere in the game itself.
In the classic space colonization/adventure game Alien Legacy, the main alien race, the Empiants, periodically send telepathic messages once you encounter them that are displayed similarly to the regular reports your advisors give, except that they are initially shown in a symbolic code that is a simple substitution cypher. You can eventually develop a technology to translate these messages, but it's far more interesting to crack the cypher and translate them yourself, since only messages after you get the technology will be translated. The messages are all perfectly sensible and explain a lot about their position toward you, mostly that you are "polluting" their mental space. Hint: the messages all start with the word "Subject" which makes the cypher easy to crack.
The Legend of Kyrandia: Book 2: The Hand of Fate – the abominable snowman speaks backwards English (rendered phonetically in the screen text) and his utterances fit the action. “Hey, you changed your clothes!” “It’s all yours.” “You might hurt yourself!” You missed your chance.”
- Actually, the voice files were reversed, but the text used a Cesare cipher where the vowels where the first five letters of the alphabet, and the consonants filling the remaining alphabet. Using the alchemy wand on the yeti would have the yeti explain it to you.
Entering the final level of Doom 2, you hear the following speech—or would, if it weren't played backwards: "To win the game, you must kill me: John Romero." Completing the joke is that if you use the no clipping cheat to pop up into the "brain-case" of the demon, you find that the demon's "brain" is John Romero's head on a stick.
Outcast features a language of its own, used by the Talan people of the world the player's exploration team stumbles in. The game handily has a lexicon both in-game (updated as new words are learned) and a more extensive one in the manual. Whilst the vast majority of the dialogue in the game is spoken in English, the more intrigued (or bored) players still have their chances to do some translating, most notably with the miner workers' song.
Ar Tonelico also features an extensive conlang, Hymmnos, which is no longer used in spoken communication (except in rare instances of communicating with the Tower) but is still used as the basis for the game's Magic Music. The lyrics of the in-game hymns, which are translateable, actually reveal some interesting details about the characters' personalities and motivations, including shedding a good deal of light on the mindset of the main antagonist.
Hitman: Blood Money has newspapers reporting on your deeds after each level, many in foreign languages. The foreign ones are full of jokes. For instance, in Spanish one says "No tengo ninguna pista que ha escrito", which is incorrect grammar for "I have no clue what I've written." (It should be "que he escrito".) Another, oddly, says "Read a book or play outside; to play a game will only make you dumber."
- Hotel Gellárd is actually very closely based on Hotel Gellért in Budapest. The NPC-s cry for help in Hungarian. Also, the policemen tell you to buzz off in Hungarian (and in a really rude manner... this part is Truth In Video Games).
Niko Bellic often curses in his native Serbian. Turning on subtitles will give you English translations.
Jade Empire features a pair of guard golems who can be disabled if you use the correct password. The password is 'xiaohua', which, if spoken with the correct tones, simply means 'joke' in Mandarin Chinese.
Soldier Of Fortune has levels like this; notably, in the African train level, the train guards speak Swahili. They're apparently not paid very well, as they scream things like "Please! I have children!"
The Fan Translation for Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake had a Czechoslovakian on their team, thus being able to render Kio Marv and Natasha Marcova/Gustava Heffner's formerly Foreign Sounding Gibberish into perfectly legible Czech.
- Metal Gear Solid. If you're paying attention to the Briefings and know a handful of German, you'll be able to guess Naomi's history long before she delivers her Motive Rant. Translation of names, which are not normally translated, are what the game uses to obscure the fact that Naomi Hunter and Frank Jaeger have the same last name and are therefore likely related.
In Halo 2, although the Elites are mostly heard in English due to advanced Translator Microbes and Translation Convention, they still ocassionally say stuff in their real language, including the famous "wort wort wort".
- Conversely, in the first game, the then-unintelligible Elites occasionally say an English phrase, such as "Lousy piece o' crap".
In Call Of Duty 4 there are numerous signs, insignia and emblems which are in Arabic, Russian, or Ukrainian (based on the scripts and the locations). Also, much of the enemy dialogue is in unsubtitled Arabic or Russian.
- In the original Call Of Duty, in one mission a German radio operator instructs you in English to surrender and promises that you won't be harmed, right in between repeated calls in German to the soldiers to take no prisoners.
The Wii version of Punch Out have the Boxers speaking in their own language untranslated.
The later Elder Scrolls games contain a book called "N'Gasta Kvata Kvakis", which is found in many Necromancers' lairs. The book appears to be gibberish. In reality, it's slightly modified Esperanto. The translation is just the description of an Esperanto newsletter.
Mariko "Spirit" Tanaka says her last words before her Heroic Sacrifice to Blair in untranslated (but in romaji, not Kanji) Japanese, in Wing Commander II.
Sam and Max: Reality 2.0: This Mexican troper laughed very hard when Bosco revealed the name of his "safe" bank as bancolavadero.com, in Spanish "lavadero" is a water sink used to wash clothes and the popular name for shady businesses which do money laundering.
While most of the characters in Street Fighter III: Third Strike speak Japanese, a handful of them do speak fluent English. Hugo also shouts a few German phrases during fights.
In the Professor Layton sequel, the Diabolical Box, a character refers to his boss as "unko" which then is shown to be a shortening of uncle, the relation of the boss and that character. However, This Troper is relatively sure that "unko" is Japanese for "shit."

Close Video Games

Gunnerkrigg Court has occasional signs in Greek ("Danger: insects") and Latin ("Pray, read, read again, and you shall find."), as well as a snatch of Polish dialogue:
Gamma: Stupid...
Antimony: That wasn't very nice.
- A tiny bit of Slovenian is in there too.
This strip of Irregular Webcomic for Quebecois French speakers.
- And this Belgian troper says that the translator has an awful spelling. Not counting the Quebecois expressions.
Irregular Webcomic author David Morgan-Mar and others had a half-baked idea to launch a site dedicated to half-baked ideas called "mezzacotta". Mezza cotta is Italian for half-baked.
Unshelved used braille once.
Mr. Wink in Abe Kroenen speaks in runes. His conversations and actions let you get the gist of what he's saying, but translating them brings extra amusement.
One Chopping Block strip has Butch encountering someone who talks to him in French, and guessing he is either instructing him to kill people for Satan, or asking where the bathroom is. To be safe, Butch goes for the first one. Turns out that, contrary to expectations, that actually is what the guy is saying.
Completely subverted in El Goonish Shive with Uryuomoco, which has only ever been translated once, when it was needed for the plot. Nevertheless, three of the protagonists can speak it, and Tedd even dreams in it. Too bad we have absolutely no idea what's being said. Still, the topic doesn't come up much at all.
- In fact, the transcription (Uryuomoco is a cypher) is It is time for the end of man. The master of fire shall inherit the earth. My very presence eats away at your flesh..."
Rock Paper Cynic contains a strip that, according to the author, contrasts black humour with infantile joy by exploiting the Language Barrier between French and English. The strip has two separate scripts, running side by side, one in each language. The English is innocent and fairy tale like, while the French veers into darker territory.

Close Web Comics

In the Cars short that precedes the main feature of Bolt, when Mater is remodelled for his drag race in japan the Katakana on his doors reads: To Ma To
- Also, most of the signs in the background are completely legible. The kanji seen the most (the one that looks like a four-panelled window with a cross on top and on the bottom) is the kanji for 'car', and many of the signs make reference to mechanic's shops or the like.
Disney is surprisingly good at this; "Hakuna Matata" actually translates roughly as "there are no worries" in Swahili.
- Similarly, when Simba asks what Rafiki is muttering in his gibberish Swahili, and Rafiki replies "It means 'You are a baboon, and I am not'", this comes off as a joke - despite the fact that that is, in fact, what the previous two Swahili phrases actually mean.
  - This troper has lived in Tanzania, the one place where Swahili is the language of the country, and the proper form is hamna shida (I have no problems). Hakuna Matata is only used at cheesy touristy places.
- The opening chant in The Lion King ("Nants ingonyama, bagithi baba/Sithi uhm, ingonyama/Siyo nqoba/Ingonyama nengw'enamabala") is in Zulu and translates to "There comes a lion, father/Oh yes, it's a lion/We are going to conquer/A lion and a leopard come to this open place". The chant that precedes the reprise of "The Circle of Life" translates to "Rule with love, rule with peace/Rule, Simba, Rule, Simba".
- Disney's The Hunchback Of Notre Dame magnificently puts a Latin confession of sins on the background of the Knight Templar Big Bad's declaration of purity. Not only does it crest with his internal strife, but it admits fault where he blames others, asks for forgiveness where he affirms his determination, repents where he refuses. Booyah.
  - The Hunchback soundtrack is full of these. For example, during the climactic scene when Quasimodo is breaking out of the belltower, the chorus sings Libera me, Domine (Free me, Lord).
Atlantis: The Lost Empire has one Bilingual Parental Bonus: The lech-leaning engineer askes one of the Atlantean woman "Voulez vous couchez avec moi, ce soir?" Talk about Getting Crap Past The Radar, given this is a Disney film (and that middle school French is sufficient to translate it...)
In the DVD version of Invader Zim, you can have Irken subtitles. Naturally, this quickly becomes aggravating. More so given that they are the only subtitles available.
- True, but you can turn on Closed Captioning at least. Nickelodeon DVDs in general don't have subtitles.
In the South Park episode "Pinkeye", Cartman dresses up as Hitler for Halloween, and is made to watch a propaganda film on how it is bad to dress up like that. We get to see a crudely-animated Hitler delivering a speech in which the words "Alle Menschen werden Brüder" ("All people become brothers," more or less, taken from a poem by Schiller made famous by its use in Beethoven's 9th symphony), can clearly be heard. This is, of course, not something the real dictator is likely to have said. (Unless he was lying.)
- Additionally in "Good Times With Weapons" the kids are playing with the weapons and imagine themselves as anime characters, complete with a song in Japanese made by Trey Parker (who speaks a good deal of Japanese), "Let's Fighting Love". The song also has several odd statements in Gratuitous English (including the titular line), and most of the song is profane (but grammatically correct) nonsense and the singer admitting how bad the song and his English are.
- Japanese jokes aplenty in "Chinpokomon" - Chinpoko is Japanese for "very small penis." The chant, owatta beikoku! means "down with America!"
- Another episode featured a fictional videogame console, the Okama Gamesphere. "Okama" being Japanese slang for "gay man."
- In a later episode, Cartman forms a de facto neo-Nazi club around fans of The Passion Of The Christ, and leads them in chants, which his devotees mistake for Aramaic (like in the film). Those who speak some German will understand the repeated lines, "Wir müssen die Juden ausrotten!" (We must eliminate the jews) which confirms the suspicions of the actual nature of the club, if the Hitler impersonation and iconic mustache Cartman spouts aren't clear.
- In "Chickenlover", the alphabet poster above the school blackboard reads "DiOsMiOhAnMaTaDoHaKeNnYbAsTaRdOs", which is Spanish for "Oh my God, they killed Kenny, you bastards".
- In Osama Bin Laden Has Farty Pants, the Afghan children speak fluent Persian (with Iranian accents), most of which can be guessed from context. Includes the line "God! They killed Keivan" when the Afghan Kenny-analogue is killed.
- Also in Pinkeye, the button the Cosmonauts accidentally press to crash the Mir space station is labelled "hoopsie" in Cyrillic script— a possible transliteration of either "oopsie" or "whoopsie".
Headcases features "Nicholas Sarkozy" doing- pretty good- French versions of "It's Getting Hot In Here" and "Sex Machine". It's still not funny.
The Simpsons had this in one episode:
Marge: "Ooh, Tango de la Muerte! I've been dying to see that movie!"
- The episode parodying the Count of Monte Cristo also has Bart and Lisa asking Homer, "May we?" to which he responds, "Mais oui!" (pronounced the same).
Avatar The Last Airbender: All of the written text in the show is in Chinese. Almost everything has been translated by fans.
Futurama has two distinct alien languages that can occasionally be seen in backgrounds and the like. One is a simple substitution cypher, but the other is slightly more complicated.
One episode of The Fairly Odd Parents shows snails being eaten at a cafe in downtown Paris; the name of the cafe is "Café Abattoir", a French loanword even into English.
In Hey Arnold, Mr. Kokoshka (I can't quite remember the way the series spelled it) has a Meaningful Name in Russian—Kokashka translates to feces or (according to The Other Wiki; this Russian-speaking troper has never heard it used like this) "shithead," which precisely describes him.
The Disney film version of Mulan has a couple Chinese puns in its names: Mulan's alias, "Ping", makes her full name "Hua Ping", which is Chinese for "flowerpot" and also a slang term for something or someone that looks good but is otherwise useless. In addition, Chi Fu's name is a pun on the Chinese word for "to bully".
Beast Wars has Cybertronix, a simple substitution cypher. Sometimes it's used for gibberish, sometimes it's plot relevant, and sometimes it's just used for in-jokes and Getting Crap Past The Radar.
Every time this troper sees the okonomiyaki sign in Kappa Mikey, she angsts about how the one place that sells it is two hours away. Wait, is that a bonus?
How has the list gone so far and not mentioned Mas y Menos from Teen Titans? Their Catch Phrase "Mas y Menos, si podemos!" could be translated to "More or less, we can do it!" This is also a pun on their names- "Mas" can mean "plus" or "more", and "Menos" can mean "Minus" or "less". The Spanish phrase "Mas o menos" also means "I'm okay" in the right context.
- Plus there's all that Japanese in the movie. In one part, a girl calls Beast Boy "otaku," which roughly translates to "geek," and hilarity ensues when he thinks she calls him cute. In another, he runs into a karaoke bar and somehow ends up singing the show's theme song... except that it's nothing like the English version. In fact, it's a translation of the Japanese version, which plays at the begining of some episodes. Plus there's all that Japanese text in the background.... You see my point.
One episode of The Simpsons features Sherpa people, who are speaking authentic Sherpa.

Close Western Animation

This troper gets a chuckle every time he passes by Diablo Stadium in Tempe, Arizona. The stadium is the Spring Training home of The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.
- To make it clear, that makes their name The The Angels Angels. Everyone in the area with even a rudimentary understanding of Spanish (or , conversely, English) facepalmed when the new owner announced the name, to make the team more "marketable".
  - I don't think that troper was referring to that, they were referring to how a team called the Angels plays at a stadium named for the Devil.
In a case of bilingual punning, after conquering of Sindh in Pakistan (despite having received orders not to do so), Sir Charles James Napier reported the news to London in a telegraph that simply said: PECCAVI, Latin for "I have sinned (pronunced the same as Sindh)".
In German the word Bürgermeister basically means 'Mayor' making this guy◊ the Cheesebürgermeister.
- The baddie Burgermeister Meisterburger in The Legend of Kris Kringle suddenly makes a whole lot more sense.
In a large waterpark in Texas, the giftshop sign reads "gift haus" which translates from German to English as "Poison house". This is a notorious English-German false friend.
Because sometimes gratuitous foreign languages are necessary, German talkshow host Harald Schmidt decided that he and his whole team would not say a word in their native language for a whole show and speak french instead, making the whole thing one long surreal bilingual bonus. It's made even funnier for native french speakers by the fact that Schmidt speaks pretty well, makes pun on hit songs and at one point mimes extracts from a traditional french puppet show. Of course, the German audience was somewhat less pleased.
The software company Piriform makes freeware cleanup tools, including Recuva, a tool for recovering lost files after you accidentally delete them. Piriform is Latin for "pear-shaped", British slang for Gone Horribly Wrong. (The company logo is also pear-shaped, confirming that this is intentional.)
I've entertained the idea of Monk airing in Japan as Monku Tantei, which translates as "Complaining Detective". It's also a pun on monku-tare ("complainer").
The Other Wiki has this.
This troper read an example French phrase that was supposed to say, "Est-ce que tu peux baisser la volume?" or something like that. Instead, it read "Est-ce que tu peux baiser la volume?". Coke therefore exited from my nose, because the second one is "Could you please fuck the volume?".
- Uh, baiser means kiss, not fuck.
  - "Baiser" used to (and technically, still does) mean "kiss", but lately has come to mean something... stronger.
  - A friend of mine was reading a french version of The Phantom of the Opera, and upon reading a line that mentioned kissing a girls hand on the side of the road, he insisted on using the other translation of "baiser".

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