Troperville
Editing Help
Tools
Toys
|
alt title(s): Engrish 
The Welsh says: "I am not in the office at the moment. Please send any work to be translated."
"That pond it seems me many multiplied of fishes. Let us amuse rather to the fishing."
"'Caution: do not take while consuming alcohol or impregnating heavy machinery.' I guess they let the Kudzu write the labels again."
Translation is a work to be worked by people who understand the language, or rather, two languages. When a producer forget it, we take this trope.
It's trope about some cases in which translate a job or simply want Did Not Do The Research filled the room with what they thought was appropriate. Why do not know the language, we get a string of nonsense. Asian European trend is the translation of the more bizarre to the results.
In some cases, such as translation is for love of the fans, become a Good Bad Translation.
It should be known that this trope is common in video games and cartoons in the 80´s since they were not sufficient to integrate people to care about the results, they often have no more than little text, and the fans are so happy to have the product in their hands. Overall, this is because the company used its own staff native who passed the knowledge of the language or because they did not bother to prepare a test of translation agencies (who trained to provide a literal translation and how straightforward you, the customer and, then write that cater to their needs). However, you think the local branch has recruited a person with a third-level education or better just by rubbing the text limited. The example in the picture is an odd one, as a company dealing with translations from English to Welsh should probably not automatically send emails back in the language its customers do not speak.
Translation Train Wreck is a Sistertropics them. The Vodka Is Good But The Meat Is Rotten produces a cover when a fictional character in itself. Babel Fish not related, or Azathoth, the blind idiot god (At least that is how generally we not want). Contrast As Long As It Sounds Foreign. Ad of bad translation Bite The Wax Tadpole. Exact opposite for Superlative Dubbing please see this trope.
If you do intentionally, it is Zero Wingrish.
Plain English Translation
A Blind Idiot Translation is a translation from one language to another where the translation is overly literal, grammatically incorrect, very awkward, or clearly misses what the word or phrase was supposed to be. When a translation is complete gibberish, then it is Translation Train Wreck.
Compare Recursive Translation.
Examples
open/close all folders
Anime and Manga
- The French dub of Yu-Gi-Oh messed up and forgot that Jack, other than being a proper name, is also the face value for a card. This resulted in card names like the Knight of the King, the Knight of the Queen, and the Knight of Jack, whoever that Jack may be.
- One of the scenes in Episode 35 of Yu Gi Oh The Abridged Series parodies the 1st episode in the style of an old black and white silent ragtime film, with some minor alterations to the dialogue.
- There is a Japanese version of one Yu-Gi-Oh episode that translates "Dark Magician" in the subtitles as "Dark Physician."
- In one dub of Yu-Gi-Oh, it translated a line saying "I'm tired of your six decks." into "I'm tired of your sex decks," in Swedish. Even worse, when this was subbed into English, it was subbed as "I'm tired of your sex games," because deck and game are both the same word.
- This is only a translation error in terms of Swedish-to-English. In Swedish, the difference between 'sex games' ('sexlekar') and 'six decks' ('sex lekar') is a matter of a single space, or, in spoken language, a difference in intonation. As such, this isn't so much a mistranslation as it is a typo or a misreading by the voice actor.
- There is a youtube account, Yami Bakura, which has what appear to be fan-subs of Yugi-oh. Said subs have a baffling tendency to mix up "he" and "I," among other errors (Such as saying that the Graverobber card "Can take cards from place"). It even veers into Translation Trainwreck at points.
Rare Hunter Guru: We are sure that Kaiba has the Square Tower's Giant.
Marik: Really? Why the man called Kaiba can use that tower at ease?
- These subs are actually the result of subtitlers in Hong Kong. Basically the script is translated into Chinese, then translated into English. These creates a LOT of screw ups in the translations, example included the Blue Eyes White Dragon is often called the 'Green-Eyes/Eyed White Dragon', several monster names getting mangled, some of them being utterly hilarious (Summoned Skull becomes 'Steel Demon Koko' in one episode, The God of Obelisk is translated as 'Giant of the Square Tipped Tower' in one episode) and names are swapped around (In the Joey/Yugi duel at the docks, Joey is called 'Serenity' for 3 episodes straight!) And then of course, there are card names which get such a bad translation, that hilarity ensues. The best example being in this clip, where the card Heart of the Underdog gets a very weird name. And of course the implications it has for poor Joey...
- Some of the screw-ups are really quite understandable if one knows Chinese. For example, the character 青, used in both Chinese and Japanese, can mean both blue and green. And "Square Tipper Tower" is the literal meaning of the word "obelisk" (方尖碑 ) in Chinese.
- One of the title translations displayed in the second Death Note opening is in Russian: "Zapiska Smerti". While this is a literal translation of "death note" into Russian, it disregards the fact that "note" means "notebook". An accurate translation would be "Tetrad' Smerti", literally "notebook of death".
- For that matter, Death Note itself. There are several loanwords from English and other languages that have similar but not quite identical meanings in Japanese. "Note" meaning "notebook" is one of them. It's worth noting that both the manga and anime feature the rules for using the Death Note in both Japanese and English, and despite the series also being full of bizarre "English" names (Quillsh Wammy is the real name of a major character), all of these are in perfect, if not awkward-sounding, English apart from the odd use of the word "note".
- Also in the first live-action movie Naomi Misora gets a comforting letter◊ from the FBI.
- Oh, and the protagonist's name is "Light."
- The dub of the So Bad Its Horrible anime Garzey's Wing features this. Likely the translator just translated it verbatim from Japanese and CPM didn't bother with a script editor. A review (with clips) is available here. Watch as Chris wrings his hands in stress and says "I must somehow make sense of our convoluted situation." in a dull monotone.
- A lot of anime fans would probably like to believe that the English dubs of their favorite shows fall into this category, but they really don't. The dubs for Transformers Armada and Transformers Energon, however, genuinely do. Both shows were created on so rushed a schedule as to feature first-draft translations as finalized scripts, and even unfinished animation used for broadcast. Translation errors fly about freely, characters are regularly referred to with the wrong name, there are typos in the title cards, and a hugely disappointing proportion of dialogue, put simply, does not make sense. This is especially problematic in Energon, in which every single episode has plot points that are obscured by dialogue that apparently got most of the words but missed the point. Thankfully, their sequel series, Cybertron, received a competent localization, appropriately peppered with Woolseyisms and other cleverness that, y'know... made sense.
- A particularly amusing example comes in the official dub of Getter Robo Armageddon, where the dub could not decide on which giant robot would be known as Getter-2. Tradition and every other source of media has the silver Getter with a drill-arm being known as the Getter-2, but the name was also strangely applied to the rubber-armed and insanely-different-looking yellow Getter-3 as well.
- The dub also had trouble getting the attack names right. One example has Gou using the right name to fire Shin Getter's Getter Beam in the first episode, but the next time he used it, he called it "Fire Ray". Hell, the never said "Open Get" even though that was English to start with. Although, it did give Ryoma some interesting lines.
Ryoma: Laugh while you have a head old man! <and> Payback is a bitch you bloated corpse!
- The Viz translation of the Read Or Die manga gave Yomiko's organization as the "Library of England". While that's technically a literally correct translation, the organization in question is the British Library. Maybe a case of Creator Provincialism, if the American translators had never heard of a British institution.
- Manga Entertainment's translation of the OVA had an error involving the post-it notes left by Nenene Sumiregawa for Yomiko, which are seen near the beginning of the first episode. These say things such as "Clean this up. — Nenene". However, the translators apparently didn't recognize that Nenene was supposed to be a person's name (which is understandable, since she doesn't actually appear on-screen in the OVA), and interpreted it as the question-tag particle "ne" repeated three times. As a result, the on screen translation of this note is "Clean this up! Up! Up!" (and similar things for the other notes).
- Kiseki Films' subtitles for Macross: Do You Remember Love? completely change the meaning of some lines. For example, the line "We fell into the engine block" became "My engine blocks are angry at me", and the line "He screwed up during an acrobatic maneuver" became "Well... it seems you jump back and forth between subjects like an acrobat".
- Horribly, horribly present in Hellsing. From the fact that the title comes from 'Helsing,' which is only ever spelled with one 'L' to the fact that British characters have names in Eastern order and opposite gender titles of nobility to, most egregiously, the fact that in the official subtitles, a character whose name is 'Dracula' reversed is called "Arucard." Because Bram Stoker wrote a book called Dracura, apparently. The original author admitted that he had no idea what he was doing when he wrote the English bits.
- Keep in mind the Japanese have problems pronouncing L and R differently. The English translation still comes out as "Alucard."
- At an anime convention, Taliessin Jaffe (ADR director of the English dub) addressed the "Arucard" issue. They knew "Alucard" was correct, but the Japanese licensors insisted that they use "Arucard" in the subtitles on the grounds that "it's Dracura backwards."
- And then there's Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, which transliterates "dhampir" (half-vampire) as "dunpeal". And carries the same mistransliteration into the English version, to the point Fan Fiction continues using the term...
- Not to mention the Swedish subtitles the movie was given, which, among other things, uses the Swedish word for "lack" or "be without" when translating "why did you miss my heart?"
- The Polish translation of Sailor Moon, while very good in most parts, had Sailor Venus' "crescent beam" spell translated into "peas and beans", probably because the translator mistaken the word "bean" with "beam" and just run with it.
- "Sailor Saturn" was also mistakenly translated as "Sailor Satan" for two volumes.
- The English dub did this once, with an early episode in the first series that featured a tennis player that Naru referred to as "Onee-san". Usagi, being dense, acted offended that Naru had never told her she had an older sister. In Japan, it's not uncommon for younger children to refer to older people they look up to as a big brother or big sister, so the joke was relating to Usagi's cluelessness. However, the dub translated the line literally, even though the practice is completely unheard of in America and Serena's misunderstanding isn't a joke at all. Even odder was that the dub simply cut out every other instance of a character using "oneechan" or "oniisan" like this, so someone wasn't paying attention.
- There's another example in the English translation of Sailor Moon. In the Stars series, Sērā Reddo Kurō was translated to Sailor Red Crow. It should have been Sailor Lead Crow, which would have made more sense since the enemies in that arc were named after a metal and an animal.
- The makers of Fang of the Sun Dougram did this to their own work. In one episode, the evil government issues a series of pamphlets announcing a hunt for guerrillas. They decide to show the pamphlet up close. They decide to use the front page of a random English-language newspaper and erase its name. They DO NOT check what the front page says. The result? BEAST WHO RAPED NUN. Possibly also an example of Gratuitous English.
- Wait, if it's used for a piece of propaganda, there may be some Fridge Brilliance, no?..
- The Brazilian dub of Yu-Gi-Oh! was shares between two translators, informally known as "the good one" (that does most of the episodes) and "the bad one" (that did some episodes). For examples of the bad one:
- In one episode, the bad one misheard "Great Moth" for "Great Mouth" and, yes, that giant moth thing was called "Great Mouth" (in portuguese) for the rest of the episode. Weird? You have no idea how much.
- In the movie, Queen's Knight was misheard for Queen's Night. Since the name makes no sense, the bad one changed it to Queen of the Night. With the other two following the pattern.
- In a flashback, Marik calls Mai "meu caro", portuguese for "my dear". The problem? "Meu caro" can be only used with men. In Mai's case it should be "minha cara".
- In a later season there is a small joke with a "secret identity" of Yugi's grandpa called Apdnarg Otom, which backwards spell "Grandpa Moto". At the end of an episode, this is explained. The bad one apparently didn't catch the joke and transliterated, which makes no sense because "grandpa Moto" is "vovô Moto" in the dub.
- The Polish dub of Dragon Ball Z definitely takes the cake here as being translated from the French dub. Examples? Piccolo is "Satan Littleheart", Cell is "Protophyte" (it actually sounds less sophisticated in Polish) and Master Roshi is "the Genius Turtle". The manga translation has it better (Piccolo is called "Satan Piccolo" and Roshi is addressed either as "the Turtle Hermit" or "Divine Mastah").
- Also note that while Piccolo and Roshi's names were present in the French version, Cell was just Cell.
- Also, since the french dub had already used Satan as a name for Piccolo (based on his title being great demon king - daimaou - and because it probably sounded more threatening than a musical instrument), they were in a bind when a character whose name actually was Satan showed up; so they renamed him Hercule (no 's' at the end in french). You can guess where this is going, making this a very convoluted subversion, despite being just as idiotic.
- To be honest, he would've been the third character who's name derives from Satan, seeing how Ox King was caller Satanirus for some reason.
- "Master Roshi" is itself an English version. He's called "Muten Roshi" meaning "honored master". "Master Roshi" would mean "Master Master".
- The Hungarian dub of Dragonball, which was also translated from the French one had serious consistency issues regarding the name of the Kamehameha. It starts out as "Lifeforce Wave", occasionally becoming "Magical Beam", "Magical Power" and "Great Forces" (yes, in plural). When the character using it DOES shout Kamehameha, the -ha in the end is usually replaced with random shouting. And the worst is when two or more versions are used in the same episode. Also in the Hungarian dub, the Crane Hermit became the Raven Hermit, for no apparent reason. Although in Hungarian, the word for raven sounds more fitting to a villainous old man.
- The English translation of the 2nd movie was rather odd. While the dub correctly pronounced the Big Bad's henchman as Dr. Willow, the subtitled version calls him Dr. Wheelo. Odder still since the subtitled version was usually made after the dub back then.
- It's actually supposed to be Dr. Wheelo (Wheel-o) to continue the series tradition of punny names like the other mad scientist Dr. Gero (Gear-o) who was also affected by this trope with the dub pronouncing his name "Jiro" completely losing the pun.
- In an example that has nothing to do with dubbing, the first episode of Bartender includes a brief explanation of what the word "bartender" means. They explain that it is derived from the English words "bar" and "tender", meaning "a gentle perch".
- Zone Of The Enders anime Zone of the Enders: Dolores, i suffers from this in the early episodes of the ADV dub and subs. Translations like "Orbital
Frame Flame", "Bahram Buffram" and "Nohman Norman" were found often. Somewhat forgivable in that, by the end of the series, these translation mistakes were fixed. But they still persist in the opening episodes, so...
- The Swedish Dub of Cyborg 009 is filled to the brim with these, but sadly none of them are funny enough.
- Air Gear has the Sabeltigers AT team. Sabertigers was probably what they were going for, given the cat motif.
- The series is FULL of these. "Rez Boa" Dogs? You mean Resevoir Dogs, right? Oh! Great sucks at English.
- Alternately, Sabeltiger might be a case of gratuituous (if lousy) German, as "Säbel(zahn)tiger" is the German word for sabre-toothed tiger.
- The English subs of the Fist of the North Star TV series has their share of translation mistakes and inaccuracies ("Devil's Rebirth" is translated as "Devil Rivers" at one point and Kenshiro's Catch Phrase of "omae wa mou shindeiru" or "you're already dead" is embellished to "you don't even know you're already dead"), as well as some odd translation choices (the martial art styles are given English names, but honorifics like "-san" and "-sama" are kept), but the translation is still passable.
- The Eastern Star sub of The Movie, on the other hand, is just plain mediocre. Common words and terms are mistranslated ("denshousha" or "successor" becomes "savior", while "aniue", a formal word to address an elder brother is changed to "Master"), the namedrops of special techniques are replaced by clearly made-up lines ("Nanto Gokusatsu Ken" or "South Star Hell Murder Fist" becomes "Nanto cannot be beaten"), and Kenshiro's martial art of "Hokuto Shinken" is constantly misspelled as "Hokuto Kenshin" (even though the correct spelling is used as well).
- Although not an example of English or bootleg subtitles, the choice of words in the Finnish subtitles of the anime Final Fantasy: Unlimited was quite off rather frequently. A good example is during a pretty serious fight, when a swordsman, according to the subtitles, yells something that roughly translates into 'Have a taste of this sword'. Unfortunately, the phrasing made the request sound completely literal. And yes, the subtitles were official.
- There was a Chinese bootleg of Inu Yasha which called Sesshoumaru "The Killing Pill" and referred to Miroku (a Buddhist monk) as a "rabbi." (Well, if Nuns Are Mikos...)
- How about one where Kikyo had her name inexplicably rendered as "Jugen"?
- The kanji of "Sesshoumaru" literally means 'killing people pill' or 'murdering pill', especially when read in Chinese. The kanji of 'maru' originally meant 'pill' in Chinese, but after the Japanese started incorporating Chinese characters into their language, 'maru' came to mean 'circle', and was often used to end male names back in the day. As for Kikyo, the kanji for her name can be read in several different ways, and "Jugen" is one of them.
- Except of course, when the subtitles go with the voiced dialogue that CLEARLY refers to her as "Kikyo".
- Kouga, in a Chinese bootleg of the Shichinintai arc: "Gewei (Kagome) once was red like flower, now is white like fish belly!"
- A bootleg of One Piece from before the series was licensed outside of Japan actually replaced every single character's name with Jack.
- A different bootleg had a somewhat less-mangled subtitle quirk involving names. Every name was translated into a un-namelike English word that sounded similar. The best of which were "Sanji" translated as "Sunkist" and "Crocodile" translated as "Clock Dell."
- A bootleg for Sonic X translated Sonic himself as "Sonic Rat" for about the first couple of episodes and constantly called Dr. Eggman "Machine King" which arguably sounds pretty cool.
- Another bootleg of the Sonic OVA also uses "Machine King", and transcribes Tails' name as "Dillus".
- A bootleg of Mobile Suit Gundam Seed had quality that varied from episode to episode (in some cases being astonishingly good). The shining moment was when they called Mwu la Flaga, general badass and counterpart to the Char clone, "Florida".
- There's a store in Melbourne that sells anime DVDs that had Japanese subtitles translated to Chinese and then translated to English. They have never, ever correctly spelled a character name, sometimes just giving up and giving them a random English name instead. Hayate, the male love interest of Pretear, started out being called Sarah, then Jingje, then finally Hayate. The same DVDs also translated all the male characters as female but kept all references to female characters as female, except for the main character, who was apparently the only male.
- The same thing happened to the characters of Sister Princess in the English subtitles of a grey-market Hong Kong release of the series. None of them were called by their actual names, and the names changed several times during the course of the series.
- There is a Full Metal Alchemist fansub where a group of characters named after the Seven Deadly Sins included the names "Rust" and "Blatnee" (Lust and Gluttony) for several episodes before the translators apparently caught on.
- This troper has seen a scanlation for the Full Metal Alchemist manga that has Winry's name as "Willy" and Riza's name as "Lisa."
- A mild annoyance: The Law of Equivalent Exchange was called the Law of Equal Trade in one fansub This Troper saw. They mean the exact same thing, but this is an actual law of physics and it is properly called "Equivalent Exchange." Which sounds more sophisticated than "Equal Trade" anyway.
- It's the 'Law of Conservation of Mass/Energy' actually.
- Some Yu-Gi-Oh fansubs have quite a few obvious errors. Some names are changed and others are completely wrong; for example, "Black Magician" and "Exodia" are switched around. They also use some odd grammar, especially in the opening song translations, and make some strange changes to the words. In Yugi's duel with Pandora, they call the buzzsaw a "gummer," and sometimes refer to the cards as "pokers". Possibly the most hilarious was translating "Millennium Puzzle", and "Millennium Rod" into "Thousand Year Bricks" and "Thousand Tin Stick".
- In their defense, the Japanese characters refer to the items as "Sen-nen," which literally means 'thousand years'. Only English-speaking characters (such as Pegasus) say "Millenium." Now while we all know millenium means one thousand years, some fansubbers are insistant on translating exactly what is said, rather than using English equivalants. Trying to ask them to do otherwise can end badly.
- In a couple of episodes in the second season, they also call Kaiba "Seahorse" for no apparent reason. They also usually mistranslate Anzu's name as "Kyoko", and on one occasion, Mokuba as "Wooden Horse".
- Kaiba does literally mean seahorse. And Mokuba does mean wooden horse. God knows what the author was thinking when he chose those names for them. The kanji for Anzu's name might be misread as Kyoko, as there are different ways of reading the kanji. Also, the original kanji for the "Millennium Puzzle" literally translates to Thousand Year Toy Bricks/Puzzle Bricks. Remember that millennium means a thousand years anyway, so that part of the translation isn't that off.
- In Japanese 'Seahorse' literally means baby dragon...
- Perhaps worst of all, even some Gratuitous English names are wrong; "Revival Slime" becomes "Revival Mud".
- 'For me the hatred of the death souls does not mean anything for me. Let me show you my spirits!' takes the biscuit for the very worst piece of translation this troper has ever seen.
- How about 'Bonkotsu No Iji'? Whilst it should be translated into 'Willpower of the Ordinary', the subs translate it into 'Dignity of the Retarded'! This troper considers it to be a Crowning Moment of Funny, just because of the fact that Joey/Jounouchi is commonly referred to as a Bonkotsu, and seeing what they used as the translation of that word in this episode... look for yourself.
- On a similar note, some episodes (especially the early ones) will refer to Yugi as "Game." Yes, this is literally translating the name.
- There was an Ask Dr Rin subbing (I think of Chinese origin, because it was using Chinese names for everyone) that had Tokiwa call himself a "lovable sex maniac." Now, ostensibly true as that may be for character description purposes, understanding Japanese, I can definitely say that he was calling himself a "shikigami user" instead, which makes a lot more sense.
- There is a bootleg of xxxHoLic in which every time Watanuki's surname appears, it always appears as its literal translation ("April 1").
- There was a Fist Of The North Star snapshot that had subtitiles that translated Raoh's alias "Ken-oh-sama" as "Lord Boxing Champion"
- This Mazinger Z sub. Tall Evil God. Doctor Hill. Asla. It just... it just keeps going.
- Crabstick. Asia directs the beast king armies of Dr. Hill with it's Crabstick.
- The US version of the Yu-Gi-Oh manga would occaissionally refer to Mai Kujaku (Mai Valentine) as Mai Shiranui. Mai Shiranui is a completely different person.
- In an early episode of the Ranma 1/2 manga, there is an elaborate pun on "panda," "pan da" and the sound effect "pan". The English translation turns this into a slightly less elaborate pun on the sound effect "pop" and "I'm Ranma's pop", which got literally translated in the French version to the pun-less "Je suis le père de Ranma, pigé?" (in English : "I am Ranma's dad, got it?"). What the...
- Central Park Media's English translation of Slayers: Super-Explosive Demon Story has several problems. It has numerous differences in transliteration of names compared to the subtitles for the anime; for example, Sairaag is called "Sylarg". This wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact that the translation for the anime was also by Central Park Media, and was done earlier. Then, some of the differences in names go beyond simple transliteration differences; for example, Elmekia Lance was renamed to "Element Lance" for no obvious reason. Also, the phrase kenja no ishi was translated literally into "stone of sages"; apparently they didn't recognize that kenja no ishi itself was the result of translating the phrase "Philosopher's Stone" into Japanese. (At least they didn't call it the "Sorcerer's Stone"...)
- There is also a hilarous example in polish translation of the series, where Death Fog was renamed to "Dead Frog" ("martwa żaba").
- The Filipino voice actors of Gundam Wing got the names of the five pilots and some of the secondary characters right, but they fail horribly at the translation with some of the characters, which is understandable since it was broadcasted two years before the English dub came.
- It's not as if Gundam Wing's English dub was much better for a little while. The character names were all approved by Bandai, so they're spot-on... but several lines of dialogue that one would think could be easy to translate were somehow screwed up beyond all recognition in the first episodes. The most glaring (and hilarious) example comes from episode one where Zechs Merquise declares "No Machine Gun for him! Shoot him down!" *
For those who don't get what the original line was, try replacing 'machine gun' with 'warning shot.' For some reason, some of the people who hate on Wing attribute this to the voice actors rather than the dumbass translator.
Western Animation
- And then there is Ivar Combrinck, the ultimate blind idiot translator, who single-handedly ruined The Simpsons, Futurama and Family Guy for German audiences.
- Strangely enough, the Norwegian or Swedish translator (the exact same errors are often present in both translations) of The Simpsons often gets the names wrong, resulting in everything from minor oddities such as Ben Flanders and Crusty Mc Clown, to weirder ones like Mark Grimby (Major Quimby). One of the most egregious (non-name) errors made by the translator is mishearing "Percadine addiction" as "perky Diane Dixon". Obviously, the translator is just casually listening to whatever he's supposed to translate, not knowing anything about the series itself.
Comics
- The English translation of the first volume of Dungeon translates Main Gauche as "left hand." Although this is literally what Main Gauche means in French, in context, it's quite obviously referring to a knife or dagger wielded in the off hand.
- Not a bootleg, but one issue of the UK "Sonic The Comic" had a misprint where one page had the same word balloons from the previous page. And the balloons still kind of fit in terms of page layout.
- The Dutch translation of Elf Quest got particularly horrible somewhere around the Shards War arc: speech bubbles were aimed at the wrong characters, elves were suddenly given new names, and apparently none of the translators had read the original series at all. After five issues or so, the translation suddenly got much better again, and a thank-you note to a Dutch BNF was included on the last page.
- Dirty Pair: Run from the Future attempted a Bilingual Bonus, but ended up making several linguistic errors, one of which is hilarious. One of the criminals Kei and Yuri have been assigned to arrest is "Jeannot Delagauchetière", who speaks (what is apparently intended to be) Québécois French. After putting restraints on him, Kei is about to say what he's under arrest for, when he somehow causes Kei's holo-camouflage to deactivate, and reveals that he has several heavy assault mecha under his control. He introduces these mecha by saying "Dis 'Allô' à mes p'tits amis". This literally means "Say hello to my little friends"; the problem is, it has the idiomatic meaning of "Say hello to my boyfriends". Oops!
Fan Fiction
Fansubs and Scanslations
Close Fansubs and Scanslations
Film
- Found in the Danish extended version DVD of the Terminator 2: Judgement Day film. When Sarah Conner is about to smash the Terminator's chip John stops her, saying that they need the Terminator's help. The word "need" can be translated into Danish in different ways, depending on wether the need is practical or mental. The translator chose the word implying mental need, which then implied that John's need of the Terminator is of sexual nature.
- Found in Good Morning People, a student film shown at 2008 Asian American Showcase. Most of the spoken lines were in Japanese, with subtitles translating it literally, keeping the Japanese grammar and sentence construction intact.
- When the remade versions of the Star Wars films were shown in Norway, the subtitles were really badly translated. The most widely known example is that the word "lightsabre" was translated as "lettsabel", which does, in fact, mean "light sabre", as in the opposite of a heavy sabre. In Attack Of The Clones, "you will be invincible" was translated as "you will be invisible". Another hilarious Norwegian subtitle is from an episode of Seinfeld, where "make-up sex" was translated as "sminkesex", which means sex involving cosmetic products.
- Another famous Norwegian translation mistake is the line "It's not a motorcycle, it's a chopper" from Pulp Fiction, translated as "It's not a motorcycle, it's a helicopter" in Norwegian.
- Then there is Star War: Backstroke of the West, a bootleg version of Revenge of the Sith, translated to Chinese, with English subtitles. But in writing the subtitles, they didn't write it in the original English - No, they retranslated the Chinese back into English. Hilarity ensued. Big No? Do Not Want!
- A few years ago, a major restoration of Metropolis was released to DVD. In the restoration all the intertitles and in-film text was translated from German to English, including the shot of Freder reading from the "Boot of Revelations". Nice job, Kino.
- Shoot Em Up. When Mr. Hertz first meets hooker Monica Belucci's character he insults her in Italian, orginially using a phrase that had been translated via Babelfish. A rather confused Monica had to provide a more accurate version.
- Space Cowboys gave us:
Frank Corvin: "Let me tell you something, my dear. Those instructions were written by a fellow in Japan when they made this damn thing. They were probably translated by some gringo who was an expatriate American that couldn't get a job in this country. And then the Japanese guy probably translated him just to double check on him. You don't need these instructions. Not at all. Tear them up."
- A few further gems from Norwegian: "Lettsverd", from Star Wars: Episode IV. It means "Light-sword", as in the opposite of "heavy". Then there's the Light Cycle Grid from TRON, which became "Lyssyklusmatrisen", "Light cycle matrix" - as in "something which repeats itself", rather than "bike". Sometimes, editors get too eager, leading "Fuck you, you motherfucking fuckers!" to be translated into Norwegian as "No lyt dykk roa dykk ned, gutar" - "You might want to calm down, boys". In Friends, "make-up sex" was translated into "sminkesex", leading viewers confused as to what rouge and lipstick have to do with sex. In one movie, the reassuring "I'll be right behind you, watching your back" becomes a moderately creepy "I'm standing behind you, looking at your back". "The Yellow Brick Road" became "That Road Which Is Paved With Yellow Cobblings". "One day, you will be invincible" became "One day, you will be invisible". However, probably one of the worst was from Apollo13 - "Go for launch!" became "Gå til lunsj", meaning... "Go to lunch".
- On the back of the Swedish DVD of the Sin City film, it says that the film is based on the work of "comedy book author" Frank Miller, an obvious failure to get what "comic book" means. (For the record, the correct Swedish word for "comic" is serie, literally "series".)
- During one of the audio commentaries on Pirates of the Caribbean, there's a discussion about the sores on Jack Sparrow's face. In the Swedish DVD translation, however, "the scab" is translated into "strejkbrytaren", i.e. strike-breaker. Technically a correct translation, but completely nonsensical in context.
- This troper has a copy of the Japanese edition of Sukeban Deka: Codename = Asamiya Saki (otherwise known in the West as Yo-Yo Girl Cop). The English subtitles seem to have been generated by attempting to translate the individual words directly into English, including the names, causing it to veer between this trope and a Translation Train Wreck. I was baffled by why the seemingly meaningless phrase "of temple" kept recurring in the dialogue until I worked out that this was a translation of Asamiya, the heroine's family name.
- Film: Please Teach me English - The main Korean character and her classmates don't speak very good English (which is understandable because they're trying to learn a the language.) While Cathy, the pompous Caucasian English speaking teacher, is the complete reverse example of this trope - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PeMbC_ZM-oY&feature=related
Literature
- One of the most egregious examples could be English as She is Spoke, an 1800s book by a Portuguese man, who only spoke Portuguese, writing an English phrasebook with the help of a Portuguese-French dictionary and a French-English dictionary. Hilarity Ensues.
- For a while, there were several Russian 'translations' of Harry Potter floating around, all fairly terrible, featuring straight translations of figures of speech that have Russian equivalents. It got to the point where, back in 2004, a newspaper held the "Worst Harry Potter translation" contest. Since then, better translations have been made available (though the old sucky ones are still out there)
- This editor picked up a copy of bawdy Russian folklore called Russian Secret Tales after reading a translation of the folklorist's clean folklore. Unlike the cleaner ones which were well-translated, the bawdy ones were very odd reading since as far as could be determined, they were a translation into English from a previous translation into Italian, and had lots of quirks such as calling village priests popes due to a false cognate.
- Perhaps it was through Italian, but 'pop' is Russian for a priest, with a light tinge of low rank or disrespect to it.
- Joseph Conrad's writings have occasional odd turns of phrase due to false cognates between French and English, since he learned English partially from a French-English dictionary (like most Slavic aristocrats of the time he was fluent in French).
- The original (and infamous) Swedish translation of The Lord Of The Rings rendered the phrase "where the Firstborn roamed" as "där den Förstfödde råmade". Which means "where the Firstborn mooed". You can read all about it here, and it includes some gems too, like Gollum's "He guessed it long ago, Baggins here guessed it" (which makes it sound like he's referring to Frodo when he was actually talking about Bilbo) and Gorbag asking if prisoners will be whipped "with teeth, nails, hair and everything else" (the key word was originally "stripped", not "whipped").
- The Swedish speaking reader can read a more elaborate list of translation errors here, here and here. The worst translation error made by Åke Ohlmarks was stating that Merry was the slayer of the Witch-King of Angmar (which completely and utterly nullified the No Man Of Woman Born trope). Worse yet, the first Swedish edition on the book contained a foreword where Ohlmarks stated that the book was an allegory against Stalin and Hitler, and where he randomly fictionalized facts about Tolkien's life.
- Just a small Brask Note: Ohlmarks didn't make a Blind Translation. The prose of his translation is more enjoyable than the stiff (but correct) re-translation made by Erik Andersson. However, that doesn't defend it from being an Idiot Translation.
- Your Mileage May Vary majorly — it's kind of obvious that a lot of people don't find Ohlmarks purplish prose all that enjoyable.
- The Norwegian movie subtitles for the LotR movies were so hilariously bad that they were changed in the DVD versions. Not because they were Blind Idiot Translations, but because they were so archaic that the audience quite simply started laughing. Elrond's "Kast den inn i eldmørja!" ("Cast it into the fires!", but really leaning more towards "Cast it into the sea of flames-infernal!") and Théoden's "Mitt kjøde er knust" ("My body is broken", but really more like "My corpus is undone") are both still buzzwords.
- The Japanese subtitles were also pretty infamous. Fan complaints resulted in the translator being replaced for the next movie.
- The German translator of Mr Terry Pratchett's famous Discworld books is not so much translating as rather raping them. For example, the "bloody stupid robe", worn by the big bad in "Guards, Guards" becomes "blutroter Seidenumhang" (blood red silk robe). Every character talks exactly the same way, with the exception of the trolls, who talk in infinitives. ("I be big troll. I be scary") Some way to force a German reader to learn a foreign language.
- For the love of God, don't make me start with the old Spanish ones who even spelled wrong the name of the series. Thankfully, Spanish translations seem to be getting significantly better lately, finally realizing that translating such punny works literally just plain doesn't work, and trying for a bit of Woolseyism. Whether they have managed or not is up to discussion, but the fact that they're trying puts the new translators heads and shoulders above the old ones.
- Or the original German publishers, who inserted soup advertisements into the actual text of the book.
- The Italian translations have Death literally translated as Morte, which in Italian is feminine, so The Grim Reaper is a woman. This is an issue in all Discworld translations into Romanic languages (French, Spanish, Italian), as all nouns in these languages are grammatically gendered, which means they HAVE to be either male or female — and death is typically a female word. The smarter translators manage to make a good pun or two out of this.
- Danish SF lore tells of some horribly bad translations of science fiction done in the 1950's. In one case, a story dropped several rungs on the Mohs Scale Of Science Fiction Hardness when a hydraulic power plant that supplied energy to a human settlement became a "hydraulisk kraftplante" (hydroactive force-weed, more or less).
- The Hebrew translator of Dragons of Summer Flame translated "draconian" (a lizard-like creature) to "dracon" - which is the Hebrew word for "dragon". Apparently Caramon Majare was so strong he killed two DRAGONS by bashing their heads together. This translator also called Tasselhoff Burrfoot "Barefoot Tasselhoff", and traslated the word "Elf" everywhere it appeared to "Shed" - meaning "Demon". Tanis Half-Demon, how cool is that?
- An error in the Traditional Chinese translation of Warrior Cats has caused Blackstar to have black claws instead of black paws. Apparantly, they've also referred to Hawkfrost as Brambleclaw's older brother (he's really his younger half-brother), among other minor errors.
- "Magenta Dune" is a "translation" of the first book of Dune to Russian which was done so ludicrously bad and has so little in common with any normal use of either language that it retains its "fame" from 1990 to this day: no page contained less than 3 errors and 8 typos. Problem is, later lazy translators tried to polish this horror instead of working from scratch, creating several mutant clones. Let's just say there were things like "the pile of rocks that were" *
that was in plural, so not even pile, but rocks themselves were, obviously home of Atreides family and there was 19 g. Amen.
- Happened a lot with the Hebrew translations of the early [[Discworld]] novels. In one book, the librarian is described in English as "the sad orangutan". It was translated to "the sad orange jam". The Israeli Discworld fans still wonder what the hell the translator was smoking.
- Even worse was the whole witches vs. wizards deal. There are two possible words for magic-user in Hebrew: mechashef and kosem. The translations of The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic chose to use "mechashef". Unfortunately, there's only one word for "witch": machshefa (kosemet would only mean "female magic-user"). So when Equal Rites comes along and they make a big deal over the fact that Esk is the first female magic-user as opposed to witch, it would have made sense to put a translator's note at the beginning saying "up until now we used mechashef, but in this book a wizard is a kosem" - and made Esk the first kosemet and Granny Weatherwax a machshefa. But if they'd done that, I wouldn't be entering it in this page, right? They made Esk the first kosemet and Granny Weatherwax a machshefa - but they left wizard as mechashef! So they made a big deal over the first kosemet appearing, and accidentally implied that there was no such thing as a male kosem!
- Renne Nikupaavola is an infamous translator who has butchered numerous fantasy novels into something resembling Finnish and consistently translates the English "uncle" into the Finnish word for "maternal uncle", even when someone who had been paying the slightest attention would have been aware that the word was being used to refer to someone's father's brother.
- Lord Foul's Bane by Stephen Donaldson was subjected to an epically horrible Finnish translation full of bizarre neologisms and general badness. The most memorable and horrifying detail was the mangling of the name of the Dark Lord into something that sounds like a humorous, family-friendly Harmless Villain when he is actually anything but. The cherry on top is that the name means "False" while the character has never once lied during the entire series. This trainwreck of a translation killed all further translations of Donaldson into Finnish which is more than even Renne Nikupaavola can claim.
- The infamous Polish translation of Lord Of The Rings by Jerzy Lozinski. Where do I start? Calling dwarves "krzaty" (that can be most closely translated as "ixies" - "pixies" (skrzaty) without the first letter)? Translating "Strider" as "Lazik" (something like "Rover" as in "lunar rover" the vehicle or just plain ol' "Land Rover")? Trying to make Frodo Baggins' name sound more "Polish", as "Frodo Bagosz z Bagoszna"? So Bad Its Horrible. So Yeah.
Live Action TV
- In a House episode online with Spanish subs Dr Cameron describes a wound as "pus-y", i.e. oozing pus; the subtitles said the wound was a vagina. So Yeah.
- The very infamous (official) The X Files Finnish translation rendered "The Truth is out there" as... "The truth is over there, outside".
- There is a bootleg of the Ninja Sentai Kakuranger movie which translates "Kakurangers" as "Cuckoo Rangers" and contains the line "Go to Sam Hill, Cuckoo Rangers!"
- Another infamous example by Hong Kong Subs was Kamen Rider Ryuki, in which in one episode, someone said, "Don't Molest the Lawyer". This too became a minor meme within the fandom.
- In cultures where most people speak fluent english as a second language, Blind Idiot Translation can be used to create easy, deliberate comedy. For example, one of the most famous sketches by the finnish comedy troupe Kummeli involves a band (Kornit Murot, which in itself is a Blind Idiot Translation of "corn flakes" into "corny cereal") taking the lyrics to Every Breath You Take and blind-idiot translating them into finnish (the seminal ending line "I'll be watching you" becomes "Mä tuun kellottaan sua", or "I'll come and clock you").
Newspaper Comics
- Not a bootleg, but one issue of the UK "Sonic The Comic" had a misprint where one page had the same word balloons from the previous page. And the balloons still kind of fit in terms of page layout.
Tabletop Games
- There were some bootleg Pokémon cards which included, as the Pokémon names, a description of their appearance. "Little Yellow Mouse (Evolves into Yellow Mouse)" for Pichu, "Small Worm" for Caterpie, and "Little Bird (Evolves into Bigger Bird)" for Pidgey, and the list goes on.
Video Games
- Possibly the ultimate repository of Engrish videogame examples would be the Zany VG Quotes page, all complete with screenshot and (pithy) caption. Witness Romeo and Juliet built only with (slightly tweaked) videogame quotes, you strange, unmasked fellows, and don't go to heaven!
- "You strange, unmasked fellow. Don't go to heaven!" is actually a direct translation from the original Japanese version.
- In Company Of Heroes, the online multiplayer modes for the French version of the game was translated from "2v2 AT" (meaning 2 versus 2, arranged teams) as "2v2 Anti-Tank" (In French).
- All your base are belong to us.
- The Warhammer 40000 game Space Hulk's translation from English to Spanish had a few of these, including "si fire no move" (unknown original line, but presumably "If you fire, you can't move") and "Giro 19, izquierda 1" (turn 19, left 1; "izquierda" is left as in left and right).
- The Final Fantasy series has had a few corkers:
- Final Fantasy V (the PSX translation) has a character named Faris, who was adopted at a very young age. As it turns out, her real name is Sarissa, and her adoptive name was simply all she could pronounce at the time. The English translator apparently never got the jokes and instead went with... "Salsa".
- It Got Worse. The Wyvern enemy was rendered in said translation as "Y-Burn". Ugh.
- Final Fantasy VII had its own translation issues◊ the French translation also has some pearls like "I am one of the rightful heirs to this planet", which was better translated by Google than it was in the game itself.
- Even worse is the german version, which was obviously translated from the english one. Why? Because every other english line is left untranslated. And no, it's not a case of Gratitous English, when random lines like "He's scary!" or "I'm so nervous." suddenly appear in an all-german text for no reason. Also, some attack- and weapon-names were mistranslated horribly. For example, "Drain" became "Rohr", which means "sewer-pipe" instead of "to drain of something" and Materia- and spell-names often got variing translations in different places of the game. It was often hard to make out what you actually just equipped.
- Final Fantasy Tactics has a notoriously bad translation, with such gems as mistranslating "Fire Breath" as "Fire Bracelet", and being totally inconsistent with name spellings (such as Luveria/Ruvelia).
- And now you know how the Assassins' "Stop Bracelet" could cause Instant Death.
- Star Ocean: The Second Story translates a monster supposed to be named "Scylla" as "Sukula", and at least one or two Tales of... games mistranslate "Stirge", a bat-like enemy, as "Stage".
- In earlier Tales of games released in North America, "Armet Helm" is mistranslated as "Ahmet Helm."
- In Tales of Symphonia: Afterwards, Mithos, the hero, formed a pact with the Goddess Martel to seal away the Desians whom caused the war.
- Given the number of English speakers who don't know the difference between "who" and "whom", this one's pretty pedantic.
- The German translation of the WW 2 shooter Hidden & Dangerous is a hilarious example. The sentences seemed correct at first, mostly as it featured voice-overs, but almost all critical information was wrong. In one mission the player is ordered to destroy "die verbleibenden Panzer" (the remaining tanks), but there are no tanks on the map! Unless, of course, you figure out that tank can also mean an oil tank. Another example is "Bordwaffenbeschussmodus links / rechts" (aircraft weapon firing mode left / right) meaning, yes, "strafe left / right". There is some historical truth to it, but it made it look like your HQ was infiltrated by Dadaists.
- You are at least introduced to the quality from the beginning - the games loading screen reads "Das Laden, warten bitte" - in English "The Loading, wait please".
- Along those same lines, there are some out-of-place uses of the word 'Panzer' in Codename: Panzers. Anything that is called a tank is called a Panzer ingame- Russian crewman shout that their Panzer has broken down, while a US unit cries "A Tiger... they have a Tiger Panzer!" Obviously due to the use of Panzer (short for Panzerkampfwagen, "armour-battle-vehicle") meaning both tank in German, and being the designation for their AFV's in WW 2 (at least until the Panther, which was officially designated the Panzerkampfwagen V until Adolf Hitler himself decreed in 1944 that it shouldn't be)
- This troper recalls playing Codname Panzers. The Russian "panzer" was, at the time, crewed by a German crew. Not to sound too much like justifiying it, but look at most German-English dictionaries, and note how "Panzer" translates to "tank".
- The English version of Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn manages to translate a use of "Fire Emblem" in game as "heart of fire", yes they mistranslated the titular Mac Guffin while getting it right in the title. Yes, Heart of Fire is a valid translation otherwise, but come on, how do you do that...
- In the same game, the Four Riders (a title granted to the four highest ranking generals) of Daein are mistranslated as the Four Horsemen in The Black Knight's profile. Again, a valid translation (and if used consistantly, would have been better) but it's quite the mistake.
- I don't know if this counts, but Muarim's profile is for some reason the same as Mist's. Yes, so Muarim is now a member of the Greil mercenaries and Ike's sister.
- The otherwise well translated Cave Story had one isolated example of this in the form of a password that the player is given towards the end of the game. In the original Japanese, the characters for the game's original title (Doukutsu Monogatari) are written backwards to form the password. The translator has admitted to being half-asleep when working on this section of the game, as he didn't notice and the backwards kana came out as Litagano Motscoud
- One has to admit, it makes for a pretty good password. Would you guess it?
- But "It's running!" after defeating the undead core isn't that forgivable.
- Happens many, many times when translating games to Italian. For instance, in Shogo: Mobile Armor Division they translated "intelligence", as in "military intelligence", as "intelligenza", which means "intelligence" as in "intelligence quotient".
- The publisher company Natsume spelled their own name wrong in an earlier Harvest Moon game title screen.
- "Natume" is actually a valid alternate spelling of the name "Natsume" if you go by the Kunrei-shiki romanization format instead of the Hepburn format, but not everyone is apparently aware of that fact.
- They also spelled "sofa" as "Sopha", "flower" as "Flower", and stone as "Sone" from Friends of Mineral Town.
- That's more the territory of really bad spelling than really bad translation, though. (Incidentally, Natsume is horrible about that in general - Problems with its/it's/its', their/there, and commas are to be expected in all things Harvest Moon.)
- They just plain forgot in one Mineral Town NPC. He still speaks Japanese.
- "g Rod "hing Rod Copper Fishin For Fishing" - The description for the fishing rod.
- Their translation of River King Mystic Valley is... special. A lot of the characters in it are from Japanese folklore and mythology... but Natsume was apparently totally oblivious to this. If the manual is anything to go by, you get Tenuki instead of Tanuki, Arai Adzuki instead of A(d)zuki-Arai (They apparently mistook it for a personal name, rather than the name of the type of creature he is, and reversed it into "Western order"), the kamaitachi (literaly "Scythe Weasel") simply as "Weasel", Kapa instead of Kappa (yes, it does make a difference), and Nurikabe as "Plaster Wall" (An accurate literal translation, but sounds ridiculous as a name for a creature in English).
- After you've completed a mini game you get a "CLEAR!" message in big letters (as in "FINISHED!"). In the german version it says "LÖSCHEN!" (as in "DELETED!").
- In the game Graffiti Kingdom, there are several small mistakes in grammar. "It is time for tea almost" instead of "It is almost time for tea", and such things like that.
- The hentai game Neko Kawaigari, which deals with terminally ill cat girls, has music with terribly mangled English lyrics. This is especially poignant in the ending tune, which is supposed to be very sad, but totally misses its mark.
- You have to admit that the phrase "I love you from cradle to flatline" is suitably touching, grammar aside.
- There's a kind of ironic symmetry in the fact that the very title of the above-linked You Tube video includes a horribly basic mangling of the name of the game itself (just because "kawaii" is the only Japanese word you know doesn't mean you have to shoehorn it in where it isn't necessary...) Might that be a Blind Idiot Transliteration?
- In Space Colony, among the player's many tasks is mining for silicon (in German: "Silizium") to produce computer chips. German players, however, had to mine "Silikon" (silicone). Admittedly a very deceptive false friend, but come on...
- For those who don't understand the difference: Silicon is in computer chips. Silicone is in breast implants.
- The Game Boy Advance dungeon crawler Dokapon: Monster Hunter has a hilariously awful translation—it seems more like a corny fan-made effort than a genuine translation. "Gems" include: "Fire breathed practice alcoholism", "Cat to hold is special skill," and "Make some status effect happen."
- Deliberately pointed out by the translators of Rhapsody A Musical Adventure. "Welcome to the town of Whitesnow, a town filled with snow. Enjoy the world of snow. *Note: this is what happens when you do a direct translation."
- Mondo Medicals has many deliberate examples of Engrish, or at least very awkward English. "CANCER?! DO YOU EVEN KNOW WHAT A CANCER IS?! CANCER IS A SMALL PIECE OF DEATH THAT SLOWLY TAKES OVER A BODY!"
- Every Cactus game has this. It was quite a surprise to find out his English is rather good when conversing normally.
- Every single Resident Evil game has English audio— even in the Japanese releases. The very first Resident Evil was dubbed by native English speaking voice actors, but overseen by a Japanese director. Thus you get such Good Bad Translation lines as 'This hall is dangerous! There are terrible demons! Ouch!' (and yes, he does say the word 'ouch').
- "I'm going back to the pharmaceutical room." She actually means the chemical room where you mix the V-Jolt, not the medical room in the main house.
- "You, the master of unlocking..." "You were almost a Jill sandwich!".
- " The STARS are doomed! Someone is a traitor!"(when playing as Jill) "Double-crosser!"(when playing as Chris)
- "We need to blow this place up. I'm going to set off the triggering system for a bomb." (I'm going to activate the Self Destruct Mechanism.) Who set up us the bomb?
- RE 2 has pretty bad translations in parts too:
- "We lost contact with them over ten days ago. Chris, Jill, Barry, every last stars team member has disappeared. We should have listened". Of course, their communication was cut off due to the Zombie Apocalypse.
- "I cleared the wreckage (debris) that was blocking the corridor."
- "Only there's a wrecked car barring the entrance". It's a van, not a car, and although it blocks the door, it's not "wrecked".
- "We now have access to the back of the building (the back of the basement, that is)".
- "It's burning up(you've got a fever). We've got to do something before the embryos (there's only one embryo actually) pupate(metamorphoses)".
- "I heard {my dad} call my name". But wasn't he already mutated? I.e. What Happened To Daddy? Plot hole?
- "Did your mom give you something called 'G Virus'?" Sounds like "did she infect/inject you with it"?
- "We've finally arrived. I wonder if there's something hidden here." Actually, they haven't quite arrived at the laboratory yet.
- "We're inside umbrella's secret lab". Underground research facility, not a lab itself.
- "Someone tried to kill me", actually she was trying to kill Ada and Leon took the bullet. "Ada went after the sniper", ie the gunman.
- "Mugnum Parts". This was fixed in the Updated Re Release.
- Claire to Sherry in the 2nd scenario ending: "You look terrible."
- Even Code Veronica didn't have the best translation.
- A couple of the most narm worthy quotes from the game make an appearence in Dead Rising, specifically one of the stores. Reading the description you'd have to wonder if Capcom did the bad acting on purpose.
- The series' companion book Resident Evil Archives had many translation mistakes and inconsistencies in its English edition. One of the most obvious ones had the translator replacing every instance of the word "Biohazard" with "Resident Evil", regardless of its context. Thus, the "Umbrella Biohazard Countermeasure Service" becomes the "Umbrella Resident Evil Countermeasure Service", and a train's self-destruct mechanism is activated due to a "Resident Evil outbreak".
- The disclaimer, originally from the Bullet Hell shooter DonPachi, shown on Our Lawyers Advised This Trope: "Violator and subject to severe penalties will be prosecutedt to the full extent of the jam."
- The H-game Phoenix Drive was translated by the developers themselves. Needless to say, his alibi collapses with this evidence product!
- He will beat a rod until...a tank empties!
- Oh SNAP! I do not hear such a truth...?
- Nice chest, Maya! Cool beans!
- The weird thing is, von Karma uses correct English while everyone else is mangled.
- From the epilogue of the Original R-Type: "THE EVIL BYDO EMPIRE WAS ANNIHILATED TO NEVER SCARE PEOPLE AGAIN." Luckily R-Type II and newer are much better about this.
- In the hentai game Divi-Dead, when confronted by an obnoxiously smug character at one point, the protagonist thinks "What a fart-blasting scrotum this guy is!"
- The scenes with actual not-safe-for-work content tend to elicit unexpected responses as one character goes "let's achieve mutual liquid nirvana!", and the protagonist always, always, ALWAYS finishes these scenes with "I'M BLASTING!"
- The rendering of "Shiroma" and "Kuroma" from the Final Fantasy side-games as "Shirma" and "Croma" in post-merger translations. These are technically acceptable romanizations, but result from the translator apparently being completely oblivious to the Punny Name nature of the original names — it would make more sense to change the names entirely to something that has a similar joke... or, failing that, to romanize them directly to maintain the original joke for people who would still get it.
- The names are not only punny, they are also meaningful: "Shiromadoushi" means "White Mage" and "Kuromadoushi" means "Black Mage": Exactly what those two are. Giving them Eight Bit Theater -esque names would probably have been more appropriate for the translation.
- The first Suikoden game has a pretty notable bit of Engrish:
Mathiu: All this violence in front of a children!
- It also almost seems to like referring to Mathiu, your strategist, as a surgeon or doctor.
- Not to mention Odessa referring to her uncle, Leon, as her father.
- The ending theme is worse: it's suppsed to be in Portuguese, but the guy who translated it apparently didn't actually know the language, so it ended up as gibberish that just sounds like Portuguese.
- Suikoden II is full of these as well, with plenty of name inconsistencies such as Bright Shield Rune/Shining Shield Rune, Black Sword Rune/Black Blade Rune, Jilia/Jilian Blight, Han/Hal Cunningham, etc.
- Not to mention untranslated NPC dialogue and enemy names.
- While the DS Dinosaur King game is fairly good about this, it slips up grammatically in places:
You got an Mystery Fossil!
- Well, that seems more like having a generic sentence builder. "You have an.." to which any given object can be played after to create a sentence so that the game doesn't have to have any additional information about the correct use of 'an' and 'a' which may not even exist in the original.
- The Polish translation of The Orange Box (Half Life 2, Episode One, Episode Two, Portal and Team Fortress 2) was obviously done by someone who never played the games. How else would you explain such bloopers as referring to Portal's female protagonist, Chell, as male throughout the whole game; or translating "[security] breach" as "a cave"; or translating "breach of internal base defenses" (that is, enemies getting past your defenses) as "resistance of the internal base defenses" (that is, your own defenses turning on you). In fact, if you don't know English, then playing with Polish subtitles will leave you completely confused.
- This sadly seems to be a common feature in Polish games. The Polish version of Beyond Good And Evil features the English voice track, and apparently translates the English idioms used in the game very... er, literally. "This button has no fruit juice."
- The Polish version of Scrapland is just as atrocious. Translating "They're engaged" as "Everyone is busy" made me nearly catatonic for a couple of hours. Worse yet, otherwise acceptable translation of Fallout 3 contains a So Bad Its Horrible pun, changing the name of villain AntAgonizer into what can be most closely re-translated as "Entomology McAnt" (although translating the nickname "Three Dog" literally is a close second). Curiously, most failed translations come from one and the same distributor.
- Chaos Wars, a Massive Multiplayer Crossover between several RPG series (And shooter series Gungrave for spice), was localized by O3 Entertainment. Leaving aside its So Bad Its Horrible Voice Acting, the translation itself was extremely poor. Shadow Hearts Smug Snake Nicholi got his name translated as "Nicole", every single "Breath" attack was translated as "Bless" (so you'd better watch out when that red dragon uses its Fire Bless on you) and- most glaringly- they translated the game title "Rebirth Moon" as "Reverse Moon" even though an English logo sits right below where they wrote this.
- There are many who argue for literal Russian transliteration, arguing about "Nikolai" versus "Nicholi". "Nicole", however, is hilarious.
- They also quite obviously never even glanced at the official translations of the games they take characters of; they render the Shadow Hearts main known in the US as "Yuri" as "Uru" instead, and also render the "Hiyoko Bug" as a "Chick Bug" — although this is an accurate translation of Hiyoko, the Generation of Chaos and Spectral series games translated by NIS America and Atlus USA have always just left it as Hiyoko.
- The Yuri to Uru thing is at least justified, since Yuri's Japanese name is URUMNAF, of which Uru is a shortening. The rest, though...
- There was a discussion of this once, and I finally realized what the hell that name is supposed to be — they were going for Ulmanov, which is a legitimate Russian name, if kind of obscure.
- Persona, again. Some of the name changes of the Personae and demons in the game were a result of this — they just directly romanized or approximately romanized the name of the Demon/Persona, without bothing to check if it was referencing anything. Among others, this leads to Armati becoming Almighty, Scylla becoming Sucula, and at the "what were they thinking?" end, Skuld becoming Skragg.
- The So Bad Its Good Spanish ROM hack "Pokémon Quartz" has plenty of these.
"Argh! Fucking kid! You send my plan down to the WC!"
- Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow translated "Rubicante" as the unintentially amusing "Lubicant", and "Scarmiglione" became "Skull Millione" - take that, Dante. Likewise, an excellent way to annoy anyone with a passing familiarity with Hindu mythology is to refer, as they did, to a certain bloodthirsty goddess as "Curly".
- The English translation of The Magic of Scheherezade also calls Kali, "Curly". Among other misnames.
- The English release of Zoids Saga 2 (As Zoids Legacy) was about as blind idiot as it comes. Not just did it freely mix the names from the English dubs of the Zoids anime with their Japanese originals (So you had the American "Leena" alongside the Japanese "Ballard") but it was full of pure nonsense translations. For example, the description of the Gator Zoid read 'Deform for recon'. More interestingly, the Merda Zoid (One of many in the game not released in the US, not to mention it had about four or five possible Romanizations) was renamed "Hellrunner", the name it was released under in the UK... in the 80s. To make the whole thing even more confusing, one of the lead translators on the staff was an active member of the Zoids fan community.
- The fourth game in the Megaman Battle Network series introduces a class of bad guys that should have been translated as HeelNavi... instead the player was faced with HealNavis. This was especially funny because the name was in no way appropriate to their appearance; HealNavis are big bruisers with spiky armor. Beware the medics... =]
- From the same game, the infamous line "What a polite young man she was." I mean, we know Ran looks absurdly androgynous, but come on.
- Megaman, is the jack out now!
- There are so many electronic store!
- Leg's go, Megaman!
- Want to saver you progress?
- And the fifth game, while not as bad, had some rather amusing bits, such as Lan asking Mister Famous "What am I, Mister Famous, doing here?"
- The DS version of the fifth game is even worse than the GBA version (somehow). With the chip trader offerring to "Bigin Trading", and lines like "Be areful Lan." and "I'm on flames!"
- A pirate translation in Russian of Heroes of Might and Magic IV had one distinctive mistake in translation: all of the the buttons labeled "Back", instead of being translated as in "Go Back" ("nazad") were translated like the part of the body ("spina"). They Just Didnt Care, how else to describe it?
- There was a particularly bizarre (and hilarious) Russian translation of Empire Earth II. "Composite bowmen"="complicated men of bowing". A Korean faction named "Chou"? "A tube made out of paste" (presumably connected to Choux pastry?).
- Legend Of Dragoon had an amusing example. Since the characters shout out their attack names, the incredibly literal "Gust of Wind Dance" (suppposed to be "Gale Dance") just becomes Narmtastic.
- Heck, the whole game was filled with moments like this. Particularly bad during cutscenes that are supposed to be serious.
- The strange thing about the game's translation is its unevenness. It starts out fairly decent (only a bit below the level of, say, Final Fantasy VII) but seems to get worse as the game goes on. Some scenes are positively tear-jerking, only to be followed by laugh-out-loud terrible comments on the same event.
- From the original Dragon Quest Monsters game:
Terry looked in front. There are some yummy food.
- From Zone of the Enders: The Second Runner:
"The winner of the year was Hesperia Gales. In the final 30 seconds, Henry G trashed out from fieldout!"
- This game was full of it. "It is a command which arose from the basis of a program." "The basis of a program, are you kidding?!"
- The original Wild ARMs game had a pretty bad translation, with gems such as "Ray Line" instead of "Leyline." Fortunately, they fixed it in the remake, although the remake's translation is widely to be considered just as bad.
- The Italian version of Zoocube translated the word "ostrich" as "ostrica". "Ostrica" is Italian for "oyster", a correct translation would be "struzzo".
- Mario is not immune. A great many of the English item names show that Square's publication arm utterly failed to do any research when localizing Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars. To wit, the "Noknok Shell", a familiar green bouncy turtle shell: "Nokonoko" is the Japanese name for the race known in the West as the Koopas.
- In addition, the Boo enemies you first find in the sewers are just ordinary Boos ("Teresa"), yet they're called "The Big Boo" in the English translation. (Big Boo in Japanese is "Atomic Teresa".)
- Super Mario 64 DS has an overall okay English translation... except from Bowser's final speech(s) (Both before and after getting One Hundred Percent Completion) and the message you get after collecting one of the castle's secret stars:
Wow! Another Power Star! You're getting stronger from the power of the castle.
- In the English version of German RPG Gothic, a certain type of health-restoring berry is labelled 'Blueberries'. They're red.
- In order to sucker people into thinking it was an actual Pokemon game (the gameplay of the original game is a bit similar in that respect), someone - probably a Chinese bootlegger - created a pirated version of Keitai Denjuu Telefang in which the game (besides being bugged up the ASS) is translated into English. If you can call it English, at least:
"Some points of X lost!"
"I want to somewhere by the way and will return!"
Just about every other line in the game.
- Iron Tank: The Invasion of Normandy for the NES: "SNAKE! Watch out, use radar, gigantic enemy objects ahead". "Found the train firing bullets by radar". "I'm your friend. Stay on the railroad, go straight through the town. The enemy train is there. Shoot it." "Enemy's long range bullets are awesome. Allies are destroyed." "Look out ahead, there is the long range firing bullet. Destroy it immediately. The safety of the back up unit is your goal."
- Battle Rangers (a.k.a. Bloody Wolf): You! Invaders! Get you the hot bullets of shotgun to die!
- Idiomatic translation: Intruder! Prepare to eat hot lead!
- Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 2 suffers from this is utterly stupid ways. Usually, the Koei franchise features good translations, but whoever translated this game just didn't recognize traditional English phrases.
Cecily: "It looks like we'll make it back safe... how about some toast when we get back home?"
Mission title: "Peace Singing Singstress"
Kamille: "I could be dead by morning. I should have changed my underwear."
Shinn Asuka: "I'm more than a match for these guys! Who's laughing at Shinn now?!"
- The Samurai Shodown games are full of this. All of the games in the series suffer in some way. One rather unusual example in the second game looks like an exception, when Cham Cham is regarding the SNK Boss right after she's declared her intent to 'eat, eat you all': 'Shit! You really make me mad!'
- Samurai Shodown IV is always happy to declare "victoly!"
- The referee's statement after anyone's second fight in 2 is "ki ga warui" (meaning, roughly, "something's not right" or "something strange is happening"). It was translated literally into English, into the immensely quoteworthy "Horrible atmosphere."
- The Swedish translation of the manual for Super Mario Galaxy translated the word "toad" as "frog". For those not in the know, Mario "toads" are humanoid mushrooms.
- Though in all fairness, Toad and the toads do always sound like they have a frog in their throat.
- The manual for Bionic Commando. "You can shoot at wide range but reach is shoot (short)". As well as much of the dialog in-game:
- "So you think you can destroy the main system? You have no chance!"
- "Maybe we can find good weapon we can use".
- "Ok, we are going to open the door of the boos's room".
- "I take this bazooka".
- "This base will explod in 60 sec".
- Mystery Quest: "Hao can not swim", showing his Super Drowning Skills.
- The NES translation of Metal Gear was So Bad Its Good ("The truck have started to move!"), but the English MSX version (official, not a fan translation) was So Bad Its Horrible. Examples: "Destoroy the ultimate weapon, Metal Gear", "I goofed! The lorry started to move!", etc.
- The non-canonical sequel Snake's Revenge, which was supposedly made with the North American market in mind (and never came out in Japan), was very badly translated too. For example, the second boss group in the game tells Snake that they've prepared "three graves" for him; an enemy spy in disguise calls Snake to tell him that "there is no enemy in that room" when the player is right next to a room with an enemy soldier inside; and when Jennifer, Snake's contact from the inside, is captured after her cover is blown, Snake is informed by another ally that "we have found out that Jennifer is a spy", giving the impression that she was a spy working for the enemy.
- Metal Gear Solid 2 was generally really well handled, but the most egregious mistake is the parrot chanting the horoscope 'Venus in Cancer'. The original line was something like 'The Venusian crab!' (a reference to the Venusian from It Conquered the World), and was supposed to cast Emma as a b-movie geek (in contrast to her brother's anime Otakudom). Makes even less sense when in Metal Gear Solid 3, Para-Medic jokes that the mask makes Snake look like a Venusian - "not the crab kind, the other kind".
- Breath Of Fire II has an infamously bad translation, even for Capcom.
- It should also be noted that absolutely nothing was changed in the GBA port. Even one instance where a regular party member's name was replaced with a placeholder flag.
- The English bootleg translation of the arcade version of Wonder Boy in Monster Land.
- One particular Wall Banger from that translation: The name of "Excalibur" is actually spelled out in English in an on-screen graphic. The translators still managed to misspell it in the dialogue as "Axecaliva".
- The X Men arcade Beat Em Up notoriously has Magneto unleash a sneak attack on the players while proclaiming "X-Men - WELCOME TO DIE!"
- Let's not forget Professor X's sage advice. Right before the final boss fight (after defeating a Magneto imposter), he proclaims: "Alas, that was Mystique, not Magneto! Magneto is in another place! Go, X-Men!" Especially odd when you realize "another place" means "this door, right here."
- The Final Boss fight is a continuous stream of this sort of dialogue, from "I am Magneto, master of magnet!" to "KILL YOU!" Most definitely worth a quarter or ten.
- The popular song Airman ga Taosenai translates as "I Can't Beat Airman." Unforunately, thanks to a blind idiot translation, many YouTubers vehemently insist that it's "Airman will not be defeated." The reason is that "taosenai" is, in this case, clearly meant to be the negative potential conjugation of "defeat" (i.e. "cannot defeat"), but can also be the negative passive conjugation (i.e. "is not defeated"). Both make grammatical sense, but the former describes what the frikkin' song is about.
- Castle Shikigami 2 is terrible about this. Even though you can still enjoy the game without understanding anything that is being said, backstory and references to the prequel are impossible to understand because of the vague translations. There are several characters whose stories are so badly translated that you have no idea why they're even in the story (even the next to final boss has a backstory that makes almost no sense due to the translation). And then there's the ingame dialog. Keep in mind this isn't even some of the worst dialog in the game.
- Valkyrie Profile has a pretty decent translation, possibly because the english voice cast needed something intelligible. But the message the game gives you when it's time to unleash your Limit Break is a real howler: "Technical arts energy charged, PURIFY WEIRD SOUL! Hurry up push button! Step on it!"
- GHOST Squad has an example that become a short-lived meme on its board on GameFAQs:
"The mine will explode when the time becomes 0!"
- Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune. Dear God, almost every line that is longer than 3 words is wonkily translated. In fact, there are a few instances where not only is the translation is wrong, but the formatting is wrong. On one stage, there are 2 lines, both of which are very long and don't have linebreaks, causing each line to go all the way across and off the screen.
- World In Conflict. The second screenshot is obviously supposed to be HUD of a soviet copter. The text in the right column is: "Method: seedpod of a weapon; auto piece of artillery; Sabo(?); ? of kidnaping". No wonder it was posted in LJ community dedicated to "Fake Russian" trope.
- "Conglaturations".
- "and prooved the justice of our culture. Now go and rest our heroes."
- The infamous Dr. Light/Right and Crash/Clash Man (and C r/l ash Bombs) mixups in Mega Man. The first of each pair is considered correct.
- The Navi Mode tips in Mega Man Anniversary Collection. Interestingly, there's an It Was His Sled moment too, as Protoman is the tip-giver in Mega Man 3, despite the fact that you're not supposed to know about him yet.
- Proto Man shows up early enough in Mega Man 3. More egregious is Kalinka being the tip-giver in Mega Man 4, which not only introduces a character that won't appear until the end of the game, but hints in advance that the alleged Big Bad of the game isn't.
- Mega Man X6 is full of these and it wants to know if you want to "Overwright" your save...
- The intro to the arcade game Pirates:
"Map of the treasure is in pirates' pie ass power. Help me to find it. It might be dangerous. Be strong and be brave. Good luck."
- A mistake in the SNES translation of Chrono Trigger has Gaspar saying "One of you is close to someone that needs help. Find this person... fast, which seemed to imply the existence of an additional quest apart from the several he mentioned (most often believed to be one to save Schala). In the DS remake, this is corrected to have him tell the player to speak to each of the party members for clues on the quests.
- As for actual Engrish in Chrono Trigger, Melcior's response to seeing the Rainbow Shell is "This is a very rare!"
- REVENGE OF DR ROBOTONIC
- Lufia & The Fortress of Doom contains several instances of awkward dialogue. Sometimes it's punctuated wrong, sometimes it's gramatically incorrect, but mostly the dialogue is just incoherent and/or random with what's happening in the story.
- One Final Fantasy X fan, dissatisfied with the English voice dub, was hoping to play a subtitled copy bought on eBay. Instead that person got something else entirely. The "Guado" race is now the "Chubby" race, "Jyscal" is "Jessica," and Walter(Wakka) is a good egg.
- There's also a surprising amount of Ho Yay in the translation, such as "I feel happy that Walter wants to arouse me".
- Bad Dudes: "Rampant ninja related crimes these days, White House is not the exception."
- Copyright disclaimer for Japanese version says: "If you are playing this outside the country of Japan, YOU MAY PARTICIPATE IN A PRIME!"(You are involved in a crime)
- The Spanish translation of Fire Emblem 7 (The first one released outside Japan) has dozens and dozens of typos, though they're all in Support Conversations, Hector's tale and in some houses, implying they did some sort of spellchecking, but only the bare minimum. Most stuff got renamed for no apparent reason, most notable being Lyn's promoted class getting Un-Lord-ified from "Blade Lord" into "Swordmistress" (for no reason. But that wasn't the worst. The worst was turning Fa(e) into a boy and claiming Marquess Darin looked... like House Laus.
- The later installements got better, but they still have issues: Amelia of Sacred Stones refers to herself as a man when she promotes, two throwable weapons from Path of Rradiance were called "Swordreaver" and "Axereaver", despite that game having no "Reaver" weapons, and no two games on the same system call (Armor) Knights the same thing (Like most other classes, for that matter... They have it worst though, since half the names are dumb).
- When Disgaea Hour Of Darkness had its DS version released in France, we got a full translation... except that it was the English version almost word for word. Translated with a dictionary, apparently. With pearls like translating "Usagi Drop" as "Rabbit Crap", or failing to see that the Horse Wiener was a Gag Penis and not an actual wiener. Seriously, guys.
- Secret Of The Stars had a particularly bad one, such as translating "Kraken" as "Clarken". Some quotes from the game:
"Whew! Studying math gave me a rash."
"What? You're so anything. Go to the circus now."
"I am just your everyday normal cat! Not!"
- Star Fox Adventures had an acceptable French translation, but two errors stand out for being visible even if you didn't understand English:
- Early in the game, after Fox falls into some water, a dinosaur greets him with a line whose two only intelligible words are "hot spring". "spring" was translated as if it was the season.
- Late in the game, a dinosaur offers to take Fox within striking range of some defensive turrets, but since their range is greater than Fox's, asks him to "protect [me] from their fire" and not blindly shoot at them. It was translated as if the turrets were either equipped with flamethrowers, or on fire themselves, I don't really know.
- Most of the changes to the English script of Knights In The Nightmare are just removal of characters' accents, name changes, and the alteration of all text into standard polite English. Some of the translation conventions, however, cross into this territory:
- The original Japanese script had a female Lance Knight named Meslieness and an NPC poet named Marion. For whatever reason, Meslieness' name was changed to Marion, and Marion's name to Mervyn. Something that might irritate those who preferred the original script perhaps, but nothing catastrophic—except for the fact that in the game and the few translated bonus materials, "Mervyn" was still referred to as "Marion" in many places, causing a lot of confusion.
- Then there are the item names. Atlus has always shown confusion on how to translate the name of the item ココリの実 ("Kokori no Mi"), which has variably been written as Applecot, Kokorinut, and Applecot Nut; however, it was the "Upola Statue" item which was the most egregious example in the game—the translation that had stood for the past two entries (and their two remakes) was changed to Upora Statue, evidently out of L/R flip confusion.
- And... Marietta's signature attack, which in Japanese has always been リヴェリオン (usually Romanized as "Rivellion" by Sting) and has always been translated as "Angelic Thunder" by Atlus, was suddenly changed to Rebellion without explanation.
- If a Keyboardmania arcade machine detects a problem with the wheel during its power on self-test sequence, it will say "PLEASE WHEEL REPAIR. WE DO THE APOLOGY FOR ANY INCONVENIENT."
- Polish version of The Return of the King videogame translated the dialogue between Eowyn and the Witch-King this way:
Witch-King: Pathetic female warrior.
Eowyn: I will kill you if you touch him.
- Also, Polish translation of Prince Of Persia: The Sands of Time while being fairly decent, contains one. When the Prince rejects Farah's proposition of covering him, because she could hit him, the dialogue in Polish goes like this:
Farah: I'll cover you.
Prince: Please, don't. Your duty is to hit me.
- Super Mario Land had this, in that it was pretty much machine translated from the Japanese version. The real reason half of the enemies have strange names such as 'Pakkun Flower'? It's because those are the Japanese versions of the names of enemies such as 'Piranha Plant'. More obvious when you consider the bosses and such like, with names that are very obvious English direct translations of the Japanese like 'Dragonzamasu' and 'Hiyoihoi'. It's also why half the world names lost the meaning in them.
- In the English version of Ishar 2, the citizens of the main city greet you with "Welcome presumptuous travelers!".
- The Dutch manual of Gothic 2 translates 'turn undead' as 'ondood worden', which means "become undead".
- Wolf Team is loaded with this. Even the title screen has it! Enjoy the 5.1 Circle Sound while you use the EM-60, but have to reload four times to prevent overheat from over 200 shooting. Stupid interruption in the supply of ammo. Watch out for the Snake Attack, you never know when a Ghost Wolf will get behind you. They usually try when your Machine Gun is in installation or when you are trying to
install plant the bomb.
- Dance Dance Revolution: The lyrics of "The Shining Polaris":
A north star ray in the dark
I see thee
Daylight singing away
But night can see the shining polestar
I never lost my own way
With your shining lightest star in the earth
Ray me by your radiant light
- "The special mission available!"
- YOU'RE WINNER!
- I'm amazed no-one's mentioned the Maru Mari and Varia from Metroid. Maru Mari literally translates as "round ball" or "circle ball", of course this later became Morph Ball. The "Varia" (suit) was originally meant to be called the Barrier Suit. However, the name Varia caught on and has been used ever since...
- When a Power Instinct 2 machine firsts boots up
FIRST BOOT UP IS.
FIRST EEP ROM DEFAULT INITIALIZED.
Web Comics
Real Life
- The Trope Namer is an apocryphal story about an attempt to translate "Out of sight, out of mind" into a foreign language and back and get the phrase "blind idiot" or "invisible lunatic". The story was old as of 1963. PDF link (Of course, many of these translations seem to have been done by a blind idiot...)
- Another version had "the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak" translated to Russian and back and ending up as "The Vodka Is Good But The Meat Is Rotten". As can be seen in the above link on Invisible Idiot, this one dates at least as far back as 1956.
- Yet another story about machine-aided mistranslation has the phrase "hydraulic rams" being translated as "water sheep".
- Pick any online text translator. Pick a block of text - the beginning of Hamlet's most famous soliloquy, for example. Now translate it to any other language, and back again.
- English -> French -> English
To be, or not to be—c' is the question: If ' ; tis nobler in l' spirit to suffer the supports and the arrows from unworthy fortune Or to take arms against a sea of the troubles And by l' opposition stop them. To die, sleep— Not more—and by a sleep to say we let us stop sorrow d' love, and the thousand normal shocks This flesh is heir with. ' ; Tis a consumption Being desired with enthusiasm. To die, sleep— To sleep—perhaps with the dream: ay, there' ; S the strip contact, for in this sleep of dead which dreams can come When we scrambled in addition to this mortal rolling up, Must give us the pause. There' ; S the respect That makes the calamity thus long life.
- English -> Japanese -> English
Because of a certain, or because it is not,—That is question: ' Whether or not; In order the topping lift and the arrow or the arm of a nobler tis inhuman good fortune to take with the heart which suffers vis-a-vis the sea of trouble and finish those with in the opposite direction. In order to die, in order to sleep,— Above this—And as for us that meat of mental agony and thousand natural impacts which finish with the sleep which is said is to the successor. ' Because it is desired from Tis consummation heart. In order to die, in order to sleep,— In order to sleep,—In perchance dream: there' ay; Whether perhaps, any dream comes, when mixing from the coil where we do not escape this death friction for the sleep of s death, separated, we must give pause. There' s point that makes the disaster of such long life.
- English -> Spanish -> English
To be or not to be, that one is the question; If ' tis more noble in the head to undergo the slings and you shoot with an arrow of the indignante fortune, Or to take the arms against a sea from hardships, and being been against, to finish those. In order to die, to dream; Not over; and by a dream to say we were finished the pain and the thousand natural shocks that meat is the heir - ' tis a consumation devoutly to being wish' d. In order to die, to sleep; In order to sleep, to perhaps dream. Ay, there' s the rubbing, stops in that dream of the death what dreams can come, when we have mixed ourselves of this mortal coil, we must occur stop. There' s the respect that so makes terrible of long life.
- There are actually translators that do this deliberately like Lost in Translation (not the film). As in, that's the sole reason for their existence.
- The FA's translator for when Fabio Cappelo first became England Manager!
- An advertisement on this very wiki, for "Game 4 Power.com", asks "How can you enjoy the game so lightsome?"
- The German translation for a small toy fishtank with pastic fish: "Lebensunterhalt aus direkter Sonne leuchtet". Just retranslating this to English in the most literal of ways gives you "Keep out of direct sun light", which is probably the phrase it was originally translated from. But in this case they picked the German words representing the words secondary meaning or literal translation: The translation for Keep used here is the German word for the keep you earn... They also translated light as "leuchtet" (light up/glow), even splitting up sunlight into two words and literally translating each of them.
- According to this story, many Irish police stopping Polish motorists for driving infractions were reading the wrong part of the driving licence when taking their details. This came to light when it emerged that Prawo Jazdy (Polish for "driver's license") was the most wanted driver in Ireland.
- You'd think the big-name companies of KFC and Bic would be able to afford good interpreters for advertising, but alas, no. When KFC first went to China, the slogan "finger-lickin' good" ended up being translated as "eat your fingers off." And, when Bic went to Latin America, it thought that the word "embarazar" meant "to embarass." So, the billboards told you that "this pen won't leak in your pocket and get you pregnant."
- The Chinese example is actually a perfectly legitimate translation. To "eat your fingers off" is the colloquial equivalent to "finger-lickin' good". It's usually applied to snacks and foods you eat with your hands generally: it implies that what you're eating tastes so awesome that you might accidentally bite your fingers in the process of gobbling it up. A literal translation of "finger-lickin' good" would sound rather unappetising to the average Chinese.
- What happens when a Chinese restaurant fails their translation.
- According to this blog entry, "Most of us, however, have all along suspected that this phenomenon resulted from reliance on faulty translation software. Indeed, it is easy to prove that absurd English translations are being spewed out daily in China when individuals who don't know English merely plug Chinese sentences into the software and expect it to come up with reasonable renditions." A bug in one particular translation program has caused the word "fuck" to appear on shop signs and restaurant menus, etc.
- The government of China has released an official list of food name translations in the hope of stopping this problem for the Olympics.
- "Yesterday not throw the fire inside the battery". Literally, "never throw the battery in a fire".
- A negligent translation to Russian and back allowed Margaret Thatcher's nickname to shift from 'Iron Maiden' (as in 'torture-box') to 'Iron Dame' to 'Iron Lady'. An improvement, no?
- The website Hanzi Smatter has many examples of poorly used Chinese and Japanese by English speakers. Unfortunately, a lot of the time, in tattoos.
- Some of the most glorious Chinese-to-English examples ever recorded could be found on Anime Jump's (the website has stopped updating, and Mike Toole works for Anime News Network) Bootleg Toys Showcase. The Flying Headless Goku is a meme in itself.
- Speaking of bad Chinese-to-English translations, has anyone read those red chopstick packets available at most Chinese restaurants? (Although most of these packets have been recently revised to display better English, you can still find a few badly translated ones here and there.)
- The mentioned site contains what is probably one of the best (read: worst) Blind Idiot Translations ever: the INTERTLLR TERININATDR (also called Apolay Wayyioy).
- Lots of this sort of thing can be found at Rinkworks.com
- An example from a Tokyo car rental brochure: "When passenger of foot heave in sight, tootle the horn. Trumpet him melodiously at first, but if he still obstacles your passage then tootle him with vigor."
- This sounds so very English. "Tootle vigorously, my dear chap, it seems that fellow over there obstacles our passage."
- Another example involved Tony Blair giving a speech in French about the "third way" falling foul of the fact that the literal French translation of "third way" (troisième voie) is more often used in conversational French to refer to Platform Three at a railway station.
- John F Kennedy supposedly did this in his "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech, where Berliner can refer to a type of pastry, but the belief that this was a mistake is an urban legend.
- BUT...The story about Carter in Poland? That was actually true and not his fault but the translator's. Carter had said that he wanted to get to know the Poles better but it was translated as "I would like to have sex with the Poles."
- An information board in China was rendered as "propaganda board", perhaps aptly in a country whose government has a fairly hazy distinction between information and propaganda.
- The Chinese word does mean literally "propaganda board", as there is no negative connotation associated with the word "propaganda" in China.
- In a translation of a hymn about John the Revelator, who wrote the Book of The Seven Seals, 'seal' was translated using the 'aquatic pinniped mammal' meaning.
- Translated into Norwegian with that meaning: "De Sju Selers Bok". Translated back into English in the same manner: "The Seven Harnesses' Book". It could also be read as "The Seven Seals' Book", as in "aquatic mammal".
- Polish translators in general seem to be baffled by slang, for example translating the word "radical" to the Polish equivalent "radykalny" which, needless to say, is not and has never been a slang word. This makes the translated dialogue sound oddly disjointed or plain incomprehensible.
- One translation which rendered the British anatomical slang term "bell-end" literally, as in "terminal section of a device that makes a ringing sound".
- Signage in Wales is required to be in both English and Welsh, leading to regular examples of Blind Idiot Translation. As shown in the picture above, a sign that in English directed heavy goods vehicles to take another route, in Welsh said, "I am not in the office at the moment. Send any work to be translated."
- Another sign located near a section of road under repair read "Cyclists dismount" in English, but "Bladder disease has returned" in Welsh. (Though the word order does mean it makes even less sense in the original Welsh)
- In 2006, a school in Wrexham had to remove a sign which translated "staff entrance" into Welsh as "enchant the wooden stick".
- A temporary sign for pedestrians in Cardiff reading 'Look Right' in English read 'Look Left' in Welsh.
- This infamous synopsis of the opera Carmen. "All hail the balls of a Toreador!"
- "The Sistrums Tinkeling!"
- The phenomenon was referred to by Stephen Fry in an article when he was discussing why he never did any classical roles. He commented that he didn't 'have the sort of calves that could carry off a pair of tights' which he thought could be translated as 'possess the type of young cows that could transport away two drunks".
- In one version of Adobe Director, a word was translated into double Dutch: the original "Left - Center - Right" were translated into "Koppelingen - Midden - Rechts", where "koppelingen" is Dutch for (hyper)"links", and "links" in turn is Dutch for "left".
- The Dutch copy of Trackmania has a dialog button "Dichtbij", which means "Close", as in a short distance away.
- And in the Dutch version of iTunes, where in a file's information you can type in the name of a show, it translates "Show" as "Tonen", as in making something seen.
- The Brazilian Portuguese translation of Windows Vista had 'Sobre o Janelas'◊, which means... 'About [the] Windows'. Sadly, it was fixed.
- In the "Breaking Bad" episode "Mandala," there's a restaurant called "Los Pollos Hermanos," which evidently is supposed to translate as "The Chicken Brothers." The grammatically correct Spanish would be "Los Hermanos Pollos."
- Top Gear's Clarkson and James May explored the workings of the world's first automobiles and were very confused by an instruction sheet translated from French. See here starting at 3:09
- French Example: This◊ packaging for a snow shovel, which translates "snow pusher" to "revendeur de drogue de neige", uses the wrong sense of the word "pusher." Instead of "an object which pushes snow", it means "drug pusher", literally reading "Snow-drug seller".
- The United States government did this recently when dealing with the Russian government. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hands something to the Russian official and even says "We worked hard to find the right Russian word", just before the official points at one of the words and says "That's the wrong word." Hilarity Ensues. (Hillary's face was a mixture of Oh Crap and trying not to laugh)
- In a reversed case, English was blind idiot translated to Chinese here.
- One still-existing kingdom in Africa has two state copies of The Bible. According to the King of that kingdom, one of them is a recent, pretty decent translation. The other one was a gift from Queen Victoria, and thanks to the state of knowledge of the language in question at the time, contains translation gems like “The Lord is the keeper of my sheep.”
- One brand of prawn crackers (the kind you fry yourself) proudly proclaimed them to have a "peculiar taste". Somebody ought to inform that translator that the use of "peculiar" to mean "unique" is archaic; it's far more commonly used to mean "weird".
- The Spanish version of this wiki suffers from this, a lot, around 85% of the tropes' names are roughly translations word by word from the English version, in fact the very word "Tropes" gets translated as "Tropos" which is a pretty unusual (and even weird if not plain wrong) sound for an Spanish word. More blatant examples include "Disonancia del Angustia" for Angst Dissonance(in Spanish all nouns are gendered, "del" is a male pronoun and "Angustia" a female one, thus the right LITERAL translation should be "Disonancia de la angustia"), "Angustia que Angustia" for Angstwhat Aangst (depending on the punctuation "Angustia que angustia" means either "Angst that makes you Angst","Angst that angsts" or "Angst!, what an angst!" ), Badass Decay becomes "La Decadencia del Chingon" (Roughly, and only ROUGHLY, means "The Badass Decadence", since "Chingon" is an aproximation for "Badass") and Crowming Moment Of Awesome becomes "Momento Cumbre de lo Impresionante" (Peak Moment of the Impressive).
|
|
