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"I like how Gracie's a man in the Japanese version. She's like super flamboyant, fruity, fashion trend-setter in the Japanese version."

Sometimes things get Lost in Translation, and occasionally this isn't so much lost as purposely altered. Sometimes the "thing" in question is a character's gender.

Reasons for this are generally narrowed to six:

  • To make the show more marketable to girls (especially to tomboys if they aren't likely to want to identify with a Girly Girl) when the original show had The Smurfette Principle in play;
  • The Moral Guardians of the country the show is being translated for don't want a crossdresser or gay character in the cast (this is the most popular reason behind this trope, particularly in the case of Sailor Moon).
  • Related to the above reason, the character looks too girly to pass for a male.
  • The producers made a mistake. Sometimes, the character looked, sounded, and acted androgynous enough that picking a gender was basically a coin toss (and depending on the language, even pronoun choice may not be enough), and the translation team called wrong. Of course, when the character was simply mistaken for the opposite gender, this can lead to continuity problems and may or may not be fixed.
  • The work is being translated into a language that uses the concept of grammatical gender for nouns, and the character's gender doesn't fit the grammatical gender of their name, so the translator changed their gender to keep it from sounding unnatural. This usually applies only to animals with a Species Surname, animate objects, and Anthropomorphic Personifications.
  • The work is being translated into a language that uses a strict masculine/feminine grammatical gender, and the character is nonbinary. However, it should be said that nonbinary speakers of such destination languages still exist, and the fact they have to use either the masculine or the feminine grammatical gender to refer to themselves doesn't make them any less nonbinary.

Compare Affirmative Action Girl, Hide Your Lesbians, and Getting Crap Past the Radar. Compare Gender Flip and Adaptational Gender Identity when adaptations, rather than translations, change a character's sex or gender. May result in Viewer Gender Confusion, as well as They Changed It, Now It Sucks!.

Note that despite the title, this applies to changes in either direction in any language, not just male to female or overseas to Japan. The only possible inversion is if the writer gender-flips a character before the work is released.


Examples:

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    Advertising 
  • The Honey Pops cereal mascot Pops used to be a male in some European countries (where until the early 2010s, only Honey Loops were sold in those countries on their own until Honey Pops were introduced), abet with a different design and renamed to Loopy.

    Anime and Manga 
  • The Latin American dubs for Hunter × Hunter (1999) and Sakura Wars did the characters Illumi Zoldyck (voiced by a female in the dub, referred to as female despite being male in the original) and Leni Milchstrasse (voiced by a male in the dub, referred to as male despite being female in the original). Both cases were a mistake, since both series were dubbed by the same company, which also dubbed Rurouni Kenshin and kept both Kamatari's gender and homosexuality intact.
  • Brazilian dubs did this many times, as well:
    • In the Shaman King dub, the first cameo of the Big Bad Hao was a still picture, where he covered his face with his cape. He has a single line in the scene. Since the evidence wasn't enough to say he is a man, he got a very female voice to say the line. In later appearances he has a perfectly normal male voice, ignoring previous change.
      • Also, Kororo was voiced by a male voice actor and referred to as male, even though it's revealed in manga she used to be a human girl while alive. But the one that takes the cake is Goldva, which was correctly voiced by a female voice actor in her first and short appearance... but then was treated as a male for the rest of the series, completely masculine voice included.
    • In the Inuyasha dub, Hakudoushi was first thought as a woman, and also got a very female voice actress. Later he is referenced to as a boy... but they kept the very female voice actress anyway.
    • Hunter × Hunter (1999): Strangely, despite getting Illumi and Kalluto's gender right, they treated Senritsu as a male in the Brazilian dub, complete with unmistakenly male voice. The Brazilian version of the manga also made Neferpitou a female.
    • In the dub of the Patlabor: The TV Series, Bud Renard, an admittedly very androgynous looking young boy, is treated as female and gets a more girly voice than the original (voiced by an actual young boy at the time), not even in the Crossdressing Voices territory.
  • Alice 19th's English translation accidentally called the main villain Darva female the first time he appeared, correcting the mistake in later chapters.
  • Bakugan:
    • Tigrerra was a male character in the Japanese version: this is even more clear in the evolved form Blade Tigrerra, which clearly has a masculine body. Still, Tigrerra became a female in foreign dubs. Despite this, Tigrerra's name in the original Japanese version was still the very feminine "Tigress".
    • Ingram from New Vestroia is a ZigZagged example. In the original Japanese dub, Ingram was always portrayed as male. Whereas the English dub portrayed Ingram as female during the first half of New Vestroia before correcting itself at the start of the second half of the season, portraying him as male from then on, to the point of even recasting the role so that Ingram would have a male voice actor.
  • In the original Gatchaman, the villain Berg Kattse was a hermaphrodite, able to take on a male or female appearance. For the original dub into English, Battle of the Planets, the two appearances became two characters, twin siblings; Zoltar and Malanote . However one of the last episodes shown in the US did have the scene where Zoltar/Berg is partially unmasked before escaping leaving the characters to wonder if Zoltar was a woman. Its possible if the US version had continued, they would've just said Zoltar was a female cross dresser.
    • When Gatchaman II was adapted into Eagle Riders, the female (but very masculine voiced) villain Gel Sadra became the male Mallanox. When the character's gender became more obvious in the later episodes, Saban tried to rectify the error by giving Mallanox a feminine voice (except when in her costume) and referring to the villain with female pronouns.
      • The French dub of Gatchaman II (Gatchaman: Le Combat des Galaxies) referred to Gel Sadra as "neither man nor woman", while referring to the young girl (Sammie) that she was mutated from as a boy.
      • A Korean compilation film adaptation of Gatchaman II had Gel Sadra as a man, and had altered and redrawn footage of his origin: Instead of showing a young blonde girl being grown into the villain, it was a brunet boy named Marko.
  • The Hungarian dub of Bleach, which accidentally turned Kiyone into a man for the first few episodes she appeared in. A gay man. They eventually corrected this after noticing what the fans had been nagging them about for weeks: She's got boobs.
  • Ruby Moon in Cardcaptor Sakura was originally genderless and preferred girls' clothes as Nakuru Akizuki. The Nelvana dub just made her female.
  • In the Italian dub of Cardfight!! Vanguard, Eiji and Reiji (Kamui's two friends/supporters) were turned into females. Since both of them have long hair and are voiced by female voice actresses in the original dub, they're easily mistaken for tomboyish girls, albeit their gender is made clear by later episodes (such as the Beach Episodes in the second season where they both wear swimming trunks and are bare chested, or season 3 onwards where they wear male school uniforms). The error was fixed in later episodes, where they are referred to with male pronouns.
  • The Cat Returns:
    • The Cat King's main messenger has a distinctly female voice in Japanese and a distinctly male voice in English. The cat's appearance seems to be modelled loosely on an archetypal Japanese female servant, but the character's clownish function in the movie must have seemed better suited to a male in America.
    • In the English dub, the cat servant Natoru is male and voiced by Andy Richter, but in the original Japanese version and most other dubs, the character is female, although the character does behave rather flamboyantly in the English version.
  • A few of the many errors and/or localization changes that happened in Tokyopop's loose translation of Cyborg 009 included misgendering of characters. The dog Kubikuro was initially translated as female, only for the gender to be corrected mid-chapter to refer to him with male pronouns. The Brain in a Jar-controlled Sapient House Cyborg 0012 was originally powered by a woman's brain, while Tokyopop had the characters referring to 0012 as "he". Another example included an unnamed member of the Mythos team (who was christened "Hera" in the 2001 anime) who was intended to be a woman, but her androgynous appearance left the Tokyopop translators referring to her as a "he" as well. It's worth it to note that the official character guide refers to the character as "Woman Esper", but the translation team might not have been aware of that.
  • Played straight with Sylvie in Cybot Robotchi, an early '80s kiddie comedy show by Ken Ishikawa and Knack Productions. Sylvie, biologically male but frequently seen in a pink pant suit and hat and even in dresses (with padding to give the appearance of breasts), would likely be understood as a transgender woman today, though, this being an early '80s kiddie comedy, Sylvie's gender identity is Played for Laughs. Sylvie was changed to a cisgender woman and renamed Yvette in the 1985 English dub, Robby the Rascal.
  • Rem is a female shinigami in Death Note, although she was voiced by a man in the live-action films (which predated the anime adaptation) while the reference to being female is removed. In the dub of movie 2, Rem is directly referred to with male pronouns to go along with his voice.
  • Thistle the Lunatic Mage of Delicious in Dungeon is in the "mistake" category: he's an elf, he wears heavy clothing, he appears fairly infrequently, and the manga didn't use a gendered pronoun to refer to him for a good while. The Yen Press translation went with "she", and called it wrong.
  • In the Latin Spanish dub of Di Gi Charat Nyo!, Gema is dubbed as female, despite being male in the original version.
  • The Greek dub of Digimon Adventure infamously made T.K. a girl for the first few episodes before reverting his gender to male, apparently due to an episode that showed the characters, separated by gender, bathing.
  • In Digimon Adventure 02, Iori (Cody) is male in Japanese and in English, but in Spanish and Portuguese, they accidentally thought he was female, and "she" referred to "herself" as a girl for the whole series (though there is a part in the series where they are all in jail and a digimon says he will save the girls only, and Iori is left in jail, therefore implying he is a guy). Needless to say, the epilogue where they showed him all grown up got some strange reactions.
    • In most continuities Digimon explicitly fall under No Biological Sex. Many of them are allowed to have perceived genders but these do not always align with the gender of their voice actors or even their physical appearance. Sometimes they receive voice actors of a different gender from the original Japanese or the translation gives off a different perceived gender than what the original did. Notably, Japanese usually avoids any gendered terminology for Digimon and any explicit pronouns in translation are often themselves examples of this trope.
      • The German version of Renamon from Digimon Tamers is given a male voice actor. In Japanese, Renamon has a female voice actor but always speaks in an androgynous tone. The German dub actually did a good job of maintaining Renamon's androgyny since Renamon is a rare example of discussing Digimon's No Biological Sex in-universe. Renamon affirms that position after being asked about their gender and as such many versions having Renamon constantly referred to as "she" and "her" from the beginning is something of a Dub-Induced Plot Hole. All references to Renamon's/Kyubimon's beauty as well as Ruki's mother commenting on Renamon appearing feminine is kept in the German dub. Sakuyamon is of course almost always voiced by a woman.
      • Lopmon in Digimon Tamers. This was more of a case of guesswork, however, as Lopmon usually speaks using an outdated and gender-neutral dialect and has a female voice actor, forcing the localization team to just take a guess and roll with it. Much later in the anime, however, there is a scene of Xiaochun (known as Suzie in the English dub) trying to get Lopmon to use a masculine "I" pronoun, indicating that Lopmon is likely perceived by the characters as a boy. But by this point the dub had already aired episodes where Lopmon is referred to as a "she" several times.
      • Digimon Frontier's Lord/RhodoKnightmon was about as close to Camp Gay as you can find in a Digimon series, but the English dub's Crusadermon was portrayed as a woman.
      • Also from Frontier, Seraphimon, Cherubimon and Lucemon were all male in the original Japanese dub, but they all became women in the German dub for some reason (LordKnightmon remained male). This became strange when Seraphimon and Cherubimon later re-hatched as Patamon and Lopmon, respectively, with them sharing the same voice actors as their Adventure/02 and Tamers counterparts, meaning that Patamon had a male voice in the same dub.
    • Italian dubs:
      • The dub of 02 turned Hawkmon into a female, probably to make the comparison with Biyomon more obvious.
      • The dub of Tamers turned Lopmon into a female, like in the English one.
      • The dub of Digimon Fusion turned Sparrowmon into a male. In the sequel series, the same happened with Opossumon... which evolves into the blatantly female-looking Chohakkaimon, but is still referred as a he and speaks with a very masculine voice.
    • The Filipino dub of Digimon Adventure 02 mistook Daisuke's older sister, Jun, for a male (likely because the name "Jun" is commonly a boy's name in the Philippines and because of the rather androgynous body types of most young females in the series) and gave her a male voice actor in her first appearance. All succeeding episodes, however, rectified this, with no explanation at all as to the sudden change in voice gender.
  • Many European translations of Dragon Ball Z initially refer to Zarbon as a woman, and have him randomly change sex in vol 23. Since all of them are based off each other, and none of them bother changing dialogue in reissues of older volumes, the error keeps sticking around.
    • The Filipino dub goes so far as to rename "her" Zara.
    • The Greek dub turns Frieza into a female and casts a female voice actress for her.
    • Technically Puar is this in the English dub, being referred to as "she" a couple times, but in the Japanese version Puar only had Ambiguous Gender and the character was only even confirmed male by Word of God.
    • Dodoria became a woman (granted, with a very deep voice) in the Hungarian dub, probably due to "her" pink color, big lips and feminine-sounding name. Frieza also almost became a female, as his name was at first rendered as "Dermesztina" or "Freeze-Tina", but they switched to the gender-neutral "Dermesztő" ("Freezer") before the character actually appeared, and when he did, he got a male voice. For the record, Zarbon was voiced by a male in this dub, though he softened his voice so much that his gender became indeterminable.
      • Also Korin the cat from the same dub. Not only did he get a female voice, he was also referred to as a woman in the dialog.
      • Korin was also a female in the French dub and the obscure European "Big Green" English dub of the movies.
  • In Duel Masters, the character Shinoji, who is female in Japanese, was given a gravelly male voice in English.
  • Future Card Buddy Fight features the minor character Quinus Axia, who was born male, but identifies as female in the Japanese dub. The localization removes all references to Axia having a trans identity and only refers to them as being male, changing their desire from wanting Drum to be her prince to wanting Drum to be his Buddy (The key card in a deck).
  • More fun with Tokyopop. In his first appearance, Get Backers' obligatory Bishōnen and usually unwilling Crossdresser, Kazuki, was referred to as a bitch, a seamstress, and a she (not that Shido calling him a bitch wasn't hilarious in its own way). They corrected this in his later appearances - good thing, too, since there's a scene where he's both (a) naked and (b) explaining why he carries himself like a girl - and changed his nickname from "Kazuki the Seamstress" to the gender-neutral (and better translated) "Kazuki of the Strings". ADV Films, the company that dubbed the anime version, avoided this by actually watching the series, apparently. The DVD Commentary has a joke to the tune of "Well, as the writer, you make all the unexpected discoveries first..." / "Yeah, and one of the most unexpected is that Kazuki is a guy."
    • Tokyopop also fixed the error in Kazuki's introductory volume for later printings, making the original printings with the errors somewhat of a prize in the fandom, if just for the comedic value.
  • Happens in the English Gag Dub of Ghost Stories, and Played for Laughs like everything else: In the original Japanese, Momoko's hairstylist cousin Maki is a woman. In the English dub, Maki was turned into a Camp Gay man.
  • The first German translation of the Hunter × Hunter manga made Kurapika female. This mistake was corrected when the Dark Continent arc was translated.
  • Certain Inazuma Eleven characters like Fuusuke ("Bryce") and Ryou ("Miles") were changed into girls for the dub. It's averted in the English games though.
  • The initial official English translation of I Think I Turned My Childhood Friend Into a Girl by Seven Seas Entertainment rewrote Hiura, who is a crossdressing boy in the original Japanese manga, into a transgender girl.
  • In the anime adaptation of Kino's Journey, the Japanese dub depicts Kino rejecting all gendering and being explicitly nonbinary/genderqueer, saying that they are neither a boy nor a girl but are simply Kino. In the English dub, Kino is changed to a tomboy, who simply dislikes people patronizingly calling her "little girl" or "little boy".
  • Coo the Owl is male in the Kirby games, but the Japanese version of Kirby: Right Back at Ya! gave Coo a female voice and referred to him as female, while the English version made Coo male to match the games.
  • Most translations of Land of the Lustrous try to perserve the gender ambiguity of the original Japanese by using gender neutral pronouns in place of the leaning-masculine pronouns the Lustrous use (which contrasts their leaning-feminine appearances). The Latin-American Spanish dub of the anime instead uses all feminine pronouns and refers to the Lustrous as girls.
  • In the Brazilian dub of Last Exile, Lucciola was referred to as a girl in the first few episodes (adding to his ambiguous looks, Japanese voice actress and dress-like Guild garments, "Lucciola", pronounced 'Luciola', is very much a woman's name in Portuguese). Later episodes did their darndest to not use gender specific pronouns at all.
  • In Loups=Garous, Ayumi is a girl in Japanese, but is voiced by a male actor in English and referred to with male pronouns, which gets a little bit confusing late in the movie.
  • In the USA-produced Latin American dub of Magic Knight Rayearth, Autozam's commander, Eagle Vision, was changed from a man to a woman. While this played all sorts of havoc with the Love Triangle — turning the gay crush into a heterosexual crush, and accidentally implying Lucy (Hikaru) to be bisexual — many fans of the series thought the strong performance by the actress and the change into a female military commander (with giant mecha and all) yielded a more interesting character overall.
  • Magne from My Hero Academia is a trans woman, but the Italian dub initially used male pronouns to refer to her, correcting it only in season 4 after she is killed.
  • Akira in My-HiME is in fact a cross-dressing girl, but this isn't revealed until well into the series, and the German dub had already given her a distinctly male voice. Whoops. This is made even more ridiculous by the fact that this was a direct-to-DVD dub, which usually serves as an (additional) point of getting the people who already have the fansubs to buy the DVD. Needless to say, the dubbing company did not even care enough to redub the wrongly-dubbed parts after The Reveal.
  • In the Italian and Spanish (and maybe also Greek) dubs of Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch, Villainous Crossdresser Lady Bat was changed into a female. However, in episode 16 the scene of him winking at Coco (complete with hearts coming from the eye) was not cut out. This is funny in Italy if you consider that they repeatedly cut out certain scenes between the Black Beauty Sisters (including that scene when they're about to kiss while singing. Spain kept them). Essentially, they censored two lesbians but they created another one. To make things even more ridiculous, in the Italian translation of the manga, Hanon asks Lady Bat "if you are a girl, then why are you dressing like a boy?" (Of course, in the original manga it was the opposite). Also, hilariously, he actually dresses up as a guy in two late episodes, making "her" a crossdresser regardless.
  • And yet more from Tokyopop! In their translation of Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Astray, primary antagonist Rondo Ghina Sahaku is referred to as "she", "bitch", and "sister". No points for guessing Ghina's gender in the original manga. Their official website even refers to Ghina as "androgynous", which is technically true, but comes off as justification for their mistake. Amusingly enough, the official Japanese website quite distinctly marks Ghina with a male symbol, and voiced adaptations is played by the same person who played Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam protagonist Kamille Bidan - who was himself mocked for having a girl's name. Making it even more confusing is the fact that Ghina has a Half-Identical Twin sister, Rondo Mina Sahaku.
  • In the European Spanish dub of Monster Rancher, Naga is portrayed as female. This is an interesting example since Naga lacks any female looking Tertiary Sexual Characteristics, and he looks like an intimidating muscular monster. This was changed probably because the word Naga sounds female in that language. The Latin American Spanish dub didn't change his gender.
  • Naruto:
    • Yashamaru, Gaara's androgynous uncle that looks like his mother was made a woman in the Italian and Polish version of the manga (though apparently not the anime). Of course, in the versions where he wasn't changed, the only real way to actually know he was male was when either a character referred to him as such (especially the manga, where you couldn't even tell his gender by his voice) or due to his name.
    • Supposedly Shiore, the grass ninja from the Chunin exam that was really Orochimaru in disguise, was changed from male to female in the English dub (he/she definitely did have a female voice actor). This is hard to say, as Shiore said little, was talked about little, and is incredibly androgynous.
    • Incredibly, the decidedly female-looking Kurenai spoke in a male's voice at her first appearance in the first Hungarian dub. The second dubbing team payed more attention.
    • In a few dubs of the anime, notably the Serbian one, Haku is referred to as female and has a female voice actor. Considering what he looks like this was probably intentional.
  • The first run of the Negima! Magister Negi Magi manga mistakenly identifies Kotaro as a girl for a chapter or two. Later reprints fixed this.
  • One Piece:
    • The German manga turned Hachi female in his first appearance. After he showed up again after falling in love with an obviously female Octopus Woman, he was treated as a guy, without any comment. In the anime, the spherical Satori was a woman—what makes this a bit awkward is that Sanji had no problem with cracking Satori's skull.
    • Holy is female in the Danish translation. Though a mistake, it's not the worst gender confusion that could have happened, since his gender doesn't play a role to the story anyways, and you cannot at all tell his gender since he is another of those animals without attributes.
  • Pokémon:
    • In the Chuang-Yi version of Pokémon Adventures, Tate is mistakenly referred as a girl. Strange since the artist drew girls with longer eyelashes than boys and Tate was usually shown standing next to his sister, Liza. Then again they are young Half-Identical Twins and even many gamers thought they were sisters. In comparison, the anime made Tate more masculine looking.
    • Pokémon: Diamond and Pearl Adventure! has an odd variation where Commander Saturn is referred to as female twice on one page, but male in every other instance. It becomes partially understandable when you realize that a few pages earlier he was drawn with broad hips, long eyelashes, and what appeared to be boobs.
    • Pokémon: The Series:
      • In the French dub, the recurring Jigglypuff is a male. Its gender is vague in most other versions.
      • Also, Ash's Chikorita was male in the Spanish dub (and he was in love with Ash...).
      • Melissa from the Kanto League (the Trainer who eventually beat Gary before Ash did) is female in the dub. Not only is HE voiced by a guy in the Japanese version and a woman in the dub, from the side, he unmistakably looks like a guy, even having a masculine Japanese name (Yoshiki).
      • Despite Ash's Staravia's gender being confirmed, he's female in the Czech dub and male everywhere else. It's even confusing where in Jumping Rocket Ship, he encounters what appears to be a Staravia with a girl's bow, as well as falling in love with her, thinking she's real.
      • In many foreign dubs, Pokémon have defined genders, since there are many languages that don't have ambiguous pronouns. A good example is the Brazilian Portuguese dub - there is no "it" in the Portuguese language, only "he" and "she". Therefore, all Pokémon got genders. Usually they went with the everyone-is-male rule, unless the Pokémon showed some attraction for someone of the masculine gender (Chikorita, for example). It's taken to the extreme in the Italian dub, where even Ash's Snivy and Iris's Emolga are referred as males, suddenly becoming females when using Attract.
      • In the Hindi dub, Brock's Happiny was referred to as a male. Happiny cannot ever be male in the games.
      • Hun from The Legend of Thunder special, causing quite a bit of frustration among fans. However, he was never explicitly referred to as a woman in the English dub, he just had a female voice. He is unambiguously female in languages that are loaded with gender-specific words, though.
  • The Korean dub of PriPara changes Leona from a boy to a girl. The reason the students are shocked during his first appearance in this dub, rather than not being a girl, is that she and Dorothy were new students who came from another school.
  • Powerpuff Girls Z:
    • Snake, who was turned into a female named Ivy for the dub due to possessing some powers that would be too Squicky if they were male on female, but apparently work just fine when the attacker is also female. Note that, since this series is based on an American series and the other four members of the Gangrene Gang have the exact same names as their counterparts in the original, this isn't fooling anyone.
    • Used with Little Arturo and one of the Amoeba Boys, who are male in the original American cartoon, but girls in the anime. Arturo was changed back to male in the English dub of Z, but kept his dress and feminine voice.
  • Apparently due to a mistake, Kouhei and Youhei Tanaka from The Prince of Tennis are girls in the Latin American dub.
    • This is especially amusing, considering PoT isn't well-known for girl characters to begin with.
  • In Romeo's Blue Skies, Nikita was a tough little kid who opposed the protagonist Romeo and his group. Although a female seiyu voiced Nikita, it was only near the end of the series that Alfredo exposed Nikita as a girl. Which is fine, except that in the Filipino dub, the network that dubbed the show used a young boy to voice her until the final episode, when a female dubber took over. There was no way to tell the difference until it was too late, anyway.
  • The Latin American dub of Rurouni Kenshin did this to Souji Okita, who the translator apparently didn't realize was a real historical figure.
  • Sailor Moon:
    • Quirky Miniboss Squad member Zoisite was a flamboyant male mutually in love with the more masculine Kunzite (who was dubbed as Malachite) in the original anime, but was changed into the female Zoycite in the DiC dub (and most others) to make their relationship heterosexual, though this was averted in the 2014 VIZ dub, making him male again. At least the voice actress, the late Kirsten Bishop, was competent and gave "her" serious schadenfreude. In France, Zoisite and Malachite were brothers (Mexico went the DiC route and made "Ziocyte" female, but did keep Haruka and Michiru's romantic relationship); in the original manga the two were portrayed to have brotherly affection (if even that, given they barely interacted at all), so this change is probably the least of an alteration. The Swedish dub turned Zoicite into a woman due to the translator thinking he was a woman due to his feminine behaviour and looks and penchant for crossdressing. The Polish dub made him genderless, with a neutral voice and no pronouns!
    • Fisheye was also made female, but it was pretty obvious that the change was made purely as an obligation to appease the moral guardians regarding his cheerful homosexuality; when posing as a fussy primadonna fashion model, "she" throws off "her" shirt, and no one comments on how flat "her" chest is, and no attempt at censorship was made to cover the exposed (if very understated) nipples. The dub DID censor Fisheye's exposed chest on subsequent airings, however the uncut DVDs use the same dub track that the TV airings use, so the uncut dub on DVD shows "her" exposed pectorals while still referring to her as female. Even still, there were several shots that made it obvious that Fisheye was suspiciously flat-chested, giving the impression that dub!Fisheye is trans female or intersex. In the Polish version, before becoming the fashion model, Fisheye announces that "she" will "become a man" for this task, making it look like "she" is capable of changing "her" sex. The real kicker about that one is that Fisheye is capable of changing his sex—or at least some incredibly convincing crossdressing. In one episode where he poses as a ballerina, not only is he an exceptional dancer, but also has some impressive "talent".
    • The German dub kept Haruka and Michiru's romantic relationship (albeit toned-down), but still made Zoisite and Fisheye female. Interestingly, the manga never changes either character's gender. Neither Zoisite nor Fisheye are gay men in the manga either...but they are both deliberately designed to be so androgynous they can easily pass for women. Zoisite in particular poses as a glamorous female scientist in one of his schemes to get the Silver Crystal, and Fisheye is listed in the artbooks as being the circus ball girl. Furthermore, their sexual preferences aren't elaborated on either - Zoisite being a former love interest for Ami in their past lives was scrapped before his first appearance and exists only as a concept in an artbook and some of the musicals. Fisheye attempts to seduce Ami, but only to kill her. And of course, the idea of them being bisexual is never ruled out. The anime clearly chose to run with their androgyny to the point of them being sexually attracted to men, but it didn't invent it from whole cloth either.
    • There had also been several occasions of a character's gender changed for no good reason. Tamasaburo from a filler episode of Sailor Moon S got changed into a girl in at least the Cloverway English and Russian dubs, in the first case due to a very brief crossdressing scene that would have been easier to cut, and Chibi-Usa originally had a crush on him ("cousins", eh?). Zirconia became male in some adaptations, even though she was female in Japanese (supposedly, her obsession with Nehelennia's beauty made her come off as a lesbian but she really IS Nehelennia, or at least the personification of her vanity). Queen Metaria got a male voice in the Russian dub, and was referred to as "King Metallia" (maybe the translators intended to make her a royal couple with Queen Beryl?). The Portugese dub wound up with some very amusing Ho Yay moments when they reversed the genders of the cats Luna and Artemis because of all the plots with Luna falling in love with human men and Artemis' ongoing crush on his owner Minako.
    • What's really hilarious to note about Tamasaburo's gender change is that Rini's crush on him/her remains intact in the dub. Essentially Cloverway, the company that usually tries horribly to hide lesbian relationships, created a new one. Of course, Japanese Tamasaburo looks like this and is voiced by a woman using a grown-woman voice and not a little boy voice. It's easy to miss his gender note  until the very last line in the episode, where "Sailor Tamasaburo" gives his version of Sailor Moon's introductory speech, but "bishojo" is replaced with "bishonen" in his version of the full title.
    • In the French dub, the secret identity of Sailor Uranus has a male voice, which changes to female after transforming. Oddly, their name is "Frederique", whereas the male spelling of the same name would be "Frederic".
    • In the Italian dub, it was claimed for one episode, and one episode only (188), that the Sailor Starlights were calling upon their twin sisters (which raises many unanswered questions), instead of transforming from their male civilian identities as the boy band the Three Lights to their female Sailor Guardian selves. Cloverway worked around it by... never getting the license for the final season (the one the Starlights appeared in). The Russian dub of Sailor Stars left the Starlights as they were (male in civilian form, female when transformed — with two sets of voices, even)... and added the same quirk to poor Haruka, who was voiced by a man in civilian form. The best part is that this change made no sense: Haruka was already acknowledged to be female (and in relationship with Michiru) in the third season, which was translated several years before by a different company; apparently, the new translators were not familiar with the previous translation — let alone the original — considering how many names and spells were screwed up in the transition.
    • Because they aren't targeting youth-oriented television (only video and on-demand which are both intended for older viewers), Viz's new English dub can safely avoid the trope and stay true to the original Japanese characterizations.
  • Saint Seiya:
    • In the first Spanish dub, Pisces Aphrodite is given a female VA and is identified as a female. It is speculated that this was caused by a Viewer Gender Confusion from the dubbers, since Aphrodite is an exclusively female name in real life. The movie dubs and newer dubs for the anime fix this, giving him a male voice and portraying him as male.
    • The first few episodes in the french dub gave Shun a female voice until they realized she was a he.
      • Now taken to the extreme by Netflix. Saint Seiya: Knights of the Zodiac turned Shun female and changed his name to "Shaun", without giving her a mask like all female saints wear. They also flipped the level of androgyny: whereas Shun has long flowing hair and a feminine appearance, Shaun wears essentially the male Saint uniform and sports a mullet.
    • Not to mention Mu, who also got a woman's voice in the French dub.
    • Parodied in Les Chevaliers du Zodiaque : La Série Abrégée who gives him a very male voice and an "Have I Mentioned I Am Male Today" attitude (Pisces Aphrodite's episode hasn't been released yet).
  • In the English dub of Sasami: Magical Girls Club, Amitav's evil counterpart is clearly feminine and referred to as a female. The Japanese dub hints more at it being a guy, which doesn't help because Amitav looks quite feminine already.
  • In Shaman King's Latin American dub, Goldba is given a rather elderly male voice in her first (and brief) appearance in the anime, and is later corrected when she reappears several chapters later.
  • The manga adaptation of Sorcerer Stabber Orphen features a flashback chapter at the end of the last volume, revolving around Orphen and Hartia on a mission for the Tower of Fangs. In the German version, Hartia is inexplicably referred to with female pronouns... even though when he showed up earlier in the series, he was correctly identified as male.
  • Crona in Soul Eater is intentionally of Ambiguous Gender, yet is referred to with male pronouns in the first official English releases of the manga and anime. In both cases, the translators acknowledge that Crona is supposed to be of either gender and admit that they themselves don't know which could be the right one, but because only Medusa has the jurisdiction of calling Crona "it", they had to pick a gender because dodging pronouns would lead to some very awkward sentence structure (Both were translated a few years before "they" became far more widespread as an ambiguous gender singular pronoun). The manga's English re-edition now updates Crona's pronouns to a neutral "they/them".
  • Levin, the androgynous, effeminate mechanic from Tekkaman Blade, was adapted into "Maggie", the androgynous Wrench Wench in Teknoman. Given that Levin's character doesn't distinguish between trans women and gay male crossdressers, this isn't much of a leap.
  • In the Tenchi Muyo! OVAs, the animal sidekick/spaceship Ryo-ohki was referred to with genderless pronouns. Since that didn't translate well, the English dubs just used male pronouns. Which was fine until an episode late in the second OVA revealed that Ryo-ohki was female.
  • Tokyopop made another mess when Quiche ("Kish") in Tokyo Mew Mew referred to Tart as a "witch" in his first appearance. Given the male villains' revealing uniforms, an open top had unfortunate implications, so it's lucky that he was reverted to a boy when they figured it out.
  • Nitro Convoy from Transformers: Galaxy Force became the female Override for the dub Transformers: Cybertron, which stuck with future incarnations of the character. They also did this with a generic motorcycle refugee; her TFWiki.net article even has a link to this page.
    • In the first Hungarian dub (translated from the English version, not the Japanese), Override started out as a male, but no one noticed the weirdness because of the gender-neutral pronouns. Then Bud referred to "him" as a "chick" at one point. The show took a long break without any new episodes airing, and when it continued, Override became female, and other characters also received new voices.
    • In most foreign dubs of the Optimus Prime vs Megatron: The Ultimate Battle DVD special, given away with toy purchases outside the US, Thunderblast delivers a line with a male voice in a shot where she's shown from the back.
  • Twilight Star Sui and Neri's scanlation has Neri being referred to as "she" in the first few chapters, as Neri is actually a male, due to an erroneous mistake in the translation. Subverted in the later chapters, when he was correctly referred to as "he".
  • CLAMP has a thing for genderless characters; the angels in Wish are genderless too, so long as the translated languages had genderless pronouns. Other times Kohaku was referred to as female (Tokyopop) or male (French Canadian?). Confusing the whole bit is the presence of the tightly-dressed cat demons, who look distinct from them and are very clearly female.
    • The Spanish translations of Wish and RG Veda have turned the androgynous characters (Kohaku and Hisui in the former, Ashura in the latter) to feminine, too.
    • Interestingly, Kohaku appears in the Japanese anime for Kobato.. Kohaku's female seiyuu has a VERY feminine voice and the animation is far less ambiguous than the manga artwork.
  • In the Hungarian dub of The Wonderful Adventures of Nils, Akka, the elderly female goose, is voiced by a man. The dub of the series' second half was lost over time due to deterioration, so when these episodes were later re-dubbed, Akka was given a female voice with no in-story explanation for why he became a she.
  • In an episode of Yu-Gi-Oh! Yugi mentions that the card he finds most similar to himself is Maha Vailo, which he refers to as a male (and is dubbed with a male voice when it's used later in the show). In Japanese, however, the creature on the card is female, a fact which Yugi admits to being embarrassed about. (Another clue to its true gender is the fact that Anzu uses it, and her deck seems to be composed exclusively of female monsters.)
    • Zig-zagged with Yubel of Yu-Gi-Oh! GX, a Hermaphrodite monster with a literal female right side and male left side. The dub version altered their design to make them look totally female along with a feminine voice, but also had a younger version of Yubel with a male voice, making them transgender in the dub.
  • The Filipino YuYu Hakusho dub (renamed "Ghost Fighter") is rather infamous for this. Originally, Kurama was thought to be a girl, dubbed by a female voice actor, and named Denise. They hand waved it later, by explaining no, his name's really Dennis and he impersonates a girl while in the human world — then this is, apparently, never spoken of again. Worse was Old Master Genkai, dubbed as Master Jeremiah, and thought to be a man. It must have been strange when he suddenly turned into a Megumi Hayashibara-voiced (okay, not in the dub), pink-haired young girl.
    • The Kurama thing was apparently figured out in a scene where he rips his shirt open, revealing a very flat male chest. Apparently the fact that he's always running around in a BOY'S uniform never caught their attention.
    • Also present in the Hungarian dub: Kurama has a deep-voiced female voice actor and the lack of gender-specific pronouns in the language make it even more ambiguous.
    • There's also the matter of the demon Miyuki of the Triad, the Elite Mooks of the Toguro brothers' gang. In the original Japanese and the unedited English dub, he's a man who crossdresses and is heavily implied to have breast implants (or a woman who was undergoing gender reassignment surgery). In the edited English dub, she's a woman who fakes her injuries so men will feel guilty about beating up a woman and back down just as "she's" about to attack them again. Leads to a nice display of Wouldn't Hit a Girl and Would Hit a Girl in either case.
    • The family jewels have not been stolen.
  • The Hungarian dub of YuYu Hakusho played it straight, turning Kurama into a woman, for at least the entirety of the first season.
  • This was a problem for some time with Zofis (Zophise) in Zatch Bell!. Lack of gender-specific pronouns, a feminine countenance and a female VA in the anime caused many scanlations and fansubs to assume Zofis was female, but Word of God set the record straight - Zofis is male.
  • In Zoids: New Century Zero, Harry Champ's Robot, Benjamin, falls in love with a JudgeMan robot. The dub alters this to be a female JudgeMan, whilst leaving all the others shown male. They could have at least made a couple of the other Judges shown to be the 'female variant'.

    Asian Animation 
  • In the American English dub to The Giant King which is a futuristic adaptation of the fable of Tosakan and Hanuman the Monkey King, Hanuman is changed to female and Sadayu is changed to male.
  • In Infinity Nado, Pandora is a feminine-looking male with a gender neutral-sounding voice. A number of international dubs change him to a female, or to totally genderless with no pronouns.

    Comic Books 
  • When Fawcett stopped producing superhero comics after losing their legal battle with DC, publishers L. Miller & Son, who had up until then reprinted the Captain Marvel stories for the British market, decided to continue with home-produced replacements. For Captain Marvel, British readers got Marvelman, for Captain Marvel Jr. Young Marvelman, and for Mary Marvel ...Kid Marvelman. The editor thought a British equivalent to Mary Marvel would not be as popular with his young boy readers.
  • Lucky Luke's horse, Jolly Jumper, is a mare called Dolly in Greece. It is interesting that this gender change never conflicted with the story or caused confusion and as a result most people in the country consider the horse a female character. ...Until the #73th issue was translated, which was all about Jolly falling in love with a mare. To avoid making 'Dolly' a lesbian, the publishers decided to correct the horse's gender from that issue and onwards. Although to be sure Jolly Jumper's sex was a bit ambiguous to start with. The name "Jolly Jumper" can apply to both stallions and mares, the French generic word for horse, cheval, is grammatically masculine, and Jolly's general visual appearance lacks certain attributes (male genitalia tend to be very obvious in horses), making the horse appear female by default.
    • In the German translations for the Kauka Verlag (1965-1973) Jolly Jumper was the mare Rosa. In later translations for the Koralle Verlag (1972-1978) and Ehapa Verlag (1977-present), Jolly Jumper stayed male.
  • Chlorophylle: The main character is a male mouse in the original Belgian comics and female in all ex-Yugoslav translations.

    Comic Strips 
  • In the Norwegian translation of Peanuts, Woodstock is a girl named Fredrikke (a female name over there, although it has a slightly androgynous feel).
  • In the Finnish language Mutts, Mooch is named Kati, which is a female name. It was probably the translator's decision to have a girl cat paired with a boy dog in the comic. It becomes interesting when later in the comic strip's run Mooch is shown to be romantically interested in female cats. Mooch was never renamed in the translation, so to the readers the character appeared as lesbian.

    Films — Animation 
  • BIONICLE 2: Legends of Metru Nui: In the Polish dub, Nidiki is referred to as a female by Krekka and Likhan. This may have been caused by his name sounding female for Poles.
  • Wreck-It Ralph:
    • In the Russian dub, all of the Sugar Rush racers are referred to as girls, though Rancis (renamed "Slasta") still has a masculine voice.
    • The Dutch dub renames Swizzle Malarkey to "Savanna Sweettooth", changing him from a boy to a girl. Rancis and Gloyd also become girls, and are respectively renamed "Renske" and "Trijn". note 
  • In the original Hungarian dub of The Seventh Brother the Magpie is a male character but in the English version it's female.
  • In the English version of Watership Down the cat is female but in the Italian dub she's a male character.
  • The Dutch film Als je begrijpt wat ik bedoel, an adaptation of the comic strip Tom Puss, features the titular character with a cutesy appearance and female voice but he's otherwise male. When the film was dubbed in English a few years later as The Dragon That Wasn't (Or Was He?), Tom was renamed Kit Cat and changed to female.
  • Transformers: The Movie:
    • The French dub made Starscream and Shrapnel into women. This was due to a change in dubbing studios; the cartoon's dub kept them male.
    • The Russian dub also made Shrapnel female.
  • For some reason, the original German 1967-75 featurette dubs of The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh made Rabbit and Roo females.
  • In the Italian dub of Robin Hood (1973), Tagalong seemingly became a boy rabbit, but is actually never referred to as a boy or as a girl, she just has a male voice actor, and the gender is not specified.
  • The Brave Little Toaster:
    • The German, Polish, Brazilian 1996, Serbo-Croatian, Russian TV and Czech 1992 dubs made Lampy into a girl. (In the Brazilian 1996 dub she's a Tomboy and in the German dub she's a Girly Girl, with the Polish version fitting nicely in the middle). Blanky also counts, because 'blanket' is female in some countries.
    • The Toaster has a gender confusion controversy, causing many fans to think the Toaster is either male or female. Ironically, while the Toaster is referred to as "he" in the movies, "his" voice actress Deanna Oliver calls the Toaster "she" and "her." The gender also varies in several countries, as most dubs have him voiced by women, with the exception of the Latin Spanish, German, Finnish, Persian, Russian, and Serbo-Croatian dubs, which have him voiced by a male actor.
    • The German dub of the sequels inconsistently avert the gender swap.
    • Also in several foreign dubs (ex. Polish, Hungarian, Danish), the 'Mish-Mosh' (a Joan Rivers parody) is male.
    • In the Hungarian and 2nd Brazilian Portuguese dubs, the Hearse in the 'Worthless' segment is female. Also, the Tan Car is female in the Latin Spanish, Russian, and Hungarian dubs, while in the Danish, Icelandic, and Brazilian Portuguese (1st and 2nd versions) dubs, the Wood-Sided Wagon (a.k.a. the Surfer Car) is male.
  • Cera from The Land Before Time is a boy in the Hungarian version... but only in movies II and III. Confusing matters, she's technically seen as a girl in the latter, despite having a male voice.
  • In every foreign dub of Finding Dory, Sigourney Weaver is replaced by a local celebrity, whose gender varies between versions. For example, in Sweden and Hungary, it's a male celebrity.
  • In the Italian dub of Alice in Wonderland, Alice's female kitten Dinah becomes a male kitten named Oreste. This is to make a joke work in Italian. The last syllable of "Oreste" is pronounced the same as "té," the Italian word for "tea," so in place of Alice spelling "c-a-t" to avoid upsetting the Dormouse and the Mad Hatter thinking she's saying "tea," he makes the same mistake hearing the last syllable of her cat's name.
  • In the Telugu dub of The Lion King (1994), Shenzi is voiced by a man making her a male character even though Shenzi is the leader of the hyenas and in real life, females rule the hyena pack.
  • The Chinese film Lighting Dindin has a confusing example with the Deuteragonist Aurora the robot. While he had an unmistakably masculine voice in the original language, the English dub used a Siri-like voice but still referred to Aurora as a "he", only for the dub of the sequel to switch to "she" instead.
  • In the English dub and most other versions of The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Lumalee, who is captured in Bowser's prison and is obsessed with wanting to die, is male. In the Croatian dub (both dubbed and subtitled), he's a female.
  • Ice Age: Continental Drift: The Polish dub changes Precious gender into male and even gives her masculine name "Skarbuś". This makes sense, given that whales are usually depicted as male in fiction, not to mention that Polish definition for whale "wieloryb" has a masculine connotation.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • Madame Rose, the villainess of the Thai film Tom-Yum-Goong, is a transwoman in the original; in the English release, all references to this are removed.
  • Mothra Leo in the Rebirth of Mothra trilogies is a male in the original Japanese dub, but is referred to as a female in the English Dub.
  • Babe the pig, from Babe and its sequels, is originally male, but referred to as female in the Polish dubs, presumably since the Polish word for "pig" is feminine in gender.
  • Ran features a triple literal example, changing King Lear's three princesses into princes. Openly assertive women with a chance of inheriting the throne wouldn't look plausible in medieval Japan.
  • In Napoleon (1995), the antagonist is an unnamed female cat, except in the French dub where he is a male named Mephisto.
  • In at least one Brazilian Portuguese dub of Song of the South, Brer Fox is called Irmã Raposa (Sister Fox), but the character is still voiced by a male actor.
  • In the German and Hungarian Dubs of Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, several female stormtroopers are portrayed as male.

    Literature 
  • In the first .hack//AI Buster novel, Watarai's assistant is made male by Tokyopop. No big deal, just a passing character, right? Ooooooor maybe it's the very female Kamui, the Knight Templar bad guy of Legend Of The Twilight. Handwaved, since the series has documented players playing the opposite gender on a few occasions.
  • Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid features a series of dialogues featuring Achilles and the Tortoise from Lewis Carroll 's "What the Tortoise Said to Achilles." Like Carroll, Hofstadter wrote the Tortoise as male without thinking too much about it (because animals are Always Male). When GEB was translated into other languages, however, such as French and Italian, in which "tortoise" is a feminine noun, the translators made the Tortoise into a female character (Madame Tortue, Signorina Tartaruga). Hofstadter, who had subsequently become interested in the problem of sexism in language such as the male-default for characters in stories, was delighted by this. The episode is discussed in his book on translation, Le Ton beau de Marot.
  • In various translations (such as the Spanish ones) Terry Pratchett's Death from the Discworld series was given female pronouns, usually due to Death being personified as female in many countries (which in turn is because "la mort" is a feminine noun). This has mostly been fixed in the translations of his more recent books.
    • The French translations of the earlier books all feature a footnote pun about Death being male because he's a necessary evil*; the French words for "male" and "evil" sound the same. In later books, though, the footnote is still here, but basically saying, "Yes, Death is masculine. That's just the way it is." In further books, the footnote comments on the fact that the reader should know this by now.
    • The Spanish translation of Reaper Man, faced with Bill Door and his not-quite-romance with Miss Flitworth, had a footnote saying, essentially, yes, Death was female in the early books, but now he's male.
    • The Italian translation zigzagged this trope: earlier translations treat Death as female (for example, in Mort Ysabel calls her "Mommy" and not Daddy), but newer translations (like Reaper Man and Lords and Ladies) treats Morte as a proper noun with masculine pronouns.
    • This also happens with the Spanish translation of the Brothers Grimm's tale "Godfather Death" ("Der Gevatter Tod" in the original German, also masculine), in which it becomes "La muerte madrina" (literally "The Death Godmother" or "Godmotherly Death," since adjectives usually follow nouns in Spanish).
  • In the Italian translation of The Ancestral Trail, the (female) Guardian of Insects Kika was changed to a male.
  • A rare case of this happening within the same language: John Benson's 1640 edition of Shakespeare's sonnets messes about with them considerably, including changing a few pronouns so that the sonnets adressed to the Fair Lord were now adressed to a woman, turning the borderline homoeroticism into straight-up love poetry.
  • The Young Adult version of Clive Cussler's Iceberg removes the fact that one of the female villains is a actually a crossdresser. The other one is a trans woman.
  • In Soviet Russia (and in Russia to this day), as well as in Poland, Bagheera the black panther is female, in both the book and the movie of The Jungle Book. Same with the White Cobra. This particular sex change has probably happened for linguistic reasons: in Russian, nouns that end with the vowel -a are (in most cases) grammatically feminine - such as the word pantera (panther), and the name "Bagheera" itself.
  • Owl ("Sova" in Slavic languages) from Winnie the Pooh is female in Russia and Poland, for similar grammatical reasons. In The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh this was corrected by calling him "pan Sowa" (Mr. Owl).
  • Harry Potter
    • In the Italian translation of the books, the male phoenix Fawkes becomes female, and is named Fanny. Possibly due to the fact - just like the examples above - that in Italian "phoenix" is a feminine word.
    • The unisex named Blaise Zabini was one of the several students mentioned in the Sorting Ceremony in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. In the Dutch version, his name was translated to "Bella". When the character was finally revealed to be male in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the translator corrected his mistake by renaming him "Benno".
  • Alice's Adventures in Wonderland:
    • Following that pattern is the March Hare, who is female in the Spanish version of the novel. A lot of times, when a language does not have gender-neutral pronouns, an animal will be referred to as a "he" or "she" depending on the "gender" of the word of the species if gender is unknown or does not matter.
    • And in most Russian translations, not the Hare but many other male characters become female. When a female Caterpillar ("gusenitsa") smokes hookah, much of the Victorian age spirit of the book is actually lost. There is actually a very good Russian article complaining about this tendency - as it points out, there are a number of possible solutions (such as using the masculine "chervyak", Worm, like Boris Zakhoder did, or "shelkopryad", Silkworm), but alas, few translators bother.
  • There is an infamous Polish translation of Winnie the Pooh (under the title "Fredzia Phi-Phi") which changes Winnie to a girl, since the translator assumed "Winnie" was a shortened form of "Winifred". (Technically, the bear that gave Christopher's toy bear its name was female, but her name was a shortened form of... "Winnipeg", and Pooh himself is clearly referred to as male in the books.)
  • In the 2006 Hebrew Translation of Good Omens, Pestilence (the white Horseman of the Apocalypse before Pollution took over) is referred to as female rather than male. This is because the Hebrew noun for Pestilence ('Magefah') is gendered as female, and all the other Horsemen already have their gender correspond to the grammatical gender of the concept they embody.
  • In the better-known Russian translation for Gelsomino in the Land of Liars, which was also used as basis for the movie adaptation, the Limping Cat that gets accidentally animated by Gelsomino is made female instead of male. The Russian language has a perfectly fine noun for "male cat" with no unusual connotations or anything, but the translators were going for a Woolseyism, since the word for "female cat" rhymes with a word meaning "the limp (female) one", while such a pun can't be created with the corresponding words with the male genedr.
  • The Finnish Cultural Translation of The BFG changes the Queen of England to a male president.
  • Reign of the Seven Spellblades: Carlos Whitrow was explicitly assigned male at birth, but uses the feminine first-person pronoun atashi in the original Japanese, which tends to denote queerness when used by males. The various translations and adaptations have been inconsistent on Carlos's gender identity and pronoun preference. The official Light Novel translation from Yen Press regards Carlos as non-binary and uses "they/them". Crunchyroll's English subtitles of the anime adaptation treat them as an asexual male ("he/him"), while in the dub Oliver briefly referred to Carlos as a "him" in episode 8 (which in context could have just been Oliver's mistake: Carlos wasn't present to correct him), then had Godfrey (Carlos's best friend) use "they/them" in episode 15.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Power Rangers/Super Sentai:
    • When Saban Entertainment adapted Kyōryū Sentai Zyuranger into the original Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, they took advantage of their flexible adaptation method to avert the Smurfette Principle by casting a woman as the Yellow Ranger. They'd repeat this trick in future seasons when necessary: Lost Galaxy, Lightspeed Rescue, Time Force, and Wild Force, were adapted from "Pink (White with Pink accents for Wild Force) is the only female Ranger" Sentais, giving the male Yellow Rangers female counterparts. This is also why those Rangers don't have a skirt like their fellow female teammates, though many of these costumes were given skirts when worn by Luka Millify/GokaiYellow/Gia Moran/Super Megaforce Yellow. This was averted in several other seasons where the Japanese Yellow Ranger was female to begin with.
    • The occasional villain or Monster of the Week has been voiced as the opposite sex of its Sentai counterpart, the most major recent example being Power Rangers Operation Overdrive's Crazar. Also, the Snow Prince was a female Heavenly Saint in the source material Sentai, same reason as Curio, whose Sentai counterpart's gender remains uncertain despite them being voiced by a woman (who even played them in a human disguise in one episode). Similarly, the effeminate young male Kyuemon Izayoi of Shuriken Sentai Ninninger (himself another case of Crossdressing Voices), became the adult woman Madame Odious of Power Rangers Ninja Steel.
    • Behind the scenes, most of the suit actors, including the female Rangers and villainesses, are actually men. The reason the skirts are used is to hide the actor's package. The only time a female suit actor will be used is if the Ranger in question has a rather sizable bust (although more stuntwomen have been employed in recent years, while the cross-cast stunt actors now play mainly non-human villainesses and female monsters, whose armor-like costumes make it easier to hide that extra something).
    • Although Tokumei Sentai Go-Busters wasn't adapted at the time, Amit Bhaumik's proposal for an adaptation of the series, Power Rangers Cyber Corps, would've invoked this trope for the PR version of Beet Buster, having the gold ranger be a 23 year old pop star named Kaya.
    • This has a justification in Power Rangers Dino Fury as Izzy's Kishiryu Sentai Ryusoulger counterpart, Towa, was also a male. In the series, the original Dino Fury Green Ranger was a female with a skirt added to her uniform and this carried over to Izzy when she gained the powers. However, before she goes into battle, she reaches down and rips her skirt off, proclaiming "Skirts... are not my thing." Presumably the Green Ranger was chosen to be made female in America because this season had no Yellow Ranger, and the Green Rangers of some other recent Super Sentai seasons were female in Japan.
  • Space Sheriff Shaider featured a prominent villain named High Priest Poe, who was a male crossdresser. Poe's American equivalent in VR Troopers was a woman named Despera, which naturally caused some problems in certain scenes that used stock footage from Shaider.
    • In the Brazilian dub, the character was named Sacerdotisa ("Priestess") and had a female voice actor.
  • The Indian adaptation of Shake it Up features two boys as the main duo instead of two girls.
  • In Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, the character Dr. Aspen uses they/them pronouns. In the French dub, these are changed to she/her pronouns. Weirdly, when the same company produced the French dub of Star Trek: Discovery, they had no trouble translating Adira's they/them pronouns with iel, a recent coinage that is increasingly widely used by Real Life non-binary francophones.

    Myths and Religion 
  • Avalokitesvara, the (male) Bodhisattva of compassion. He is known as the female Guanyin in Chinese and Kannon in Japanese.
    • In the classic Chinese novel Journey to the West, possibly as lampshade hanging, Guanyin is female but often takes male form when visiting the mortal world so that the ignorant are less likely to bother her.
    • Zigzagged in Fengshen Yanyi with her "taoist self" Cihang Daoren, who later in the novel converts to Buddhism and becomes Guanyin Pusa. In some depictions, Cihang is visibly a man, complete with burly physique and prominent facial hair, but in many others Cihang is female or, at least, very androgynous, alongside the other two Immortals who turn into Buddhas, namely Wenshu Guangfa and Puxian.
    • Actually, looks the Bodhisattva Guanyin has ambiguous gender at least in China (also, see the statues in Buddhist temples in China).
  • Opposite in the case of another Bodhisattva, Ksitigarbha, who is female in the original Indian form, but male Dizang/Jizo in Chinese/Japanese.
  • For Bodhisattvas, who have been reincarnated as both male and female in their many lifetimes, the gender in a particular incarnation is actually not very relevant. They can be (and have been) both.
    • For an exception, though, see Tara

    Toys 
  • In the 2022 reboot of Monster High, Frankie Stein is explicitly non-binary, with the trailer for the live action movie making it clear immediately ("I'm Frankie Stein, they/them"). Since Italian lacks neutral pronouns, they're treated as a female.
  • In the original 90's wave of Tamagotchi handheld devices, Mametchi is male in the Japanese versions and female in the North American versions. His/her physical appearance also varied depending on the regional version (yellow with circular eyes for the Japanese version, blue with thin lines for eyes internationally). Later releases make this more consistent by changing Mametchi to his Japanese gender and design in the international versions of the toys; he's remained like this since.

    Video Games 
  • In the german version of Minion Masters, the Adventure-Master Akaal the Unbroken is referred to as "she/her". Akaal himself is a Slitherbound, an army of Shirtless Captives.
  • Super Mario Bros.:
    • Birdo is confusing. In Japanese, Birdo was transgender and named "Catherine", but prefers the nickname "Cathy". The English manual description says "He thinks he is a girl and he spits eggs from his mouth. He'd rather be called 'Birdetta'." This gave gamers the impression that Birdo was in fact transgender, an impression that has stuck ever since (in fact, several European sources such as the Super Mario Strikers website, Mario Tennis Aces and Super Mario Party still refer to Birdo as male). Several games refer to this while others keep it ambiguous. For example, the somewhat subtle subtext in the Popple/Birdo partnership in Superstar Saga (which has Popple say "This, uh...dame passed my audition perfectly, see?" in reference to Birdo). Was he trying to get rid of Birdo because she was too clingy, or... In the extremely strange Japan-only Nintendo game Captain Rainbow, Catherine is quite clearly transgender, gets arrested for using the girl's bathroom, and gives you quests to help her prove to prospective male dates that she's a girl, including finding a censored item that is heavily implied to be a sex toy of some kind. She is usually portrayed with a deep voice, but in Super Mario Advance she was voiced by a female voice actress. Super Smash Bros. Brawl fudged it a bit by saying that Birdo was "of indeterminate gender", and referring to the "Birdetta" thing. There's also this nugget in Nintendo Power from issue #250 (January 2010)...
      At once a male crossdresser and a female love interest for Yoshi, Birdo is an enigma, and determining his/her gender is one of life's biggest questions. Then there's the fact that Birdo shoots eggs out of his/her mouth-hole thing.
    • Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door: Bonetail is referred to as female in the German, Spanish and Italian versions, and all of the dragons are female in Japanese (having "baba", meaning "old woman" in their names, instead of "tail"). The English version added a Female Monster Surprise with Hooktail who is only ever referred to as "it" or "he" until you meet Gloomtail, who vows to get revenge on Mario and his party for defeating his little sister, whereas in the Spanish localization Hooktail is male.
    • In the German version of Mario Party 6, Brighton is female and Twila is male instead of it being the reverse in every other language. This is because, unlike in most languages with grammatical gender, the sun is considered female in German and the moon is considered male.
    • In Paper Mario: The Origami King, most of the members of the Legion of Stationery are referred to without using gendered pronouns (since, as pieces of stationery, they all obviously lack a gender), with the only exception being Colored Pencils, who is clearly referred to as a male since he has an extended masculine name. As in some languages items are given genders, translations of the game in those languages follow suit. For example, in Italian Colored Pencils, Rubber Band and Sticky Tape are males while Hole Punch, Scissors and Stapler are females.
  • Poison the "punk" girl member of the Mad Gear Gang from Final Fight who later becomes Hugo's manager in Street Fighter III is actually a male-to-female trans woman in Japanese, although most people didn't know that at the time since her sex was only mentioned in the Japanese manuals for the home versions. When a Capcom USA team decided to do Final Fight Revenge, they had Poison develop a romantic interest towards Cody, likely unaware that she was male-assigned-at-birth. The Japanese localization of Final Fight Revenge corrected this by stating that Poison was biologically male, but kept the romantic subtext anyway. When Street Fighter IV producer Yoshinori Ono was asked about this in an interview, he clarified that Poison was pre-op in Japanese, but that she was a post-op transsexual in English, and then changed his mind saying there is no official answer. Poison's convoluted situation inspired a fan-made documentary that tries to clear up the subject.
  • In the Japanese version of Mega Man Battle Network 3, secret boss Serenade is said to be a man that looks like a young girl. The gender is ambiguous in the US version. The Word of God confirms that Serenade is a sort of perfected being without a sex. In the Megaman NT Warrior manga, Serenade is referred to both as "he" and "she". Technically, as a computer program, Serenade wouldn't have a gender.
  • Wild ARMs 2's Caina was originally a boy. However, since he also happened to have a huge crush on Vinsfeld, he had a sex change during the localization. Amusing is how the Strategy Guide just alternates using "he" and "she" when referring to Caina.
  • In the original Bloody Roar, the fighter Fox is a rather masculine woman or a rather feminine man, depending on which side of the Atlantic you're playing on. Fox is male in Japanese, remains male in the American release, but becomes female in the European release. The fact that Fox has a very feminine voice does not help his case.
  • Fire Emblem:
  • In the European and American versions Yuan from Shenmue II is dubbed in a woman's voice and consistently referred to as a "she," despite very obviously being a man in feminine clothing and makeup. Yuan is definitely a guy in the Japanese version; Yuan has a clearly male voice, and is referred to as being a guy. For the European Dreamcast version of Shenmue II, Yuan was redubbed by a female Japanese voice actor.
  • Sonic The Hedgehog: Sally Acorn started as the English version of the tiny squirrel Sonic rescued in Sonic 1, before becoming a princess Freedom Fighter in Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM) (though her bit role in Sonic the Comic predates that). But in Japanese, the squirrel is male and known as "Ricky". He has been reverted back to male internationally since at least the Sega Saturn days, with Sally becoming a seperate character entirely.
  • The German localization of Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals sports Artea as a girl. Maybe the translators were put off by the fact that s/he can put on some equipment that was otherwise exclusive to the two actual girls in the party, like most of the staffs in the game or robes or a freaking bunny suit. Or maybe two Action Girls weren't enough for them.
  • Gracie, Saharah, and Blanca are all male in the Japanese release of Animal Crossing, but are made female in international releases. Gracie was altered due to her characterization taking elements from anti-LGBT tropes in Japanese media, something considered inappropriate for the series' target audience, while Sahara and Blanca were altered simply due to their designs being more traditionally feminine.
  • Mega Man Zero:
    • The character Harpuia looks feminine and has a female voice actor. No pronoun is used for him in the first English game, so many Western players wondered if he was supposed to be a woman. Capcom USA — unaware that the character would soon become more important — basically said "why not?" They realized their mistake before translating the sequels, but for a while it was actually Word of God that Harpuia was female, and many casual players still think so.
    • Cubit Foxtar from Zero 3. The Rockman Zero Remastered CD confirmed him as an effeminate male, but the English translation of Mega Man Zero Official Complete Works he is stated to be female.
  • In Final Fantasy, all classes are supposed to be relatively androgynous, but the Spanish translation of Dawn of Souls turned the White Mages into an explicitly girls-only class.
  • Cupid in Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter also got hit with this; English localisation has Cupid as female, while the Japanese version is (per Word of God) a very effeminate male. This was essentially a lampshading of the implied more-than-platonic relationship between Cupid and Elyon—which was a gay relationship in Japanese..
  • In the NES and the more common English arcade version of Legendary Wings, Michelle Heart and Kevin Walker were replaced with two generic male characters.
  • Ne Zha from Koei's Hōshin Engi series is a male in the Japanese games, but became a female in Mystic Heroes. Might be due to his Dude Looks Like a Lady affair and to add another female to the main cast.
  • Sypha Belnades of Castlevania was mistakenly called male in the English translation of Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse. The text asking the player if they want a character to join their party is shared between all three party members (Sypha, Grant, and Alucard), and while it did not use any gendered pronouns in the Japanese text, it uses "him" in the English version. This was likely overlooked by the translators to save on cartridge space, not helped at all by her mysterious In the Hood appearance that hid her feminine features, though it does set up a surprise reveal for the end of the game (which does explicitly refer to Sypha as female, even in the English translation). Unfortunately, the creators of Captain N: The Game Master most likely never reached the end of the game with Sypha, since she is depicted in one episode as a male Wizard Classic complete with a long Wizard Beard.
  • When translating The King of Fighters dialogue to Spanish for Latin American players, the translators kept reffering to Bao as female.
  • Red in Gunstar Super Heroes is female in English, but androgynous in Japanese.
  • The Russian version of the PC point-and-click game Discworld II turned Death female. Sorta. While the character is consistently referred to and speaks of herself as a female, the character's voice is obviously male (not to mention the translation itself is a voiceover so the original voices are heard in the background). This might have to do with the Russian word for "death" being feminine (see the Bagheera and Owl examples above), but it should be noted that the translated Discworld books properly refer to the character as male.
  • Chihiro from Bushido Blade 2 is a case: clearly female in the original, but given a male voice actor and always referred to as "he" in the translation.
  • Poor Noah in Phantasy Star I. Always supposed to be a man, but the English translation freely flip-flops between using "he" and "she" when referring to him.
  • For some bizarre reason, the section of the English manual for Ōkami explaining some of the game's more esoteric references tries to claim that the game's version of Amaterasu is genderless. Why the manual does this when characters in the English version of the game constantly refer to Ammy as a female (as she is in the Japanese version and, for that matter, the original mythology) is inexplicable. It's possibly due to the fact Ammy openly ogles female characters including most notably Rao, to the point of ignoring Issun's warning because she's literally Distracted by the Sexy.
  • When the Fist of the North Star game for the Sega Master System was released internationally without the license as Black Belt, Souther received a few cosmetic alterations and became known as Rita.
  • The Sega Master System version of Pro Wrestling (which has nothing to do with that one) was a port of an arcade game which featured Dump Matsumoto and captain ersatzes of her AJW rivals that re-skinned everyone into men.
  • In Shadowverse, this happens to a few cards with androgynous appearances. For instance, Angel of the Word has a feminine English voice, while the Japanese voice befits a young boy's.
  • The English translations of Style Savvy changed the flamboyant man Pario into a woman named Rococco. They changed his design slightly to accommodate the change. When he reappears in the sequel in a more masculine and Bishōnen design, the translations opted to change him into Rococco's son.
  • In Hyrule Warriors Sheik is not referred to using any pronouns, making it vague whether the characters see her as a bifauxnen or if they think she is male. In the Japanese version, she is referred to as male. In contrast, Sheik is referred to as female in Super Smash Bros.. In The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Ruto refers to her as a boy in the English version due to her being disguised as male.
  • Before a patch corrected it, final boss Franzer from The Legend of Dark Witch 2 was mistakenly referred to as a male in English. To be fair to the translators, she is very androgynous and her voice is deep enough to easily mistake for that of a younger male.
  • The Spanish version of Age of Mythology has Amanra reffer to herself as a male in some lines of dialogue. This despite everything else in the game reffering to her as a woman, looking like a woman and having a voice actress.
  • Monster Rancher Battle Card Game had Penny become male in the English release due to her crush on the female Cocohino, though the translation does hint at the original version with both characters asking you not to tell anyone.
  • In the English NES version of City Connection, the main character was changed from a girl named Clarice into a generic male greaser.
  • In the Italian translation of Cuphead, Mangosteen and Mr. Chimes are both females.
  • In Taito's arcade port of Left 4 Dead 2 called Left 4 Dead Survivors, Coach and Francis were replaced by a Japanese school girl named Haruka Hirose, which makes it two boys (Yusuke and Blake) and two girls (Haruka and Sara) in one team.
  • Muggy, the miniature Securitron from Fallout: New Vegas's Old World Blues DLC, is called "he" in the ending narration in English, but refers to himself as female in languages that use gender-specific words.
  • When SEGA first released Ninja Princess, it featured a female heroine (a kunoichi) fighting to reclaim her castle from evil tyrants. However, when translating the game for the American market, the game was rebranded as The Ninja or SEGA Ninja, the Player Character was changed to a generic male ninja, and the princess became a Damsel in Distress.
  • Dragon Quest II: While the localized NES version treats Rubiss as gender neutral, one NPC refers to Rubiss as "he" and a "sorcerer", rather than a "sorceress".
  • Resident Evil: Gun Survivor: Morpheus Duvall, in Dead Aim, is presumably assigned male at birth, who looks quite androgynous to start with, is mentioned to have had plastic surgery (though their colleagues at Umbrella put this down to them being vain), and eventually uses the t+G Virus to shapeshift into a feminine-appearing body (breasts, curves, and...high-heel-shaped feet). In the Japanese script, Morpheus alternates between masculine and feminine language when describing themself. In the English translation, they are only ever referred to as "he" and never indicate a wish to be referred to differently. The Resident Evil wiki listed them as male for a long time, then after the Japanese script became more widely known, a decision was made to change all references to Morpheus on the wiki to use they/them pronouns and to list the character as genderfluid.
  • The Battle Cats: King of Destiny Phono is referred to as a "Reina", or queen, in the Spanish translation.

    Webcomics 
  • Stand Still, Stay Silent: This happened to Sigrun Larsen when the webcomic got a French translation. The title card calling her "kind of an ass" was translated into the masculine version of gendered term and the Distant Prologue segment in which she appears lacks any dialogue referring to her gender. While she both looks somewhat boyish and is dead of old age by the time the story proper starts, the in-comic hints that Sigrun Larsen went on to marry her explicitly male friend Aksel Eide and is the great-grandmother of the explicitly female Sigrun Eide are left untouched.
  • The Korean-to-English translators of Tower of God for LINE Webtoon can have difficulties with characters' gender thanks to Korean having no gendered pronouns, and some characters having looks that engender Viewer Gender Confusion. A translator who had forgotten about Hansung "looks like a beautiful woman" Yu from the beginning originally referred to him as a "she" when he appeared on the Hell Train, though that was later fixed (but Endorsi was still left referring to him as a "chick"). Evankhell, who was not seen at the time, was originally referred to as a "he", though who can blame the translators since that was the author's original idea too, but then she appeared in the comic as a not terribly feminine woman... who some time after started getting referred to as a "he" again.

    Web Video 
  • CLW Entertainment: The Gag Dub of Ninja Hattori (here) gives Shinzō a girly voice, despite the character being male. Collin apparently knew almost nothing about Ninja Hattori when he made the dub, which is why he thought Shinzō was female.

    Western Animation 
  • Transformers: Beast Wars:
    • The Canadian/American series has Airazor, a female Maximal who was turned male for the Japanese production. Of course the toy was originally conceived as male too, but they made the pre-production decision to add a female to the cast and Airazor looked serviceable. The fact that the Japanese dub was a Gag Dub doesn't help matters. It also turned out more than a little bit weird that Airazor and Tigatron got paired up just before they got fired into space. (Lampshaded with Rattle wondering what their deal was immediately afterwards.) In the Japan-exclusive Beast Wars: Metals manga, she was changed back to female, but also barely engaged in combat and acted as a subservient fangirl to Tigatron.
    • In one Russian dub, male Waspinator became female Buzzer, possibly because the Russian word for wasp, "osa", is feminine.
  • Bluey: Muffin, Socks, Honey, Bentley, and Lulu, who are all female in English, are all male in the Dutch and Arabic dubs. In the Italian dub, only Socks and Bentley are male.
  • In a case that crosses over with Inconsistent Dub, in the Italian dub of the The Casagrandes episode "Operation Dad" Casey, a male character, is temporarely turned into a female for the simple reason that he appears in a scene where Ronnie Anne and her friends are dressed up as punks, and he's wearing a pink shirt and heavy makeup.
  • In the German dub of Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers, Zipper is sometimes referred as a female.
  • Gobots characters, Crasher, Smallfoot, Spay-C, Snoop, Vamp, and Pathfinder were not female in Japanese, but Challenge of the GoBots convinced fans that they were female in the American storyline.
    • To clarify, Tonka's Gobots toyline was based on models from Bandai's Machine Robo toyline. Machine Robo had its own anime series, but it had nothing to do with Hanna Barbera's Challenge of the GoBots. The Machine Robo anime came two years after Challenge of the GoBots was first aired in the United States.
  • Sakko in Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go!, an evil monkey who cross dresses, has been reported to have been turned female in a few dubs to other countries.
  • Rusty the diesel in Thomas & Friends ended up being female in the US narration of the 2005 series. Hit Entertainment skirted the issue by pointing out Rusty's gender had never been stated - a 1995 article indicates that Rusty was deliberately made gender-neutral, in response to the common complaints of gender bias on the show and its source material. Both The Railway Series books and the UK narration of Series 9 referred to Rusty as male, and the US narration was later re-recorded (and narrator Michael Brandon gave him a noticeably gruffer voice in the next few series).
    • In the Greek dub of Seasons 2-5, Duck is made into a female named "Jackie."
    • In the first Polish dub, Bill and Ben are similarly portrayed as females. The same was true for Bertie the bus.
    • Narrowly averted with Edward in the US dub. He was going to be a female named "Alice" there, but he stayed male when the show officially debuted in North America.
    • Played straight with Rheneas in the Indonesian dub of Season 11.
  • Similar to the Rusty example above, Azrael in The Smurfs (1981) was given female descriptors in the original Spirou stories and Peyo's books. They made Azrael male in the Hanna-Barbera cartoon, but in a bizarre twist, the gender switch was made canon!
  • Poor Tails is not safe from it in the Mexican dubs of Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog and SatAM, which made him female. While the reason for this is unknown, the fact that there is one episode where he's shown crossdressing (complete with the line "I just noticed...I'm a girl!"), so that could have played a role in making Tails female.
  • In the Japanese dub of SpongeBob SquarePants, the Radio DJ in the episode "Krab Borg" is given a woman's voice and speech mannerisms, probably due to his pink shirt and long hair.
    • Likewise, the Dutch dub of "The Krabby Kronicle" has a female fish given a male voice.
  • The Brazilian dub of Avatar: The Last Airbender dubbed Smellerbee as a boy for most of the episodes... then it came the episode when she was revealed to be a girl, so there goes a replacement of voice actor and plot holes. And by the next episode, the male voice actor returns. Confused? It's normal.
  • Spanish-language dubs of Garfield and Friends originally referred to Nermal (whom, for some reason, was Dub Name Changed "Telma") as gatita, the word for a female kitten. It was finally changed in the later episodes. It doesn't help in the English version, Nermal's soft voice and deliberate cute act causes Viewer Gender Confusion. The Italian and Greek dubs did the same.
  • In the German dub of The Ant and the Aardvark (from The Pink Panther cartoons), the aardvark became a female. (A woman with a very deep voice, but still unmistakably a woman.) The aardvark is even called "Die Blaue Elise" ("The Blue Elise" as in Beethoven's "Für Elise")
    • The Pink Panther is female in Spanish, French, Portuguese, Russian and Italian, but the character is still voiced by a male actor in all those languages.
  • In the Latin Spanish dub of X-Men: The Animated Series, Callisto was mistakenly portrayed as a man during her second guest appearance. For her third guest appearance, she was once again voiced by a female voice actress.
  • In both Latin American and European Spanish dubs of Chowder, Ceviche is referred as a girl in the character-introducing episode "The Apprentice Games", but is referred as a boy in later episodes. The character design... well... doesn't help.
  • Kaeloo:
    • The main character, a Hermaphrodite in the original French version, was re-written into a very effeminate, touchy-feely boy for the English dub, likely due to being voiced by a man. This went all fine and well, albeit with a little Ho Yay subtext, until the series hit a cluster of episodes including one that all but confirmed the main character's (current) biological sex as female. Those and later episodes retconned her back into a female, though the already dubbed episodes were not fixed.
    • She was just plain turned male in the Hindi, Italian and Serbian dubs, with dialogue altered to explain away dodgy-seeming scenarios. Apparently, the initial Translator Gender Confusion just stuck.
  • My Little Pony:
    • Essentially all ponies in the first cartoon, except for the six or so Stallions who popped up for one episode, were girls. In order to add more gender diversity to the cast, certain European countries made certain ponies into boys, typically the ponies with lower voices.
    • Generally, in every language that has gender-specific adjectives, stallion toys are referred to with feminine ones.
    • The Polish dub of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic makes both Spitfire (though only in Season 1, thankfully) and Little Strongheart into boys, for no apparent reason. (Granted, they're minor characters, but still...) Owlowicious the owl, on the other hand, is made into a female, perhaps because in Polish "owl" is a noun with a female gender.
    • Not to mention that Polish translation of Big Macintosh's blind bag description says "She's very gentle". For truth's sake it seems that the Polish translator of the blind bags probably didn't know that ponies are also male, as the same treatment was also given in Noteworthy's, Meadow Song's and Chance-a-Lot's colector cards.
    • The Hungarian version plays a very, very big role in this regard, as Derpy Hooves and Babs Seed were changed to males.
    • The Macedonian dub makes Rainbow Dash and Applejack males.
    • The Croatian RTL dub has Mage Meadowbrook in the season 5 premiere being referred to as a male. Justified, as in the original English script her gender is not mentioned and is instead only known in the comics and revealed in an episode from two seasons later, likely leading the translators to assume that Meadowbrook was a male character without supplementary information beyond season 5.
    • The Italian dub of the episode "Discordant Harmony", the female owner of the tea shop is turned into a male.
  • For Bob the Builder, Muck is male in the UK, but female in the American, Greek, Bulgarian, Brazilian Portuguese, Swiss German, and Korean dubs. Also, Scoop is female in the Swedish and Polish dub, Roley is female in the Swedish dub, and Dizzy is male in the Romanian and Slovenian dubs. Lofty is the only machine to always be male in all countries.
  • The Swedish dub of Nature Cat turns the title character into a female cat, whose real name is changed from Fred to Jill.
  • The French dub of Magic Adventures of Mumfie turns Mumfie into a girl, most likely due to the character's pink jacket and the name ending in the very feminine "-ie". But he's male in the 2021 series.
  • In the British children's series, TUGS, the characters of Sunshine, Captain Star, and Little Ditcher were all male. In the American translation, Salty's Lighthouse, all three of these characters became female due to a Dub-Induced Plotline Change.
  • In Ox Tales the turtle is a female in the original Dutch comics called Dollie. The animation's dubs in Japanese and English (and many others) turn her into a turtle called Jack. The Italian dub made her a female again, called Camilla.
  • In the Brazilian Portuguese dub of Dungeons & Dragons (1983), Tiamat is a male dragon rather than female.
  • Adventure Time:
    • BMO is an ambiguous-looking robot, has a small child's voice, takes on different gendered roles while playing pretend without any obvious preference, refers to themself using varying gendered terms depending on the episode (though masculine terms are more common), and has a counterpart in a genderflipped world who is completely identical. However, in the Mexican dub he is given a distinctive male voice and refers to himself exclusively using masculine terms, but any other show of gender ambiguity is kept, making BMO a borderline Camp Gay rather than a genderless machine. Something similar happened in the European and Brazilian Portuguese dubs, with him having a female voice actressthe same one for Princess Bubblegum—in the European one, and a male, childish, and slightly gender-neutral one in the Brazilian one.
    • In the Polish and Russian dubs, Cake the Cat, the female counterpart of Jake the Dog, is referred to as a man and was renamed to "Pie", defeating the idea of the Gender Bender Alternate Universe the character originates from.
    • In the Romanian dub, Cake sounds exactly like Jake in "Fiona and Cake". This is fixed in the other episodes.
    • The Mexican dub gives Me-Mow a high-pitched but still distinctively male voice, and constantly refers to the (originally female) character to with male pronouns.
  • In the original French version of The Owl And Co, the Owl is female. In the English dub, the Owl is male.
  • Crazybolt in the Hungarian dubbing of Transformers: Robots in Disguise (2015) is female.
    • A meta case within America; Strongarm is female in Robots in Disguise, but the character she's based on was originally male.
    • Scatterspike is a male in the Italian dub.
  • In Gormiti: The Lords of Nature Return, at least three Sea tribe characters who were females in the original toyline (Mantra, Ancientjellyfish and Swamptoad) have distinctly male voices. Ancienturtle and Air tribe's Magic Lookout are the only female characters who kept their gender.
  • Marshall and Zuma in the Brazilian Portuguese version of PAW Patrol were dubbed as females in the first and part of the second season. The episodes were latter redubbed using female voices with redubbing of other characters were they refer to them using the masculine pronoun. As some voice actors were changed in subsequent seasons, the redub made some characters have two different voices in the same episode.
  • In the Italian dub of the Teen Titans Go! episode "The Best Robin", the Carrie Kelly incarnation of Robin is referred as a male, probably a mistake since both in the original and in the Italian dub she haves the same voice actor as the other male Robins.
  • In the Tom and Jerry short "Jerry's Cousin", the titular cousin looks rather androgynous and has a name nonindicative of gender ("Muscles"), but clearly has a male voice.note  The Polish dub changes the cousin's sex to female for no apparent reason (and yet still has "her" speak in a gruff masculine voice).
  • Steven Universe's Russian dub is, obviously, rife with censorship. While Ruby was not made male outright, her dub voice is very much ambiguous, something in-between a young boy and a boyish girl. Even the dub's team is conflicted on the matter: while Ruby was once referred to with male pronouns, the team would later say that "all Gems are female" in the context of Ruby and Sapphire's wedding (see below). Interestingly, Alexandrite was also given a male voice, but for an entirely different reason: the dub team did not think that such a monstrous fusion could sound feminine.
    • The writers of Steven Universe seem to be aware of this trope, which may be a reason why, during the episode where they got married, the traditionally feminine Sapphire wore a tuxedo and the usually-masculine Ruby wore a dress, so it would be harder for translators to hide or dub over the LGBT relationship (the Russian media responded by not showing this episode outright).
  • In The Loud House, Lincoln's friend Clyde has two fathers, Howard and Harold. In the Arabic dub, Howard is a woman and given a female voice actress, though "she" looks exactly the same. Luna's crush Sam is also male in the Korean dub.
  • Potato, a female bunny in the original English dub of OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes, is voiced by a male actor and usually goes by male pronouns in the European Portuguese dub of the show. Things like wearing a dress to prom or the montage with K.O. are not edited out.
  • She-Ra and the Princesses of Power: The non-binary Double Trouble is changed to male in the Polish dub. The German sub avoids pronouns while the German dub uses male ones as well. In the French and Spanish dubs, they're a female, most likely because gender-neutral pronouns such as "iel" have yet to be fully recognized in the former language.
  • Some characters in 64 Zoo Lane have different genders in the Greek dub, mostly to fit with their nouns' gender. For example, Molly the Hippo is male, while Zed the Zebra and Boris the Bear are female.
  • In the Danish, Polish, European and Brazilian Portuguese dubs of 101 Dalmatian Street, Da Vinci's gender was changed to a male. The first and last of these changed her back into a female for "Doggy Da Vinci".
  • The Amazing World of Gumball: Leslie is a boy, but he can easily be mistaken for a female due to his name, being a pink flower and frequently hanging out with girls, which resulted in him being treated as a girl in several dubs, despite characters referring to him with male pronouns. As of Season 2, this was undone in all dubs, due to the episode "The Flower" being entirely about Gumball getting jealous of Leslie, a boy, hugging his crush.
  • Miraculous Ladybug specifically has to deal with this in regards to the Kwamis, the gender of which tend to vary across multiple dubs (aside from Tikki and Plagg, who appear on a regular basis). For example, Nooroo is male in the English and French dubs, but female in the Korean and Mexican dubs.
  • The Owl House: The non-binary Raine Whispers has run into this problem in multiple different dubs, largely due to many languages lacking a neutralnote  grammatical gendernote . Here are a handful of examples, although there are probably even more than that:
    • They are made male in both Spanish dubs. This could possibly be because gender-neutral pronouns don't really exist in Spanish.
    • Originally, the Thai dub had Raine referred to as a male, but only because the dubbing team wasn't aware that they were non-binary. After receiving backlash, the dubbing team plans to rectify its mistake in the future.
    • The Danish dub, where Raine is voiced by a male voice actor (Simon Nøiers, who also voices Amity's brother Edric in the same dub), changes Raine's name to "Rainer", which is a boy's name in the regionally adjacent German language, and the character is actually referred to with a masculine pronoun in one sentence uttered to them by Eda in "Eda's Requiem":
      • Original
        Eda: So, the Head Witch of the Bard Coven likes pretending to be a rebel. Too bad they're not very good at it.
      • Danish
        Ida: Så, hekselederen af skjaldecirklen vil gerne lege, at han er oprører. Synd, at det er ikke gået særlig godt.Translation
      • However, later season 2 episodes fortunately avert this trope in the Danish dub, as outside of that aforementioned instance, Raine is always referred to with the Danish pronoun "de", which may be grammatically awkward, but is gender-neutral and in this case a very literal translation of the singular "they" pronoun used for the character in the original English version.
    • The Italian dub, unable to use any gender-neutral pronoun, takes an alternate way by giving Raine a male voice but using female pronouns.
  • The Polish dub of Animal Stories took an unusual route to avert this. Each episode features a different animal with a specific name ("Trevor the Frog", etc.), which in the Polish language runs into the aforementioned "gendered animal name nouns" problem. The dubber got around it by replacing the species names with made-up neologisms of the correct gender. For example "Trevor the Frog" would sound awkward when translated to Polish, because żaba ('frog') is a feminine noun. The dub translates "Frog" as the non-existent word żab, which has a masculine form.
  • Space Goofs: The Latin American dub of Season 1 made Candy female, but they reverted him back to male when Season 2 was dubbed.
  • Transformers: EarthSpark:
    • Frenzy, a traditionally male character who was made into a girl for the show , is a boy in the Hungarian dub. Also, Nightshade has dissociative disorder rather than being non-binary, as the "they/them" pronouns would make no sense in this language otherwise.
    • The Italian dub initially solves the issue with Nightshade's gender identity by just claiming that they "don't identify in any gender", and they're referred to with no pronouns whatsoever for the remainder of the episode since there's no equivalent to "they/them" in Italian. Subsequent episode keep doing it as much as possible, albeit they're sometimes referred to with male-coded words when it's impossible to do otherwise.
  • Samson and Sally depicts the adult whale who takes care of Samson as his mother, but the original Danish dub depicts the whale as male.
  • Franklin: Beaver and Skunk, originally female, were turned into boys in the Polish dub, because their Species Surnames have the male gender in Polish. Mr. Owl was turned into a female teacher for the same reason.

Alternative Title(s): Dub Gender Change

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