History Main / TrollingTranslator

* ''ComicStrip/MadamAndEve'': When the Andersons ask their housekeeper Eve to give them African names, she renames Mother Anderson ""Ugogo We Sixhwele,"[[note]]Old Woman Who Drinks Lots Of Gin[[/note]] and Gwen becomes "Ingoco Ne Vila."[[note]]She Who Is Cheap And Lazy[[/note]] The madams ''love'' [[AsLongAsItSoundsForeign their exotic-sounding names.]]

* Creator/TrevorNoah pulled this on ''himself'' while presenting at the 2019 UsefulNotes/AcademyAwardsCeremonies. Making a joke about viewers who thought Wakanda from ''Film/BlackPanther'' was a real African country, he said, “Growing up as a young boy in Wakanda, I would see T’Challa flying over our village, and he would remind me of a great Xhosa phrase: ‘Abelungu abazi’ uba ndiyaxoka,’ which means, ‘In times like these, we are stronger when we fight together than when we try to fight apart.'” It wasn't long before real Xhosa speakers gave away the punch line: The phrase in question actually means "[[spoiler:White people don't know I'm lying]]"!

* In a 1987 sketch on ''Series/SaturdayNightLive'' Kevin Nealon plays a translator live-translating a joint press conference by UsefulNotes/RonaldReagan and Gorbachev, but he doesn't speak Russian very well. To cover Nealon "translates" Gorbachev saying "I'm now going to start speaking in a very obscure Russian dialect that very few have ever heard of and it will be impossible for your translator to translate." (paraphrased.)

* In ''LightNovel/ACertainMagicalIndex'', the English Laura Stuart asked Motoharu Tsuchimikado to teach her Japanese, but he deliberately taught her wrong because he enjoys screwing with people. This leads to her humiliating herself when she tries to speak Japanese.

->'''Starla:''' [=OMG=], I literally don't give a shit if you can speak Spanish, FC. You're not impressing anyone and I'm not gonna translate it.\\

'''Fuck Cares:''' No, I didn't. I said that Latinos born in the [=USA=] can barely speak Spanish in the first place, so they have no authority on this debate.\\
'''Bowl:''' I just translated that and [[BlatantLies it's French for "Like, really really fat. And ugly."]]

* In ''Machinima/RedVsBlue'', Lopez tricks O'Malley into calling himself a ''pendejo'' (asshole in Spanish) among other things, thinking that he's giving orders to his robot army. The fact that O'Malley is an AI (i.e. as much a computer as Lopez) should have allowed him to translate it. Then again, he's a crazy AI, so he might not bother.

-->'''Charles:''' What about El Baboso, The Dagger?\\
'''Jake:''' Yeah, turns out Rosa was lying about that. El Baboso actually means "the slug."\\
'''Rosa:''' Ha ha, tonto. That means "dumb-dumb."\\
'''Jake:''' It was very cruel. I referred to myself as El Baboso to several beautiful Latina ladies.

* Lexi orders a [[TranslatorMicrobes Babel Finch]] by mail in ''Webcomic/LatchkeyKingdom'', but recieves a Babel ''Funch'' instead, a large seabird who is incredibly rude and says whatever it wants under the guise of translating for her.

'''Bowl:''' I just translated that and it's French for [[BlatantLies "Like, really really fat. And ugly."]]

'''Bowl:''' I just translated that and it's French for "Like, really really fat. And ugly."