Sandbox / "Blind Idiot" Wick Check

"Blind Idiot" Translation has an extremely misleading name, which gets it confused with tropes like Translation Trainwreck a lot. However, it's actually a victim of Trope-Namer Syndrome — "Blind Idiot" Translation is about overly literal translations that don't understand the context behind what's being translated or don't use correct grammar, resulting in the translation being pretty "off", but not even necessarily bad. The trope namer in this case is how the phrase "out of sight, out of mind" mutated through various translations into Chinese and English. It doesn't mean, like so many assume, that the translation is done by a "blind idiot".

50 wicks will be checked, potholes bolded, entries alphabetized by namespace.

Wicks: 50/50

Results:

• Correct, Noncomplaining: 10/50, or 20%
• Correct, Complaining: 2/50, or 4%
• General Bad Translation: 15/50, or 30%
• ZCE: 13/50, or 26%
• Other: 10/50, or 20%

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Correct — Noncomplaining (10/50)

1. Anime.Dragon Pilot Hisone And Masotan: The Latin American Spanish dub suffers of this quite a bit, due of the translator's likely ignorance on military terminology: No idea what these examples are saying but I guess they're using the trope right?
   • Kakiyasu is addressed in Spanish as Jefe de Escuadrilla (Squadron Leader). While technically the name is correct, due to likely to either the translator used the same script used for the European Spanish dub or also because the translator maybe assumed the Latin American dub would be used there, the term "escuadrilla" is used almost exclusively in Spain, while Latin America uses "escuadrón" instead.
   • The Latin American Spanish name of the series suffers of this, as it was named as Pilotos de Dragon: Hisone & Masotan^note Pilots of the Dragon: Hisone & Masotan. Since the name is written in plural tense (assuming, of course, it was refering to Hisone exclusively), the correct translation should be "Pilotos de Dragones " instead, or "La Piloto del Dragon" when talking about both Hisone and Masotan.
2. Anime.Re Main: In-Universe example: Jojima has "Yamanami Water Ball" in English printed on the back of their team jerseys.^note "Suikyuu", the Japanese word for "water polo", uses the characters for "water" and "ball." Eitaro, however, points out three times that the sport is called "water polo" in English, not water ball. In-Universe
3. Film.Dog Day Afternoon: The LGBT slogan "Out of the closets and into the streets" is translated into Dutch as "Uit de toiletten, in het licht" (Out of the toilets, into the light).
4. Film.Smokin Aces: Darwin Tremor's text tattoo is an opening line from 'Mein Kampf'. It is translated very poorly however (possibly by an automated translator) and 'Braunau-am-Inn' (Hitler's birthplace) is rendered as 'Braunau-auf-der Gasthaus' ('Gasthaus' is German for 'inn'). May be justified though, because Darwin might have done the translation himself. Possibly in-universe
5. LetsPlay.Spike And Barley Play: lindIdiotTranslation: Colina's developer was Portuguese and the game was poorly translated into English. The reading of the notes was at first frustrating to Barley but then this happened:
   Barley: "I heard a horrible noise in the room dinner!" HAAHAHA! The "room dinner"?!
   Spike: I think they meant dinner room!
   Barley: It's not even dining room.
6. VideoGame.Dot Hack GU: Multiple instances:
   • The English version of this game makes plenty of mistakes on whether something is singular or plural. These translation errors make sense if one has studied Japanese because the Japanese language requires that the writer consider the context of the noun in question to determine if something is singular or plural, while English requires the writer to explicitly choose singular or plural when writing unless the writer chooses to be very wordy to say that the noun can be either singular or plural.
   • Kaotin in the Shadows is the same PK as Kaochin from .hack//SIGN. This is a case of two inconsistent but valid Romanizations in the franchise that is a case of Spell My Name With An S.
7. VideoGame.Magic Pengel: Presumably 'by mistake, the vegetable shop has a sign saying "Flesh", the fish shop has a sign saying "Flesh Seafood", and the bakery is called "Fluffy bakely".
8. VorkosiganSaga.Tropes A To I: In Diplomatic Immunity:
   Fourteen languages were handled by nineteen different brands of auto-translators, several of which, Miles decided, must have been purchased at close-out prices from makers going deservedly belly-up. [...] The fourth iteration of ["Ask Sealer Greenlaw"] was finally met with a heartrending wail, in chorus, from the back of the room of, "But Greenlaw said to ask you!", except for the translation device that came up a beat later with, "Lawn rule sea-hunter inquiring altitude unit!"^note I.e. '[green] [law] [sealer] [asking] [miles]!'
9. WarriorCats.Tropes 0 To G: An error in the Traditional Chinese translation has caused Blackstar to have black claws instead of black paws. Apparently, they've also referred to Hawkfrost as Brambleclaw's older brother (he's really his younger half-brother), among other minor errors.
10. WesternAnimation.Speedy Gonzales: In "The Pied Piper Guadalupe" one of the mice carries a "Loco El Gato" sign. This is a wrong translation of "Crazy Cat", reading "Crazy The Cat" (O rly?). It should have said "El gato loco", or, even better "¡El gato está loco!" ("the cat is crazy!") or "¡Qué gato tan loco!" ("what a crazy cat!").

Correct — Complaining (2/50)

1. Anime.Twin Princess Of Wonder Planet: The show's official title in English is Twin Princess of Wonder Planet, which is shown on the first Eye Catch as well as TV Tokyo's English website. "Twin Princesses" is the grammatically correct term. Since Japanese doesn't have any plural markers for its nouns, you'd let them off for that and expect the title to be corrected later on — but nope! Be it the manga licensed in English by Chuang Yi, or licensed in European countries, the same title was still kept!
2. Characters.Blazing Souls Accelate: I guess these count, but they're so hostile...
   • Liza's name is translated here as Leeza. And this isn't even the worst of Aksys' translation trainwreck.
   • Just look at his in-game name^note Aksys literally translated the romaji directly from the kana and left it like that.. His first dialogue with Jadore also has a massively glaring one where he refers to the Demon Prince as Janice's son. Seriously.

General bad translations (15/50)

1. DarthWiki.Headscratchers: Potholed as "Translated by Blind Idiots" in one reply
2. Funny.Rank 10 YGO: He introduces Over the Rainbow with a terrible and pained singing of "Over the Rainbow". When Google Translating the text for Over the Rainbow to verify that it only works for Rainbow Dragon and Rainbow Dark Dragon (rather than any "Ultimate Crystal" monster), it somehow managed to turn "Gem Beast" into "Big Bears"
3. Horrible.Anime And Manga: All this is topped off by an incredibly rushed production schedule, resulting in English scripts full of mistranslations and lines that don't fit the onscreen action, making the already confusing story nigh-incomprehensible.
4. Music.Nogizaka 46: Miona Hori and Maaya Wada attempt to translate what Yuri Kitagawa says in episode 192 of Nogizaka Kōjichū.

   Yuri (in English): My favorite food is tomatoes, but I also like bread.
   Miona (in Japanese): My maid's name is... Palaio?
   Maaya (in Japanese): My favorite food is... humans.

5. Podcast.Power Pros: Every episode ends with Hoff doing a reading from old video game boxes, badly-translated eShop descriptions, or even actual Nintendo Power issues.
6. TabletopGame.Twilight 2000: The quality of the small bits of Polish included in the scenarios is just plain horrible.
7. VideoGame.Abalaburn: The introduction English text in the opening and the beginning of each character story mode is very poorly translated and awkwardly worded.
8. VideoGame.Monster Rancher: Various games across the series have had translation quirks, but the standout is probably Battle Card for the Game Boy Color—the whole thing is a mess of pea-souper Engrish.
9. VisualNovel.Divi Dead: Some of the most obvious problems:
   • Changing the twins' last name from "Itsukino" to "Seino" for no discernible reason, and then keeping the dialog which mentions their last name being related to the moon. With the original last name and basic knowledge of Japanese or Sailor Moon, it makes sense. Otherwise, no.
   • Dropping all honorifics, but maintaining several conversations in which characters discuss each other's use or non-use of them. When everyone is calling everyone else by first names, it makes no sense to suddenly flag one character as being unusual for doing so.
   • Translating "miko" as "angel", resulting in dialog in which someone comes from a "family of angels", which gives totally the wrong idea.
   • Probably intentionally mis-translating (or outright replacing with ellipses!) certain scenes and lines for censorship purposes.
   • All in all, between the Mind Screw plot and the extremely confusing translation, understanding what's going on at any point is very difficult.
10. VisualNovel.Kira Kira:
    • Not particularly egregious, but the translators have a habit of misspelling the characters' names. Kashiwara probably gets the worst of it.
    • There's several references to a band called "The Crash." While such a band does exist, considering the heavy emphasis on early punk bands they probably meant The Clash.
11. WebAnimation.Pretty Blood: The subtitles are so badly translated from Thai to English that some of the video's plots are completely incomprehensible.
12. Webcomic.The God Of Highschool: The official English translation has several grammatical errors, though it does get better. Some sections are physically painful to read and you may get a migraine trying to parse the broken English by chapter 10. It does indeed get better later, but it's a good idea to turn your brain off and just enjoy the pretty fights for the first 50 chapters or so.
13. WebVideo.Barshens: The Google Translate Quiz, where Ryan ran famous film quotes through Google Translate into Japanese and then back into English. Barry and Stuart try to guess the original quote and the film. The strangest results include "Yeah, my grandmother!" ("Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker!" from Die Hard) and "Why are you leaving, half a bunch of frightening hawks, relying on half!" ("Why, you stuck-up, half-witted, scruffy-looking nerf herder!" from The Empire Strikes Back).
14. WebVideo.Jon Tron: The translated version of Clock Tower, Titenic, and the Plug and Play games are all explicitly this.
    Jennifer: [looks at a window] It's a swimming pool.
    Jon: Actually, that's a window!
15. YMMV.Guardians Of The Galaxy 2014: The movie was poorly received in China, mostly due to the atrocious translation job done with the Chinese subtitles.

ZCE/random wick (13/50)

1. Characters.Medaka Box: Similar to Kanaino except her version breaks the kanji into nonsense phrases a la "Blind Idiot" Translation.
2. Fanfic.Castlevania Nocturne Of Ruin: The discrepancies of "Orlock" as spoken out loud and "Olrox" in Charlotte's Bestiary.
3. Fanfic.Hop To It: A lot of the French dialogue apparently falls into this, thanks to Google Translate, though some of it has since been proofread.
4. Film.Fish Story: In-Universe, the book that inspires the titular song.
5. Manga.Area 88: The trio of African mercenaries who specialize in hunting down deserters is known as the "Escape Killers". One speculates they actually mean "Escapee Killers" but it still sounds awkward. This is probably why the VIZ/Eclipse translation just decides to call them "The Enforcers". Doesn't mention translations at all until the end, so it's unclear where the error originates.
6. Manga.Ikki Tousen: Likewise, official English descriptions of the series claims that main character "Sonsaku", whom the entire non-Japanese-speaking world knows as "Sun Ce", is the "reincarnation of a person named "Sho Haou". Which is borderline "Blind Idiot" Translation. Very complainy but it's going here since IDEK what the error is
7. Pinball.Spy Hunter: The upper-left region of Saturn 2 is named the "Combact Area".
8. Recap.Qian Qiu: Note: The subtitles have made several "Blind Idiot" Translation mistakes and has left plenty of nuances Lost in Translation so official or not, it is unreliable and it is not advisable to refer to the subtitles for either naming the episodes, quoting the characters' dialogue, referencing any terminology pertaining to the adaptation's setting, or anything in between. An invisible page note
9. Series.Hero Corp: Mique can read thoughts, although approximately, resulting often in "Blind Idiot" Translation.
10. Trivia.Tomodachi Life: An English fan translation exists for Tomodachi Collection. It's incomplete due to things other than Miis' speech still being in Japanese (which is said to have been one of the biggest things preventing Nintendo itself from localizing the game), however, such as how only text was changed (since building labels contain graphics, they're still mostly in Japanese) and the text often reads like a "Blind Idiot" Translation.
11. VideoGame.Rockman 4 Minus Infinity: Although PureSabe did admit his bad English skills in the English readme file. The 0.02 and 0.97 releases lampshade this — the language select option has "Japanese" and "Engrish," with a real English release stated to be coming soon.
12. YMMV.Pathologic: True Art Is Incomprehensible: The opinion of many who don't get the story. This may be a side effect of the "Blind Idiot" Translation of the original release.

Other/Unsortable (10/50)

1. Anime.Gravion: The very first episode features the infamous "Status Clitical" emergency screen. Just seems to be a typo
2. Characters.Tears Of Themis: There are still remnants of the first translation draft, as he is called 'Robin' in some earlier lines. Incomplete translation
3. Creator.Seven Seas Entertainment: Seven Seas Entertainment have received push back on removing queer-centered passages of text from series featuring queer characters with I'm In Love With the Villainess, and also frequently translate Japanese text with misinterpreted subjects and other errors. The first part is just censorship, the second might count but I can't put it in either of the correct folders...
4. Fanfic.Legolas By Laura: It isn't one because it was originally written in English, but it really does read as if it was. "Mean while Gandalf is have a fun time trying to distory the dark lord"? It's just bad grammar
5. Film.The Prophecy: The movies treat "Nephilim" as a singular. In reality, it is the plural form of Hebrew naphil (a fallen one/giant). That said, most pieces of fiction that use nephilim make the same mistake. Is it a translation error, or just a common misconception?
6. Literature.Wild Cards: "Nur Al-Allah" is ungrammatical in Arabic, it should simply be Nur-Allah; and "Sayyid" does, technically, translate as "master" but it's also the common form of polite address, roughly equivalent to "mister" in English, which doesn't make for an imposing Ace name. This isn't a translation of anything, it's just bad foreign grammar
7. UsefulNotes.Julius Caesar: Broadly the difference between "The die is cast" and "Let's roll the dice", i.e. the Latin translations "alea iacta est" or "iacta alea est" from "anerriphtho kybos". The more proverbial and famous "The die is cast" presents Caesar as decisive, commanding, authoritative, and fully aware that Nothing Is the Same Anymore. The latter phrase, "Let's roll the dice" presents Caesar as cautious, hopeful, uncertain as to what might happen, and see it as an acknowledgment that he's acting as and when the situation advances and develops. More recent historians favour "Let's roll the dice" because they see it as more consistent and typical of Caesar's moderate bridging factions approach, emphasizes the contingent element, and removes the idea of inevitability that was more appealing to Suetonius (whose 12 Caesars is obviously favorable to a direct continuity from Caesar onwards) but which modern historians don't agree with. Historians have also noted that simply changing the tense in Latin from est to esto makes it mean the same as the Greek. Just a paragraph about historians disagreeing on what Caesar would've said back then...
8. VideoGame.Bravoman: Dr. Bomb has a weird Scottish/Russian-esque accent, while still speaking in exaggerated Japanese Engrish I... Engrish is already a trope...
9. VideoGame.Codename Panzers: While the games generally have good English barring some typos, during Phase One, characters tended to refer to ALL tanks as Panzers. Germans calling the BT-7M a "Damned Russian Panzer", British soldiers calling the Tiger tank the "Tiger Panzer", etc. Justified for the Germans though, since it's their word for tank. This doesn't necessarily feel like a bad translation, rather than a weird quirk
10. VideoGame.Time Crisis: The arcade release called the hero Croad McGalain and one of the bosses Eddy. The PlayStation 2 version fixed them into Claude McGarren and Edge, respectively. Is this a translation issue, or just a weird thing the translators decided to do?

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Checking overlap. Are there enough standalone examples of "Blind Idiot" Translation? How many examples are not also Translation Train Wreck and Lost in Translation?

Using this post as guide

Wicks: /50 picking only trope-list examples from work namespaces

• 17/50 solely "Blind Idiot" Translation not used in-universe

1. Animation.Feng Ling Yu Xiu: * "Blind Idiot" Translation: The Fan Sub name for the series, Spirit Wind Elegance, doesn't convey that the Chinese title is a play on the leads' names.
   • Lost in Translation

2. Animation.Son Of The White Horse * "Blind Idiot" Translation: The official English subtitles of the 2020 release contain some deliberate and accidental mistranslations.
   • When the White Mare gets pregnant for the third time, the dragons threaten the snake keeping her captive that they will kill it if it lets the third son escape. In the subtitles, the dragons talk to the Mare instead, telling her she won't have enough milk to raise her son, probably because the translator misheard "ha te evvel" (if you [can't deal] with this) as "a tejeddel" (with your milk) and reinterpreted the rest of the line from there.
     • None of the three
   • The subs add that Vasgyúró tempers iron in a forge, yet there is no forge to be seen, he's just sitting beside a stream to cool the iron with.
     • None of the three
   • The griffin father is strangely referred to as a "she" in the subs.
     • None of the three

3. Anime.Anime Gataris: * "Blind Idiot" Translation: A lot of the content for series within the series changes spelling depending on the episode, potentially losing the reference in translation:
   • Ru:Zero is spelled as Roux:Zero at least once in the subtitles.
     • Lost in Translation / ZCE
   • The "useless goddess" of AnoSuba is written as "Akina" in the episode 6 subs unlike episode 5's more faithful "Aquina" spelling.
     • None of the three. This is Inconsistent Dub

4. Anime.Bt X: *** "Blind Idiot" Translation: In the Spanish localization, however, B't was turned into Beta, deleting any meaning of the original name.
   • Lost in Translation

5. Anime.Cross Ange: * "Blind Idiot" Translation: The word "Assault" for Assault Mode in this series is spelled as "Assult". This is both present in "The Fallen Imperial Princess" and "Villkiss Awakens". It gets fixed in later episodes.
   • None of the three

6. Anime.Devil Survivor 2 The Animation: * "Blind Idiot" Translation: The official subs mistakenly translated Ja'aku Furosuto as Jack Frost. That demon's name is "Black Frost" in the English games to preserve the "Jack"-ja'aku/"evil" pun. As such, his Race was also mistakenly assumed to be Fairy instead, despite the voiced line literally saying it was Jaki. This error was also present in the dub.

7. Anime.Gravion: * "Blind Idiot" Translation: The subtitles can read like this sometimes.
   • —->"You son of a bitches!"
   • "I will revenge!"
     • None of the three

8. Anime.Kirby Right Back At Ya: "Blind Idiot" Translation: Non-4kids example: The subbing team butchered the names of Sir Arthur's companions into nonsensical gibberish (e.g. Lancelot was translated as "Nonsurat"). The subber responsible did not realize her mistake until nearly a decade later, and admitted that she should have known better that a group of knights led by someone named Arthur would be named after other Round Table members.

   • Lost in Translation

9. Anime.Stellvia Of The Universe: * "Blind Idiot" Translation: "Does it make answer? ... It records. After a dial tone please message" on a video mail system. Made even more jarring as it comes about five minutes after a screen showing "See You Next Year!" in seven different languages... none of them Japanese.
   • Translation Train Wreck?

10. Anime.Tiger And Bunny: "Blind Idiot" Translation: A couple of the episodes subbed by Hulu suffer from this. One was hastily typed and full of misspellings and missed spaces, and two more go so far as to leave half of the dialogue completely untranslated. Fortunately, some of these instances were corrected after a while but not some of the mistranslations which lead the fandom to believe that Barnaby took on the name of his deceased father after his parent's murder (when Barnaby was his birth name) and that Pao-Lin wanted a boy to notice her when it was just people in general. It doesn't help that some of these mistranslations have been included in the dub, such as the above spoiler.
    • None of the three

11. Anime.Twin Princess Of Wonder Planet: "Blind Idiot" Translation: The show's official title in English is Twin Princess of Wonder Planet, which is shown on the first Eye Catch as well as TV Tokyo's English website. "Twin Princesses" is the grammatically correct term. Since Japanese doesn't have any plural markers for its nouns, you'd let them off for that and expect the title to be corrected later on — but nope! Be it the manga licensed in English by Chuang Yi, or licensed in European countries, the same title was still kept!
    • None of the three

12. Anime.Xamd Lost Memories: * "Blind Idiot" Translation: Sony has always used bad translations, but Xam'd is one of their worst. Complete with typos, the context is often off, and sometimes an important term (even one that's the episode title) gets translated differently with each use, severing story connections. Not surprisingly, a frequent complaint for the series is that the plot is nonsensical.
    • "One more red mark (akaboshi) and I'll get disciplinary training." -> "Akaboshi's disciplinary committee's coming by again!"
    • "Don't be stupid. We purged those a long time ago." -> "Don't even joke about that. I don't want to be purged..."
    • "It's a 3 hour wait at the military hospital. You'd be long dead before the examination." -> "They always glare at you before examination."
      • Lost in Translation

13. ComicBook.Blake And Mortimer: "Blind Idiot" Translation: In The Secret of the Great Pyramid, Sheikh Abdel Razek's magic spell to stop any attacker in his tracks is given in the original French as "par Horus, demeure." As a verb, "demeure" means "to stay/to remain." As a noun, it means "dwelling/abode." In context, the sheikh is pretty clearly saying "by Horus, stop" but it's translated instead as "by Horus' abode."
    • "Blind Idiot" Translation

14. ComicBook.Justice League Generation Lost: "Blind Idiot" Translation: Varik has a pretty good grasp on English, but edges into this when he tries for idioms and phrases. Usually, he just mixes up the word order. Examples include "bump fist", "right as Maine", and "egg crumbs" (bread crumbs).
    • None of the three

15. ComicBook.The Scorpion: "Blind Idiot" Translation: The title of the third French album, "La croix de Pierre" has been translated as "The Stone Cross", where it's pretty clear that the original title refers to the upside-down cross of St. Peter (Pierre meaning both "stone" or "rock" and Peter, which you know, make sense since Peter was given that name since he would be the Rock upon which the Church would be built...) and finding the original Cross of Saint Peter is what the whole album was about The Scorpion needs to find the original to prove that the upside-down cross Trebaldi is using to establish his claim to the Papacy is a forgery. Adding insult to injury, the word "Pierre" in the original title is capitalized, which given French title capitalization conventions means it's a proper name and a lot of the titles are explicitly religious, like "Au Nom du pere"... "In the name of the father." The best part? The cross in question is wooden.
    • "Blind Idiot" Translation

16. Film.An American Hippie In Israel: "Blind Idiot" Translation: Much of the dialogue has this feel, possibly due to the script being written in Hebrew and then sloppily translated into English. Some samples:
    "World, you’re so full of shit. You’re so badly contaminated that it’s impossible to find a corner free of smell."
    "They turned me into a... murdering machine. You understand? Me at nineteen a murdering machine!"
    "Shut your ass!"
    • Either none of the three or barely "Blind Idiot" Translation

17. Film.Casablanca: "Blind Idiot" Translation: The Leuchtags, the elderly German (or, at least German speaking—possibly Austrian or Swiss) couple headed for America, are trying to make the transition to using English to become better acclimated to American life. Their English is good for the most part, until they trip over the fact that the German word "Uhr" can, depending on context, mean "watch", "time", or "o'clock":
    Herr Leuchtag: What watch? ("Wie viel Uhr?" = "What time is it?")
    Frau Leuchtag: [checks her wristwatch] Ten watch. ("Zehn Uhr." = "Ten o'clock.")
    Herr Leuchtag: Such much? ("Wie viel?" = "It's that late??")
    Karl: (smiling) You will get along beautifully in America.
    • Characters not translating correctly in-universe

18. Film.Deadpool 2016: "Blind Idiot" Translation: The German dub translates Francis's "What's my name?" literally as "Wie ist mein Name?", which isn't technically wrong but sounds rather stilted. One would normally say "Wie heiße ich?".
    • None of the three

19. Film.Dog Day Afternoon: "Blind Idiot" Translation: The LGBT slogan "Out of the closets and into the streets" is translated into Dutch as "Uit de toiletten, in het licht" (Out of the toilets, into the light).
    • "Blind Idiot" Translation

20. Film.GI Joe Retaliation: "Blind Idiot" Translation: During the "war race" scene, we can see the French nuclear football with very prominent labels. One stands for "arm", or rather the French word for it. The human appendage, not the weapon-related term. Maybe they throw their nukes by hand?
    • "Blind Idiot" Translation

21. Film.Howling II Stirba Werewolf Bitch: * "Blind Idiot" Translation: In the Russian bootleg translation, the translator mixed up milleniums and millions, and thus made poor Stirba ten million years old - far older than humanity itself. (Or wolves for that matter.)
    • Translation Train Wreck?

22. Film.Night Of The Bloody Apes: "Blind Idiot" Translation: As shown by the page quote, the translation in the English dub is very literal, having been translated word-for-word without adjusting the phrasing or syntax to English norms.
    • "Blind Idiot" Translation

23. Film.Record Of A Tenement Gentleman: "Blind Idiot" Translation: The English title, which was rendered literally from the Japanese. Wikipedia reports that a better title would be "Who's Who of the Backstreets".
    • "Blind Idiot" Translation

24. Film.The 400 Blows: "Blind Idiot" Translation: The French title, Les Quatre Cents Coups is a reference to a French idiom, "faire les quatre cents coups", which means "to raise hell". The English title is a completely literal translation, which is nonsensical in context. The original translator tried to give the film the more appropriate name Wild Oats, but the distributor changed it back.
    • Translation Train Wreck

25. Film.The Sabata Trilogy: "Blind Idiot" Translation: One bad guy gets off some Evil Gloating, leading to a non-sequitor of a comeback.
    Skimmel: with a gun on Sabata Do you remember our shooting contest in Louisville? You were the only one to ever defeat me, Sabata. Pity you won't have another chance to beat me.
    Sabata: Who knows? Sometimes an idea is enough. throws knife and kills him
    • Lost in Translation

26. Film.Warriors Of Virtue: "Blind Idiot" Translation: The Polish version was entitled "Wirtualni wojownicy" - "Virtual warriors". Apparently the translator didn't know what 'virtue' was.
    • None of the three?

27. FireEmblemHeroes.Tropes A To E: "Blind Idiot" Translation:
    • The lance equivalent of the Wo Dao sword in English is called "Harmonic Lance". This is because of the Japanese name is "倭鉾", translated as "Japanese Lance", but "倭" could also be translated as "harmony". While "Harmonic Lance" is fitting for the hero that came with the weapon, Shigure from the "Wings of Fate" banner, who is a singer, it is a mistranslation, as if it fitted with the Chinese pronunciations of the weapon name, then the more accurate name for that weapon in English would be called "Wo Móu". The fact that the axe version of the Wo Dao is called "Wo Gún" reinforces that it was a mistranslation, but was too late to change it.
      • Lost in Translation
    • Mae's exclusive weapon name is called "Book of Orchids". Mae however has little relation to flowers, so the "orchids" part of the name makes no sense. This is because the Japanese name is called "金蘭の書", translated as "Tome of Profound Friendship", where it is more accurate to her personality, and her friendship with Celica. The "orchids" part come from "金蘭", where it is literally "gold orchid" in Japanese, where that can also be figuratively read as "profound friendship".
      • Lost in Translation

28. Franchise.Resident Evil: "Blind Idiot" Translation: The first game featured an awful lot of English typos, grammatical errors, and just plain goofy phrases that slipped through the QA net (including, not least of all, "Welcome back to the world of survival horror"). It did get better in subsequent games as the sequels got better budgets. The irony, of course, is that all the Biohazard games prior to Revelations only had English voice acting with Japanese subtitles. It gets even worse in non-English localizations, at least in the German version. For example, Jill's lockpicks are called "Dum-dum Geschosse" (dumdum bullets) instead of "Dietriche", the correct translation for lockpicks. And if you happen to understand English, you'll notice that what the characters are saying is often very different from what the subtitles read.
    • The German part is "Blind Idiot" Translation

29. JoJosBizarreAdventure.Tropes A To B: * "Blind Idiot" Translation: The notorious DUWANG scanlations of Diamond Is Unbreakable and Vento Aureo.
    • The Japanese name for Prosciutto's Stand, The Grateful Dead, is "偉大なる死", literally "The Great Dead". Apparently, Araki thought "Grateful" and "Great" means the same thing.
      • None of the three

30. Literature.Goblin Slayer: "Blind Idiot" Translation: Somehow, a line from High Elf Archer about flooding goblin lairs becomes about waterboarding in the Crunchyroll subtitles for the anime. Worth noting for coming some time after the light novel and manga versions of the scene were already translated correctly.
    • "Blind Idiot" Translation

31. Literature.The Familiar Of Zero: * "Blind Idiot" Translation: While acting-wise the European Spanish dub is pretty good, the translation is sometimes too literal:
    • Louise's nickname Louise The Zero is translated literally in Spanish as Louise La Cero. Even if that makes sense as Louise is cataloged in her world as a Zero talent mage, it was turned into "Louise la Inútil" (Louise the useless) for the official translation, making the nickname to not go with the untranslated name of the cartoon, although, It goes more among the lines of Woolseyism as they are adapting the names like "Kirche the Ardent" became "Kirche la ardiente" (both a fire mage and a seductress) and "Guiche the Bronze" became "Guiche el chico de bronze" (an immature kid and also a master of metal creations) for the latino dub.
      • "Blind Idiot" Translation

32. Literature.Americanah: * "Blind Idiot" Translation: The German translation decided to literally translate the name of the TV show "friends" as "Freunde". Of course, the TV show is known with its English name in the German-speaking world.
    • Lost in Translation?

33. Literature.City Of Thieves 2008: * "Blind Idiot" Translation: A ten-ruble banknote that was (badly) counterfeited by the Nazis to lower the value of the actual notes.
    Kolya: [reading the note] "The prices for food items and the necessities of daily life have increased enormously and the black market in the Soviet Union is florishing." "Flourishing" is spelled wrong, by the way. "Party functionaries and Jews are working dark deals at home while you at the front have to sacrifice your life for these criminal." "These criminal", that's nice. They occupy half the country and they can't even find someone who speaks the language?
    • In-universe and none of the three

34. Literature.Foundation 1951: "Blind Idiot" Translation: One translation of the English Foundation to Russian translates the words "Logarithmic slide rule" as "Pravilo logariphmicheskogo skol'zheniya". Literally "The law of logarithmic sliding".
    • "Blind Idiot" Translation

35. Literature.Island Of The Lizard King: "Blind Idiot" Translation: At one moment, you come face to face to a Lizardman riding a Styracosaurus, which is a quadrupedal herbivorous ceratopsoid. In the French translation, the (illustrated) Styracosaurus is described as a Tyrannosaurus rex.
    • None of the three

36. Literature.Qian Qiu: "Blind Idiot" Translation: Besides leaving many nuances Lost in Translation, the official subtitles of the Animated Adaptation also either mistranslates the dialogue or translates a sentence/phrase/term too literally.
    • Qi Fengge's name is sometimes transliterated to "Qifeng Pavilion" instead. While the ge (阁) in Qi Fengge's name (祁凤阁) does mean "pavilion", any unsuspecting viewer might mistake the term for the name of a place rather than a person.
      • Lost in Translation
    • Xuandu Mountain is also known as the Purple Manor of Xuandu (玄都紫府), but the donghua calls it "Xuandu Pink Manor" instead, even though purple (紫 or zi) and pink (粉 or fen) are two entirely separate terms.
      • Lost in Translation

37. Literature.The Stars Are Legion: "Blind Idiot" Translation: The Spanish translation often translates the verb "to sign" (saying something using sign language) as "señalar" (pointing something). As a result, dialogues in sign language become quite jarring.
    • "Blind Idiot" Translation

38. Literature.Wild Cards: "Blind Idiot" Translation: "Nur Al-Allah" is ungrammatical in Arabic, it should simply be Nur-Allah; and "Sayyid" does, technically, translate as "master" but it's also the common form of polite address, roughly equivalent to "mister" in English, which doesn't make for an imposing Ace name.
    • None of the three

39. Literature.World Without End: "Blind Idiot" Translation: During their trip in France, Mair and Caris happen to walk along corn fields. As precised by the author, "corn" here stands for "any grain crop including wheat, barley and rye". It was nonetheless translated into French as "maïs" (maize), a cereal which originated in Mexico, that would be totally unknown in 14th century Europe.
    • Lost in Translation

40. Manga.Ayakashi Triangle: "Blind Idiot" Translation: When ayakashi from the moon visit, they talk about taking the food Suzu offered, but Matsuri misunderstands and thinks they're taking Suzu. The last phrase they say is "itadakimasu", which is typically said before meals, but literally just means "I receive". In the English version, they outright say "Thank you for the meal", making Matsuri's misunderstanding a complete non sequitur.
    • Lost in Translation

41. Manga.Land Of The Lustrous: "Blind Idiot" Translation: There are quite a few hiccups in the official English release:
    • When Sensei tells the Gems to take down The Professor, he specifically orders them to just strike it down. The english translation changes the order to "kill it", which the Gems wouldn't understand since they don't have a real concept of death.
    • Lost in Translation

42. Manga.Pandora In The Crimson Shell Ghost Urn: "Blind Idiot" Translation: Seven Seas translates the name of Uzal's philanthropic organization as the "Rare Foundation", but considering all of the other Classical Mythology Shout Outs in the series, the name is most likely supposed to be "Rhea".
    • Lost in Translation

43. Manga.Princess Jellyfish: "Blind Idiot" Translation: When MC Hanamori tries to say "jellyfish" in English it comes out "jelly ear mushroom".
    • "Blind Idiot" Translation

44. Manga.Two Thousand One Nights: "Blind Idiot" Translation: Scientific terms and the like are usually translated properly, but the wording of some lines is awkward, and some jokes are missed. (KARC was supposed to be KIRK.)
    • Lost in Translation

45. Music.Boney M: "Blind Idiot" Translation: "Daddy Cool" was released in the Soviet Union as "Calm Father".
    • "Blind Idiot" Translation

46. Music.Nogizaka 46: "Blind Idiot" Translation: Miona Hori and Maaya Wada attempt to translate what Yuri Kitagawa says in episode 192 of Nogizaka Kōjichū.

    Yuri (in English): My favorite food is tomatoes, but I also like bread.
    Miona (in Japanese): My maid's name is... Palaio?
    Maaya (in Japanese): My favorite food is... humans.

    • Translation Train Wreck

47. Music.The Pogues: "Blind Idiot" Translation: One led to the creation of the song "Turkish Song Of The Damned" - The band had acquired a German magazine with an article about The Damned while on an international tour, and noticed that it referred to the Damned B-Side "Turkey Song" as "Turkish Song Of The Damned" ^note the original song title was referring to the bird, not the country - They thought it was too cool a title not to use, so they came up with music and lyrics to fit it.
    • In-universe "Blind Idiot" Translation

48. Radio.The Burkiss Way: "Blind Idiot" Translation: A version of the ending credits in which they are subject to a schoolboy's Latin translation renders "Happy dynamic living!" as "Gay, energetic wages!"
    • "Blind Idiot" Translation

49. Series.Angie Tribeca: "Blind Idiot" Translation: While pretending to be a proud Mexican father Geils, for some reason, decides to translate "Tribeca" as "Tresbeca".
    • None of the three

50. Series.Doctor X Surgeon Michiko Daimon: "Blind Idiot" Translation: There are some in-universe, such as a "Proctology Department" sign translated as "Anus Department".
    • In-universe "Blind Idiot" Translation

51. Series.Space Sheriff Gavan: "Blind Idiot" Translation: In the Brazilian dub for episode 20, the Demonfire Meteorite is never called by name for some reason, and on top of that they make Commander Qom refer to dinosaurs as dragons when speaking of the meteorite's origins.
    • None of the three?

52. Series.The Legend Of Xiao Chuo: "Blind Idiot" Translation: The YouTube subtitles are sometimes awkwardly phrased to the point of being incoherent — for example "agitated the destinies of me", which shows up early in the first episode.
    • "Blind Idiot" Translation

53. TabletopGame.Hunter The Vigil: "Blind Idiot" Translation: The name "Habiti Ma" roughly translates to "My love Ma". Which doesn't really mean anything. Word of God says that it was supposed to be Ma'at.
    • Lost in Translation