The Translation Convention in comic books.
- Agent 47: Birth of the Hitman: The Russian language spoken by the four Pripyat targets is translated for us when 47 goes in guns blazing, but all Mikhal Slavsky says is just various swearwords... which are censored with symbols, making the "*Translated from Russian" prompt completely redundant.
- Asterix:
- The series does this well with some languages being represented as their own font. Exceptions include Egyptian which consists of a bunch of symbols vaguely resembling hieroglyphics.
- For humour, certain expletives are left "untranslated", simply being shown as a bunch of symbols. However, the expletives can still have national flavor — a Goth's expletive will have slightly more angular symbols, and the skulls will wear Goth helmets, for example.
- The exception being the unremarked-upon distinction between the legionaries' Latin and the villagers' Gaulish — unless of course you're reading a translation into something like Swiss German, when Swiss can be used for Gaulish and the more "official" Hochdeutsch for Latin.
- Another exception is whenever someone makes a classic Latin quote ("Alea jacta est", "O tempora o mores", etc) which appears untranslated (Pegleg the pirate does this once per album).
- Atomic Robo: When someone is speaking in a translated foreign language it's written <in angular brackets>.
- Be Prepared has the Russian that Vera speaks at home and camp (where she's encouraged to only speak in Russian) translated, with <brackets> around the language. Some of it is untranslated, leaving a Bilingual Bonus.
- Editors can sometimes get confused about what constitutes Translation Convention. In the first New 52 issue of Blue Beetle, a conversation has an asterisked note saying, "Translated from the Spanglish." Except, it's not translated from the Spanglish: "Lo siento, mijo, pero there's no way I'm letting you go to la casa de amparo cardenas!" There's no translation in effect here!
- Commando Comics: All of the characters, regardless of nationality, appear to speak English even if there are no native-English speakers present. Exclamations such as "Himmel!" and "Mein Gott!" and insults such as "Dummkopf!" and "Schweinhund!" usually go untranslated, however.
- Dawn of X: To indicate that something is in Krakoan, Krakoan script is used, but if transcribed to Latin letters the words are English.
- Disney Ducks Comic Universe: In one issue, the narrator notes that a native tribe with an unknown language will from now on be heard speaking in the readers' language… so naturally since the main characters, who speak the readers' language too, can suddenly communicate with the tribesmen.
- Doom Patrol: The introduction of Brotherhood of Dada member The Quiz during Grant Morrison's run features some Japanese people speaking English for the benefit of readers who aren't fluent in Japanese.
- Early issues of The Flash Volume 2 used different fonts for different languages. The "Russian" font had backwards Rs and other tricks to make it look like Cyrillic, while the "Chinese" font was done with kanji-like brushstrokes.
- In Grandville, Britain was conquered by France during the Napoleonic Wars. While the dialogue is in English, it's established at the end of the first scene that English is an almost forgotten language, and the characters all speak French. Interestingly, while most writers doing this would drop in the occasional bit of Gratuitous French as a reminder, Bryan Talbot goes the opposite route, using literal translations of even place names and common French interjections, but only in the dialogue (so, for instance, characters might talk about the Red Windmill cabaret, but the sign still says Moulin Rouge).
- Most Comic Books often put "< >" brackets around plain English to represent when a character is talking in another language. This is usually accompanied the first panel it shows up in by an editor note box stating what language they're speaking. This is usually carried over to Webcomics as well, such as MegaTokyo, which uses it when characters speak in Japanese.
- In The Great Ten, Mandarin Chinese is the assumed default, so the dialogue of tourists is enclosed in the brackets to show they're not talking in Mandarin.
- Batman, Inc. uses italics instead.
- In the Franco-Belgian comic Michel Vaillant, Julie, a friend of the hero, called the Big Bad on her lack of respect because she used "Tu" (the French are very rigid about the T–V distinction
. The Big Bad was raised by an English woman in India, Julie is American. - Marvel's Voices:
- Indigenous Voices: Blue Moon's dialogue is in Siksiká, with a caption box clarifying that it's rendered in English.
- The Philippines- and Pakistan- set dialogue in Identity is in Cebuano and Urdu respectively, rendered in English.
- Ms. Marvel (2014) gets confusing about this. Almost all the words are in English, though there is some indication that Kamala's family speaks Urdu at home; this is most clearly shown in a scene where Kamala is speaking English to Bruno, while Muneeba yells at her in untranslated Urdu on her phone. Then, when Tyesha moves in she has no trouble understanding anybody even though she is unlikely to have a strong grasp of the language. Later on, in an issue where Kamala goes to Karachi, all the dialogue is shown in English, though it's stated this is a representation of Urdu; indeed, the fact that Kamala doesn't speak Urdu perfectly is remarked upon, though her Urdu is represented as perfect English. Even so, some Urdu words are left untranslated; while one could reasonably argue that naani specifically means maternal grandmother and thus doesn't have a proper English translation, there's no particular reason to use ferengi when foreigner (not those ones) will do.
- Presumably, the characters in Nikolai Dante are speaking some form of Russian, but the speech bubbles are always in English.
- Ronin (1983): Played to the T. Japanese characters speak English while in feudal Japan. Once the title character makes the jump to futuristic America, he is blatantly shown to only be able to speak Japanese. Of course, those "feudal Japan" scenes are actually the English translations of a Japanese television show.
- Star Trek: Early Voyages: In the two-part story "Cloak and Dagger", the Vulcans of Darien 224 speak an ancient version of the Vulcan language. It is rendered in English with "<< >>" brackets when they are speaking among themselves. However, when they are speaking to the Enterprise crew, the brackets are absent as their language is being translated by the universal translator.
- Strontium Dog: In "Max Bubba", both the English and Old Norse are represented as English. It is mentioned that Johnny was given a crash course in the language right before being sent back in time, which is why he is able to speak with the Vikings. Bubba doesn't speak Old Norse, and instead has his Viking captain translate for him.
- Superman:
- Superman Smashes the Klan has the font in red when the Lees are speaking Chinese, while Kryptonian is written in a garish and scrabbled green to emphasize how alien it is.
- The Krypton Chronicles is a series set in Rokyn -a planet settled by Kryptonian survivors- and the pre-destruction Krypton. It's assumed the characters are speaking in Kryptonese but their speeches are translated into English, except for some few Kryptonian terms peppering the story.
- The Day the Cheering Stopped: In the final scene, the narration explicitly states the aliens are not speaking English, and their speech is translated by the reader's benefit.
- Supergirl (1984):The scenes featuring conversations between aliens from Argo City like Kara are translated into English for the benefit of the readers.
- The Phantom Superboy: When Superboy listens to a recording about the history of the Phantom Zone, it is assumed that the Kryptonian characters are speaking Kryptonese, but their speeches are being translated for the readers' benefit.
- New Super-Man also defaults to assuming the characters are speaking in Mandarin, representing when people are using English words by putting them in blue. When Kenan guest stars in a comic with English-speaking main characters, this convention is reversed. Red text is later introduced to represent Korean.
- DC Retroactive Superman: In "The 70's" issue, it is assumed that the speech of the denizens from the ninth-dimensional land of Bppkss is an alien speech which is being translated into English.
- Legion Of Superheroes: Unless time travelling to the present, the characters are speaking Interlac, not English.
- Tintin does this extensively, since many of the albums have the characters travel to non-Francophone countries. Tintin in America had a variation on this, where Americans sometimes begin to speak with English phrases such as "How do you do" and "Good morning" before this trope sets in.
- W.I.T.C.H. is an Italian comic (supposedly) set in America. Italian is treated as a foreign language, making it even clearer that they're speaking English.
- This gets confusing in Yoko Tsuno, because no indication is ever made of the language actually spoken by characters, so that when the actual language spoken is relevant to the plot or discussion, things can get awfully confusing.
