Translation Convention / Video Games

The Translation Convention in video games.

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• Alpha Protocol. You visit locations such as Saudi Arabia, Taipei, Rome, and Moscow, but none of the locals or enemies speak their own languages. The biggest example would be in Taipei, where a fictional President of Taiwan gives a bold speech asserting Taiwan's independence, and it's heard only in English. Justified by the protagonist being a Polyglot.
• Assassin's Creed:
  • Averted for the most part in Assassin's Creed, due to the Animus automatically translating foreign dialogue, but played straight in the short films Lineage and Embers, neither of which take place in the Animus.
  • Later games in the series still translate most of the dialogue and all text into modern English, such as Altaïr's codex pages which were presumably written in Arabic and the Scrolls of Romulus in Brotherhood which would have been written in Latin. Ezio's arc translates most of the dialogue into English but peppers it with Italian, such as for cursing, particularly a long, profanity-riddled speech by Caterina Sforza in the "Battle of Forli" DLC. Assassin's Creed III could be an aversion since all of major characters speak English and the Native American characters speak in authentic Mohawk (except in The Tyranny of King Washington, where it's translated into English), and almost no other nationalities are present in speaking roles (except for a German-speaking shopkeeper). Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag is an interesting case, as the languages of each nationality are present and in use (primarily English, French, Spanish, and some native languages mainly used by various Assassins) but the subtitles use archaic spellings and capitalization which were common in the period.
  • A straight example comes up early in Assassin's Creed III: when Juno pulls Ratonhnhaké:ton into "the Nexus" via an Apple of Eden, his dialogue suddenly shifts from being spoken in Mohawk to English, which he maintains for the rest of the memory sequence while he's talking with Juno, and then it switches back to Mohawk when he comes back to the real world. It should be noted that Ratonhnhaké:ton is actually already fluent in English even as a child.
• Given the setting and the amount of Gratuitous German throughout, the player is meant to understand that the first Atelier Series games use German (or something like it) as the spoken language, even though all important readable text and all dialog is in Japanese (or English, should the games ever be brought over). This is, however, abandoned from Atelier Iris onward - the characters may or may not be speaking "our" language but there are basically no hints as to what else they'd be saying.
• In the Battlefield series of multiplayer shooters, the player has the option to have non-English-speaking armies speak in their native language or have their speech "translated" into perfect English. The first choice grants the game a sense of authenticity, but might disadvantage a player who doesn't understand an army's native language, as they have to look at the edge of the screen when a verbal command is given, where the command is written in whatever language the game is set up for no matter what. This means players from all over the world can interact pretty effectively even with no mutual language - an English player can wander on to a German server, and due to the Translation Convention, be perfectly understood (or vice versa) if they're giving commands via the in-game communication menu (which covers most of the basic commands needed). Obviously though, it doesn't work for typed chat text.
  • The above translation option actually took away one benefit to the player in Battlefield 2 - that is, the ability to guess where enemy players are based on their speech, because to save space the translation option just made everyone use the same sounds as the US Army. Later games, starting from at least Battlefield: Bad Company, instead give non-American armies distinct accented speech when translated.
• The first Bushido Blade game had a Caucasian foreigner who spoke in halting, uncertain English, presumably to mirror his halting, uncertain Japanese in the original release. At one point near the end of his storyline, he even gets confused on a verb tense and curses Japanese for being such a complicated language.
• In the Russian campaigns of the first two Call of Duty games, most characters speak in Russian-accented English. Some unimportant lines (such as battle cries) are rendered in full Russian. Also, at one point in the first game, the main character hears a German propaganda broadcast aiming to demoralize Russian soldiers, presumably in German-accented Russian. The player hears it as German-accented English.
  • The same is true of the third game in the series. During the Polish campaign, for example, the Polish NPCs speak in accented English whenever the player needs to understand them, but also occasionally break out into untranslated Polish. Later games use this or not depending on the circumstances; for instance, Call of Duty 4 has Russian Loyalists speaking in Russian among themselves (only speaking English when talking to the player character and his squad who are themselves English-speakers), while a level in Modern Warfare 3 where the player takes control of a Russian FSO agent has everyone speaking in accented English.
• In most of the games in the Castlevania series, the characters are most likely supposed to be speaking European languages. In Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow the Japanese characters, like Soma Cruz and Graham Jones, are heard speaking Japanese in their voice clips, even in the English release.
• In Crysis, the Korean soldiers yell out orders and battle tactics to each other in accented English — except when playing at the highest difficulty setting, in which they all speak un-subtitled Korean.
• The Great Ace Attorney is a prequel to the Ace Attorney series that takes place both in Meiji-era Japan and Victorian London. While all the text is in Japanese or English depending on the game version, it's made clear that the characters are speaking English in the London segments (one case features a Russian juror who specifically comments that his English isn't very good), except possibly when the protagonists are talking to other Japanese characters. The English localization addresses this by having the characters use Japanese honorifics when speaking Japanese, and English titles when speaking English. Humourously, this is averted for the most part in the first case, as a witness is shown to be speaking in English (mostly completely unreadable cursive) which is played in the perspective of the judge and prosecutor, save for both members of the defence who can not only speak and understand English, but also her covert cursing.
• Doki Doki Literature Club! is vaguely set in Japan but written in English. This is Lampshaded a couple of times; at one point Natsuki makes a pun that only works in Japanese, and Monika slips into Medium Awareness to point out that the pun was (supposedly) Lost in Translation.
• Implied with Donkey Kong Country, in terms of Animal Talk. The characters speak just fine but in crossovers with other Nintendo series they sound like normal animals.
• Played with in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. At the start of the game, the dragons all speak entirely in the dragon language with no subtitles. As the game progresses, the dragons begin speaking in English. Not because they're actually speaking in English (aside from one instance) but because the player character is beginning to understand the dragon language.
• Used in Eternal Darkness whenever Alex reads from the book of the same name. To indicate the presence of translation, two chapters, those of Pious and Anthony, begin in Latin, which shifts into English after a few lines of dialogue. Interestingly, the mouth flaps often don't match the dialogue, giving the impression that it has been overdubbed.
• This is a power granted by the Echo in Final Fantasy XIV, which allows people granted that power, such as the player character, to understand anyone regardless of language barrier. It's also noted during a conversation with a dragon in the Heavensward expansion that nobody is actually understanding the language they're speaking, but rather their wills are so powerful that they force themselves to be understood by lesser beings.
• English is the native language of Ghost of Tsushima, which takes place in late 13th century Japan. If you play it in a dub, the Japanese characters will speak that language while the Mongolians speak untranslated Mongolian.
• Nobody knows if this applies to Half-Life 2. While it seems to take place in a post-apocalyptic Bulgaria, everyone has Anglo-Saxon names and speaks with American Accents. Given the Combine's administrative policies and the fact that most of the main characters are explicitly American, they're probably speaking English. The Combine also has the nasty habit of shuffling people randomly between the various cities, so even if it takes place in Bulgaria, it's likely that most of the inhabitants aren't Bulgarian anyway. It certainly doesn't apply to the Vortigaunts, though, who can be frequently overheard conversing in their own language (and apologizing for doing so if you stop to listen—they are partially telepathic, but consider it rude to converse that way in front of the non-telepathic humans).
• In the Halo series, whenever the Covenant are heard in English, it's usually Handwaved as being via Translator Microbes, but they also are heard speaking English to each other in the absence of humans.
  • The background lore zig-zags this quite a bit; the unlockable timeline in Halo Wars includes an unlockable Covenant communique calling for the formation of a task force to learn the language of the "Unclean" pretty early in the war, and that this task force was only to speak English to each-other (guess it caught on pretty fast). Additionally, the background book that came with the Special Edition version of Halo 3 implies that the reason why Grunts are heard in English throughout the original trilogy is because they can learn things very quickly and tend to be tasked with monitoring human communications, which enabled them to gain a partly complete understanding of English that they take considerable pride in. Yet another passage in the novel Ghosts of Onyx notes that another apparently important reason the Covenant had for learning English was so that they could hurl curses at the human planets while glassing them. Of course, Fridge Logic would tell you pretty quickly that this wouldn't explain why, say, the Covenant High Council is heard debating in English in Halo 2.
• Inverted in killer7 - the Japanese characters all speak barely-accented English, even to each other.
• In Kingdom Hearts, you visit the Deep Jungle, and Tarzan himself was about as articulate as he usually was. Except for one scene, where Tarzan, speaking to the apes, was uncharacteristically articulate, making an impassioned plea to them. Then, they cut to the perspective of Sora and company, and all of Tarzan's dialog became grunts.
  • This was because the film the world was based on uses this convention as well. However, because the film is from Tarzan's point of view, he only starts doing the Hulk Speak thing halfway through the film, when Jane shows up.
• In The Legend of Zelda, there have been at least three different Hylian languges, spoken over the course of different ages: Ocarina of Time-era Hylian, which is written in katakana-like syllables, the Hylian of the The Wind Waker's Great Sea, which is written in similar symbols but different enough to render the inhabitants of the Great Sea unable to understand the Hylian language from Ocarina, and the Hylian language of Twilight Princess, which, unlike the previous two, is written in symbols similar to real world English and therefore thought to be radically different from the other two. Then, there's also the language of the Zoras and the language of the Gerudo. We, however, can't tell, because all the dialogue in the games is conveniently in Japanese/English/Whatever the language setting of your console is at the time. We get to hear clips of the Hylian language of Ocarina in Wind Waker (but it's little more than gibberish) and hear Midna talk TP-era Hylian in Twilight Princess (same). It's taken to the extreme in the Wind Waker spin-off Navi Trackers, where three characters (Tetra, The King of Red Lions, and Sue Belle) are suddenly voiced in fluent Japanese, when their language was suggested to be simmilar to Portuguese (Oi~!) in the original game. The games have, however, also subverted this trope from time to time — the Picori in The Minish Cap are talking either Pokémon Speak or backwards, depending on your language setting (Pokémon Speak for English, backwards for pretty much everything else), and Link has to apply Translator Microbes in order to render their dialogue understandable. In Majora's Mask, the Goron and Zora races have their own written languages which appear on monuments and signposts in their native regions. When Link attempts to read one of these monuments or signposts while transformed into a member of the race that created it, the words written on the monument or signpost appear on-screen in English (or Japanese or whatever real world language that specific copy of the game is in). When Link attempts to read one of these monuments or signposts while in his human form or while transformed into a member of a race other than the one that created it, a text box appears on-screen informing the player that Link is unable to read the symbols on the monument or signpost.
• In Mass Effect, Commander Shepard hears the Prothean language as perfect English, due the Prothean Beacons and the Cipher, downloading the full knowledge of the language into their subconscious. Suffice to say, since their translators were not programmed to understand a dead, 50,000 year old language, everyone else only hears unintelligible gibberish.
  • Occurs once more in the From Ashes DLC for Mass Effect 3, when Shepard witnesses ancient data recordings showing the fall of the Prothean settlement on Eden Prime, with everyone speaking English. Much like the above, all the rest of the party saw was Shepard zoning out after looking at a bunch of static.
  • This is pretty much par for the course for the entire series; due to translators in their omni-tools, each race speaks their native language, and the listener's omni-tool translates it in realtime into their own language. While pretty much universal, the translators aren't always completely perfect; sometimes the listener will have to ask someone to clarify if/when a word doesn't translate correctly or at all. The translators do however make exceptions and occasionally intentionally do not translate words or phrases, such as when there is not a close enough English equivalent or that translating the world would cause it to lose its contextual meaning.
• Used in Mega Man Battle Network, although justified in the second game which explained that the dialogue was being translated by Lan's PET. In fact, until Mega Man turns on the translator function, foreign characters' dialogue appear as a bunch of unpronounceable symbols.
• Metal Gear:
  • All characters in Metal Gear Solid 3 speak American (or British where appropriate) English, but are assumed to be speaking Russian or the listener's native language. The Russian scientist Sokolov remarks (in English) that the American agent Snake's Russian is excellent, despite all lines having been spoken in English. Only one character in the game, the scientist Granin, speaks with a noticeable Russian accent, but this has been chalked up by some fans as being either because both he and Snake are speaking English in that scene, or that Granin's drunkenness causes him to slur his speech.
    Amusingly enough, Naked Snake's Japanese voice actor, Akio Ōtsuka, was more than prepared to do all the dialogue in Russian, and had been taking lessons. The director, Hideo Kojima, was also enthusiastic about the idea, but the rest of the voice cast, who did not want to learn an entirely different language for very little purpose (and after all, they weren't learning English for conversations between American characters, were they?), threw various tantrums until the idea was finally overrun and dropped. Ohtsuka, disappointed, reportedly dropped random ad-libbed Russian into his lines until the rest of the cast was thoroughly sick of him constantly necessitating re-takes.
  • This trope applies to the second and fourth Solid games as well: Metal Gear Solid 2 features Russian private army members, while Metal Gear Solid 4 includes many nameless NPCs from the Middle East, South America, and Eastern Europe. In MGS4, the characters speak in perfect English, and MGS2 has them speaking with a noticeable Russian accent. The novelization for Metal Gear Solid 2 also heavily implies that Olga and Sergei were actually speaking Russian and that Snake was actually listening in and understanding the conversation due to taking Russian speaking courses during his training in FOXHOUND.
  • And, of course, it applies to the original Japanese language versions of the games, as the cast is (other than the exceptions above) largely comprised of English-speaking Americans.
• The same goes for Metroid: Other M but only in the Japanese version: It's more than obvious that everyone is speaking in English but translated to Japanese for the players' benefit. Even in the Japanese voice acting, many characters (Samus included) uses lots of English loanwords that could be translated without problems like baby, princess, lady, etc.
• Speaking of Metroid, Metroid Dread would play this trope straight with the Chozo. However, the Chozo are only shown speaking their own language (Aside from Raven Beak impersonating Adam), with English subtitles. Interestingly, they do seem to have a proper Conlang, as most of the Chozo dialogue can be directly translated back to the subtitles without contradicting itself, with little exception.
• In Noita, Tablets are written using the in-game runic langauge. When approached, a pop-up displays the runic text which slowly fades to be replaced by the player's langauge, indicating the player character can read the tablets. All other instances of runic messages must be translated by the player.
• Pentiment: The game is set in 16th century Bavaria and thus most characters speak German, while the majority of dialogue is rendered in English. Deciding the details of Andreas's Multiple-Choice Past involves choosing what other languages he is familiar with... at one point including the option to give him some knowledge of English. There is one English-speaking Italian doctor he can encounter, and if talked to the doctor's dialogue is rendered as phonetic German; the same trick is used for translations of Pentiment into other languages that can be encountered in-game.
• In Phantasy Star Online 2, the Vegas Illusia boss, a living Statue of Liberty replica riding a living Sphinx replica wielding an Eiffel Tower replica (don't ask) speaks perfect Japanese. In Las Vegas.
• Pokémon
  • For the main Pokémon series the obligatory "They're speaking Japanese" comes up but in Pokémon Black and White (and their sequels), Pokémon Sun and Moon (and their updated versions), and Pokémon Sword and Shield, it's implied they're speaking the Pokémon world's equivalent of English as the games take place in a New York City-like region, a Hawaii-like region, and a region based on Great Britain and the Isle of Man, respectively.^note In the second region's case, the characters use real Hawaiian slang and speech patterns, such as calling each other "cousin", and in the third's case, British English vocabulary, such as the player character's mother being called Mum instead of Mom, is used. In at least two appearances of people from Unova in a Japan-based region (specifically, Kanto in Gold and Silver and Hoenn in Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire), their speech is rendered as broken English in the English localizations (the reverse is also true for the few NPCs from Unova within the Hoenn remakes, assuming they either aren't speaking in their native tongue or aren't Aarune, a character from Unova who seems to speak the native tongue just fine). In most places, including the source country for the games, you'll have the characters speaking in a language other than English. Similarly Pokémon X and Y implies that the characters are speaking Poké-French as Kalos is France based. In most language versions^note except French itself, many characters pepper their speech with Gratuitous French, similar to the various France-set Disney/Pixar examples where Gratuitous French and French accents are used "for flair". There's even a portion where the former Funny Foreigner Looker, who now speaks fluently, mistranslates a Kanto (Japanese) woman's dialogue; in the Japanese version, it was English. Adding to this confusion are:
  • Animated Adaptations (both the main adaptation and Pokémon Origins) now use a constructed alphabet for written text, which is left the same in every language version and every in-universe region.
  • The game's different translation languages existing in-universe, mostly through foreign Pokédex entries, but this also pops up in some NPC dialogue. For the latter, there's quite a bit of NPC dialogue in other languages^note in the English version of X/Y, there's even an NPC who speaks full French in Kalos, in contrast to other characters' dialogue which is displayed as English, but there's also some dialogue referring to foreign versions of the franchise itself, Dub Name Changes and all.^note In the same games, there's a TV program that quizzes you on the Japanese names of Pokémon. In these cases, the game's language is treated as "native", while even the main language of the region's Earth counterpart is treated as "foreign".
  • In the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon spin offs, all the characters, including the player talk using Pokémon Speak, but players read it in their language, this only happens in this sister series.
• Presumably in effect in the non-English versions of the Professor Layton games, the titular Layton being an Englishman who lives in London.
• In Quake IV, signs in the alien language are incomprehensible until an alien communications node is jammed into the player character's brain; immediately thereafter (and with a rather cool transformation effect) the alien signs are in English, with a stylized alien font.
  • The written alien language is simply English in a wingdings-esque font anyway, so if you had a character chart and too much free time you could translate all the signs from the beginning of the game.
• Ratchet & Clank, maybe? Because, you know, it unfolds in galaxies far far away, and everything is much MUCH farther from England than my arse is from the dark side of Europa.
  • Except the Tyrranoids in Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal, who need a special device to communicate, due to having a language that's done through gestures and noises.
• Rival Schools has three American characters: Roy, Tiffany and Boman. Despite their nationalities, Roy and Boman speak Japanese in all of their in-game voice overs, while Tiffany speaks mostly Japanese with occasional slips of English (lampshaded by the explanation that Tiffany's a horrifically bad Japanese speaker).
  • Street Fighter on the other hand (due to the nationality) has stated that characters speak in either English or Japanese with the translation convention going both ways. For example Ryu and Sakura are speaking Japanese, while Guile and Cammy are speaking english, with Chun Li pretty much speaking English, or Japanese depending on the situation. This is why Ryu has no accent (since Translation Convention is going on) but Cammy sports an English accent. Street Fighter IV even allows players to choose which characters speak in English and which ones speak in Japanese.
• Shadowrun Returns:
  • In Dragonfall, the entire plot takes place in Germany. There are a few scattered hints throughout the game that most of the characters are speaking German most of the time despite all but a few words of the written dialogue being in English. There is even one part of an optional sidequest that implies that your character may not know English.
  • In Hong Kong, you play an American who knows Cantonese as a second language. The very beginning of the game has you speaking in English, until Duncan switches to Cantonese and points out that you should practice it so that you can talk to the natives. This dialogue, and all later dialogue is still written in English (but the game tells you that it has started translating).
• Particularly egregious example from the opening scene of Shenmue II: Japanese protagonist Ryo gets off the boat in Hong Kong and asks a street urchin for directions, only for the boy to exclaim in Japanese that this is the first time he's ever heard the language being spoken. The rest of the game doesn't do any better in this regard.
• For Shin Megami Tensei games released in English-speaking countries since Nocturne, it is to be assumed that everyone is speaking in Japanese, (except for a few cases) with the dialogue translated into English for the benefit of the audience. The Persona games even use gratuitous Japanese honorifics to hammer home the point.
  • Persona 2: Innocent Sin has a major issue with this, as Lisa Silverman's inability to speak English is an important plot point. Eternal Punishment actually addresses this with the parts of the game where Baofu speaks Chinese with some members of a Triad group...by adding "(in Chinese)" at the end of the sentences where it's spoken. It's actually a bit of a minor meme among fans of the game.
  • Fridge Logic comes up a few times in Persona 3. In the English dub of 3, Junpei, confused at Mitsuru's use of Gratuitous French, remarks "That's not English, is it?". There's also Bebe, a French foreign exchange student who uses Gratuitous Japanese, since there was no other real way to translate his quirk in the Japanese version (he speaks with a more old fashioned form of Japanese used centuries ago). The PSP port fixes Junpei's English blurb by having him say "Lousy seniors with their lousy French" in response to Mitsuru's French usage instead, which makes more sense.
  • Persona 4 has a few Fridge Logic moments like above: Teddie makes a lot of puns off the word "bear" in the English dub, and there's a brief sequence where a character spells "Algebra" wrong, with another specifically noting the incorrect use of the letter J. And then as if reminding the audience the cast is supposed to be speaking Japanese, one of the lessons the protagonist takes is actually supposed to be an English class. The teacher even notes it as being "how Americans say it", and it's part of the "very easy" academics part of the game. At a later point, Rise complains after apparently failing an exam: "Why do I have to learn English? I can just hire a translator!".
  • A minor one in Persona 4: Arena Ultimax; in Akihiko's portion of the Episode P3 ending, he mentions to Aigis that he's mastered English, presumably thanks to his global quest for power that he went on between the events of 3 and Persona 4: Arena.
  • Persona 5 has a few instances of this trope, most notably right before the game's fourth dungeon. An international hacker group known as Medjed puts out a message in English that most of the main characters, being high school students from Japan, can't read. Ann has to be the one to translate the message to Japanese since she's bilingual, being part-American. Also, when the group travels to Hawaii for a short time, there's a tour guide who directs them to their buses in English, but Ryuji expresses surprise that the tour guide speaks Japanese.
• Per their sound bytes and in-game text, the canonical language of all characters in Solatorobo: Red the Hunter is French, despite the game's script originally being written in Japanese and translated into English and other languages. The same applies to later game Fuga: Melodies of Steel, which also has a far more extensive Japanese and French voice track, both done by the same Japanese cast.
• In Shadowrun Returns, this trope is played straight for both Dragonfall and Hong Kong (where it's both explicitely stated and obvious that the respective lingua franca are German and Cantonese), all displayed in the player's chosen language. Dragonfall throws a curveball when a sidequest gets derailed because an important NPC does not speak German, however.
• In Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, the player has the option to have all the unimportant NPCs talk either in English or their native tongues. With the former, they can understand all the random conversations the NPCs have with each other, while the latter is more realistic. However when interrogating a foe, they will always speak in English.
• Starflight: Communications with alien ships will be completely translated if your communications officer is up to speed, otherwise, the conversation will be in the alien's own language, or half-translated between English and alien.
• In Star Control II, your ship has a translation computer which understands almost all alien languages. "Almost", because the Orz language is apparently too strange or complicated to be translated completely, resulting in exchanges such as "Who are you? Are you *silly cows* ? No, you are not *silly cows*, you are *happy campers*."
• In Sword of the Stars other races that contact you will have their text rendered as gibberish until you research at least one level of their languages, which turns the communiques into English. All factions have their native language tech researched to level three from the start and thus its words are in readable English except for certain culture-specific terms.
  • Interestingly, in order to understand humans, the alien races must first study English, then Latin, and finally Chinese. While English is the official SolForce language, much of the human population is Catholic and may know at least some Latin. It's not clear why Chinese has to be studied, though, and not spoken Chinese but Hanzi (written Chinese).
• Played straight in Syberia: as the heroine travels from a village in the French Alps east into Germany, across Europe and into Russia, almost all the characters speak (and write) English — not just English, not just American-accented English, but modern American idiom, even to the use of "retard" as a noun (in a journal written in the 1930s).
• Tomb Raider II - Bartoli and his various henchmen, with ridiculous, exaggerated and almost unintelligible Italian accents.
• In some ways this occurs in the Wing Commander games mainly 2 and 3. All of the humans speak English with some saying stuff in other languages. The Kilrathi the alien race all speak English to them selves and to humans even though they do not speak in their native language. The novels change this up a bit since in the novels the Kilrathi speak in their native tongue which shows up as English in the text, but when Kilrathi pilots taunt Terran pilots their taunts get translated into English with translation devices in the pilots fighters.
• In Wolfenstein 3-D, the Nazi soldiers spoke only in German.
  • In Return to Castle Wolfenstein, this was replaced with accented English—but Germans also peppered their speech with untranslated German words and phrases—usually ones that would be recognizable to English-speaking ears. In combat, however, they speak purely German (no matter what they're fighting).
  • Despite the above, American protagonist B.J. Blazkowicz is implied to be fluent in German himself, a necessity for his missions as an OSA agent.
• The World Ends with You takes place entirely within one city in Japan. However in the English version the characters use American slang, including Nao a valley girl, and Beat the ebonics speaking skater. All background text, including the mission text messages are in Japanese however.
  • There's even a random thought bubble you can scan that is titled "English" but the actual thoughts are entirely in Japanese characters, when translated it says that the man you're scanning is a tourist from a America looking for a shop to buy a specific souvenir from, but he doesn't speak Japanese so he can't ask anyone about it.
• World in Conflict has player units addressing player in english, with or without accent. When left to their own, they will revert back to their own language (Russia, German, France etc.) when they start to talk among themselves. Raises questions in Soviet Assault where player character is Russian.
• In World of Warcraft, Horde and Alliance characters cannot understand each other. Each faction has a 'common tongue' that the characters speak by default; for Alliance characters it's Common, for Horde characters it's Orcish. Any words spoken in the faction's 'common tongue' will appear as normal for all members of that faction but gibberish to members of the opposite faction.
  • Non-humans and non-orcs also have the option to speak in-game in their native tongue (Thalassian for Blood Elves, Taurahe for Tauren, Dwarvish for Dwarves, etc etc.) This native language will appear as normal to you and any other members of your race, but as gibberish to anyone else. If you encounter NPCs who speak that native tongue, a similar effect applies; what they say will appear as normal to members of that race but gibberish to others (i.e, the Wretched on Quel'dorei Isle speak in Thalassian.)
  • Of course, this can lead to some very confusing discrepancies of language. Just to list a few:
    • Why are "Lok'tar Ogar" and other orcish battle cries rendered in Orcish and not translated to their literal meaning ("Victory Or Death?")
    • Why can players and NPCs who used to be part of the same faction, or even the same race, no longer understand each other? (e.g., How did the Blood Elves and Undead humans forget Common when they were both part of the Alliance fairly recently? And when did they all learn Orcish?)
    • At what point did the Draenei learn Common when they just recently crash-landed on Azeroth? They're more likely to know Orcish, since they had relations with the Orcs on Draenor. Beyond The Dark Portal explains this: A Nemuraan did it.
    • When faction leaders and other important NPCs speak in cutscenes or /yell in city zones, how can they be simultaneously understood by all factions? One could assume that when speaking to them directly they tailor their language of choice to you, but do they repeat all their important dialogue twice in both languages?
    • In Icecrown Citadel, when Overlord Saurfang is speaking to his corrupted son, he says: "We named him 'Draenosh,' which means 'Son of Draenor' in Orcish." The problem here is that he's actually speaking in Orcish. Meaning that what he actually said was "We named him 'Son of Draenor,' which means 'Son of Draenor'." (And of course, the Alliance can somehow understand him.)
  • Gameplay and Story Segregation: While nearly every race in Azeroth should have some understanding of the Common language, the language system in game was specifically designed to prevent players of the opposing factions from communicating with each other. In early Beta tests, the Forsaken race was capable of speaking Common, which didn't work out well.
    • Because it didn't work out well, the Forsaken were given a new language called Gutterspeak, which was eventually renamed Forsaken. In application, Forsaken is effectively just a very low, slang-laden form of Common, different enough to be unintelligible to Common-speakers. When actually looked at, both languages are fairly similar.
  • Books and comics seem to show that Common is, in fact, the world-wide language that everyone speaks, not just the Alliance races; on at least one occasion it has been stated that two characters from opposite factions spoke together in "the common tongue". So this is a classic case of Gameplay and Story Segregation.
  • With the release of Mists of Pandaria, and the first-ever neutral playable race, the Pandaren, there's even more strangeness. At the end of the Pandaren starting zone (The Wandering Isle), you must choose whether to side with the Tushui (the Alliance Pandaren faction) or the Huojin (the Horde Pandaren faction). This makes sense, but what doesn't make sense is that once you make your decision, you're somehow no longer able to understand what Pandaren of the other faction are saying.
• In the X-Universe, the interstellar trade language is a variation on Japanese (imported by the Argon). Even the nonhumans use it. The translation convention turns this into English or whichever language the player selected (for instance the devs' native tongue is German).
• Xenoblade Chronicles X: Lampshaded in an early chapter, when Elma finally questions exactly how humanity is able to understand all these aliens without any lingual difficulties. L at least has the excuse that he was obsessively studying human records and learned English that way, but the Nopon and Ma-non have no trouble communicating either, despite having had zero contact with humans beforehand. They ask Tatsu about it, and Tatsu replies that from his perspective, they've all been speaking the Nopon language like natives from the moment they met. Everyone's confused but don't have the time to question it any further at the moment.

Exceptions

• Ar tonelico has its Hymmnos dialogue subtitled and said in Hymmnos, without any translation whatsoever.
• The Russian campaign missions in Battlefield 3 have Dima's squadmates speak entirely in subtitled Russian, both to one another and to the player. The only time one of them speaks English is when Dima himself addresses Blackburn in the second-to-last mission, and that's obviously justified because he's talking to an American.
• Later Call of Duty games have non-English-speaking soldiers generally speak their native languages whenever appropriate. For example, in Call of Duty 4, the only Russians who speak English are doing so for the benefit of the Americans and/or Britons they're talking to; all other flavor speech and combat dialogue from them is untranslated Russian. Same for the Germans and Japanese in World at War, the Brazilian militia from Modern Warfare 2, and the Vietnamese and Cubans in Black Ops, who each get at most one line of English dialogue (spoken to captured American player characters) in their games' respective singleplayer campaigns.
  • The WWII-era CoD games have the German soldiers speaking only in German, and the Japanese soldiers in World at War speak Japanese. While for the most part their orders are unimportant, having a basic understanding of these languages can be quite helpful ("Mauer" generally implies the German soldiers are either attacking or hiding behind a "wall", for example)
• In Civilization games with voices, all of the leaders speak their respective land's native tongue. Units also do so as well. It can be Hand Waved that the text being in English is because you have an interpreter.
  • Except Civilization Revolution, where they're Speaking Simlish.
• Unlike in the previous games of the series, the soldiers and agents in Empire: Total War all speak their native languages. The dialogue is roughly identical for each of the nine playable factions.
• In the Mothership Zeta DLC for Fallout 3, you meet a Japanese samurai who speaks un-subtitled, perfect Japanese. Of course, he speaks modern Japanese, not 18th century Japanese like he should. Many players have also complained that the subtitles for the samurai's speech are transliterated into English and thus can't be plugged into a translator to understand what he's actually saying.
• Fighter's History of all games (you know, that game that caused Capcom to sue Data East for being a blatant Street Fighter ripoff) is one of the few full aversions (unlike the Street Fighter and Soul Edge examples above, which are only partial aversions). Every characters speaks their native tongue, be they Japanese, American, French, Vietnamese, Russian or Korean.
• In Final Fantasy X, the Al Bhed Cypher Language is always spoken straight. In something of a subversion, the subtitles for these scenes are written in Al Bhed as well, although they are deciphered as you find more language primers scattered around the world (or earlier, if you're good at cryptograms).
• FreeSpace has the Vasudans always speaking their own unintelligible language. When they and the Terrans are speaking to one another, mechanical translators are provided that repeat the Vasudan statement in English. It's never made entirely clear whether humans and Vasudans are capable of pronouncing each other's language, but Vasudan is said to be immensely complex and extremely difficult to learn in any case.
  • The translator must require enormous processing power to function, as it has to constantly adjust to the nuances of Vasudan language.
  "Syntax and vocabulary are dictated by such factors as the speaker's age, rank, and caste, the time of day and the phase of the Vasudan calendar, and the relative spatial position of the speaker to the Emperor. This is further compounded by the existence of several alphabets, dozens of verb tenses, and thousands of dialects."
• The Guilty Gear series uses this. This is mostly fine, but comes across as a bit awkward with Chipp Zanuff, who explicitly doesn't actually speak Japanese, and all the times where he's actually supposed to be "speaking" Japanese just have him spouting random gibberish — he uses the names of Japanese food when Calling His Attacks, for instance.
• Halo:
  • Until Halo 5: Guardians, the Jackals spoke only in their own language.
  • Halo: Reach, where all the Covenant speak their native tongues, rendered as foreign-sounding gibberish.
  • In Halo 4, the Covenant remnant's soldiers also speak only in their native tongues. Their leader, Jul 'Mdama, can understand English perfectly well, but he apparently has enough trouble speaking it that he doesn't even bother with full sentences.
• IL-2 Sturmovik has all pilots speak their native languages over the radio. Good thing you get subtitles...
• Word of God states that Robert Garcia speaking with a Kansai accent in The King of Fighters is to substitute for the fact that, should the game be fully dubbed with characters speaking the languages they ought to be, he'd actually be an English-speaker with a pronounced Italian accent (as he and the Sakazakis live in the United States). That doesn't stop them from giving him a special intro with Sie Kensou (who is a Chinese guy who also speaks with a Kansai accent) where they act out a traditional Osakan sketch.
• Characters in both Knights of the Old Republic games who speak languages other than Galactic Basic actually speak those languages. If your character understands them, you'll see the subtitles in English. Of course, the alien voice acting isn't based on any actual full invented languages or even unique strings of nonsense for each line so much as a limited range of phrases per each language repeated seemingly randomly.
  • In Star Wars: The Old Republic, the aliens can speak in their native languages as well which is shown in subtitles for the player. The vast majority are Huttese (the second galactic lingua franca) which is reasonable, but the player characters all seem to know every language in the galaxy with the sole exception of Mandalorian.
  • Scaled down in Jade Empire, another Bioware game, where half the Non Player Characters speak the old tongue, but all the PCs (and, it's implied, everyone in the empire) know this language perfectly, so you always get the subtitles.
• Max Payne 3 has lots of ambient NPC dialogue spoken in Portuguese since a majority of the game takes place in Brazil, all of which goes untranslated and without subtitles. This was done to highlight Max's feeling of alienation, the fact he's lightyears from home, meddling in things he doesn't understand, and being a 'fat, balding gringo' in a country that hates his guts.
• Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, in sharp contrast to previous titles has enemies and NPCs speak in untranslated Russian (Soviet Army soldiers), Pashto (Afghan mujaheddin POWs), Afrikaans (South African mercenaries), and Kikongo (the child soldiers from northern Angola). English subtitles for their speech will only be enabled if the player has recruited a respective Interpreter to join their Diamond Dogs staff at Mother Base.
• In Nioh, the protagonist William is granted the magical ability of being able to communicate with the locals of Japan, meaning that while all of his dialog is in English, Japanese characters still speak Japanese unless they're explicitly using English. Edward Kelley primarily speaks English and uses telepathy to speak to Japanese characters.
• Just like in Fighter's History, every character in the Wii revival of Punch-Out!! speaks their native languages, and this applies to all versions of the game. To make things more interesting, the only form of translation between regions is giving Doc Louis subtitles, but he still speaks in English.
• In the Resident Evil games, the files are in Japanese, but absolutely all the dialogue is in English of variable quality. #4 is a bit confused - the Americans consistently speak English and the Spaniards speak Spanish, except when it's a named character speaking to an American, when they adopt English with a Mexican accent.
  • Starting with the rerelease of the Remake, Japanese has become a dialogue option in every game, meaning it is played straight since the characters are all still English speakers.
• In Shadow of the Tomb Raider, you can toggle whether or not the local South American NPCs speak in accented English or their native language, though regardless of your option Lara will always just speak English.
• In Siren: Blood Curse, characters actually speak English when they're supposed to be speaking English, and Japanese when they're supposed to be speaking Japanese — the appropriate language for the localization is subtitled for the benefit of the player.
• The English translators for Soul Blade on the PlayStation (predecessor of the Soulcalibur series) made a strange decision regarding localization. All characters of European or American nationality had their voiceovers translated from Japanese into English, whereas the voiceovers for all Asian characters were left in the original Japanese, be they Japanese or Chinese or Korean.
• Startopia has each race speak in it's own unique language that fits their appearance while moving around on the station, and with the exception of Aarona Daal and VAL (who is translating for you) the audio files to accompany any transmission you receive is also in one of these with the text in English. It appears that there's a Universal Translator in-universe, as the aliens can understand each other and VAL can render what they say in a manner you understand, however you (explicitly a human) don't get to have one yourself.
• In the prologue to Star Fox Adventures, before Fox enters the story, everyone speaks Saurian with subtitles. When Fox does enter, the natives speak Saurian without subtitles until Slippy gets his translator online, then they appear to speak English, complete with lip flaps that match the English dialogue. Later games in the Star Fox series avert this with Krystal, since the games take place years apart, and it's assumed that Krystal learned how to speak English in that time.
• The original arcade version of Strider (Arcade) has each of the character speaking their own native tongue during the game's cut-scenes, subtitled in English or Japanese depending on the version. The PC-Engine version plays this straight by dubbing all the characters' voices into Japanese.
• In a somewhat different vein, the Tekken series follows a very odd standard. For the most part, the characters speak their own native languages (mostly English or Japanese, with some exceptions). However, everyone can understand anything spoken by another character. This leads to the odd case of human characters having conversations with Kuma... who is a bear.
  • The whole thing about Kuma is debatable. Heihachi can converse with him because Kuma is his loyal pet, and they're quite friendly to each other. As for Paul, it may be said that he doesn't really know what Kuma is saying (or if he's even saying anything), but doesn't care anyway.
  • Tekken Tag Tournament 2 ultimately became an aversion by having the characters from non-English speaking countries speak their native language (i.e. Eddy and Christie now speak Portuguese, Miguel Spanish, Leo German and so on).
• Total War: Shogun 2 zig-zags on this trope. Diplomacy, advisers and most cutscenes use Japanese-accented english, but units, armies, characters and pre-battle speeches use unsubtitled Japanese.
• Tenzin from Uncharted 2: Among Thieves only speaks unsubtitled Tibetan, leaving both the player (assuming they don't speak Tibetan themselves) and the Player Character to try their best to work out what he's saying.

Mixed

• Sonic Unleashed sort of subverts this, but not really for the reasons you'd expect. While the game takes place across a multitude of countries in a pre-Retcon Sonic's World, every single character in the game speaks perfect Japanese/English no matter where you are. Even in cutscenes, as two characters in versions of Africa and Italy still speak perfect English in American accents.
  • However, looking at the main characters in the story, there are a few hints that this trope may not be in play. Sonic himself is not conventionally intelligent, being more of a street-smart type, so it's unlikely he just happens to know every language on the planet (Gratuitous English in the Japanese dubs aside). Tails at the very least is smart enough to translate languages on the fly, but he doesn't follow Sonic throughout the entire story - and he would have to wait for the next game to update the Miles Electric to translate unknown languages. Eggman is very similar in this regard, and does have the machinery to do so, but it's more likely that he doesn't care what language people speak - as long as they bow down to his rule. Amy, put simply, wouldn't have a prayer concerning new languages and the learning thereof. And Chip could very much be translating for Sonic owing to being the Light Gaia and all, but for most of the story he's dealing with delirium and amnesia regardless.
  • On that note, the text seen on buildings in Sonic Forces levels such as the City or Metropolis are composed of shapes or symbols that appear to work akin to Japanese characters. An interview has stated this was a deliberate choice to make Sonic's world more distinct from ours (and it has been stated that the "human world" seen in Unleashed is evidently different to the "non-human world" seen in Forces), implying that the main cast themselves may be speaking an entirely fictitious language.
• S.T.A.L.K.E.R. only bothers to translate important NPCs. The result is a firefight where everybody volleys insults at eachother in untranslated Russian except said important NPCs, who'll reply in English while the interface shows up in whatever language the player chooses.

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