History BlindIdiotTranslation / AnimeAndManga

* ''Manga/DemonSlayerKimetsuNoYaiba'', people who have acquired the official english Creator/VIZMedia licensed print have noticed some pretty bizarre translation mistakes then and there across the volumes, misspelt names and syntax errors are the most common but sometimes there are cases where a sentence somehow is translated to have the exact opposite meaning of what it originally had, like the obviously orphan and lone warrior Inosuke one time assuming Tanjiro (who's also an orphan) had parents and siblings to go back to, contrasting with himself who has lived alone his entire life in the mountains, the Viz translation somehow made Inosuke brag that ''he has'' parents and siblings, unlike Tanjiro.
** This also extends to the Anime broadcast version of the official English subtitles, as they are made within minutes after the episode aired in Japan a few errors can be found in specific episodes; once mistaking the Thunder Breathing forms as having a total of 3 forms rather 6 shows that the simultaneous broadcast translator is working solely by what they hear, without a script, since Mitsu (three) and Mutsu (six) can be mistaken by each other if you are just hearing the word rather than reading it.
** The Upper-6 backstory has [[spoiler:Gyutaro narrate that it was when he turned 13 that Ume defended herself from the Samurai who attempted to take her without consent, that sentence in Japanese is Gyutaro saying that it was when Ume turned 13 that said event occurred; the second Databook corroborates with 13 being Ume's age as Gyutaro's human age is listed as unknown]].

* ''Initial D 4th Stage'' out of Malaysia has some particularily horrid examples. The subs appear to be translations of the Chinese dubs, which seem to have been censored to aviod giving people ideas. When Itsuki turbocharges his Levin, a couple of car otakus comment that it has "the part" and when Takumi gets snubbed on Akina, he says something about braking, but the sub just says, "That is not an easy opponent." Names can be as-they-sound-in-Japanese, as-the-kanji-sound-if-read-as-Chinese (Takumi ends up being something like "Liagjang"), or transalated into English (Daiki is often "Big Tree"). Then later in the stage Keisuke damages his own car and the team has to get a "shopping car." My personal favorite is when Daiki brings his car into the garage before the battle because, "I need to check the car baker. Lend me some glue."

** The name Kakarrot was problematic in every translation that used the French dubbing as a basis, as it never made it clear that this was Son Goku's real name. Its transliterations ranged from Cachalote ("Sperm whale") in the Portuguese dub to Kasalo (pronounced "Kásáló", meaning the nonsensical "One who does pulp") in the Hungarian dub, and Vegeta seemingly pulls the name out of nowhere, only to never use it again. In the Spanish dub, he's never called by that name in the anime, but in the movies, he's called "Karoto" in the first Broly movie (maybe because "Kaka" sounds too similar to "Caca", "poop") and "Kakalot" (keep in mind it's a proper romanization) in the rest. This indirectly also causes a problem when Vegetto shows up - since "Kakarotto" is never mentioned, not even once, outside of movies, Vegetto is named Vegeku instead.

* ''Manga/FairyTail'':
** Officially, Lucy's magic is celestial spirit magic but the beings she summons are neither angels nor resides in the sky. A better translation would be stellar spirit magic as she summons the spirits of constellations.
** Job request pages whenever we see them on the Fairy Tail message board, which are all written in Babelfish-quality English.
** Lucy's whip, that she receives from one of her spirits, is called Étoile Fleuve. As it's in french, it should be Fleuve D'Étoile(River of Stars) instead of "Star River".

* ''Manga/FairyTail'': Job request pages whenever we see them on the Fairy Tail message board, which are all written in Babelfish-quality English.

** The Italian translation of the manga is a complete mess. Between [[SpellMyNameWithAnS wrong romanizations]] (Bandith Keith became "Bandit Kierce", a name that doesn't exist anywhere, and also many names that were GratuitousEnglish in Japanese were romanized in the wrong way - such as "Dynausor" instead of "Dinosaur" or "Ribaiasan" instead of "Leviathan"), [[InconsistentDub card names changing between chapters]], the translator thinking that minds and souls are the same thing (every GratuitousEnglish usage of "Mind" had a footnote translating it as "Anima", which is Italian for "Soul"), Yen being replaced with Euros in two random, unrelated chapters while talking about Yen in every other chapter, and so on.

* Horribly, horribly present in ''Manga/{{Hellsing}}''. From the fact that the title comes from "Van Helsing", which is only ever spelled with one 'L', to the fact that some British characters have names in Eastern order ("Seras Victoria" instead of "Victoria Ceres"), to opposite gender titles of nobility[[note]] It's actually worse than just the gender screw-up; it is strongly hinted that Integra's title is hereditary – KBE titles like "Dame" are ''never'' hereditary – thus her "proper" title should be either Baroness, Viscountess, Countess, or possibly Marchioness; regardless, she should '''''not''''' be called "Sir"[[/note]], to (most JustForFun/{{egregious}}ly) the fact that in the official subtitles a character whose name is [[{{Alucard}} "Dracula"]] [[SdrawkcabName reversed]] is called "Arucard". Because Bram Stoker wrote a book called ''Dracura'', apparently. The original author admitted that he had no idea what he was doing when he wrote the English bits.

** The Indonesian translation of the early manga is quite misleading during the part when the card games kick in. Some of it is purely wrong, often because of the difference in the word structure (such as Infinite Dismissal, which in Indonesia states "when your opponent say 'attack' instead of 'declaring attack'") and sometimes because card effects whose wording was hard to understand. The first opening's translation was very rough and it becomes very different when translated back to English. Finally, some lines were changed completely from what it's supposed to say, lke Anzu causing "global warming".

* The Polish VoiceoverTranslation of ''Anime/DragonBallZ'' definitely takes the cake here as being translated and voiced over from the French dub. For example, Piccolo is "Satan Littleheart" (Szatan Serduszko), Cell is "Protophyte" (Komórczak - it actually sounds less sophisticated in Polish) and Muten Roshi is "the Genius Turtle" (Genialny Żółw). We also have Kakarrot as either "Clown" or "Whale" (Kaszalot), Mr. Popo as Mr. Momo (understandable, as "Popo" means something mildly rude in Polish and French), and some really ingenious techniques. Big Bang Attack as "Mega Garlic Cannon" among others. Polish dub of ''Anime/DragonBallSuper'' switched back to proper Japanese names, but occasionally the crew throw some nods to the French-Polish names, as a sign of acknowledgement of their memetic status. For example, when Beerus [[MaliciousMisnaming calls]] Krillin "Turillin" ([[Film/TheThreeStooges Curly]] in the English dub), in the Polish version he calls him "Krilan", as he was called in the old DBZ overdub.
** The manga translation has it better (Piccolo is called "Satan Piccolo" and Roshi is addressed either as "the Turtle Hermit" or "Divine Mastah").
** Also note that while Piccolo and Roshi's names were present in the French version, Cell was just Cell.
** Since the French dub had already used Satan as a name for Piccolo (based on his title being great demon king - daimao - and because it probably sounded more threatening than a musical instrument), they were in a bind when a character actually named Mr. Satan showed up; so they renamed him Hercule. (no 's' at the end in french) This name is also used in Creator/{{Funimation}}'s edited English dub, most of the video games, and Creator/VizMedia's translation of the manga - In all cases, this causes several jokes to be LostInTranslation - the most notable being [[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything when Earth holds their hands up to the sky and start chanting "Satan!" over and over.]]
*** To be honest, he would've been the third character whose name derives from Satan, seeing how Ox King was called Satanirus for some reason.
*** Considering that his Japanese name (Gyuumao) means something like "Demon King of the Oxen," a name revolving around Satan makes some sense.

*** Though most Portuguese fans tend to pass "Cachalote" off as an [[StealthInsult insult]]. Given he only uses it in ''[[Anime/DragonBallGT GT]]''[[labelnote:*]]Which was dubbed in Portuguese before there was French version, so they had to rely on both the Japanese and the American versions.[[/labelnote]] and ''[[Anime/DragonBallSuper Super]]''[[labelnote:*]]Which was made and aired before the English dub rights were even resolved.[[/labelnote]] [[WildMassGuessing it's a possibility]].
** "Master Roshi" is itself an English version. The character's name in Japanese is "Muten Rōshi", but "Rōshi" is actually his title (which means "eldery master"). "Master Roshi" is equivalent to saying "Master Master".
*** Though it can be argued that "Master Roshi" just sounds better than "Master Muten".
** The Italian dub of ''Dragon Ball'' can be just as bad. At its worst, we get three "Al Satan" (without any kind of logic)= The Ox-King, Piccolo Daimaō[[note]]Both these characters would later be renamed to match more the original names, "Jyuma" and "Great Demon Piccolo" [[/note]], and the well known and loved Mr. Satan. Muten Roshi is called the "Sea Turtle Genius" (Genio delle Tartarughe di mare). Yamcha becomes Yamko, Krillin becomes Crili, Tenshinhan becomes Tensing, Chaozu becomes Rif (???), Piccolo becomes Junior[[note]]Though at least, there is a bit of logic here, as "piccolo" means "small" in Italian. But the name itself still makes no sense unless you know his history[[/note]], and so on. And of course there are some horrible mistakes in the technique names translations: from Kamehameha becoming "Energetic wave", to the Kienzan being named "Magic circle", to moves for which they couldn't decide how to name them, like the Makankosappo being translated as "Special cannon" when introduced, and as "Devastating light ray" in following appearences. The most egregious case probably is the one which involves the Genki-dama and Kaioken. Basically, we get to see Goku training with Kaio-sama (in Italian "Kaio") and learning the Genki-dama ("Spherical Energy"). Then he goes back to Earth - and when he first uses the Kaioken against Nappa, someone arbitrarily decided that had to be the Genkidama, so they made him scream "Spherical Energy!". Which of course did not make any sense, and was later replaced by the proper Kaioken. But the absolute worst example of all, though, has to be Gohan's name - it's stated that Goku named him after his grandfather, but in the italian dub Goku's grandfather is named Son ''Gon''.
*** To be honest, though, a huge part of the name confusion carried over from the original ''Manga/DragonBall'' dub. In detail: most of the names of characters introduced in ''Z'' keep their original name, and techniques either get a straight translated name into Italian ("Final Flash" becoming "Lampo Finale") or keep theirs (Big Bang Attack). On the other hand, characters and attacks that got changed in Dragon Ball kept the "adapted" names.

*** Add to this that the weird name changes (Young Satan, Genius Turtle, and the rest) also made it through. ''Anime/DragonballGT'' was dubbed a decade later, this time from Japanese, but half of the characters still retained their crazy French names. Only minor corrections were made, like "renaming" Momo to the original Popo, calling Trunks by his full name (formerly, he was simply called Trunk), and they also got rid of the older dubs' habit of treating Son Goku as if it was a single word. The dialog even worked in some unchanged Japanese names (like Tsufuru instead of Tuffle), which resulted in even more inconsistency. That said, ''GT'''s dub also contained genuine translation hiccups. For instance, Kamehameha would often switch back to the older dubs' "Kamehame", and there was some weird inconsistency pertaining to all the "Kai" names -- Is it Kibito Kai or Kibito? Kaishin or Kaioshin? Kaio-sama meanwhile retained the name "Kaito" from the old dubs. Further, there was one instance when the Super Star Warrior state (which is what both the old ''Z'' and newer ''GT'' dubs called Super Saiyan) was mistranslated as "Super Warrior Star".

** In the German translation of ''Dragonball'' the Kamehameha was first known as "Shockwave of the Old Ancestors". The syllables of the Kamehameha are extended so much in the original that the words "Schock(KA)welle(ME) der(HA) alten(ME) Ahnen(HA)" fit in quite nicely when the attack was used during fights. When it was merely referenced (and thus spoken much faster) it was usually abbreviated to "Schockwelle".
** So needless to reiterate, the attack names in many of the French-derivative dubs were just plain screwed-up. Worth mentioning are instances when "Kamehameha" came out as "Kamehame Personality Wave" or "Kamehame *insert pity trashtalk here*", and pretty much every attack was named "Fist of the Sun" [[note]]known as Solar Flare in English translations[[/note]] at one point, be it a simple Kamehameha or a Kienzan. There were episodes which consistently attached the name to the Neo Tri-Beam attack, and the ''actual'' Fist of the Sun technique was renamed to "Sunbeam Beating" or something similar.
** Another curiosity of a few French-based localizations: Freeza became Freezer. Okay, that's fair. But then, his father Cold, who has a meaningful ice-based name to begin with, is called Cord.
** The French version had further troubles with Kaioken, Genki Dama and the various Super Saiyan stages. For example Kaioken changes to "Kaio, empower me!" after Goku returns to life, and when he first becomes a Super Saiyan, he again shouts the same thing, even though the two have nothing to do with each other, and Kaio (King Kai) definitely doesn't empower him. Afterwards, the translation settles on "Super Space Warrior", with the 2nd stage being called "Super Super Space Warrior" at first, and "Hyper Warrior" later. As for Genki Dama, its proper name isn't even mentioned until the end of the series (where it becomes Genki Ball), which prompts Goku to ask what a Genki Ball is, even though he's used it several times by then.
** The English translation of ''Anime/DragonBallZTheWorldsStrongest'' was rather odd. While the dub pronounced the BigBad's name as Dr. Willow, the subtitled version calls him Dr. Wheelo. Neither are correct, since the character's name is play on "Uiro", which is a type of Japanese steamed cake from Nagoya. Dr. Uiro's henchmen are named after local Nagoya delicacies (i.e. Dr. Cochin, Kishime, Ebifurya, Misokattsun).
** In the Creator/VizMedia translation of the manga, Vegeta's SignatureAttack is "Gyarikku Hō" instead of "Galick Gun" - despite the fact that the name was supposed to be English in the first place.

** And let's not talk about the pronunciations. Smoochum got to be called "Smoo-Chum", "Smo-Choom", "Smoo-Choom" and "Smah-Choom". Meowth was pronounced "Me-Oh" for a long time (and also called "Meo" in the credits), then in Season 12, he became "Meow".
*** This is an issue with the English dub, too. It obviously uses the (usually expertly done) name localizations from the games, but doesn't always understand why the game localized it the way it did, and what the pun is supposed to be, thus screwing up the pronunciation. Thus, the tiny rock Pokémon that resembles a bonsai tree in a flowerpot, named "Usohachi" (from "uso" (=fake) and "hachi" (=flowerpot)) in the original, got cleverly localized to "Bonsly" in the games (from "bonsai", "sly" and "lie") and the dub pronounces it "Bon-slee".
*** The pronunciation issue was made worse after the release of ''Pokédex 3D Pro'', where Pokémon names are pronounced out loud, and those pronounciations became the official Italian ones, often replacing correct pronunciations with wrong ones. Good examples are Charmeleon, Muk and Wobbuffet: Until 2013, they were pronounced "Char-ME-lee-on", "Muck" and "WOB-bah-fett", now they're pronounced "Char-MAY-leon", "Mook" and "Wob-BOO-fett".
* The Latin American Spanish dub of ''Pokémon'' since season 10. Though mistakes and inconsistencies were always made, they were usually ignored due to nostalgia and the generally good quality of the rest of the work. But then bad dub struck, and translation mistakes and inconsistencies became much more evident (so big we wouldn't encourage listing every single one of them) and many people were turned off by the series. The change of dub company for season 13 seemed to brighten up things a bit, although the translator is using Nintendo of Europe's names for cities and attacks making the new dub something really odd to watch (name conventions between Latin America and Spain are vastly different when it comes to this, since the Latin American dub translates directly from the English dub, and the Spanish dub translates according to the Spanish games from Europe).

* The Brazilian dub of ''Pokémon'' translated String Shot as "Tiro de Estilingue", which means Sling Shot.
** Somewhat justified because of who used said technique in the debuting episodes of the anime: Caterpie, whose antennae is shaped like a pink slingshot.

* In Funimation's subtitles of the second opening of ''Manga/AttackOnTitan'', [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbWFpzi8C94 found here]], the translators translate the Japanese, but not the German, leading to phrases such as "What sings is [[GratuitousGerman Sieg]]" (better translated as "We sing the song of victory") or "On my back, Flugel der freiheit" (that phrase is the German for [[TitleDrop the Japanese title of the song]]; "Wings of Freedom," so it makes even less sense why they didn't translate that.)
** Then there's the subtitles on Manga UK's release of the same series, which seem to constantly straddle the line between this and TranslationTrainWreck. Practically every other line is mistranslated, even the most basic things that one would assume couldn't possibly be misinterpreted, and these translations range from "Well they kinda got the nuances wrong" to "Holy shit that is not even close to what was being said do you even know Japanese translator." Just as a random example, the final line of the first opening theme is translated as "The blood red of twilight pierces through". A more accurate translations would be "The crimson bow and arrow pierces through the twilight". And this is one of the ''less'' glaring errors in their subtitles. One wonders why they even bothered making their own script rather than just using the subtitles from {{Creator/FUNimation}}.
** And of course, we're ignoring the elephant in the room: that the Japanese title actually means "the advance of the titans," rather than the bizarre mistranslation we got that suggests that either only one titan is being attacked or maybe the setting is on one of Saturn's moons.
*** This is actually due to "Attack on Titan" being the [[https://i.stack.imgur.com/YIp8w.jpg subtitle]] (in English already) for the first volume- originally put there to look cool rather than convey any information. The translators decided to pick it up instead of making a new translation for the title.
*** Which is understandable, since the most suitable-sounding translation ("March of the Titans") is already the name of a well-known (in Britain, at least), ''quite'' racist book.
*** Also note that "Shingeki no Kyojin" ''actually'' translates to [[spoiler: "(the) Attack(ing) Titan" (could also be translated as the Charging Titan or Advancing Titan) [[note]]in the same vein as "Armored Titan" or "Colossal Titan"[[/note]]]], which is the name of a specific plot-important titan, namely [[spoiler: the protagonist Eren's titan power]]. So translating it correctly would've been a major spoiler, since it's not actually mentioned in-series until chapter 88.

* An apparently bootleg copy of ''Anime/CowboyBebop'' managed to phonetically mistranslate a phrase that was already English - the drug "bloody eye" became "BLDI".
** FridgeBrilliance: BLDI could quite reasonably be an acronym for the drug's scientific name, while "Bloody Eye" is a street name derived from the acronym.

* The original Finnish translation of ''Anime/DigimonAdventure'' by Agapio Racing Team was just as bad as their dubbing. It appears that the translators had no idea about the context when translating the dialogue - whenever a word could be translated in two ways, they picked the wrong one. Especially hilarious when the word is ''dropping''.

* The epilogue of the ''Manga/{{Eyeshield 21}}'' anime. The best example is "Welcome to National Football League" Weird part is, it was said in a perfect accent, and the only time the accent messed up the lines was when it tried to pronounce "rookie". The R got in the way.

** The [[http://kentaifilms.blogspot.com/2009/05/fist-of-eastern-star.html?zx=b1f604a44ad646b Discotek sub]] of TheMovie, on the other hand, is just filled with instances where the translator did not double check his translation or simply didn't care. ''Hokuto Shinken'' is repeatedly misspelled as "Hokuto Kenshin" (even though the correct spelling is used as well) and many terms used throughout are mistranslated as well (e.g. "''denshousha''" is translated as "savior" instead of "successor", while "''aniue''", a formal word for "elder brother" that Jagi uses when he's sucking up to Raoh, becomes "master" instead). Most JustForFun/{{egregious}}ly, there are several instances where a character is [[CallingYourAttacks mentioning the names of their technique]] and the translator, not knowing what the characters were saying, simply replaced it with some made-up embellishment (i.e. ''Nanto Gokusatsu Ken'' or "South Star Hell Murder Fist" is translated as "Nanto cannot be harmed").
*** Discotek explained this as them being forced to use Creator/{{Toei|Animation}}'s pre-made subs (not shocking, considering Toei has [[Anime/SailorMoon a history of doing that]]), and they did rerelease it with corrected subtitles in 2010.

* A particularly amusing example comes in the official dub of ''Manga/GetterRobo Armageddon'', where the dub could not decide on which giant robot would be known as Getter-2. Tradition and every other source of media has the silver Getter with a drill-arm being known as the Getter-2, but the name was also strangely applied to the rubber-armed and insanely-different-looking yellow Getter-3 as well.
** The dub also had trouble getting the attack names right. One example has Gou using the right name to fire Shin Getter's Getter Beam in the first episode, but the next time he used it, he called it "Fire Ray". Hell, the never said "Open Get" even though that was English to start with. Although, it did give Ryoma some interesting lines.

* There was a Chinese bootleg of ''Anime/InuYasha'' which called Sesshoumaru "The Killing Pill" and referred to Miroku (a Buddhist monk) as a "rabbi". (Well, if NunsAreMikos...)
** Perhaps it is set in the same universe as [[Franchise/StarWars Backstroke of]] [[TranslationTrainwreck the West]], where the Presbyterian Church is secretly the Jedi Council.
** And inexplicably renamed Kilala "Roger", and had people falling into the malaria.
** And inexplicably rendered Kikyo's name as "Jugen".
*** The kanji of "Sesshoumaru" literally means 'killing people pill' or 'murdering pill', especially when read in Chinese. The kanji of 'maru' originally meant 'pill' in Chinese, but after the Japanese started incorporating Chinese characters into their language, 'maru' came to mean 'circle', and was often used to end male names back in the day. As for Kikyo, the kanji for her name can be read in several different ways, and "Jugen" is one of them.

* The official English translation of the ''Anime/LuckyStar'' manga is at times just downright awkward to read. It's a mix of being overly literal and having grammar that would technically be correct but not colloquial at all, as well as using outdated or inappropriate phrases and euphemisms (you rarely hear people say "let's have a blast" these days). The credits suggest it was translated by someone whose first language was Japanese based on the name – who also translated the anime.
** Early volumes were translated by Rika Takahashi (a veteran translator who used to work for Geneon USA and [[http://www.linkedin.com/pub/rika-takahashi/19/82b/2a5 graduated from Stanford]]), and later volumes by William Flanaghan.

* A Chinese bootleg version of ''[[Anime/NeonGenesisEvangelion The End of Evangelion]]'', that was floating around on Website/YouTube and other video streaming sites, had attached an English fansub, which was clearly very literally translated, leading to several hilarious examples of English that, while grammatically sensible most of the time, often ended up as nonsense. Most notably is when Asuka confronts Shinji with the line "I know about your jerk-off fantasies of me." In the original Japanese, Asuka actually uses the idiomatic phrase "I know you've been using me as a side dish". In Japanese lingo, "using something as a side dish" is an expression for using something or someone for one's erotic fantasies, but with the underlying implication that the person using the "side dish" is too scared to actually act on their feelings. In the fansub, however, the line comes out as "I know you only think of me as food!"

* There's a store in Melbourne that sells anime [=DVDs=] that had Japanese subtitles translated to Chinese and then translated to English. They have never, ever correctly spelled a character name, sometimes just giving up and giving them a random English name instead. Hayate, the male love interest of ''Manga/{{Pretear}},'' started out being called Sarah, then Jingje, then finally Hayate. The same [=DVDs=] also translated all the male characters as female but kept all references to female characters as female, except for the main character, who was apparently the only male.
** The same thing happened to the characters of ''Literature/SisterPrincess'' in the English subtitles of a grey-market Hong Kong release of the series. None of them were called by their actual names, and the names changed several times during the course of the series.

* In an early episode of the ''Manga/RanmaOneHalf'' manga, there is an elaborate pun on "panda", "pan da" and the sound effect "pan". The English translation turns this into a slightly less elaborate pun on the sound effect "pop" and "I'm Ranma's pop", which got literally translated in the French version to the pun-less "Je suis le père de Ranma, pigé?" (in English: "I am Ranma's dad, got it?").

* [[Creator/VIZMedia Viz's]] English translation of the ''Anime/ReadOrDie'' manga was often overly literal. It gave Yomiko's organization as the "Library of England". While that's technically a correct translation of the original's ''Daiei Toshokan'', the organization in question is in fact [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Library the British Library]]. May be a case of CreatorProvincialism, if the American translators had never heard of the eponymous British institution, or had never seen the (nicely translated) TV series that had come out a couple years before.

* Crunchyroll's English subtitles for ''Manga/{{Saki}}'' not only left some of the Mahjong lingo in Japanese, but also frequently translated terms into their ''Chinese'' word origins and then romanized it via pinyin (which would otherwise be correct, had the Japanese not been left in as well). Sometimes a line would have English, Japanese romaji, ''and'' Chinese pinyin all in the same sentence. For example: "all simples pinfu mixed triple chow".

* ''{{Literature/Slayers}}'' examples:

* The Brazilian dub of ''[[Manga/TokyoMewMew Mew Mew Power]]'', as the name suggests, was based on the [=4Kids=] version; that would mean the translation work was easy, right? Yeah, no. There are a lot of glaring English-to-Portuguese mistakes there, many bordering on nonsense. For example, a small scene of trash-talking between Zoey (Ichigo) and Tarb (Tart) includes the lines "I've brought my flying sweater!" (originally, "I've brought my fly-swatter". And no, it doesn't make any more sense in context) and "How about a little nap?" (originally, "How about a catnip?"). Also, the song "Supernatural" was translated, leaving the word as-is, which wouldn't be a problem if the meaning wasn't completely different ("Supernatural" in Portuguese is along the lines of "totally natural". The correct translation would be "Sobrenatural").
** And then there's "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4784i1V-STY four kitties baking a pie!]]"

* ''Literature/VampireHunterD: Bloodlust'' transliterates "dhampir" (half-vampire) as "dunpeal", and carries the same mistransliteration into the English version, to the point FanFiction continues using the term. Streamline's dub of the original movie also had this mistake. It wasn't fixed until Sentai Filmworks' 2015 redub of the original movie.

* ''Manga/VampireKnight'': Zero telling Sara he's taking her to the "Church" rather than the actual word which was "Association", became almost a MemeticMutation of jokes about the two of them getting married.
** "Mr. kind hearted person" somehow got translated to "Mr. human lover"

** The Italian dub of ''Dragon Ball'' is just as bad. We get three 'Satans': "Al Satan" = The Ox-King, "Al Satan" (again, without any kind of logic)[[note]]Actually, after the introduction of this other "Al Satan", the former one was renamed with his Japanese name Jyuma[[/note]] = Piccolo Daimaō, and the well known and loved Mr. Satan. Muten Roshi is called the "Sea Turtle Genius" (Genio delle Tartarughe di mare). Tenshinhan becomes Tensing, Chaozu becomes Rif (???), Piccolo becomes Junior, and so on. And of course there are some horrible mistakes in the technique names translations - the worst of them all probably being the one which involves the Genki-dama and Kaioken. Basically, we get to see Goku training with Kaio-sama (in Italian "Kaio") and learning the Genki-dama ("Spherical Energy"). Then he goes back to Earth - and when he first uses the Kaioken against Nappa, someone arbitrarily decided that had to be the Genkidama, so they made him scream "Spherical Energy!". Which of course did not make any sense, and was later replaced by the proper Kaioken. The worst example of all, though, has to be Gohan's name - it's stated that Goku named him after his grandfather, but in the italian dub Goku's grandfather is named Son ''Gon''.

* The tenth episode of ''Anime/LoveLive'' is titled 先輩禁止(Senpai Kinshi), which roughly translates to "[[SenpaiKohai Senpai]] is Forbidden," and refers to Eli asking the school's {{Idol Singer}}s, a group that includes students from all three years, to not use "senpai" on their upperclassmen. One translation, used on the wiki, is "[[https://love-live.fandom.com/wiki/No_Upperclassmen_Allowed! No Upperclassmen Allowed]]!"

** Similarly, ever wondered why such cartoony villains as Jessie and James have a heroic sounding motto? That's right, another mistranslation. The original Japanese version of the motto stated that Jessie and James pretend to be good but are actually lying villains. Yup, the dub's mangled translation resulted in the motto gaining ''the opposite context'' from the intended one.
** Given their general behavior, the mistranslated motto is more accurate to their personalities.

** Before ''Armada'' and ''Energon'', ''Transformers'' suffered a particularly infamous instance of this trope. The SoBadItsGood English ''Anime/TransformersHeadmasters'' dub changed dialogue so nonsensically that you got translations like "[[SugarWiki/FunnyMoments Fortress Maximus has come himself]]". There were also bizarre and completely pointless name changes, like renaming Blurr "Wally," referring to Raiden (the [[CombiningMecha combined form]] of the [[CoolTrain Trainbots]]) as "Grimlock" despite there already being a character with that name, and dubbing Spike as '''Sparkle''' of all things. The whole dub has become a minor meme in the ''Transformers'' fandom and is often considered a good example of what can happen with incompetent dubbing elsewhere.

[[quoteright:350:[[Manga/CaseClosed https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/img_20210423_125032.jpg]]]]
[[caption-width-right:350:Conan, no one wants to see that.[[note]] The actual name of the gadget is the Stun Gun Wristwatch.[[/note]]]]
[[BlindIdiotTranslation Japan's movement and pictures]] (Anime & Manga)

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** For a long period, the most common English fansub in the fandom was a RecursiveTranslation from Hong Kong, which resulted in some ''really'' silly lines.

*** The Millennium Items are very inconsistently named, with the worst offender being the Millennium Rod, which goes by "Millennium Tinny Rod," "Millennium Tin Stick," and "Ancient Buddhist Stick" at various points. Kaiba is often renamed "Seahorse," and Blue-Eyes is sometimes labelled "Green-Eyed." Also, "shuffle" got translated as "wash," which is pretty silly when dealing with cards...
*** The grammar ranges from "not terrible" to "English as a third language" to "incomprehensible." Lines like "You can't defeat me" frequently become "you can't win me", for instance. Unsurprisingly, [[SpiceUpTheSubtitles profanity]] is a lot more common, which led to the memorable line "This piece of shit can't win me!"

* A line from High Elf Archer about ''LightNovel/GoblinSlayer'' [[CombatPragmatist flooding goblin nests]] was translated as [[ColdBloodedTorture "waterboarding"]] in the Crunchyroll subs and turned into "Water torture" in the Funimation dub.
* ''{{LightNovel/Gosick}}''. It's supposed to be [[GothicHorror "Gothic"]], but Japanese doesn't have a "th" sound (nor, admittedly, do most modern languages; English is one of the rare ones that does), so it ended up more like "Goshiku" and [[RecursiveTranslation somewhere along the line they forgot what the original word was]].

* ''LightNovel/IsItWrongToTryToPickUpGirlsInADungeon'': Yen Press translated the name of Liliruca's crossbow, the Little Ballista, as the Little ''Barista'', as in someone who serves coffee.

* ''LightNovel/Overlord2012''

** The same thing happened to the characters of ''LightNovel/SisterPrincess'' in the English subtitles of a grey-market Hong Kong release of the series. None of them were called by their actual names, and the names changed several times during the course of the series.

* ''{{LightNovel/Slayers}}'' examples:

*** A bootleg translated Sonic himself as "Sonic Rat" (possibly confusing the Japanese "nezumi" (rat) for "harinezumi" (hedgehog)) for about the first couple of episodes and constantly called Dr. Eggman "Machine King".