History BlindIdiotTranslation / AnimeAndManga

*** 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", which arguably sounds pretty cool.

** A bootleg of ''Anime/SonicTheHedgehogTheMovie'' also uses "Machine King", and transcribes Tails' name as "Dillus". One line in said bootleg has Sonic's yelling "Shut up, Tails!" transcribed as "Dillus, you're too noisy!" While the Japanese word "urusai" (often used to mean "Shut up!") does literally mean "noisy" or "annoying", it doesn't quite have the same meaning as the original line.

* The Brazilian dub of ''VisualNovel/FateStayNight'' managed to mistranslate "Caster" as "Castor" (Beaver). Seriously.

* 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 were 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!"

** And let's not talk about the [[NoPronunciationGuide pronounces]]. 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 became "Meow".

*** The pronounce issue was made worst 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 pronounces with wrong ones. Good examples are Charmeleon, Muk and Wobbuffet: Until 2013 were pronounced "Char-ME-lee-on", "Muck" and "WOB-bah-fett", now are pronounced "Char-MAY-leon", "Mook" and "Wob-BOO-fett".
* The Latin American Spanish dub of ''Anime/{{Pokemon}}'', since season 10. Though mistakes and inconsistencies were always made, they usually were ignored due to nostalgia and the generally good quality of the rest of the work. But then bad dub stroke and translationg mistakes and inconsistencies became much more evident (so big I 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 Latin American dub translates directly from the English dub, and Spanish dub translates according to the Spanish games from Europe).

** The Pokémon League championships are called conferences because of a mistranslation. Their Japanese name is ポケモンリーグの大会, which translates "Pokémon League Tournament". However, the last word, 大会, can also be translated as "conference", depending on the context. Given that the event is question is a tournament in which league participants battle each other, it's clear that that's not the intended meaning here. Unfortunately, the dubbers couldn't be bothered to apply some context, so they translated it as Pokémon League Conference, and never bothered correcting it in later seasons.

** The first movie got different attack names, so Vine Whip changed in "Stretta con Tralci" ("Root Wrap"), Razor Leaf became "Lame Vegetali" ("Vegetal Blades") and not "Foglielama" and, for the best one, Hyperbeam became the overly long "Attacco con l'Iperlaser" ("Hyperlaser Attack").

* ''Anime/SonicX'':
** 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", which arguably sounds pretty cool.
** The official 4Kids dub contains a notable instance in that they thought Chaos Control was the name of Eggman's base in the opening episode, rather than the time-space-warping power that engulfed said base and transported them all to the human world. References in the first few episodes to "destroying Chaos Control" still just manage to make sense, but when the power itself is later introduced in the Sonic Adventure 2 arc those new to the Sonic franchise would probably get thrown for a loop.
* A bootleg of ''Anime/SonicTheHedgehogTheMovie'' also uses "Machine King", and transcribes Tails' name as "Dillus". One line in said bootleg has Sonic's yelling "Shut up, Tails!" transcribed as "Dillus, you're too noisy!" While the Japanese word "urusai" (often used to mean "Shut up!") does literally mean "noisy" or "annoying", it doesn't quite have the same meaning as the original line.

** Also, who could forget Kodansha's "I am Princess Beryl! Queen of the Dark Kingdom", where her line should've been "I am Queen Beryl! Mistress of the Dark Kingdom".

* The ''VisualNovel/DanganRonpa'' anime dub has a particularly bad example where, in the first episode, Makoto Naegi's younger sister Komaru calls him "little bro". What makes this espically puzzling is that the localization of the first game had been out for other a year at that point and the word used in the original Japanese means "elder brother", implying that Creator/{{Funimation}} not only didn't bother to consult readily available sources, but didn't even translate the original script and instead used the subtitle as the base. His mother also calls him "Naegi" instead of "Makoto" as she does in the original Japanese, and referring to another family member by their surname makes very little sense.

*** The cards' names suffered from grade-school errors, for example "Man-eating Plant" became a "Plant-eating Man". "Dark Magician" was renamed to "Cień Magii" (''Shadow of Magic'') for the most instances but occasionally was called by the name "Ciemny Mag" (more acceptable translation) or other variants; other cards shared similar fate.

** In Polish dub translated Yugi's Millenium Puzzle was translated as "Milenijny Pasjans", where ''pasjans'' means… ''solitaire''. Sure, this is a show about cards, but, y'know…

** The Spanish dub of ''Frontier'' was okay, some voices too feminine and no translation of the text at the end making some of it's meaning to scare go away as Spanish kids can't read japanese. But the dub of Zephyrmon takes the cake, being dubbed by a man with BadassBaritone.

* The Brazilian dub of ''Anime/DigimonAdventure'', aside from being completely [[InconsistentDub inconsistent]], has one or two instances of plain weird phrasing. For example: in the second episode, Joe is lecturing the other children – "A group of people form a party. Our party has 7 people...". The problem here is that the word used for "party" ("festa") doesn't mean "a group of people", but "festivity". Cue fandom joke.

* The Polish ''over''dub of ''Anime/DragonBallZ'' definitely takes the cake here as being translated from the French dub. Examples? 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 Polish ''over''dub of ''Anime/DragonBallZ'' definitely takes the cake here as being translated from the French dub. Examples? 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. The manga translation has it better (Piccolo is called "Satan Piccolo" and Roshi is addressed either as "the Turtle Hermit" or "Divine Mastah").

*** And then there's the ''Polish'' ''over''dub of Armada, which failed so badly that it is to this day considered the worst Polish translation of a Transformers series ''ever''. Characters would often get new names that were so ridiculous it made you think whether the translators were doing it on purpose. Example: "Hot Shot" became "Piorunus", which, when translated back into English, becomes "Lightningus", which is just plain wrong. It even more wrong when you realize that his character has ''nothing to do with lightning whatsoever''. And to make it even worse, the translators were somehow able to make Armada's already nonsensical dialogue make ''even less sense'' at times, like says Cyclonus is a planet, when it is a Transformer.

** The "Unicron Trilogy", consisting of ''Anime/TransformersArmada'', ''Anime/TransformersEnergon'' and ''Anime/TransformersCybertron'' was lousy with this:

* Franchise/Transformers

* ''Anime/TransformersArmada'' and ''Anime/TransformersEnergon'' were created on so rushed a schedule as to feature first-draft translations as finalized scripts, and even unfinished animation used for broadcast. Translation errors fly about freely, characters are regularly referred to with the wrong name, there are typos in the ''[[TyopOnTheCover title cards]]'', and a hugely disappointing proportion of dialogue, put simply, does ''not make sense''. This is especially problematic in ''Energon,'' in which ''every single episode'' has plot points that are obscured by dialogue that apparently got most of the words but missed the point. Thankfully, their sequel series, ''[[Anime/TransformersCybertron Cybertron]]'', received a competent localization, appropriately peppered with {{Woolseyism}}s and other cleverness that, y'know, made sense. Even so, in one episode Thundercracker famously referred to himself as Starscream and Crosswise was called by his working-name Smokescreen for a while. Although these were later corrected, most foreign dubs were produced based on the erroneous dialogue.
** ''Energon'''s English translation also had characters talking where originally no one did and using drawn-out "uh"s to fill out the frankly sparse dialogue. The ''only'' advantage it had was having characters react to certain important events, like getting new bodies or color schemes, ''at all'', where in Japanese they kept on like it was the most [[UnusuallyUninterestingSight normal thing ever]].
** And then there's the ''Polish'' ''over''dub of Armada, which failed so badly that it is to this day considered the worst Polish translation of a Transformers series ''ever''. Characters would often get new names that were so ridiculous it made you think whether the translators were doing it on purpose. Example: "Hot Shot" became "Piorunus", which, when translated back into English, becomes "Lightningus", which is just plain wrong. It even more wrong when you realize that his character has ''nothing to do with lightning whatsoever''. And to make it even worse, the translators were somehow able to make Armada's already nonsensical dialogue make ''even less sense'' at times, like says Cyclonus is a planet, when it is a Transformer.
** Then there's the Hungarian dub, which is equally abysmal, but there is no fan consensus over how bad it is compared to other Transformers localizations simply because TF media is so screwed over in Hungary that fans mostly stopped paying attention to them. While the translator himself is a very prolific and quite decent one, since he had to work with the error-filled English script, he fumbled up parts of the dialog even ''more'' in trying to make sense of it. But he has no excuse for the names he gave some of the characters. For example, Side Swipe became Sűrű, meaning "Dense" or "Thick", as in "thick forest". Not that he managed to keep track of his own names either: Sparkplug has been called everything from Grindor to Incinerator (and at one instance his name was out-right omitted from the dialog), the translator mistook Sideways for Side Swipe at one point, and some of the special combinations and weapons also changed names every other episode.
** Similar to the confusion between Sideways and Side Swipe, the second Hungarian dubbing of ''Cybertron'' mixed up Thunder''blast'' with Thunder''cracker'' in one episode.
** ''Energon'''s second Hungarian dubbing at first made sure to call the characters by the names made popular in the translations of the [[Comicbook/TheTransformers old Marvel Comics series]], rather than names used in the show's first dub. But as the series progressed, the names began alternating every other episode, leading to a confusing mess. Even in the 20 minute DVD ClipShow ''Optimus Prime vs Megatron: The Ultimate Battle'', containing newly dubbed clips from ''Energon'' and ''Cybertron'', couldn't keep them straight: certain names would change within the same scene, while characters who have only ever been named in ''Energon'' would be erroneously referred to by Generation 1 names or completely new names.
* 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" 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.

** 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 maybe it involves one of Saturn's moons.

*** Also note that "Shingeki no Kyojin" ''actually'' translates to [[spoiler: "(the) Attack(ing) Titan" [[note]]in the same vein as "Armored Titan" or "Colossal Titan"[[/note]]]], the name of [[spoiler:the protagonist Eren's]] titan. So translating it correctly would've been a major spoiler, since it's not actually mentioned in-series until chapter 88.

* The Malaysian translation of the ''Manga/JoJosBizarreAdventure'' manga (up to ''Vento Aureo'') translated some names of the characters and the Stands fairly well, but ended up translating the Egyptian Gods Stands "Bast/Bastet" and "Atum" to "Vesta" and "''Autumn''" respectively.
** Don't even get us started on the Chinese fan translation of ''Diamond is Unbreakable'', which achieved a [[MemeticMutation memetic]] status among the fanbase for its SoBadItsGood tendencies. The entirety of it can best be summed up in one quote:
-->"What a beautiful Duwang!" "chew" "There must be no other place as pretty as this town. This feels like a picnic."

*** Also note that "Shingeki no Kyojin" ''actually'' translates to [[spoiler: "(the) Attack(ing) Titan" [[note]]in the same vein as "Armored Titan" or "Colossal Titan"[[/note]]]], the name of [[spoiler:the protagonist Eren's]] titan. So translating it correctly would've been a major spoiler, since it's not actually mentioned in-series until chapter 80-something.

* The official Italian translation of the manga Historie by [[Creator/HitoshiIwaaki Hitoshi Iwaaki]], while overall great, has a recurring mistake that's pretty difficult to ignore. The story is a romanticized retelling of the life of [[UsefulNotes/AlexanderTheGreat Alexander the Great]]'s personal secretary, Eumenes, who was a Scythian ("scita" in Italian), as many more characters in the story. However, the translation insists on calling him and all other people of his race Shiites ("sciita" in Italian, with two "i"s). As in, a Muslim from the second biggest branch of Islam. In a story that takes place between 370 and 310 BC - that is to say, more than 800 years before the birth of Muhammad, let alone the foundation of Islam. And no, it's not an intentional AnachronismStew. This is more likely to be a screw up on part of the editor rather than the translator, especially considering how the words for Scythian and Shiite in Japanese - [[note]] "sukitaisha" (usually written in katakana, although the manga uses an old fashioned kanji version) and "shii" (written in katakana), respectively[[/note]] are just too different to be possibly mixed up.

** Always in the "Computopia" episode, at one point doctor Eckermann tells 003 about how his son was about her same age when he was struck by deathly illness that eventually killed him. The bootleg subtitles, however, renders his sentence as "Although he's about your age but he's got arthritis." [[https://i.imgur.com/cj2n0bu.png Yes, seriously]]. Given how the Japanese kanji for the word for disease, ''byouma'' (病魔), are the exact same and have the same meaning in Chinese as well, one can only wonder at which point in the RecursiveTranslation it turned into "arthritis".

* In an older region 0 DVD dub for ''MobileSuitZetaGundam'', After Kai Shiden rescues Reccoa Londe, he introduces himself by saying "My name's Kai Shiden. As a freelance investigative journalist, I can appear anywhere, anytime. Even the Vatican." Kai actually carries himself as if he thought he was a supercool secret agent, so it almost fits into character. The Bandai dub covers this up by givig him a more pedestrian line "...and as a freelance investigative journalist, I can behave professionally, even around a beautiful woman such as yourself".