History BlindIdiotTranslation / WesternAnimation

** The European Portuguese dub translates the season 4 episode "Rainbow Falls" into "A Rainbow Cai", which considers the word Falls in the title to be a verb and not a noun (the title actually refers to the rainbow waterfall featured in the episode, and has nothing to do with the character Rainbow Dash). The Brazilian Portuguese dub commits the same mistake, translating the episode title as "A Queda de Rainbow". Both Serbian dubs make the same mistake of interpreting "Falls" as a verb, and as a result the title was translated to "Pad Rejnbou Deš" ("The Fall of Rainbow Dash") in the Minimax version and "Šarenlota je pala" ("Rainbow Dash Fell") in the Mini version.

''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'' and ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy'' for German audiences.

* Ivar Combrinck is quite possibly the ultimate blind idiot translator. He single-handedly ruined ''The Simpsons'', ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'' and ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy'' for German audiences.

* The Russian dub of the 1990s ''WesternAnimation/FantasticFour'' cartoon was overall decent, but made a rather embarrassing mistake in the episode featuring Black Panther. The dubbers apparently did not realise Wakanda was a fictional country and thought it was the authors of the original cartoon who mangled the name of some real African nation. And so Black Panther became [[HilariousInHindsight king of]] ''[[UsefulNotes/{{Uganda}} Uganda]]''. Considering the release of the [[Film/BlackPanther2018 Black Panther]] movie coincided with the Uganda Knuckles meme, the Russian public was quick to notice.

** In the Croatian and Serbian Mini dubs of "The Art of the Dress", Twilight calls the Canis Major constellation an ''Ursa Minor'', and proceeds to compare it to the Ursa Major. [[http://www.seasky.org/constellations/assets/images/canis-major.jpg The Canis Major]] and [[https://galacticimages.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/SanibelDippersChumackLRblog-750x576.jpg Ursa Minor/Major constellations]] [[CriticalResearchFailure are completely different and thus impossible to confuse for one another]].

* The Arabic dub of ''WesternAnimation/SpongeBobSquarePants'' calls the Chum Bucket "Dalw al-Ṣadaqa", or "friendship bucket", but "chum" in this context is a sort of shark bait made of fish parts and not a synonym for "buddy".

** Some references in the French dub aren't translated at all. We get horrors such as calling Ecuador (the country) Ecuador and not Équateur, its proper French name, or calling [[Literature/WheresWaldo Waldo]] Waldo, and not Charlie (which is the name everyone knows in France).
** In "Fat Man and Little Boy", "[=ScratchBob ItchPants=]" is translated to "Scratchy Bob l'esponge." "Bob l'esponge" is the correct name of WesternAnimation/SpongeBobSquarePants in French, but the translator must have missed that the character depicted is Itchy, not Scratchy.

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Madeline}}'': In-universe in the English dub, but Chloe replaces Ester with Estre when she and the other girls go looking for Madame Marie in the animated version of ''Madeline's Christmas''.

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Madeline}}'': Just like she did when she replaced Ester with Estre in the French version (an in-universe mistake in the English version), Chloe replaces Stare with És(s)ere when she asks where Madame Marie went near the end of ''Madeline's Christmas''.

* ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'': Bizarrely, the dub retains the name Owlowiscious in "Owl's Well That Ends Well," but in "May The Best Pet Win!" he's called "Chouette Délicieuse," literally [[IAteWhat "delicious owl."]] This totally ignores that Owlowiscious' name in the original English has absolutely nothing to do with the word "delicious," but is a homophone for the name "Aloysius" that also includes the word "owl."

* For the longest time the Norwegian translators of 'WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy' couldn't decide how to translate the opening theme, having the line "Lucky there's a Family Guy" translated differently every time. Frequent errors include "Walter is a Family Guy", "Peter is a Family Guy" and even "Lucky is a family guy", leaving the word "Lucky" untranslated as if it was the name of a character. The Swedish translator made the same mistake. It took ''years'' before they understood that "Lucky" was not the name of a character.

** Of course, ''The Simpsons'' {{lampshades}} the Trope a lot. The best example is the [[http://www.videovat.com/videos/2407/the-simpsons-japanese-commercial-mr-sparkle.aspx Mr. Sparkle commercial]] from "In Marge We Trust", with such gems as "I am disrespectful to dirt! Can you see that I am serious?" "Get out of my way, all of you! This is no place for loafing! Join me or die, can you do any less?" "For lucky best wash, use Mr. Sparkle."

** Strangely enough, the Norwegian or Swedish translator (the exact same errors are often present in both translations) often gets the names wrong, resulting in everything from minor oddities such as Ben Flanders and Crusty [=McClown=], to weirder ones like Mark Grimby (Mayor Quimby). One of the worst (non-name) errors made by the translator is mishearing "Percadine addiction" as "perky Diane Dixon". Obviously, the translator is just casually listening to whatever they're supposed to translate, not knowing anything about the series itself.

* The English dub of ''WesternAnimation/IlEtaitUneFois l'homme'' refers to UsefulNotes/TheAmericanCivilWar as "the War of Secession", a literal translation of what the French call it (''la Guerre de Sécession'' -- although [[StillFightingtheCivilWar some Americans]] might prefer that name). It's not unheard of for the war to be called that in English (see for example the writings of Creator/WaltWhitman), but it's extremely dated.

* Not as bad as most examples, but the English dub of ''WesternAnimation/IlEtaitUneFois l'homme'' refers to UsefulNotes/TheAmericanCivilWar as "the War of Secession", which is more or less a literal translation of what the French call it: ''la Guerre de Sécession''.
** Actually, [[StillFightingtheCivilWar some Americans]] might prefer that translation.

* ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic': Bizarrely, the dub retains the name Owlowiscious in "Owl's Well That Ends Well," but in "May The Best Pet Win!" he's called "Chouette Délicieuse," literally [[IAteWhat "delicious owl."]] This totally ignores that Owlowiscious' name in the original English has absolutely nothing to do with the word "delicious," but is a homophone for the name "Aloysius" that also includes the word "owl."

* The Arabic dub of ''WesternAnimation/SpongeBobSquarePants'' calls the Chum Bucket "Dalw al-Ṣadaqa", or "friendship bucket", ignoring that "chum" in this context is a sort of shark bait made of fish parts and not a synonym for "buddy".

* In the Japanese dub of ''WesternAnimation/Ninjago'', in Season 12, the name of a video game named "Unfinished Adventure Game I" is translated in two different ways. This gets even worse when [[spoiler:this becomes a major plot point, as the game's name, when shortened in a specific way, becomes Unagami, the main villain of the season's name. Neither of these translations fit that double meaning, so the plot twist comes across as forced in the Japanese dub.]]

* From the ''WesternAnimation/RegularShow'' episode "Butt Dial", Mordecai's line "Margaret and Eileen [came] over for Game Night and nothing went wrong" somehow turned into "Margaret and [[{{Mondegreen}} I leaned]] over at each other and everything went well" in the Hungarian dub. Which is quite a change, and also messes up Rigby's response, "Except for Eileen and I whipping your butts"... at "leaning over", that is.

Many Hungarian translations tend to be half-assed and riddled with mistakes. This stems from a general trend of translators/localizators being not educated, well-informed professionals, but [[{{Nepotism}} relatives]] of some people, with minimal knowledge of foreign languages and a bad dictionary (this is especially true with English as most of the people who went to school after the TheGreatPoliticsMessUp learned ''some'', but not much, English).

Animation to the west (Western Animation)

* The Swedish dubs of Creator/DingoPictures movies (originally German) were quite obviously translated with something like Google Translate. Some lines are translated literally and make absolutely no sense in Swedish. In "''Animal Soccer World''" for example, they translated the line "Are they seriously injured?" to "Is it difficult?". The English dubs are not much better.

* The Swedish dubs of Creator/DingoPictures movies (originally German) were quite obviously translated with something like Google Translate. Some lines are translated literally and make absolutely no sense in Swedish. In "''Animal Soccer World''" for example, they translated the line "Are they seriously injured?" to "Is it difficult?". The English dubs are not much better.

** In "Fat Man and Little Boy", "[=ScratchBob ItchPants=]" is translated to "Scratchy Bob l'eponge." "Bob l'eponge" is the correct name of WesternAnimation/SpongeBobSquarePants in French, but the translator must have missed that the character depicted is Itchy, not Scratchy.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheAmazingWorldOfGumball'':
** In the episode "The Secret", Darwin has a dream in which he encounters a catfish in the ocean, which confuses him since most species of catfish live in freshwater. The Romanian dub translates "catfish" as "sea cat", the Romanian term for a stingray, something the fish clearly isn't and which ''does'' live in the ocean.
** The episode "The Vegging" was translated in Brazil as "Os Vegetais" (The Vegetables) because the words are similar, but "vegging" actually means "relax to the point of complete inertia". Other translations either preserve the english word vegging, or use more accurate translations such as "not doing anything". Something similar happened when "The Castle" was translated into "The Box" [[TrivialTitle despite not having anything to do with a box]]. Later, there was an episode actually called "The Box" which does have a box as an important object.
* Ivar Combrinck is quite possibly the ultimate blind idiot translator. He single-handedly ruined ''The Simpsons'', ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'' and ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy'' for German audiences.

** "Don't Fear the Roofer" has Creator/StephenHawking's explanation about having discovered "a tear in the fabric of space-time" translated as "Träne" (as in teardrop) instead of "Riss".
** "Wild Barts Can't Be Broken": After a victory by the Springfield Isotopes, Homer barges into Moe's bar and proclaims "Isotopes rule!". Mr. Combrinck translates this as "Isotopen-Spielregel" ("Spielregel" is the literal translation of "rule" as in "the rules of the game").
** In the same episode, the "Game of Lent" (Lent being the Christian festivity) is translated as "Das Leihhaus-Spiel" ("The Pawn Shop Game"). "Leihen" is the German word for "to lend".
** "Sorry Donkey Kong, you're just not a draw anymore" (from season eight's "The Springfield Files") became "Pardon, you King Kong donkey, you're sadly no longer a drawing."
** Some jokes however are simply difficult to translate. A good example is on the episode "Bart's Girlfriend" where Bart is having dinner with Jessica Lovejoy's parents (Reverend Lovejoy and his wife, Helen) and recounts a time where he watched ''Martin'' and gets kicked out for his "gratuitous use of the word 'butt'" (with Bart saying "But, but, but..." and Helen freaking out over it). In German, "Hintern" means "buttocks" while "aber" means "but" (as in the conjunction). Since it's impossible to translate the pun correctly, they just went with Bart saying "aber Hinter Hinter Hinter Hinter...".
** Strangely enough, the Norwegian or Swedish translator (the exact same errors are often present in both translations) of ''The Simpsons'' often gets the names wrong, resulting in everything from minor oddities such as Ben Flanders and Crusty [=McClown=], to weirder ones like Mark Grimby (Mayor Quimby). One of the worst (non-name) errors made by the translator is mishearing "Percadine addiction" as "perky Diane Dixon". Obviously, the translator is just casually listening to whatever they're supposed to translate, not knowing anything about the series itself.
** A particularly hilarious and stupid example occurs in "My Big Fat Geek Wedding", where Matt Groening made a short appearance. The original dialogue was something like "Look, it's Matt Groening, creator of ''Futurama''! Could you sign my Bender doll?" It came out as "Look, it's Matt Greening, creator of ''Futurama''! Could you sign my transvestite doll?" Slightly understandable, as "bender" in some dialects is a slang term for a transvestite[[note]]though Bender's name actually comes from the slang term for "a long period of time where one indulges in a vice or addictive habit, such as drinking alcohol or doing drugs". Well, apart from how he uh... [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin bends things]]...[[/note]], but still, it's a far cry from what the English version actually means.
** Some references in the French dub aren't translated at all, we get horrors such as calling Ecuador (the country) Ecuador and not Équateur, its proper French name, or calling [[Literature/WheresWaldo Waldo]] Waldo, and not Charlie (which is the name everyone knows in France). These instances are pretty annoying, given that the French dub of ''The Simpsons'' is overall awesome.
** In "Fat Man and Little Boy", "[=ScratchBob ItchPants=]" is translated to "Scratchy Bob l'eponge." "Bob l'eponge" is the correct name of WesternAnimation/SpongeBobSquarePants in French, but the translator must have missed that the character depicted is Itchy, not Scratchy.
** Of course, ''The Simpsons'' {{lampshades}} the Trope a lot. The best example is the [[http://www.videovat.com/videos/2407/the-simpsons-japanese-commercial-mr-sparkle.aspx Mr. Sparkle commercial]] from "In Marge We Trust", with such gems as "I am disrespectful to dirt! Can you see that I am serious?" "Get out of my way, all of you! This is no place for loafing! Join me or die, can you do any less?" "For lucky best wash, use Mr. Sparkle."
** The Finnish subtitles for one episode translated Kang and Kodos as "Kag" and "Cordos" respectively.

** ''The Simpsons'' in Hungarian is comparable to the dubs described above. Name translations tend to change within the same episode, sometimes within mere ''seconds''.
** One of the most infamous examples is when one CouchGag featured a newspaper with the headline "COUCH GAG THRILLS NATION" -- translated as "Coach Gag is a threat to the nation." Another episode had PETA translated as Alcoholics Anonymous, "murder of crows" as "crow killing", the Holy Land as Hollywood, "My bad" as "Me bad", license plate as dinner plate, the sign "Marine home for Christmas" (in "We're on the Road to D'ohwhere") as "Christmas sea house"... and it's pretty much a wonder if any of Bart's chalkboard gags make sense. See: "I am not Charlie Brown on acid" -> "I am not the grouchy Charlie Brown".
** Some errors are even the result of the translators thinking they know better. There's a scene where Principal Skinner says it's a cheat for Lisa to rename her found cat as Snowball II and act as if it was the same animal as the real Snowball II, to which she replies "I guess you're right, Principal ''Tamzarian''." This silences Skinner, and he walks away embarrassed -- the joke being that Skinner's an impostor himself, and his real name's Armin Tamzarian. The dub has Lisa calling him Skinner, so the gag's lost.
** One Swedish translator tasked with subtitling ''The Simpsons'' episodes managed to confuse "fry" with "freeze" in "Bart Sells His Soul", thus translating "I got this deep fryer on loan from the US Army. It can flash fry a buffalo in 40 seconds" into "I got this deep freezer on loan from the US Army. It can freeze a buffalo in 40 seconds."
** Spanish dubs of ''The Simpsons'' fall victim to the same issues:
** Perhaps the most infamous is the time Creator/LucyLawless did a guest appearance and the translator ''translated her last name'', so she was Lucy Sin Ley (literally, "Lucy Without Law"). Frustratingly enough, this same mistake happened in the Brazilian dub, wherein she was Lucy Sem Lei.
** An episode had the chorus of Music/BarryManilow's ''Copacabana'' featured. The person in charge of doing the Spanish song subtitles for the otherwise dubbed TV airing in Spain obviously misheard it as "At the Copa, Copacabana, ''the heart español of Havana''" and translated it accordingly.
** When Homer entered a Catholic school in "The Father, the Son, and the Holy Guest Star", he wrote "God = Good" and "Devil = Bad" on his left arm. The dub failed to notice "God" and "Good" were different words. Technically it's still accurate. [[ShapedLikeItself God is God, after all...]]
** When Homer mentioned the ''Film/PoliceAcademy'' movie series, the same kind of mistake happened and he called them "Academia de Polícia" instead of "Loucademia de Polícia".
** In "Dude, Where's My Ranch?", the Simpsons listen to Moe's song on the radio, introduced by an announcer. In the Spanish version, both the announcer and Moe's song play over each other, leaving only the last line of the song clearly audible. The family listens to the instrumental for about six seconds before they turn it off.
** When Martin Prince mentioned ''Series/SavedByTheBell'', the dub had him call the series by a literal translation of the title (Salvos pelo Gongo) instead of how the series became known in Brazil. (Galera do Barulho).
** In "Girls Just Wanna Have Sums", Lisa (under the name Jake Boyman) introduces herself to the class as liking "the Hardy Boys, Boy Scouts, boy bands, and Chef Boyardee." The Spanish version vaguely and literally translated everything, making it "the Hardy Boys, the explorers, music bands, and Italian food", leaving the question of what most of these have to do with boys.
** And in the Italian dub, episode "Milhouse of Sand and Fog". Maggie gets chickenpox, and Homer hosts a chickenpox party so other kids can get it. Except that, on the sign, they interpreted "chickenpox" as "pox-flavoured chicken".
* A bootleg Russian translation of Creator/RalphBakshi's [[WesternAnimation/TheLordOfTheRings animated adaptation]] of ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings'' was full of hilarious mistakes. "Great elven kings" was mistaken for "Great eleven kings"; "To Helm's Deep!" became something akin to "Let's put on our helmets a bit deeper!". Also, Sauron was consistently called "Prince of Darkness".
* The overall decent Polish translation of ''WesternAnimation/TheAdventuresOfJimmyNeutronBoyGenius'' tends to be either brilliantly spot-on in some places or incredibly stupid in others. The latter include:
** The "Win, Lose and Kaboom!" special includes a spoof of ''Series/WhoWantsToBeAMillionaire''. Much like in many other countries, the local Polish version of the British show was extremely popular in its day and many of its trademarks and catchphrases have become part of everyday speech. So at first it appears downright incomprehensible that the spoof's "lifelines" (which are 100% in accordance with the RealLife format) are translated into regular "lifelines" ("linie ratunkowe") instead of "life rings" ("koła ratunkowe") that have always been a staple of the Polish edition. It's probable that while the translator was aware of the Polish show's terminology (it would be hard to find anyone who wasn't, really), they probably didn't know that it was somewhat different from the original, and so thought this particular spoof parodied the concept of the "life rings", not realizing that those were in fact from the very beginning Polish creation.
* The Mexican Spanish dub of ''WesternAnimation/AdventuresOfSonicTheHedgehog'' made Tails a [[ShesAManInJapan female character]]. To this day, many people who grew up during the 1990s in Spanish-speaking American countries still believe Tails (or Colitas) to be female. Additionally, Tails' real name (which he claimed he disliked in the cartoon) is [[PunnyName Miles Prower]]. In the Spanish translation, it became Bibi Gavilán (Bibi Sparrowhawk).
* In an episode of ''WesternAnimation/PhineasAndFerb'', Doofenshmirtz talks about how he likes to give people nicknames and mentions that his nickname for Perry the Platypus is Mr. Duckbillface. In the Norwegian version of that episode, this is translated as "Ande-regnings-tryne". Apparently the translator somehow failed to realize that "bill" in this context referred to... Well, a duck's bill, and so the bill part got translated as the kind of bill you have to pay.
* The German ''WesternAnimation/StarWarsTheCloneWars'' dub of "Duchess of Mandalore" had Dooku say "I will send an assassin to Coruscant", while Pre Viszla is seen to send him out ''in the same moment''.
** The hungarian dub translated and continues to translate "fighter" (as the small spacecrafts used by Jedi and clones) as "harcász", whereas the hungarian word for a fighter jet is "vadászgép" ("hunter jet"), and "harcász" actually means "tactician" in hungarian. Esspecially jarring because the translators of the movies, and the various novels/comics from the ExpandedUniverse got it right.
** Also the hungarian dub of "Storm over Ryloth" had Anakin's line "The Twi'leks on that planet can't wait forever, Master." translated as "We can't wait for the Twi'leks any longer."
** Yet again the hungarian dub of "Children of the Force", had Anakin's line "The gungan child was screaming" translated as "the gungan boy was screaming". Two minutes later, we find out that the child in question is a '''girl'''.
** They translated the "Nightsisters" as "Daughters of the Night", despite "Éjnővérek" (literal translation of Nightsisters) was already established in the ExpandedUniverse.
* The ''Toys/{{Bionicle}}'' movies, also in Hungarian. Tenses are constantly varied no matter what the original dialog said (or what's on screen), the translator made the words "duty", "destiny", "responsibility" and "task" interchangeable, and shoehorned the word "destroy" into the dialog as many times as possible (in place of "defeat", "strike down" or "fail"). Some examples:
-->'''Norik, original:''' Unity, Duty, Destiny. It ''starts'' with Unity.\\
'''Dub:''' Unity, Responsibility, Duty. Starting with Duty.
-->'''Matau Hordika, original:''' You're our leader, Vakama. You're my leader.\\
'''Dub:''' You're our leader, Vakama. [[DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment Our leader]].
-->'''Nidhiki, original''' ''(to himself, lamenting Krekka's stupidity)'': Why do I bother?\\
'''Dub''' ''(to Krekka)'': What does it matter?
** The fourth movie, ''The Legend Reborn'' got a new translator, for better or worse. Glatorian simply became gladiators, while the giant Skopio beast was called scorpion. As for the dialog:
-->'''Metus, original:''' l told you, Raanu, pitting Vastus against Tarix would pack them [the audience] in.\\
'''Dub:''' I told you, Raanu, pitting Vastus against Tarix is a big mistake!
** At certain points in the third movie, "yes" and "of course, we can say" were translated respectively as "no" and "perhaps nor can we say", with the context of said words remaining unaltered. The entirety of the dub is filled with clumsily written, horribly mistranslated dialogue, with characters often saying the exact opposite of what they said in the original version.
* For the longest time the Norwegian translators of 'WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy' couldn't decide how to translate the opening theme, leaving the line "Lucky there's a Family Guy" translated differently every time. Frequent errors include "Walter is a Family Guy", "Peter is a Family Guy" and even "Lucky is a family guy", leaving the word "Lucky" untranslated as if it was the name of a character. The Swedish translator made the same mistake. It took ''years'' before they understood that "Lucky" was not the name of a character.
* In the Swedish dub of WesternAnimation/BatmanTheBraveAndTheBold, the English line "I feel invincible" was translated into "Jag känner mig osynlig", meaning "I feel invisible".
** In the Italian dub, a "two years ago" panel at the beginning of a flashback was translated as "two years ''later''" [[note]]Well, maybe if it was directed by Creator/DavidLynch...[[/note]]
* The ''WesternAnimation/{{Ben 10}}'' cartoons is Hungary were handed over to a translator who had a fondness for translating everything word-for-word without taking the context into consideration. Thus we got gems like "Beats me" becoming "It's hitting me", and the "plant" part of the word power-plant also proved to be too tough of a nut to crack. So these facilities became patches of vegetation in the dub.
* Same with the Hungarian ''WesternAnimation/WorldOfQuest''. "Carnies" (as in, carnival people) became "Carnivores". Often, the lines failed to make even grammatical sense.
* ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'':
** In yet ''another'' Hungarian example, the localization of ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'' also seems to be heading this way, though not to such an extreme degree, but it's still half-assed enough to be bothersome.
** The Swedish dub, while not completely terrible, seems to have had little to no effort put into the translation. The worst examples include translating "the Wonderbolts" into "Underskruvarna" ("the Wonderscrews") in the pilot episode and translating the episode title "Applebuck Season" into "Äppelpengssäsong" ("Apple Money Season"). There are various other things to complain about, but most of them are due to lack of effort rather than misunderstandings.
** Perhaps even more disastrous is how they translated the line "You don't wanna get a tummy ache" into "Du vill väl inte ha ont i tummen?", believing that "tummy" meant "thumb". As the context is about eating too fast, this is basically inexcusable. Humorously enough, the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QF-X0kGhhWs reaction shot]] that follows can easily be interpreted as targeted at the translation itself. Another case of plain idiocy is how "pet alligator" was translated into "leksakskrokodil" ("toy crocodile"). Not only there's a change in species, but they called something that's obviously alive (and in fact attempts to attack one of the characters mere seconds later) a toy. And further more, in the Winter Wrap-Up song, Twilight wonders how she's going to be able to help without using her wand; apparently the word "magic" was somehow too hard to translate, and they decided to ignore the fact that said magic clearly does not involve a wand.
** They turned "Well, we can't just leave Rarity like this!" to [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PD448WfqGoM "We can't just leave Rainbow Dash like this!"]], ignoring that Rainbow Dash was with them.
** Ditto with the Russian dub: a statue is called a tree in "A Bird in the Hoof", Grand Galloping Gala is referred as "the Magnificent Gala concert" and is said to be annual, Luna is said to be corrupted by the [[DarkSide dark side of the moon]] (and only has one name, the Moon Pony; if multiple names were used in the original, they just repeated the one used in the dub); Cutie Mark Crusaders search for a [[DrivenToSuicide handgun]] after failing to get their cutie marks (where in the original they searched for a cannon), et cetera.
--> [English] I know who you are. You're the Mare in the Moon – Nightmare Moon!
--> [Russian] I know who you are. [[ShapedLikeItself You're the Moon Pony – Moon Pony!]]
** Bizarrely, the French dub retains the name Owlowiscious in "Owl's Well That Ends Well," but in "May The Best Pet Win!" he's called "Chouette Délicieuse," literally [[IAteWhat "delicious owl."]] This totally ignores that Owlowiscious' name in the original English has absolutely nothing to do with the word "delicious," but is a homophone for the name "Aloysius" that also includes the word "owl."
** In the Chinese/Taiwanese translations, arguments caused by whether to translate their names phonetically or by meaning has made a lot of naming quite funny, most people resort to using English names during discussion.
** The European Portuguese dub translates the season 4 episode "Rainbow Falls" into "A Rainbow Cai", which considers the word Falls in the title to be a verb and not a noun (the title actually refers to the rainbow waterfall featured in the episode, and has nothing to do with the character Rainbow Dash). The Brazilian Portuguese dub commits the same mistake, translating the episode title as "A Queda de Rainbow".
** Both Serbian dubs have made the mistake of reading "Falls" as a verb, and as a result the title was translated to "Pad Rejnbou Deš" ("The Fall of Rainbow Dash") in the Minimax version and "Šarenlota je pala" ("Rainbow Dash Fell") in the Mini version.
** The Croatian HRT dub of the show, while otherwise sensical and grammatically correct, has some instances that fall into this, both with dialogue and character names. One example is the names of Scootaloo and Queen Chrysalis, both of whose names were transliterated; their names are "Skakutalo" and "Kristalina" respectively, with the former basically translating back as "Skippy" and the latter as "Crystalina" - neither of which make a shred of sense for the characters that have them. Another is in the Croatian dub of the Flim Flam Brothers song, where Flim and Flam claim that they came to "see miracles" as opposed to offering said miracles to solve the problem of cider demand outweighing cider production.
** One in "The Art of the Dress", which is also present in the Serbian Mini dub (where the Croatian version took the lyrics from from): Twilight calls the Canis Major constellation an ''Ursa Minor'', and proceeds to compare it to the Ursa Major. [[http://www.seasky.org/constellations/assets/images/canis-major.jpg The Canis Major]] and [[https://galacticimages.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/SanibelDippersChumackLRblog-750x576.jpg Ursa Minor/Major constellations]] [[CriticalResearchFailure are completely different and thus impossible to confuse for one another]].
** In "The Cutie Pox", Scootaloo asking about Apple Bloom's hoop cutie mark is slightly different; in the original she asks "Is it an 'o'? Is your talent spelling?", while in the Croatian HRT dub she instead asks what the "zero" means and if that's her grade in spelling, making it seem like Scootaloo is asking Apple Bloom if her talent is being bad at spelling (which is anything but a talent).
** In "Friendship Is Magic Part 1", the introductory narration ends off with a rather confusingly translated sentence. During the part where the narrator says that Princess Celestia took responsibility of both the moon and the sun, the word "moon" somehow got replaced with the word "herself". So in essence, the narrator says the princess took responsibility of her own person, which doesn't make any sense.
** The Polish dub of [[Recap/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagicS8E1SchoolDazePart1 "School Daze, Part 1"]] has Thorax suggest that Twilight ''agrees'' with Neighsay's racism, and that he's grateful not everyone does so.
* The reason for these half-assed mistakes in many Hungarian translations originates from the mostly "TruthInTelevision" stereotype of translators/localizators being not educated, well-informed professionals, but [[{{Nepotism}} relatives]] of some people, with minimal knowledge of the foreign language and a bad dictionary (this is especially true with English as most of the people who went to school after the TheGreatPoliticsMessUp learned ''some'', but not much, English).
* Many of the Hungarian entries collected on this page are the works of an extremely prolific translator couple, László Katona and Zita Csányi, who take pride in being able to churn out over a thousand dubbing scripts under a month. While a lot of their translations are perfectly adequate, their cartoon scripts (especially those credited solely to Csányi) tend to suffer from the same general issues: painfully literal, word-for-word translations of English phrases and wordplays, choosing the wrong interpretation of expressions that have more meanings, mishearing and confusing vaguely similar sounding words, not having the faintest regard for consistency, ignoring basic principles of grammar, randomly alternating between past, present and future tenses, as well as plural and singular, placing the emphasis on the wrong part of a sentence, greatly simplifying (or in some cases, needlessly overwriting) dialogue, leaving out expressions that are tricky to translate, and simply not having any idea over the subject matter they're working on. Characters in their translations often contradict themselves and each other, say the complete opposite of what they actually mean or spout nonsense that has nothing to do with the original dialogue.
* WesternAnimation/SpeedyGonzales: In the episode called "WesternAnimation/ThePiedPiperOfGuadalupe", one of the mice carries a "Loco El Gato" sign. While this does technically translate as "Crazy Cat" it's incorrect in that, in Spanish, adjectives are supposed to come ''after'' the noun they're modifying. (So technically, the sign was saying "Crazy. Cat." as if they were seperate concepts, or worse "Crazy. The Cat.") The sign should have said "El gato loco", or, even better "¡El gato está loco!" ("The cat is crazy!") or "¡Qué gato tan loco!" ("That cat was crazy!").
* In the Brazilian version of ''WesternAnimation/SpongeBobSquarePants'', "barnacles" are always translated as mussels, even in the episode "Barnacle Face", which barnacles actually appear in.

** The German dub isn't safe from this either, despite being arguably the best foreign dub the show has ever had. For example, in "Idiot Box", the "boxing" pun is lost in translation (The German word for "box" is "Schachtel" and "boxing" is just "boxing") ''despite the fact that "Box" is an actual German word that means the same thing.''
** The Arabic dub calls the Chum Bucket "Dalw al-Ṣadaqa", or "friendship bucket", ignoring that "chum" in this context is a sort of shark bait made of fish parts and not a synonym for "buddy".
* ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy'':
** A [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgJUbmGDc6k cutaway]] from the episode "Grumpy Old Man" mocks the quality of pizzeria-provided salad, showing the staff haphazardly throwing together various vegetables into a colander. The phone then rings and the manager answers it by saying "Hello? Every pizza place!" Ironically, the Italian dub misunderstood this last refrain and translated it as "Pizze per tutti gusti!" (literally "Pizzas for all tastes!"), mistaking "Every '''pizza place'''" for "'''Every pizza''' place".
* ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'':
** The Italian dub obviously did not understand that the werecar from the episode "The Honking" was a reference to a werewolf. They went with the other kind of "were" as in "they ''were'' very bad at translation." In other words, "The Car That Was."
** The Ukrainian dub actually messed up the [[MemeticMutation 'blackjack and hookers']] line. 'Hookers' was translated into 'booze', and while it is one slang meaning of the word, it's a ''very'' outdated one.
* The Brazilian dub of ''WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender'' has a shaky translation -- never getting incomprehensible or changing any plot point significantly, but constantly mistranslating small details here and there. The biggest problem is that it mistranslated a certain portion of the OpeningNarration: "He has a lot to learn before he's ready to save anyone" became "he has a lot to learn before he can say 'I am Aang'", which, of course, makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Yet this was never corrected, so it was one translation mistake you had to hear in every single episode.

** The Spanish dub of "Wanted: Wade" is worse. The rooster crows are called "rooster songs", Wade mistakes the law label for a newspaper, and instead of "What harm can it do?" being repeated three times before and during the song (except for the ending, when it is cut off by [[spoiler: Roy arresting Wade]]), that phrase is repeated twice, followed by a phrase meaning "I don't want to do this", which he's supposed to say [[spoiler: after the fantasy ended as the dub's equivalent of the line "No! I don't want to go to prison!".]]
** Even worse than these two are the Spanish DVD subtitles, which don't match the actual Spanish dialogue most of the time and are direct translations of the English dialogue. One time, they even used the word "condenado" for the word "doomed" in the subtitles, which also means the F-word, even though it wasn't used like that.
* Both of the Hungarian ''[[WesternAnimation/TheTransformersTheMovie Transformers: The Movie]]'' dubs are treasure-troves of baffling, nonsensical translation work. Just one example from the 2nd dub: Astrotrain's "Jettison some weight, or I'll never make it to Cybertron!" line became "Gettison, the ship is too heavy, we'll never reach Cybertron like this!" The bizarre [[DubNameChange name changes]] (like "Unicorn" for Unicron or "Fishing Rod" for Hot Rod) also went memetic.
* From the ''WesternAnimation/RegularShow'' episode "Butt Dial", Mordecai's line "Margaret and Eileen [came] over for Game Night and nothing went wrong" somehow turned into "Margaret and [[{{Mondegreen}} I leaned]] over at each other and everything went well" in the Hungarian dub. Which is quite a change, and also messes up Rigby's response, "Except for Eileen and I whipping your butts"... at "leaning over", that is.
* The official Hungarian dub of the ''WesternAnimation/SamuraiJack'' episode introducing the Scotsman provided the viewers with a serious head-scratching moment. In the episode, Jack and the Scotsman meet on a bridge where he is playing his bagpipe and Jack is grimacing over the sound. The Scotsman looks at him and says [[HollywoodToneDeaf "from the look on your face I can tell you like my pipes me laddie"]]. Through some insane BlindIdiotTranslation hoops they managed to translated the line as "by looking at your face I am as familiar with you as with my bagpipe".
* In the Swedish dub of the original German ''Creator/DingoPictures''-movies, it is quite obvious that they translated it with something like Google Translate. Some lines are translated literally and make absolutely no sense in Swedish. In "''Animal Soccer World''" for example, they translated the line "Are they seriously injured?" to "Is it difficult?". The English dubs are not much better.

* The Russian dub of ''WesternAnimation/SonicBoom'' contains a typo in the intro, saying: "A [=Sega/OuiDO!=] Presents" instead of "[=Sega/OuiDO!=] Presents" or "A [=Sega/OuiDO!=] Production". Then there's Shadow, whose name had been actually literally translated, as opposed to transliterated. Metal Sonic suffered a similar fate, becoming Iron Sonic.
* The Norwegian subs for ''WesternAnimation/StarWarsTheCloneWars'' translate "gunship" as "artillery ship".
* ''WesternAnimation/StevenUniverse'''s Hungarian dub is ripe with stilted dialogue, word-for-word translations, inconsistencies and a host of amateurish mistakes. The {{crossover}} episode with ''WesternAnimation/UncleGrandpa'' fared worse, with the translator being unfamiliar with the names of characters and objects from different cartoons, randomly renaming them or leaving them in English -- unsurprising, given how the dub tends to forget what its own characters are called. The same translator is actually responsible for multiple examples already listed on this page.
* ''WesternAnimation/ShimmerAndShine'': Brazilians don't have a gender-neutral word for "Genie". When two-part episode "My Secret Genies" was advertised in Brazil, the masculine equivalent was used for the translated title in spite of the titular genies being girls.
* The Spain version of ''WesternAnimation/SouthParkBiggerLongerAndUncut'' botches the gag about Brian Dennehy in a way that only makes sense if the dubbing team didn't get it:
-->'''Original:'''
-->'''Dennehy:''' Someone say my name?
-->'''Kyle:''' Who are you?
-->'''Dennehy:''' I'm Brian Dennehy.
-->'''Kyle:''' What? No, not fuckin' [[NamesTheSame Brian]] ''Dennehy''!
-->'''Stan:''' Hey, get the fuck outta here!
-->'''Dennehy:''' Oh. Bye-ee.
-->'''Adaptation:'''
-->'''Dennehy:''' Do you know my name?
-->'''Kyle:''' Who are you?
-->'''Dennehy:''' I'm Brian Dennehy.
-->'''Kyle:''' What? No fuckin' way you are Brian Dennehy!
-->'''Stan:''' Now go fuck yourself!
-->'''Dennehy:''' Oh. Sorry.
* The Brazilian Portuguese dub of the ''WesternAnimation/VeggieTales'' episode ''The Star of Christmas'' has "dental wax" translated as "creme dental". "Creme dental" actually means "toothpaste", while "cera dentária" means the proper term.
** The German dub even mistranslates the ''lesson on the front cover'' for ''[=LarryBoy=] and the Bad Apple.'' It ended up translating "fighting temptation" as "das Nein sagen", which translates to '''''"saying no."''''' The correct translation would be "kämpfende Versuchung."
* In the ''WesternAnimation/BenAndHollysLittleKingdom'' episode "Ben's Birthday Card", Nanny Plum says "milk, flour, egg and sugar". in the Greek dub, it was changed to "γάλα, λουλούδια, αυγό και ζάχαρη", and "λουλούδια" means "flower'''s'''" in the Greek language.
** Not to mention the literal translations of characters' names, like how Mrs. Cookie became "Κυρία Μπισκότο" (''Mrs. Biscuit'') or Miss Jolly turning into "Κυρία Κεφάτη" (Miss Cheerful).
* Both Greek dubs of ''[[WesternAnimation/LittleLulu The Little Lulu Show]]'' has quite a few examples, but the episode "Beautiful Lulu" takes the cake (due to a bad case of DubInducedPlotHole). In the original version, Tubby says "homeliest" in a muffled voice, because he's eating chocolate, and Iggy says his toe is prettier than Lulu while they're making fun of her. The first Greek dub makes the mistake of having Tubby ''blatantly'' say "The most popular girl in the neighborhood" (counts as {{Woolseyism}} because "popular" and "ugly" sound alike in Greek) and Lulu says "he said I was 1 metre with my hands up" as if Tubby said that instead of Iggy. The second dub makes no mistake on the muffled voice, but still gets the toe thing wrong because Iggy's line is omitted.
* The Russian dub of the 1990s ''WesternAnimation/FantasticFour'' cartoon was overall decent, but made a rather embarassing mistake in the episode featuring Black Panther. The dubbers apparently did not realise Wakanda was a fictional country and thought it was the authors of the original cartoon who mangled the name of some real African nation. And so Black Panther became [[HilariousInHindsight king of]] ''[[UsefulNotes/{{Uganda}} Uganda]]''. Considering the release of the [[Film/BlackPanther2018 Black Panther]] movie coincided with the Uganda Knuckles meme, the Russian public was quick to notice that.
* The Spanish dub of ''WesternAnimation/GravityFalls'' translated the title of the episode [[Recap/GravityFallsS2E15TheLastMabelcorn "The Last Mabelcorn"]] into... ''"The Last Corn of Mabel"'', missing the ShoutOut to ''Literature/TheLastUnicorn''. In addition, on [[Recap/GravityFallsS1E19Dreamscaperers "Dreamscaperers"]], '''[[TheOmniscient Bill Cipher]]''' refers to Grunkle Stan once as "Stanford" instead of just Stan, [[spoiler: [[DubInducedPlotHole contradicting one of the]] ''[[TwinSwitch biggest twists on the series.]]'']]
* An interesting instance of this occurs in the Croatian dub of ''WesternAnimation/TheSmurfs''. In "St. Smurf and the Dragon", during the scene where Handy presents his Azrael-catching contraption to Grouchy, "Handy" somehow became "Hefty" in translation, not just within the dialogue but also ''[[UpToEleven the identification itself]]''; not only does Grouchy refer to Handy as "Hefty", Handy himself is also voiced by Hefty's VA despite Handy already having his own voice actor, making it likely that Handy was in fact accidentally confused with Hefty during the dubbing process.

* Not as bad as most examples, but the English dub of ''WesternAnimation/IlEtaitUneFois l'homme'' refers to UsefulNotes/TheAmericanCivilWar as "the War of Secession", which is more or less a literal translation of what the French call it: ''la Guerre de Sécession''.