Spice Up the Subtitles

Beerus is the God of Destruction, not the God of Swearing.

Official: Screw you, Sasuke! I'm sick of your attitude! You are my friend, and nothing will change that, you idiot!
Fan: Fuck you, Sasuke! Ore ^{translator's note}Ore = I am fucking sick of your fucking attitude! You are my nakama, ^{translator's note}nakama is a word that means your closest friend like in one piece and there really is no English equivalent to how powerful that word is so we decided to keep it as nakama and nothing will fucking change that, you fucking bitch!

— ProZD, "official subs vs. fansubs"

Sometimes, a fansubber will insert dirty jokes and language, Double Entendre dialogue, UST, or any number of "inappropriate" things into the script in an attempt to "improve" the show, or to cover up the fact that they're not as fluent in Japanese as they want us to think. This may also be done due to the (now fading) idea that anime and manga are "cartoons" and therefore childish, and gratuitous swearing is a way to make them seem more "mature." And sometimes the "inappropriate" content is a natural result of attempting to translate things which are perfectly appropriate but don't have proper equivalents which are. Of course, when official translations are brought over, many fans who were used to the aforementioned sub-script often are left wondering where all of the adult situations and dialogue went (which never existed in the original to begin with) and blame the series' Western distributors for having the gall to release such a horrible Macekre.

This also happens frequently to official releases that want to get out of the Animation Age Ghetto as fast as possible by adding as much family-unfriendly material as they can to the subtitles.

Difficulty translating things without them turning into profanity can also be a factor. A very common cause of this trope is the Japanese expletive kuso. This word is an all-purpose expletive, and, despite being really not all that offensive, can be translated as literally any and every word to ever cross the English profanity spectrum, including but not limited to "shit", "oh shit", "dammit", "damn", "damn you", "God dammit", "crisse de tabarnak", "rats", "darn", "crap", "drat", "crud", "not good", "this is bad", "oh no", or even, in some cases, "help" (when you don't actually expect it). Literally speaking it means "excrement", so perhaps "crap" would be the closest English equivalent. Fansubbers generally understand that kuso is supposed to be a swear word but don't know how inoffensive it actually is, and - naturally - almost always skew heavily towards the more offensive translations regardless of whether or not it fits the tone of the series, makes sense in context, or makes the characters who use it sound like 12-year-olds.^note This problem is not just endemic to Japanese translations, as many languages have expletives which can potentially be translated as "fuck" or something equally harsh, but have nowhere near the same level of severity in the original language. German, for example, turns a lot of English swear words into Lighter and Softer ones by sheer virtue of there being no equivalent German word in dubbed media In addition, lightening up on swear words can sometimes give off a rather awkward and goofy Gosh Dang It to Heck! feeling, especially in works aimed at older audiences, so even when translators know that the word isn't offensive they may feel that the most fitting equivalent is one which is. Dubs tend to lean on the tamer side; generally speaking, the more experience a translator has, the better the profanity is handled. Another common culprit is respect levels - many languages, such as English, barely have them at all, so if a character is being particularly disrespectful, it can sometimes be difficult to convey this properly without the character using another kind of "rude language" entirely and swearing in the translation.

See also: Obligatory Swearing, Rated M for Money, Avoid the Dreaded G Rating, Animation Age Ghetto. Occasionally a form of Hotter and Sexier. May cause Mis-blamed. Related to Fun with Subtitles and Gag Sub.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• Dragon Ball:
  • Early Dragon Ball Z fansubs dropped almost hilarious rivers of Obligatory Swearing into dialogue that had about one-twentieth that much originally. The Anime Labs translations in particular were infamous for this, such as Vegeta yelling at Android 20 to "Come on out, you coward! Show yourself!" getting turned into "Come out, you candy-ass faggot!" In comparison, official translations for the franchise never use profanity any more extreme than "bitch" or "bastard". (Those words in particular seeing a lot of use in the english dub for Dragon Ball Z Kai)
  • As pictured above, the MangaStream scanlation for Dragon Ball Super really loved having characters using "fuck" and "shit" every other sentence, as well as "cocksucker" being one of the go-to insults.
  • Despite its infamous censorship, Funimations early dubs of Dragon Ball Z practiced this with their script to "punch up" the dialogue. This toned down by the time of the 2013 revival, but still practiced. For example, Krillin calling the medical technology used by Frieza's men "mondo-cool" after putting Goku in a healing tank.
• Manga Entertainment, particularly their UK branch, was notorious for this as well in their earlier days. This sort of translation even gained the nickname "fifteening", for the age rating that resulted.
• There's at least one Bleach fansub out there that gives Nnoitra constant F-Bombs. This also happens in some manga scanlations.
• Shinsengumi Fansubs added quite a bit of cursing to its fansubs of Flame of Recca and Rurouni Kenshin.
• Spanish fansub AnimeUnderground seems to work by the following rule: "If there's the chance of using slang/swearwords instead of a normal word, then do so, no matter the context or who's saying it. (Unless it's a very polite character. Emphasis on very.) They especially are fond of using the word "joder" (Spanish for "fuck"), which they seem to find a way to work into every circumstance, even if the Japanese word is something like the rather mild "shimatta", or isn't even swearing (Like "Impossible!" or "This is bad!").
• An unusual example from an official release - Disney's dub of Princess Mononoke took a harmless line ("This soup tastes like water!") and punched it up ("This soup tastes like donkey piss!"). This was later admitted to have been an error in attempting to determine how "rude" the choice of phrasing originally was. The subtitles use the original phrase.
• A group called "Your-Mom" fansubs took some liberties with their Code Geass translation. In addition to this gem of Jeremiah Gottwald yelling "IMA FIRING MY PEWPEWLAZORS" (the original line was "Found you!"), there was also the wonderful spectacle of Viletta Nu angsting about "having wild sex with that Eleven," and contemptuously sneering "why would I have wondrous sex with you, Eleven?"
  • There's also an infamous scene with Shirley Fenette being particularly explicit when it was really out of character for her...
• The official subtitles of Hellsing are significantly more subdued than the dub; the dub has its share of Cluster F Bombs, while the subtitles are generally profanity-free. Yet the dub is the more faithful of the two translations— as those who viewed the series in fansubs will know, Jan Valentine's dialogue was vulgar enough in the original Japanese to get Sound Effect Bleeps in the first Fuji TV airing.
• Evident in fansubs of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, where the main characters would yell out "Who the fuck do you think we are?!" The line is more accurately "Who the hell do you think I am?"
  • The BSS fansub group had Kamina call Viral a "fucking furry". The original was more along the lines of "cocky bastard."
• One Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo scanlation changed "underwear" into "gay pants". Yeah, we don't know either.
• The Baki the Grappler series is filled with borderline-insane martial artists eager to battle each other to near death; the characters are so testosterone fueled that some scanlation efforts really took their time to spice up the dialogue to make the characters talk in nothing but a string of cuss words and generally be extremely rude to each other, as if that was the standard way a manly man should ever talk; the scans for the Prisoners Arc and a good chunk of Son of Ogre really pushed this idea, sometimes it goes beyond “spicing up” to outright change the original dialogue.
• In Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, Sanemi Shinazugawa usually speaks like a rustic thug in Japanese, with very informal speech, save the events in which he addresses to Kagaya Ubuyashiki, where he speaks eloquently; one fan translation effort decided to show that informality in English in a more blunt manner however, adding swearing then and there to portray his roughness.
• Fansub group gg has a history of this, especially when they start to get bored with the show they are working on. Their Hetalia: Axis Powers and Baka and Test: Summon the Beasts subs are the most extreme examples.
  • Example: Hetalia episode 48 - Italy (after "growing up" from Chibitalia) says "Koe hen na no" or "My voice sounds weird." Subs read "I sound like a fag." Funnily enough, Funimation's official dub isn't much better; their dub of this scene is almost identical, except with "fag" replaced with the slightly more PC "homo".
  • Another Hetalia one: "These rumors are spreading like AIDS!"
  • Don't forget this Baka and Test line: "There are people dying in Haiti, you know?" Also "Damn you liberal America"... on a show set in Japan.
• CoalGuys loves to spice up the series they work on. Especially apparent on their B Gata H Kei subs, though not the only ones. (Ironically, the English release of that series takes even greater liberties — even choosing a different title, Yamada's First Time.)
• The fansub group Commie has become notorious in the anime fandom for (for better or worse) filling their subs with punched-up "witty" dialogue and memes, often to the point of being distracting.
• The "JoJo's Colored Adventure" Scanlation contains a lot of gratuitous swearing versus the official translation, including Rubber Soul referring to Jotaro as a "soppy cunt".
• TV Nihon added at least one gratuitous "bullshit" in Zoids: Genesis.
• Ayako's fansubs for NEEDLESS are known for doing this. As well as adding swearing, they also added ridiculously long "TL notes" which explain the "science" behind the techniques used in Needless.
• Scanlations of Naruto are pretty inconsistent with the series' level of swearing.^note For example, Kakashi's famous early line about ninjas who abandon their friends being worse than trash is rendered in some scans as "worse than shit". And he's talking to kids! One character in particular gets a lot of this: scan groups often have Killer Bee drop the f-bomb, probably because he fancies himself an rapper and in US culture rappers are even more stereotypically foul-mouthed than Marines. In particular, his catchphrase kono yaro, baka yaro is often fan-translated as "motherfucker," though the actual meaning is closer to "man, you're stupid, man." (The Viz manga translates is as "fool, ya fool".)
• Done in the subs provided by Kirby's Rainbow Resort for Kirby: Right Back at Ya!, which often contain words like "bullshit". Especially jarring in because the games the show is based on are explicitly aimed primarily at a young audience and the show is fairly family friendly aside from the occasional horror and the Fumu-tan segment (which, it should be noted, made it into the official dub mostly unedited). The profanity is generally due to having trouble translating mild expletives without them sounding silly, and conveying respect levels. On the sillier side of things, during an episode where everyone is reading an obvious Harry Potter parody, they briefly (it only lasts about half a second) had the subtitles say "SNAPE KILLS DUMBLEDORE." during a scene transition.
• The subtitles of REDLINE contain many instances of the word "fuck", even when what's actually being said is a good deal milder. This is not a fansub, it's the official DVD release. (And oddly enough, the fansub is actually cleaner!)
• Horrible Subs' version of AKB0048 translates dialogue into ImageBoard memes wherever it can, and adds some slurs that the script wasn't even remotely implying.
• The original dub of Ghost Stories was notorious for adding adult jokes and references in what was originally intended to be a kids show. This was because the translators were told to do whatever they thought would get the show popular.
• The official release of High School Of The Dead follows both the "added cursing" ("WHAT THE FUCK'S GOING ON?!", for one) and "pop culture references that weren't in the original" phenomena associated with this trope.
• The European Spanish fansub of Ninja Nonsense is pretty infamous for this because EVERYONE (even the protagonist Shinobu and her little sister Miyabi, who is an elementary-grade age pre-teen, who don't swear at all in the original Japanese version) swears like sailors:
  Miyabi: ¡QUE PUTO ASCO! (That's FUCKING DISGUSTING!)^note In the original Japanese version, she only says That's gross! instead
• The European Spanish fansub of Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny, when Lord Djibril plans to fire the Requiem, he utters an Atomic F-Bomb that wasn't even implied in the original Japanese version:
  Djibril: Gilbert Durandal, ¡Ahora voy a tocar un Requiem para ti y tu PUTA especie! (And now, Gilbert Durandal, I will play a Requiem for you and all your FUCKING kind!)
• Among other mistakes in the fansubs for the Tokyo Mew Mew anime, many scenes in the show had swearing added to them, most commonly the word "shit". A major example was a scene in which "omae", a form of "you" which is sometimes seen as rude, was translated into "bitch".
• In the Mexican Spanish dub of The Familiar of Zero, Saito insults Guiche when he meets him for first time. While in the original version, Saito calls hims an idiot, in the Mexican dub, he calls him arrogant dumbass instead.^note Baboso engreido in Spanish.
• Pokémon: The Series fansubs are quite susceptible to this, with Satoshi/Ash going so far as the S word in some translations.
• Present in Yume Nikki manga scanslations. Whatever Madotsuki said after Uboa stole her effects, it probably wasn't "I'll fucking kill it!"
• The Mexican dubs of Diabolik Lovers, DEVILMAN crybaby, Bayonetta: Bloody Fate and The Seven Deadly Sins had profanity, being the first anime dubs in Mexico featuring strong profanity, possibly in an attempt to avoiding the Animation Age Ghetto trope really hard. Understandable in the first three cases, considering they were intended for more mature audiences to begin with, but Seven Deadly Sins is a shonen series.
• The Venezuelan Spanish dubs of Excel♡Saga and Superman: The Animated Series features strong profanity as well. The weirdest and baffling part of this is, while the dub of Excel Saga was dubbed from the English dub and the English dub has some profanity, the Spanish dub added even more profanity not featured in either the original Japanese or even in the proxy English translation.
• Tantei Team KZ Jiken Note, despite being a family-friendly anime, the Crunchyroll subs have the characters swear on some lines.
• The official English translation of the Batman manga has Batman refer to the astronomy-themed villain Planet King as "a pain in the... asteroids", a rather crude pun that seems out of sync with the rest of the manga.
• Sgt. Frog: Funimation's subtitled version does this to both Giroro and "the other" Momoka, but especially the latter, whose (translated) dialogue almost entirely has swearing in it, especially in the second season^note Which Funimation decided would be the "third" season.
• Late-series disks in AnimEigo’s release of Urusei Yatsura went in this direction, although they avoided it for most of the series. For example, a late series episode would have subtitles reading "Ataru, you asshole!" almost every time someone called the character's name in an angry tone, when nothing but the name was spoken out loud. It’s a contrast to earlier in the series, when the subtitles in that case would simply read "Ataru."
• Ishigami's "Urusai, baka" in the second season of Kaguya-sama: Love Is War was translated as "Go to hell, dumbass" in the official Funimation subs, while most other translations of both that scene and the scene it was echoing back in the first season used something along the lines of "Shut up, stupid."^note The Viz translation for the manga used "Go to hell, jerk", but that's another trope entirely.
• The Yen Press translation of Azumanga Daioh has Kagura uncharacteristically call Tomo "retarded" for trying to model herself after Fujiko Mine from Lupin III— the equivalent Japanese dialogue is simply "baka", which is closer in tone to "stupid" or "foolish", and is translated as such everywhere else in the book. By comparison, the older ADV Films translation uses the more tonally accurate "idiot".
• In the official English subtitles of Healin' Good♡Pretty Cure episode 13, Shidone says "That attitude's pissing us off!", which wasn't present in the original dialogue.
• While Berserk is a very dark and mature series to begin with, many fan translations enjoy going the extra mile by cramming their subs and scanslations full of harsh profanity. One infamous translation has Guts use both "fuck" (twice) and... the other F-word not just on the same page, but in the same panel. Early official translations were similarly crass, but drastically toned down the language after a while.
• Fan scans of the Splatoon manga dutifully translate every "kuso" (and since the franchise revolves around sports and military conflicts, there's a fair amount) as "shit." Occasional bits of Values Dissonance aside, the series is very obviously for children. Doubly jarring because official translations of both the games and manga tend toward Hold Your Hippogriffs — including, notably, a LINE sticker that implies the in-universe equivalent of the aforementioned word is "splat" — and otherwise use no language harsher than "freaking."
• Killer Shark In Another World's most common fan translation is a Cluster F-Bomb, with many characters (barring the comically naive protagonist) swearing in every other sentence, with the narrator's dialogue being particularly crude. Mind, this isn't the case where it's unfitting, as the manga itself is a Black Comedy Seinen with a lot of crude humor and references to B-grade horror—it'd be weirder if the characters weren't swearing.

Films — Live-Action

• The Swedish (cinematic) subtitles of The Avengers spiced up Loki's infamous "You mewling quim" to Black Widow by rendering it as "Din fega fitta" ("cowardly cunt"). Well, it's technically correct...
• The Mexican Spanish dub of Ted: While the original English dialogue is already profane enough, the Mexican dub uses even stronger profanity in scenes where characters only use mild swears, like when John says "Damn!" in the first half of the film being translated as "¡Puta madre!" (literally "whore mother", idiomatically something like "Fucking hell!/Son of a bitch!") instead.
• A non-seriously profane example, but the official, approved by Toho subtitles for Godzilla2000 has a character who in the original Japanese track shouts "Look!" when he sees the UFO fly overhead. In a film which is otherwise entirely in English, he shouts "Gott in Himmel!" ("God in Heaven!" in German).
• The Japanese dubs of the RoboCop films are more profane in many scenes than the original English versions, even including profanities in scenes when characters either used mild swearing or no swearing at all.
• For some unexplained reason, the European Spanish dub of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990) changes the Turtles' catchphrase of "Cowabunga!" with "¡De puta madre!" ("that's fucking great!"). No other Spanish version (either from the film or any other media of the franchise) does this, let alone with that tone.

Live-Action TV

• Super Sentai:
  • The CSCentrl sub of Hikari Sentai Maskman takes a Okelampa, a "character" whose only role is to Make My Monster Grow and then say "Good grief!" (Yare, yare!) Once per Episode and makes him a Deadpan Snarker of a Punch-Clock Villain. It got straight translated (and then different acceptable translations for the same term) a few times, but once CS got bored, yare, yare could become "I need a raise!" or "Why don't the Maskmen shoot me first?" or even "Baraba's mom is Rita Repulsa!" It was something different every week and part of what you waited for.
  • TV-Nihon's Samurai Sentai Shinkenger subs often offer us some "bastard"s and "bitch"s... in what is very clearly a children's show. One of the most particularly jarring examples is seeing Mako reacting to a striking revelation with "This is bullshit".
  • They might have passed that in Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger. When Yuki Gai confronts him in the middle of the night he says "Fuzaken na" (ふざけんな), a phrase which literally means "quit joking" and is considered fairly strong language, but it was rendered as "Fuck off."
• Kamen Rider:
  • OverTime's first run of Kamen Rider OOO subs had a few hilarious moments in which Ankh would yell "MOTHERFUCKER!"; while Ankh swearing was actually pretty believable given his personality, it was still a little out-of-place given Kamen Rider is a kids' show.
  • TV-Nihon had a habit of rendering utterances of "Fuzaken na" as "Bullshit" and (in one instance) "Fuck off" in Kamen Rider Gaim. And while the characters saying this may be young adults and Gaim is one of the the Darker and Edgier series of Kamen Rider, the fact remains that Kamen Rider is still a kids' show.
• Jonas: in the Disney+ airing, an instance where a character played a whistle-tone on her cellphone was subtitled to call it a "rape-whistle". How they got away with that is really radar-dodging.
• Unusual live-action and official example: the official English subtitles for the first season of Forbrydelsen on The BBC caused complaints from Danes, as whether down to ignorance or laziness every Danish profanity from mild to extreme was translated as some form of "fuck", giving a misleading impression of the dialogue and characters.
• An unusual case of de-bowdlerising in-canon bowdlerisation: in the Doctor Who story "Battlefield", the character Brigadier Bambera has a habit of exclaiming "Sh...ame!" in moments of stress. Despite still being shown in a family timeslot, the German dub reportedly had her simply say "Scheiße!".
• Reality shows involving Gordon Ramsay such as Kitchen Nightmares are shown on morning TV on Channel Four. This poses an issue whereby, for daytime viewing, C4 are careful to use versions with the copious swearing bleeped out. Unfortunately, nobody at C4 thought to check the subtitles. Every meticulously bleeped "Fuck!" on the soundtrack was reproduced, faithfully, in writing, on subtitles meant for later-night viewing.

Music

• The original Thai version of "Poo" by Neko Jump is a G-rated song about the singers having nightmares about being attacked by crabs. The Japanese version of the song is more sexually charged, as said crabs rip up their skirts and try to peep at the singers.

Video Games

• AmeNiki's fan translation of Taiko no Tatsujin Wii: Dodo~n! to Nidaime! spices up rude sentences, often involving insults with swears, without taking into account the context that the game's story is meant to be for little kids to enjoy.
• DeJap's Tales of Phantasia. While Arche wasn't exactly an innocent little flower in the original script, the translation made her so horny that she was practically the Dirty Old Man of the party (although she was neither old nor a man). The much, much, MUCH tamer official translation was one of the (numerous) problems that players of the Fan Translation had with the GBA version.
  • DeJap's translation of the boat scene (in)famously punched up Claus's Japanese line "Mint may be clean and composed, and that's good, but Arche is Arche. There's something charming about her, you have to admit" into "Mint has that quiet elegance about her, but I bet Arche fucks like a tiger". Then there's the near memetic line from the kid listening to the band in Alvanista. The original has him say "These guys aren't that good, I kind of feel bad for them" while DeJap had him say "These guys suck ASS!!!" DeJap also mutated Klarth/Claus's Pin-Up Mag weapon into a "Porno Magazine".
  • Another example of the same translator, Bahamut Lagoon, exaggerated everyone's traits to the point some dialogue sounded too stereotypical. And yes, there's added swears.
• In Dead or Alive before Dimensions and the fifth main title in the series all non-Japanese speaking fans had were subtitles to understand what the characters were saying, and these translations were heavily localized, ranging from the English text being a mere different reading of what the characters were saying to some other lines being almost completely different, as in it made some characters sound more rude and aggressive than they really were.
  Tina's intro dialogue in Dead or Alive 3:
  Japanese: Honki de iku wa yo! [in a playful tone, fitting of her personality]
  Literal translation: I'm going serious!
  Official localization: I'm gonna open a can of whoop-ass on you!
• Whoever did the subtitles for Limbo of the Lost was a bit cracked. The subtitles are peppered with demented laughter, regardless of the fact that the dialog contains none whatsoever. Bizarrely, this is actually a text-based Verbal Tic of one of the developers, as observed in some of his responses to reviewers on forums.
• Final Fantasy:
  • J2e's Fan Translation of Final Fantasy IV purports to be more faithful than the original SNES version's translation, and it is... in some places. In others, it cribs liberally from the SNES script (including the "spoony bard" line) and inserts swear words and pop culture references that were never in the original. This is perhaps most noticeable in the encounter with (C/K)ain after the Cagnazzo battle; not only does Kain refer to Rosa as a "whore", something the original script wasn't even implying, but Yang, ordinarily a polite and honorable man, breaks character entirely to call Kain a "son of a bitch". Clyde Mandelin, a former Funimation subtitler and popular fan translator (best known for spearheading the Mother 3 fan translation), argued in his extensive analysis of the different translations of FFIV that the J2e translation was worse than the official SNES one because of its extreme liberties and misleading marketing.
  • The profanity that Final Fantasy VII's localization is notorious for was mostly invented by the game's lone translator, Michael Baskett, with the Japanese version, while not completely clean, still being about what you would expect for a mainstream game aimed at young teenagers. Many instances with Symbol Swearing in English have no excessively foul language at all in the Japanese version^ExamplesBarret's line upon seeing Jenova in Hojo's lab is "The hell is this headless freak?" in Japanese, but is "Where's its &%$#in' head?!" in English; one of the rooms Cloud can visit in the Honeybee Inn is called the "Love Room" in Japanese, but the "&$#% Room" in English.. Possibly the most blatant example is if the party uses the stairs in the Shinra Building: one of Tifa's lines (in response to Barret's Drama Queen behavior) is "Hey! Stop tempting fate!" in Japanese, but in English, the line was completely rewritten to "Would you stop acting like a retard and climb?!". This is an extremely Out-of-Character Moment for an otherwise caring and sweet Nice Girl like Tifa. Previous English Final Fantasy translations (such as IV and VI) had been damaged by Nintendo of America's strict censorship policies, so Squaresoft NA may have been pushing hard in the opposite direction to shake the stigma off. Final Fantasy VII Remake, being a remake, is similarly more profane in English than in Japanese.
• For the North American release of Hakuouki, the Aksys Games translators opted to convey Hijikata Toshizo's aggressive manner of speech by peppering his dialogue liberally with profanity and crude idioms, including quite a few f-bombs. The Sentai Filmworks translation of The Anime of the Game— which in the original Japanese lifts a lot of dialogue directly from the game— is much milder.
• With very few exceptions, the Fan Translation of Mother 3 is very good about profanity, generally only using it where it appears in the original script. (Having a professional translator on the team helped.) Why does it belong here? Word of God from lead translator Clyde "Tomato" Mandelin^note Specifically, this page on Legends of Localization is that he tried to do what he thought an official Nintendo translation would have gone with, and "this stance on including swearing is [one] thing where I’m certain I strayed from what an official localization would’ve done".
• Resolve's fan translations of Tsukihime and Melty Blood often use language much harsher and more vulgar than what the original text would suggest.
• One of the various fan translations of Fire Emblem: Thracia 776 adds "IN AMERICA!" after Kempf shouts "Those idiots have fallen right into my trap!" (America doesn't even exist in that game's fantasy universe!)
• One fan translation of Fire Emblem Gaiden had a lot of Obligatory Swearing, including Desaix calling Mycen a "fucking traitor".
• Marc Laidlaw's (No, not that one) translation of Policenauts added in some homophobic and transphobic slurs that weren't in Hideo Kojima's script in the name of 'realism'. After receiving a lot of criticism for it, he has said that he regrets it.
• Klonoa is a very fluffy series intended to have Multiple Demographic Appeal, yet the Fan Translation of Klonoa Heroes: Densetsu no Star Medal can get quite blue, including two "fucks" from Guntz. Word of God is that the translators knew profanity works differently in Japanese, but threw it in anyway to prevent people from accusing them of censorship.
• This was done in Live A Live's original fan translation. Odie disrespects Masaru's opponents and it's clear he did kill them in cold blood. but the unofficial English translation has him sadistically describe how he murdered each of them in gruesome ways, such as twisting their bodies in ways the victim couldn't imagine.
• The Aeon Genesis fan translation of Mega Man & Bass has a pretty profane script by Mega Man (Classic) standards to begin with, but Bass/Forte has the foulest mouth of anyone in the game, calling Dr. Wily a "dirty son of a bitch" before the final fight and a "prick" in his ending. Even simple Flavor Text wasn't safe from this - one of Roll's lines when using the Transceiver in Astro Man's stage, 「そのステージっていったいどうなっているのかしら？アストロマンにきいてみたいわ。」^note sono suteeji tte ittai dou natte iru no kashira? asutoroman ni kiite mitai wa.("What in the world is going on in that stage? I'd like to ask Astro Man about it.") was "translated" as "I'd like to know what Astro Man was smoking when he came up with this stage!".
• In the Japanese version of Sonic Forces, it's mentioned that Sonic was captured and imprisoned by Eggman. The English translation changes this to Sonic being tortured by Eggman.
• The various RPG localizations of Working Designs are this in the "traditional" sense, but they also became infamous in later years for liberally rewriting vast swaths of dialogue to add in more jokes, usually either references to contemporary pop-culture or Toilet Humor. Usually this was incidental text that didn't get in the way of the actual plot, but it almost always played havoc with the world-building and on several occasions had actual gameplay repercussions.
• Yakuza's English dub in the original PS2 release adds Cluster F-Bombs and other curse words all over the dialogue, all delivered in a way that sounds like a kid who's just discovered swearing. Subsequent games, including the Kiwami version of the first game and those that received English dubs after, used profanity more sparingly and surgically.
• The Japanese versions of Xenoblade Chronicles X and Xenoblade Chronicles 2 are not noticeably more vulgar than the original game, aside from a couple of sexual jokes in the latter that still aren't any worse than what you'd see in a shonen anime. But while the English translation of the first Xenoblade was quite tame for a T-rated game, its sequels feature much more profanity and vulgarity, up to and including "shit" in XC2.

Web Original

• Fictosophy's sketch "Translating Minnesota Nice." When a line goes "Oh. Okay den" and reads "Oh!... This is a pickle," you know the subtitler had a little too much fun.
• TomSka adds in extra jokes in the subtitles of all his videos (listed as British English to avoid confusion with those meant for the HoH or deaf).
• The same thing is done by Team Four Star in the Canadian English subtitles of Dragon Ball Z Abridged.
• While not an example itself, this ProZD video does sum this trope up pretty well.
• Inverted in Star Wars Downunder where the subtitles explaining the Australian Slang are extremely bland (which is exactly why you leave them ON—they contrast so much with the actual dialogue that they provide a whole 'nother level of humor).
• The video "Steamed Hams but its a 90's Anime Fansub" parodies the low quality of fansubs, including unnecessary swearing.
  Skinner: What the goddamn fuck? My roast is ruined!
  Skinner: Oh fuck no! It is an expression of the Albany Clan!
  Chalmers: What the fuck?! What's happening in there?
• A form of this is a known recurring issue in fan translations for hololive clips. Though swearing isn't too much of a problem, lower-quality channels have been known to use both this trope and actual mistranslations to exaggerate drama or tensions between the talents or between them and other people, even when things actually are serious and warrant extra caution when discussing. The issue persists despite relentless pushback from other fans and Cover Corporation themselves.

Western Animation

• Superman: The Animated Series is a downplayed example in the Venezuelan Spanish dub, as although the original work was profanity-free, the only character who swears in the dub is Lobo, and using profane language is entirely in character for him (although the original comics and most adaptations usually go for Pardon My Klingon obscenities that are just dissimilar enough to the English words not to get an adults-only rating).
• One pirated Indonesian DVD (commonly sold at stalls in markets) of the Thomas & Friends special Calling All Engines! translated Thomas' exclamations "Cinders and ashes!" and "Bust my buffers!" as something that roughly means "Son of a bitch!" in English.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic episode "Flutter Brutter" was subject to this in the French dub. Fluttershy's "I'm just so peeved", which is informal but not exactly vulgar, was translated to the equivalent of "I've got balls-ache", although it did match well with everyone looking shocked upon hearing it.
  • An aversion appears in the season 1 episode "The Show Stoppers". The French equivalent of "break a leg" is "merde", which was used in one or two amateur subs and constituted a straight example. However, the official dub simply translates "break a leg" literally, even if this expression doesn't exist in French and thus makes little to no sense.
  • The same goes in the Latin American Spanish dub, somewhat, as "break a leg" was translated literally as "romperse una pata", which is more rude in Spanish than in English.
  • There's a certain (unintentional) humor in this, considering that these are horses, after all.
• The Latin American Spanish dub of Jellystone!, for some reason, adds some profanity to the dialogue some characters. For example, in the dub of Yogi's Tummy Troubles, Yogi calls himself in Spanish as "Oso baboso", ("stupid/dumbass bear"), just for the sake of a pun. The word "baboso", a Mexican slang word, is quite a strong insult to use in a cartoon geared for younger audiences.
• The Danish subtitles of The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie feature quite a bit of swearing, possibly because the translator acknowledges that the humor of the show and movie will also often appeal to adults, and that little kids are likely to watch the movie dubbed instead of subbed. The word "røv" (comparable to "ass") is uttered a few times, Plankton states "hvad fanden" (comparable to "what the hell") when shocked, and during the fighting scene atop the Hasselhoff, Dennis states that SpongeBob has balls (instead of the "guts" in the original dialogue, as the metaphor "you got guts" cannot be translated directly into Danish) and threatens to rip these balls off. Averted in the dub where, just like in the original, there is no swearing (here, "you got guts" is changed to "you got a strong stomach").

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