Translation Convention / Anime & Manga

The Translation Convention in anime and manga.

---

• 3×3 Eyes:
  • Early on, it was prevalent to have Chinese characters speak in Japanese... with the dialogue in their balloon put between brackets, to signify the fact that they're supposed to speak in Chinese.
  • Implied with the demons in Trinetra: when they normally speak with the heroes or each other they seemingly talk in Japanese like humans. However, during the arc with the three surviving Nine-Headed Dragon Generals in Tokyo, the heroes sneak into their lair using a thought-projection clone of Talisman, one of the generals. When his colleague Wu Gui notices him, she starts speaking... in a language made out of incomprehensible symbols that the heroes cannot understand, which implies that the parts where demons are talking to each other are spoken in their own language and translated for the reader's benefit.
• The dub of Ai Yori Aoshi had Mayu use a British accent for speaking English.
• Astra Lost in Space: Texts on the screens are in English and an astronaut remarks that they are speaking in English in context of noting that her native language is Russian
• Azumanga Daioh had its difficulties when dubbed into English, since the main classroom scenes take place ... in an English class. The manga had less difficulty, with different typefaces (or the artist's attempts at writing in English), but for the anime series, Yukari goes from an English teacher to a 'language' teacher, with the English-spoken lines in the original usually being turned to French or Spanish. Incongruous when the 'language' teacher has difficulty with talking to a German, or the fact that all the non-Japanese text is in English, or that the textbooks are English books. Most ironically, the teacher in the original Japanese version speaks, apparently, fluent English with an extremely thick accent, as evidenced by the fact that she is shown conversing comfortably with an American tourist. That may count as an extra 'joke', though, given her character.
• Considering Baccano! is set in 1930s America, it's probably safe to say that they are not speaking Japanese — although Firo does eventually become fluent in the language in the books.
  • Furthermore, during flashbacks to the Advena Avis, it's probably safe to say that the characters are speaking French, which would have been the most likely common language for such a wide variety of nationalities in 1711.
• In Black Butler, set in Victorian-era London, the reader is meant to assume the characters are speaking English, even when it's actually Japanese.
• Black Lagoon:
  • All the characters "spoke" in Japanese, despite being an international cast; it was assumed that they were actually speaking English. Then things got complicated in a specific arc where they visited Japan: the dialogue would switch back and forth between the English they were actually speaking and the Japanese they weren't. The general rule seemed to be English when they were speaking to those who couldn't understand it and Japanese when they could (the audience only understood when someone else did), but the pattern was broken in both directions several times.
  • The English dub, meanwhile, averts this... With the exception the first arc and the above Japan-visiting arc, where a lot of dialogue that's actually supposed to be entirely in Japanese was rendered into English in accordance to the trope.
• Blood+ features this trope hard. Over the course of Walking the Earth, the characters go from Okinawa, to Vietnam, to Russia, to France, to England and finally to America. Granted some of the characters are old enough to have learned all the languages, but it boggles the mind to wonder how two not particularly intelligent highschool students like Kai and Mao know all of them.
  • Not to mention the United States soldiers speaking to one another in Japanese when no other Japanese characters are present.
• An odd example towards the end of the Blue Seed anime, which features a number of scenes set within a US Carrier Group. The original apparently had English voice actors, with a Japanese translator speaking in the background. The Japanese translation can still be heard in the dub.
• Carole & Tuesday is set on a terraformed Mars. As all written language is in English, and Alba City (the largest Martian city where most of the series takes place) is patterned as a futuristic New York City, it can be assumed that everyone is actually speaking English, not Japanese. This is further proven in that every song including the opening and ending themes is sung in perfect English.
• Since Chrono Crusade is set in America, it's safe to assume everyone's speaking English instead of Japanese.
• The manga Club 9 feature a girl who moved from her country town in Akita prefecture to attend college in Tokyo, and work in a high-end hostess club. In the English translation of this manga, all the characters from Akita speak with a country 'hick' accent, and all the characters from Tokyo speak with urban slang. It would be interesting to learn how these language differences are depicted in the original Japanese.
• Code Geass is a bit strange about this. For the most part, it's blatantly clear that the characters are actually mostly speaking English, though there are some scenes where the true language is Japanese (and a few in Chinese), and a number of characters are implied to be bilingual. On the other hand, even the original Japanese version has Britannian soldiers use the phrases "Yes, my lord!" and "Yes, your highness!" in English (which the English dub echoes - characters will use Japanese Honorifics to indicate when they're actually speaking Japanese).
  • One Yonkoma lampshades this by having Suzaku ask "Are we supposed to be speaking English or Japanese? I'm so confused!" and Lelouch advising him not to think about it.
  • This video plays with this interestingly. It uses the original Japanese audio whenever the Japanese characters talk, and mixes it with the English dub whenever the Brittanian characters talk, switching between the two if a character is assumed to switch languages based on the plot.
  • However, everything gets thrown out the window when the Chinese are in the picture. They also speak Japanese or English depending on which dub you're watching, but thanks to the interplay of them, the Britannians, and the Japanese, it can be assumed that most of the cast is proficient in three languages, which can stretch the Willing Suspension of Disbelief. It's fine for politicians like Schneizel, Kaguya and Tianzi, and the political and linguistics genius Lelouch. Not so much for the more blue collar Japanese cast. It is possible, though, that the dialogue in this part was all in English, since they were marrying the Empress off to a Britannian in exchange for Britannian noble titles.
  • As for the Japanese characters knowing more languages, it makes more sense with what they were doing before the invasion - Ohgi was a schoolteacher, and Tamaki wanted to be a politician, so they might have had more language experience.
  • In Spin-Off Code Geass: Akito the Exiled, the onscreen text implies that the European characters are actually mostly speaking in French (which makes sense, given that in the Geass 'verse, all of Europe was conquered by Napoleon); this was made explicit in the English dub by giving them French accents. It is unclear if the Japanese characters speak Japanese, since they were all born and raised in Europe.
• The world(s) of Cowboy Bebop can be seen as highly multilingual, though the language preferred by the protagonists is most likely Chinese:
  • The Bebop can frequently be seen anchoring in a Martian Chinatown.
  • In one scene, "No Smoking" signs can be seen in various languages. Out of all those, Jet picks the one in Chinese to point his finger on.
  • Faye is from Singapore.
  • Jet can be seen reading and writing e-mails in Chinese.
  • Spike used to work for the Triads.
• The animated adaptation of Crest of the Stars has this in full force. For the most part the characters are all speaking Baronh but it is rendered into Japanese for most scenes (the opening narration is in Baronh as are a few preview scenes). A lot of the time English is used to render Martine which the novels make explicit is descended from English. The opening scenes of the first episode add another layer starting off in English to represent Martine then sliding into Japanese.
• Although the Japanese voice cast is given top billing, the characters of Cyberpunk: Edgerunners are obviously meant to be speaking English — besides the pre-established Californian setting of Night City, the in-universe subtitles used for holo messages are all written in English, using the English dub's script. A pair of Tyger Claw grunts in the third episode speak Japanese that is left untranslated in every non-Japanese dub.
• Darker than Black has Contractors and Dolls from a number of countries, and one, Maki, is supposed to not know Japanese and based upon the type of phrases he is shown studying, is at a rather remedial level in the language. So, you have a character speaking in Japanese about not knowing Japanese. Also notable are Hei's apartment mates who are practically a Five-Token Band in terms of diverse nationalities, and even if Tokyo Is the Center of the Universe, might not be expected to be fluent. While it's never stated that characters are actually speaking English, it seems likely that it would be the common language of characters from differing nationalities, rather than Japanese.
  • Since the five are living in Japan and even work there, they can probably speak Japanese at least well enough to get by.
  • Hei (Chinese), Yin (Finnish), Suo (Russian/Japanese), and Mao (probably from a country that can speak Spanish) are all very likely able to speak fairly fluent Japanese as they have been shown speaking to Japanese residents normally.
  • In Ryuusei no Gemini, it isn't completely clear each each time Suoh switches between Russian and Japanese since we hear Japanese the whole time. There is a notable example where someone who doesn't know Russian checks whether she has German, French, or English as a second language before trying actual Japanese and not the secretly-Russian Japanese Suoh had been speaking up to then.
• In the Japanese version of Death Note, the scenes at which Interpol convenes and speaks with a British detective, as well as Near's dealings with the American SPK and Mello's conversations with the US Mafia are all presented in Japanese; presumably, they're actually speaking English. In the live-action movie, Lind L. Tailor, L's decoy, was voiced by an American, while a Japanese translator made a voice-over (which is how it was done in the manga as well, although only the voice-over is shown). This is also assumed to be in effect for Wammy's House, unless we are to believe that all the residents of an orphanage in England speak Japanese as their default language.
• The "Digimon World Tour" part of Digimon Adventure 02 varied between averting the trope and playing it straight. In the US and Australia everybody can understand each other for no reason (which is ACCEPTABLE in the Australia case, as both Iori/Cody and Jou/Joe are very intelligent and probably knew English, but not in the US case, as Daisuke/Davis most likely knows little or no English and the half a dozen American children probably don't speak Japanese). In the Mexico case, the only characters they found were a guard (Spanish-speaking) and little Chichos/Rosa, whose Spanish-speak was a plot point (in the group only Ken knew Spanish, and only he could understand her). In the France case, Takeru/TK's grandfather surely knows Japanese, and Catherine addresses in dialogue that she does it too. In the Russia case the trope was averted completely, as the Japanese children couldn't communicate at all with the Russian children. The China case, though, was a complete mess - at first the inability to communicate was the challenge for the Japanese children, but less than a minute later they were perfectly able to understand the Chinese children with no explanation to why. Notice that, in the dub, the cultural shock (except for the Russia case) was replaced by a hurricane of accents.
• Virtually all text in Ergo Proxy is in English, all the way down to Re-l's personal notes. A curious exception is the episode "Who Wants To Be In Jeopardy!", where the game show is in entirely Japanese.
• Fairy Tail has signs and place names in English, plus everyone's names are in western order (even the protagonist Natsu Dragneel), thus English is implied to be the official language of the Fairy Tail universe. Word of God says that a language very similar to English was the spoken language in the author's initial work, Rave Master, so this probably is a decent assumption.
• The Familiar of Zero: Applies only in the anime: Halkegenia is presented as Japanese / English to the viewers, but Saito, as part of a Summon Everyman Hero, isn't able to understand any Halkegenian until Louise, his summoner, accidentally uses a translation spell. The Japanese version had Saito speak with an echo effect applied to his voice until Louise spelled him, while in the dub, they meet and ask each other what language the other is speaking in... in perfect English. The original Light Novel has Translator Microbes from the start, with Saito receiving a magical translation effect as part of his summoning, allowing him to perceive all the other characters' speech as Japanese from the beginning.
• In The Five Star Stories, signs and other things are labelled in Engrish, though everybody seems to be speaking Japanese (or whatever language it's translated into). The use of English lettering is particularily odd, as the people are aliens who evolved to be identical to humans apparently through sheer coincidence and have no connection whatsoever to Earth. Stranger still, the language of the ancient, mystical Farus Di Kanarn civilization is rendered as Chinese and the Kingdom of Fortune's as French. When Mugumica recites a poem from there it's written bilingually, but earlier when Lachesis changes into her final form for the first time and begins speaking it, it is left untranslated.
  • It's about 11,000 years in the future, so it might not be Translation Convention for the text.
  • Another oddity is that Ssizz and presumably the rest of Balanche's "Oriental-Style" Fatimas often have their dialogue left untranslated in English editions.
• Fractale takes place in what appears to be Ireland in the far future. All written text is in English and it can be assumed that this is what the characters are speaking as well.
• From Far Away deals with this nicely by having different outlined panels for the different languages of the characters. For example, near the beginning of the series the main heroine, who is learning said language would have a double outlined talk bubble to represent her speaking Japanese; whereas everyone else would have normal talk bubbles.
• Fullmetal Alchemist:
  • The characters speak and write in English though the manga is written in Japanese.
  • The manga uses differently shaped speech bubbles to tell whether people are speaking Amestrian/English or Xingese/Chinese. If the orientation of the text are vertical (as is normal in a manga) then it's English, but if the orientation of the text is horizontal then it's Chinese. The fonts used are also different. Note that Japanese text in manga is usually written as traditional, that is, top-to-down, right-to-left. That's why in manga most bubbles are vertical. But to mark foreign speech it's common in manga to use left-to-right, top-to-down text, as common in Western countries (it's really become a convention, even when the language supposed to be spoken here is Chinese, which is written in the same orientation as Japanese).
  • Fullmetal Alchemist (2003) seems to follow the same language conventions as the manga until The Movie, where Edward has moved from England to Germany. They're canonically speaking German throughout the film. In the voice actor commentary for Conqueror of Shamballa, Sonny Strait commented that they weren't going to add on German accents to the characters — they're speaking German, so they just translated it as if it were regular speech.
• It's only made clear in the original light novels of Full Metal Panic! that the characters are speaking in either Japanese or English depending on their location and situation, usually in Japan or on a Mithril base/mission respectively. It helps that most of the major characters are fluent in both languages. This is mostly given a Hand Wave in all dubs of the anime.
• In Gankutsuou, most of the characters are French. In fact, The Previously is always spoken in French by Gankutsuou, himself. In the finale, Gankutsuou speaks French to Albert, who apparently understands him perfectly, but still answers in Japanese, making the translation convention a pretty messy affair.
• Neither the people of Gargantia nor the Galactic Alliance in Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet are speaking Japanese (or English in the dub). Who is speaking gibberish and who is represented as Japanese/English depends on the viewpoint character at the moment.
• In Genshiken, Angela and Sue, two Occidental Otaku from the USA, visit the club. In the Del Rey localization, their English dialogue is printed in a different font, and in the anime, they speak English while the regular cast speaks Japanese. This causes problems in the English dub, since both Angela and Madarame are speaking English to the audience, but the point of the scene is that neither can speak the other's language.
• Presumably, the Tachikomas in Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex are being translated for the viewers' benefit while actually communicating electronically (since, in the first Tachikoma Special, one of the Tachikomas suggests that they should all use language, while the viewers hear them "speaking" Japanese).
• As Gunsmith Cats is set in 1990's Chicago, it can be assumed that the characters speak English rendered as Japanese.
• Great Pretender begins with all of the characters speaking their correct languages—Makoto speaks Japanese, Laurent speaks French, and when the two converse, it's in very heavily accented English. After their initial meeting, a splash screen pops up informing the audience that, for convenience's sake, from then on, everything will just be translated. From then on, everything is translated when the characters are mutually intelligible to one another, but dialogue remains untranslated when a language barrier becomes a plot point.
• In GATE, though the SDF soldiers are clearly speaking Japanese, the natives of the Special Region are generally shown speaking it as well. When they have to communicate, it is shown with the party not understanding the needed language speaking broken Japanese, or in scenes where she's present, Lelei adding a quick "he said/she said" after someone finishes talking.
• English is what's being spoken in Hellsing. In one of the OVAs Seras uses some Japanese tourists to distract Anderson and Alucard and complains about them... while still speaking 'Japanese' for the benefit of the audience. Presumably, they're still speaking English even though half the people there are Italian.
• Heroman is implicitly set in America with American characters. This is probably because the original concept was created by an American. There's also a fair bit of Gratuitous English, but that's another trope.
• In Hetalia: Axis Powers almost every single character is a speaker of a different language. So what on earth are they speaking in? Who knows, just run with it.
  • Word of God implies that they all speak their own official languages, and use a language they all know with each other. It's apparent from the strips as well: America and England talk to each other in English (re: the rubber incident, England correcting America's English), America apparently speaking in English on world meetings (so it seems all of them speak English), China and Korea singing the same song in their own languages, America and Japan needing an interpreter to communicate when they first meet, and later on America speaking in a very accented Japanese.
• Heterogenia Linguistico: Different languages are rendered in different fonts, and words Hakaba doesn't understand are rendered as black boxes (█). Some hard-to-translate concepts like "MNH" (something along the lines of "does not mix", but also meaning "fight") or WOOF! (the name of a giant earthworm eaten by many species) are left untranslated.
• In Hikaru no Go, when the show cuts to scenes of Go players in France, America, China, etc. talking among themselves, one can assume they are speaking their native languages, although the dialogue continues to be in Japanese.
• Hunter × Hunter is a bit odd about this. They use a different lettering system, so it could be assumed they're not really speaking Japanese, but they also use kanji (albeit a bit differently) and occasionally Gratuitous English as well.
• Near-constant in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. English, Spanish, Italian, Chinese, French, Hindi, Arabic, and others are all presented as Japanese—hardly surprising when, on the whole, very little of the series is actually set in Japan. However, when Koichi heads to Italy and confronts Giorno, Giorno commends him on his fluency in Italian, which Koichi Hirose lets slip that it was the result of Rohan using Heaven's Door on him. Regardless, both are presented as speaking in Japanese to the reader. From the same part, all currencies are expressed in Japanese yen, despite JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind taking place in Italy.
  • Subverted in the live-action Diamond is Unbreakable movie, where Jotaro (who otherwise speaks Japanese the whole film) has a Switch to English when he talks to his grandfather Joseph Joestar, an English-American, on the phone. Given his mom is a white expat, and by this time in the plot he was living in Florida with a white woman and their daughter, it's probably a given that he'd be bilingual.
  • Chapter 2 of Steel Ball Run has a disclaimer that says that all U.S. customary units will be converted to metric and currency amounts will be inflated to modern standards. Also, Sandman can apparently write Japanese.
  • An old man in JoJolion's Shakedown Road arc chides Josuke and Joshu for their confusion, asking them if they've forgotten how to speak Japanese. Makes perfect sense in the original, which takes place in Japan and features almost exclusively Japanese characters. Makes less sense when you're reading a translation.
• In K, the Germans' dialogue in the flashback is shown in the language of the rest of the dialogue, but Weismann's Gratuitous German when he gets his memories back is presented in German.
• Kaleido Star takes place at a circus in the U.S., so of course everybody is speaking English even if what you're hearing is Japanese. It gets confusing at times when the two languages cross paths.
• What language is spoken in Last Exile is unclear but it is not set in Japan (or even on Earth), so one would assume it is not Japanese being spoken. The written language is English but using Greek letters (a = Alpha, b = Beta, etc). To a Greek person, the text would not make sense, and to someone who can read English, they would need to decipher the characters first. All numerals are represented by Roman numerals.
• In Legend of the Galactic Heroes, people from the Alliance presumably speak in English, and their Imperial counterparts in German, though it is just as likely that they are all speaking in a yet-unknown future language which is rendered in Japanese for the benefit of the viewers.
• Little Witch Academia takes place in England — the cast is very multinational, there's a lot of English written on notebooks and posters, and a boy from a nearby town is named "Thomas". There's also a complete lack of honorifics in everyone's dialogue and Akko (the only Japanese member of the cast) suffers from Name Order Confusion when she introduces herself to Andrew. Despite this, in the English dub, nearly all the characters speak with American accents, including the ones who are supposed to be British.
• In Lucky Star, Patricia Martin is supposed to have a bit where she tries to avoid Kagami's scolding by claiming she doesn't understand Japanese (and is only fluent in her native language, English). Of course, in the English dub, this wouldn't make sense. They changed it to her simply intentionally pretending not to hear Kagami.
• The Lyrical Nanoha series has a bizarre partial application of this trope. Humans and familiars always speak Japanese, but their Devices speak either English or German depending on whether they are Mid-Childa or Belkan. This results in a number of conversations where one side is Engrish and the other Japanese.
• Almost all printed material in the Macross universe is shown on screen in English (often well-written), and it is assumed that, especially after the first series, English is the spoken language in the context of the franchise, even though it is always presented in Japanese.
  • This is implicitly lampshaded in Macross: Do You Remember Love? — although voice actress Mari Iijima is singing the title song in Japanese, a closeup of Lynn Minmay's hand at the end reveals that the lyrics provided her by Misa were written entirely in English. This is also shown earlier, as Misa's translating the original Zentradi into English, but since the translation uses a very stylized font and is only briefly on screen, it's easy to miss. Additionally, the Macross's intercom system speaks entirely in untranslated (and surprisingly fluent) English.
  • Played straight in the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross with the Zentradi, which actually speak their own (fictional) language, but Japanese is heard for the viewers' benefit. Do You Remember Love? corrects this by actually having them speak their true language. In fact, it's implied that all of Macross's aliens are actually speaking their own native languages when among themselves, since each species has been shown to have its own writing system.
  • A message Sheryl writes to Grace in Episode 2 of Macross Frontier implies that the Macross Galaxy fleet has at least a large population of French-speakers, despite their dialogue being rendered in Japanese.
• In Majin Bone, Neposians speak with a reverb when speaking in their native tongue. However, this isn't apparent at first because Bone Fighters can understand each other through a Translator Microbes effect through their Bones. In later episodes, Neposians start interacting with civilians and learning their language, and will drop the reverb when actually speaking Japanese.
• Major. After Goro joins the Minor League or whenever he's in America in general (except for when language is the issue being discussed). One wonders when he learned English though.
• Marginal Prince is set in an international boarding school, and the texts on books, newspapers and TV make clear that the language of consent is English and the characters are most likely speaking English with each other, which is rendered in Japanese so the audience can understand it. The only exceptions might be when Yuuta talks to his sister back in Japan on phone, and in the same vein, when Haruya talks to her. In this case, the speech level is noticeably different from how he speaks to other characters on the cast, switching from casual to relatively formal whenever he picks up the phone. A strange case is Sylvain, who is a declared fan of anime and manga and speaks on relatively formal speech level with the others. While it doesn't convey any meaning in contact with the American, French, Russian and other characters on the cast, one might assume that he tries speaking textbook Japanese with Haruya and Yuuta.
• In Marvel Disk Wars: The Avengers, of the non-Japanese characters, only Iron Man could reasonably be expected to know any Japanese, being an international businessman (Cap probably wouldn't, given that he operated on the European front of World War II). All dialogue (aside from Calling Your Attacks, Gratuitous English, and the English used by the DISK computer) is in Japanese.
• Michiko & Hatchin is set in a fictional country based on Brazil and thus the characters are surely speaking Portuguese to each other, not Japanese. That the on-screen text is always presented in Portuguese doesn't really open any room for argument.
• In the English translation of Miracle Girls, a character reads a letter with English text on it. When a European character who only speaks English picks it up, she mentions being unable to read Japanese.
• In one chapter of Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid, Kanna runs away to New York City with everyone speaking Japanese but with all the signs written in English.^note In the anime, they all start off speaking English before she uses her powers to learn the language, after which it switches over to Japanese. When Chloe (a girl Kanna met during that chapter) takes a trip to Japan in Kanna's Daily Life, her dialogue is peppered with Gratuitous English and it's established that she's not actually fluent in Japanese, making it clear that this trope was in effect. It can also be assumed that this applies to flashbacks in the other world.
• Gundam:
  • Every series features English text (with varying degrees of quality), but the characters themselves speak Japanese. It's generally assumed that English is the lingua franca for all timelines because, to quote an example from one Gundam Wing fansite, it doesn't make much sense for a Chinese woman to speak to a group of Arabs in Japanese. This is perhaps most explicit in Iron-Blooded Orphans, where Mikazuki needs Roberto to explain what kanji is and describes Japanese as "that language my names comes from".
  • In Origin, The Federation is apparently bilingual, with most things being labelled in both English and Russian, doubtless a reference to the US and USSR Space Race.
• At least 90% of the dialogue in Monster is translated for the (Japanese) viewers' benefit from German. There are also near-singular cases of translation from English and Latin.
  • Since the characters come from all over Europe (with a Japanese protagonist), there are a handful of confusing scenes where the translation convention suddenly switches from Japanese-for-German to Japanese-for-English, or Japanese-for-Czech. One episode actually does this repeatedly, with the audience's perspective switching back and forth between German speakers and English speakers who are travelling together.
    • That particular scene becomes even stranger in the English version. One of the characters only speaks German, the two one-shot characters only speak English, and the protagonist speaks both. There is a bit where the German-speaking character thanks the English-speaking ones in Gratuitous German, but immediately afterwards he begins asking the protagonist, in English, what the other characters are discussing.
• Muv-Luv:
  • Averted in Muv-Luv Alternative: despite the main cast being affiliated with the United Nations, they're Japanese by birth and so are presumably all speaking Japanese In-Universe. The Military Coup arc also has radio chatter between American TSF pilots which is recorded in (poorly accented) English with Japanese subtitles.
  • Muv-Luv Alternative: Total Eclipse: Except for the prologue, most of the series takes place in either Alaska or the Soviet Union's Kamchatka Peninsula. All the dialogue in the series is still rendered in Japanese despite the Common Tongue for most of the cast being either English or Russian.
• In My-Otome, nearly all text that appears on screen (including newspapers, computer screens, and diaries) is in Gratuitous English, while the spoken dialogue is (obviously) in Japanese. It is never mentioned explicitly what the "real" language spoken in this far-future setting is. Sometimes it leads to bizarre language-specific dialogue that wouldn't make much sense if the language was indeed English, like Mashiro mentioning that she was named after (the Japanese name of) Fumi's GEM, which is called "Pure White Diamond" in English. Not to mention characters occasionally slipping into speaking English...
• The Mysterious Cities of Gold is set in the 16th century and begins in Barcelona, Spain, thus everyone is presumed to be speaking Spanish. The creators have suggested Zia taught Inca to Spanish-speaking Esteban during the trip to the New World. Fair enough. Then the gang meets Tao, who presumably would only speak Hevan/Mu. And they chat along without any issues at all. And Mendoza and the other adults can understand Tao, despite never being taught Incan, let alone whatever Tao's native language would be.
• The manga for Negima! Magister Negi Magi provided an elegant solution to the problem of how to imply to the reader that some characters were speaking in English while others were speaking in Japanese. Japanese dialogue was written as normal but English dialogue was written backwards, that is, left to right - as one would expect to see English written. The English Translations provided their own solution by putting the words that are spoken in English (as opposed to being translated to it) in a different font.
  • This was also done in Love Hina.
• In the English-dubbed version of Neon Genesis Evangelion, Asuka still says her Eva unit doesn't understand Shinji, because he's speaking/thinking in Japanese rather than German. Her Gratuitous German is somewhat corrected, but otherwise untranslated. The "American" pilots in the Bardiel episode are subtitled even in some dubbed versions though, since they're speaking English in the original Japanese.Which also holds true for the German dub.
  • Neon Genesis Evangelion had an extremely brief scene in America, in which the characters spoke English.
  • Rebuild of Evangelion has a much longer scene taking place... somewhere in Europe or America, which also has the characters speaking English. Badly, in Kaji's case.
• Night Raid 1931, which took place in China, has a bunch of foreign minor characters speaking in their native languages by native speakers with the exception of the side character, Fuu Lan, who is voiced by Saki Fujita and speaks both Chinese and Japanese. But episode 6 has a bunch of Asian delegates speaking in accented English. The main Japanese characters still speak Japanese but when talking to foreigners, it can a bit horrible. The Blu-Rays and DVDs have an audio selection where all the characters speak in Japanese. This goes the same with the English dub where all the characters speak in English which makes the scene in episode 6 very awkward.
• In Noir, the main characters speak so many different languages fluently, that it can be hard to tell what language they are actually speaking at a given time: Most of the series is set in France, but when they go on a mission they speak whatever language is there because that's what assassins do so they don't look suspicious. But they still always just speak Japanese for convenience.
  • In general, a lot of that take place in more western settings like Gunslinger Girl or Madlax have the characters speak the language of their viewers for convenience, but inevitably causes erupt confusion when other languages come into the picture.
• In One Piece, Word of God stated that the main language in his world is English, hence Wanted Posters and such are in English (some of it misspelled). Since it's about pirates, the language can be "stolen" quite a lot.
• It's all but outright stated that the Common Tongue in Outlaw Star is a mix betwen English and Chinese.
• In the Planetes anime, despite being presented in Japanese, most of the dialogue is presumably actually in English. In an episode where three of the characters pay a visit to Japan, Hachimaki's mother complements Yuri on how well he speaks Japanese; in the English dub, this let the viewers know that the characters were actually speaking Japanese, similar to the Evangelion example above.
• Whatever language they're speaking in Pokémon: The Series it's unlikely it's Japanese, English, or any 'real world' language. Originally it was very clear that they spoke Japanese, however an Earth Drift happened when the writers wanted to make the series more generalized for worldwide appeal. The languages they read are fictional and Ash (who is from Kanto, based on the Japanese region) can perfectly understand people from regions like Kalos (which is based on France).
• In Princess Tutu there's only a small monologue in German, but almost all of the on-screen text is in the language, implying that the show is set in Germany and the characters are speaking German. (In fact, taken to its logical conclusion, that means neither Ahiru nor Duck is the main character's real name.) Her name is actually shown in German text: Entchen. It also means 'Duck', of course.
• In the anime-only American Competition arc of The Prince of Tennis, the Americans speak Japanese, but it's supposed to be English, Of course, they still have Gratuitous English in their speech, which makes it confusing... (In the Filipino dub, the Americans actually speak in English.)
• It's heavily implied in Queen's Blade that the language the characters speaks (at least the western ones like Leina, Elina, Nowa, etc.) is not Japanese at all. But the characters from Hinomoto (Tomoe and Shizuka) are a very special case: according with a episode in the second season (The one when Shizuka writes a letter to Tomoe before challenging her to a death duel) they both speak Ancient Japanese, but it's never explained how both girls are able to communicate with the rest of the cast without any problems, since neither Tomoe nor Shizuka even leaved Hinomoto in all their lives.
  • A throw-away scene early in the first season implies that the western girls may speak Russian, and shows Shizuka and Tomoe trying to learn basic Russian greetings from an old scroll.
  • Except that, in the same case with Fullmetal Alchemist, the characters speaks Japanese for viewers' benefit, but they speak Russian, yell their attacks in English (Except Tomoe and, oddly enough, Claudette, who yell their attacks in Japanese) and everyone writes with glyphs.
• In Read or Die a good number of the characters is British (and there are several Americans as well, including the US President). We can only assume they're not really all speaking Japanese. And in R.O.D The TV, the three main characters are Chinese, although we know they speak actual Japanese as well (Anita even gets complimented on her Japanese skills at one point). R.O.D The TV also features a scene set in school where the children are learning English. In the English dub, this was changed so that they're learning Japanese...
• In Episode 19 of the anime adaptation of Run with the Wind, the inner monologue of the Tanzanian exchange student Musa is said in Japanese presumably for the audience's benefit.
• Across the various different versions of Sailor Moon, English is implied to have been the official language of the "Shirubaa Mireniamu" (Silver Millennium), whose important characters are regularly referred to as "Kuiin Serenitii" (Queen Serenity), "Purinsesu Serenitii" (Princess Serenity AKA, Usagi / Sailor Moon), Purinsu Endimion (Prince Endymion AKA, Mamoru / Tuxedo Mask), and "Kuiin Beriru" (Queen Beryl), not to mention "Kuiin Metaria" (Queen Metallia).
• Got kind of confusing in the Samurai Champloo episode "Baseball Blues", which had Americans speaking English. It was easy to know what language was which in the Japanese episode—the Americans spoke English with Japanese subtitles (and the Americans' interpreter speaks Japanese with a laughably bad accent)—but in the English dub, everybody speaks English. The Japanese subtitles were kept. They were presumably supposed to make an English viewer understand the Americans speak English and/or they couldn't remove them.
• Retroactive example in 3×3 Eyes: The heroes mostly speak Japanese (even though Pai has to learn from scratch) but can also talk in Chinese, English and probably other languages just fine, even demons, both when they're interacting with humans and when they're speaking to each other. However, at one point, the group sends a construct in the shape of Talisman, one of Benares' Nine-Headed Dragon Generals, in the hideout of the Generals and is greeted by Wu Gui, who addresses him in a "demon language" which sounds like complete gibberish to both the heroes and the readers, implying that all the time we saw demons talking to each other Translation Convention was up for the reader's benefit.
• Some of the foreign students in the School Rumble manga got their speaking parts translated into Gratuitous English as an attempt for Western readers to recognize who's the one speaking Gratuitous Japanese.
• Shaman King has characters from all over the world (the Japanese hero's True Companions, for instance, include shamans from China, Germany, and the United States as well as other Japanese people). Somehow, everyone can understand each other.
  • Although, you have to consider that most of these shamans had been training for the Shaman Fight for their whole lives, and since it was to be held in Tokyo, they probably learned to speak Japanese as part of their training. There still are several times when this trope would be active, though (namely Chocolove's flashbacks where Americans are conversing amongst themselves in Japanese).
  • Another possibility is that the Oracle Bells act as Translator Microbes. Although, once again, this doesn't explain any flashbacks in the character's home countries.
  • There was this nice little one in Funbari no Uta, while in America, Hana, the son of Yoh and Anna, mistakes two thugs for trying to rob him. The lines for the two thugs were actually written in English and if you knew English, you found out right away that they weren't trying to do anything to Hana.
• Apparent in Simoun early on when Aer and Rimone are captured by an enemy soldier, with most of his tragic dialogue flying over both girls' heads as (the audience realizes) neither speak his language.
• Inconsistent in Soul Eater - in the American school where most main characters have grown up in that country (all but Tsubaki, in fact), Japanese is presumably spoken for the viewers' benefit. Yet text is shown both in English and Japanese (such as American (more-or-less) Kid writing a letter in Japanese to Liz and Patti...who come from New York. It is read aloud.)
• In Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, all the text is in a made-up alphabet, indicating that the characters are probably speaking a language which does not exist on Earth today (The text, in all meaningful instances, is a cypher for roman characters).
• In Thermae Romae it is obvious that Lucius, the emperor Hadrian and the other Romans would talk to each other in Latin, and would know no Japanese, but they speak in Japanese for the benefit of the anime's audience.
• Most of the characters in Tiger & Bunny are presumably speaking English, as the series takes place in a futuristic stand-in for Manhattan. This creates a bit of Fridge Logic when paired with the episode previews, where it's a Running Gag that Kotetsu can't pronounce the (English) episode titles.
  • What's more, all of the text in the series is in Surprisingly Good English, so much so that it provides some handy foreshadowing and details for the English-speaking viewer.
• At one point in Trigun, Vash is shown to be unable to read Japanese, indicating that while the dialogue is presented in that language, it isn't the one the characters are speaking. The American Wild West based setting and the frequent use of Gratuitous English implies that the language being spoken is English.
• Emma: A Victorian Romance takes place in Victorian England, so it's assumed the characters are really speaking English. Ironically, the series did not receive an English dub when it was released in North America.
• In Vinland Saga, all the Norse characters speak Old Norse (even though everything is in English/Japanese/etc for us). This becomes relevant in one chapter when an injured Thorfinn is rescued by an English woman and her daughter. Thorfinn doesn't know English well and isn't able to communicate well to the woman that she and her daughter should flee since he's there to signal a Viking raid. It becomes a bit more awkward in the anime since both characters are speaking the same language while one says to the other that he doesn't understand her.
• Wolf's Rain takes place in The Future during The End in an unspecified part of the world, but all written text is shown to be in Russian.
• In Yakitate!! Japan guest bakers speak in heavily accented Japanese to Japanese characters but unaccented Japanese amongst themselves, suggesting that they are speaking their own language to each other.
• In Yuri!!! on Ice, the Japanese Yuri and the Russian Victor are stated to converse with each other in English, as well as the rest of the international cast. Some Gratuitous English from the characters serves to hammer it in.
• A case of translation convention occurs in Yu-Gi-Oh!. Much of the show takes place in Japan, but when the main characters are in the US or Egypt, people there seem to speak perfect Japanese. Pegasus, an American character, is known for his use of Gratuitous English.

Exceptions

• A partial exception in Appleseed: While the main dialogue is indeed in English or Japanese depending on the release, characters speaking any other languages would actually speak in that language in both the Japanese and English releases.
• Blood: The Last Vampire takes place on and around the US Marine base in Okinawa. Various characters speak fluent English and/or Japanese as appropriate; the DVD was notable in that it didn't offer dub selections for either, but would allow you to select which language was subtitled.
• According to Word of God, all the characters in D.Gray-Man are speaking English.
• Averted in Eden of the East, where the first episode and a good deal of the first movie take place in America. Though the main characters still speak Japanese, all the extras in those scenes speak English. And since they hired native speakers, it's actually English, rather than Engrish. The dub, naturally, totally ignored this, since everyone was speaking English anyway.

---