Accent Adaptation

"Bill: Here's a feller says he saw an Eevee breathe far! Red: How far did it breathe? Bill: Not "far"! Far!"

- Pokémon Special, adapting Bill's Kansai Regional Accent

An Accent Adaptation is when a translator substitutes dialect in his own language for one in the original work's language, making for a Woolseyism in some cases and Adaptation Decay in others, especially when the translated dialect doesn't have an equivalent in the original work. Sometimes, a third type is used where a Funny Foreigner character ends up speaking another language when the show is imported to their home country.

Compare Dub Name Change and The Queen's Latin.

Anime and Manga

 * In American dubs of Anime, The Idiot From Osaka is frequently given a Southern "hick" accent.
 * Strangely enough Matt Greenfield, formerly of ADV said in the Puni Puni Poemy commentary that whenever he translates the Kansai regional accent he goes with a Brooklyn one instead. This is likely due to his being based in Texas and hearing a southern accent fairly commonly.
 * Azumanga Daioh tries to justify this in the anime by using one from the Houston area to play up the busy bustling commercial aspect; in the manga, they initially use a New York accent for poor Ayumu Kasuga Osaka, although they switch to a Southern accent later.
 * Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi also uses a Texan accent as a substitute for Osaka dialect in its dub -- though in this case, the characters in question are practically rubes.
 * In addition, the shopkeeper from Tokyo is given a New York accent. Both of these make sense in context as Tokyo is the New York of Japan and people from Osaka are commonly considered (by people from Tokyo, mind you -- Osaka is the second-biggest urban agglomeration in Japan) to be country bumpkins.
 * Mako from Nerima Daikon Brothers is another character that gets this treatment.
 * Additionally, she occasionally spouts Okinawan when she's emotional, which was changed to dense slang in the dub (and Cajun in the subtitles).
 * Molly from Sailor Moon was also given a New York accent rather than a Southern one.
 * A strange case from Trigun: Nicholas D. Wolfwood has a Kansai accent, but in the dub, it's made to sound more how it actually would sound in English instead of making him Southern. So this is a case of an Averted Trope--but what makes it strange is that the author apparently did have a Southern accent in mind for Wolfwood.
 * Similarly, Chinese people in anime often have their accent mutated into Hulk Speak.
 * Shampoo from the English dub of Ranma ½ is one example, if not the person most responsible for it's proliferation (Ku Fei is certainly a victim).
 * Female characters who speak with a Kansai Regional Accent are frequently given "Southern belle"-like voices.
 * Shizuru, in the dub versions of Mai-HiME and Mai-Otome, is given this treatment to match up with her polite and lady-like demeanor.
 * Many anime characters tend to get (somewhat) British accents in English dubs, which is either supposed to represent poshness or intelligence, or excessive formality:
 * Ayeka in Tenchi Muyo!; in her case it represents the archaic medieval court Japanese dialect used by the original.
 * Ren and Jun in Shaman King. Ironically, the guy who was actually British had an American accent.
 * Bakura in Yu-Gi-Oh!, who is mocked to hell and back for this in Yu-Gi-Oh the Abridged Series.
 * Bakura is given a British accent in the American version of Yu-Gi-Oh to emphasize his politeness -- in the Japanese version, he is constantly using honorifics, and 4Kids tried to show this using an accent. In the Singaporean English dub, he has a Southern US accent, according to the Other Wiki.
 * They used a British accent to emphasize politeness again in the spin-off/sequel Yu-Gi-Oh! GX with Daichi/Bastion Misawa.
 * Similarly, Katsuya Jonouchi (aka Joey Wheeler) spoke rather plainly in the manga and original anime, leaving out honorifics rather often, so the dub gave him a Brooklyn accent. BROOKLYN RAGE!
 * Jack Atlas has a British/Aussie thing going on. Not quite sure what it says about him.
 * Ami/Sailor Mercury and Luna in Sailor Moon. Mercury's British accent was only a trait of her first voice actress's performance— when the S and SuperS seasons were dubbed, her new actress didn't bother giving her an accent at all.
 * Sai from Ronin Warriors gained a British accent when the series was brought to the US to emphasize his politeness and gentleness.
 * Talpa inexplicably has a Welsh accent. Presumably for the hell of it.
 * Tecna in the Winx Club dub.
 * Speaking of Ronin Warriors, Rowen has a New York accent, presumably to make him sound street-smart.
 * Alexander Anderson, of Hellsing, is given a Scottish accent, to match that of his English-language VA, Steven Brand, a native Scot.
 * Probably Rule of Cool considering the reason Alucard doesn't have a British accent in English was that Crispin Freeman couldn't do one that was menacing. He said in an interview that he tried a British accent for Alucard, but "it didn't sound butch enough". He also begged the director to allow him to do a classic  accent, but the director rejected it as too corny.
 * In Yu Yu Hakusho's Japanese version, Jin has a Tohoku accent. In the dub, he has an Irish accent. Chu uses an Australian accent in the dub.
 * Not an accent, but the Swedish translation of the honorific-conscious Fuu in the Magic Knight Rayearth manga uses a way of speaking that is similar -- but no one has spoken like that since the 40s. As a result, she sounds like on the run from an old black-and-white movie.
 * In Axis Powers Hetalia, Poland speaks with a Nagoya accent. In scanlations, this quickly got adapted into Valley Girl vernacular. Sweden's heavy Touhoku dialect was translated into a mumbled grunt speak. Oddly, Spain's Osaka dialect is not adapted in most scanlations.
 * The English dub subverts this in an odd way: while the characters all speak with different accents, the accents used are heavy-handed stereotypical accents that are probably insulting to people who are from those countries. Hell, they're insulting even if you aren't from the country in question. It's even more Refuge in Audacity and Crossing the Line Twice than the original.
 * Poland's like ttly awesome valley girl speak is also used in the English translation of the manga, which is a thousand times more faithful to the original than the anime is.
 * The accents the nations have in the original Japanese is also an example, since Poland is not from Nagoya, Sweden is not from Touhoku and Spain is not from Osaka.
 * The Spanish dub of Excel Saga translated Pedro's speech as a thick Caribbean Mexican accent.
 * In the English translation of the manga Sumiyoshi's Okayama accent is adapted to a Geordie accent.
 * Likewise, the Spanish dub of Cowboy Bebop translates the speech mannerisms of the bounty hunters' TV show as two over-the-top, stereotypically rural variants of Mexican Spanish: the girl speaks with a strong Guadalajara accent, while the black guy speaks Northern Mexican.
 * In the dub of Chrono Crusade, a generic police man was given a (very thick) Irish accent to fit the stereotype people had about police back in the Roaring Twenties.
 * In Bleach Gin's Kyoto dialect went away, and instead of getting an accent in the dub, he was given a falsely polite voice that shows his untrustworthy nature. Dordonii is given a Spanish accent.
 * In a Chinese dub of Kare Kano, the main characters Yukino and Arima were given totally different dialects: Yukino's was Cantonese, and Arima's was Shanghainese. Funny because Cantonese speakers usually don't understand Shanghainese and vice versa. Example here:
 * As the page quote shows, Pokémon Special gave Bill a Kansai Regional Accent that was replaced with a Southern U.S. accent in the English version.
 * In the anime he has a British accent, since his characterization is remarkably different. In the first generation games, his diction suggested a southern/rural US accent, but this feature was dropped in later games.
 * The European Spanish One Piece dub gave Usopp an Arabian accent and made him a muslim. It's oddly fitting.
 * Swan White in GaoGaiGar is given a Southern accent, possibly as a way to emphasize the fact that she's an actual American.
 * The dub of Digimon Adventure 02 adapted Armadimon's Osaka-ben into a Texan accent. The earlier Digimon Adventure dub completely ignored Tentomon's Kansai accent, however.

Comics

 * The Swedish translation of Fantastic Four comics makes Ben Grimm's New York working class accent (when he has one) into a Stockholmer working class accent (or what the translators think is one, at least).
 * In the Norwegian translation of Asterix in Belgium, the Belgians spoke broad rural dialect from "flatbygdene", an area north of Oslo. The same dialect has been used elsewhere to represent US English with a thick Southern Drawl, and probably other dialects that connote rusticness.
 * Like the above example, the Hägar The Horrible comics are translated into New Norwegian rather than Book Norwegian. This is actually playing a stereotype that all Vikings speak New Norwegian. Since the Old Norse language is pretty much extinct in modern times, this is as close to rural Norwegian a translator can get without alienating the entire nation at a time.

Film

 * In the Russian dub of the Star Wars prequel trilogy, the Neimoidians' and Gungans' accents were rendered as Russian accents (in the latter case, as the Chukchi accent - see the "Ethnic stereotypes" section in Russian Humour).
 * The neimoidians seem to have this in their contract. German dub has them in french and russian ones star in the french, italian and spanish dubs.
 * In the Russian Gag Dub by Dmitry Puchkov, they are given Georgian accents. In his gag dub of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, many characters are given highly-stereotypical accents. Legolas sounds Estonian, Gimli sounds Georgian, the Witch-King sounds German (he's supposed to be a Nazi), Gothmog speaks in a mix of Russian and Ukrainian (a parody on the former Ukrainian president Viktor Yushchenko).
 * The Puss in Boots in Shrek, who speaks Gratuitous Spanish, was dubbed (by Antonio Banderas of course) with a thick Andalusian accent in both Spanish-language versions (Banderas was born in Andalusia), while in the Latin American version Donkey's Ebonics was dubbed (by famous entertainer Eugenio Derbez nonetheless) as a Mexico City accent.
 * Banzai from The Lion King also got a Mexico City accent.
 * The Scottish-accented vikings in How to Train Your Dragon have a Northern German accent in the German dub.
 * In the French dub of The Little Mermaid Chef Louis is Italian (instead of French) and Sebastian is voiced by Guiana-born songwriter Henri Salvador. In the Spanish dub, Sebastian has a Cuban accent (instead of Jamaican).
 * In the Italian dub of A Fish Called Wanda Otto West's Gratuitous Italian is replaced by Gratuitous Spanish.
 * In the Norwegian version of Fantastic Mr. Fox, Rat has a North-Norwegian accent.
 * In an example that counts also as Lucky Translation, Toy Story 3 made  a clear Spaniard stereotype rather than the usual mix-match of Spanish-speaking countries that often appears in Hollywood productions. As a result, in the Latin American version the original Castilian accent is maintained (if slightly exaggerated for comedy), while in the Spain version he is voiced with a thick Andalusian accent since both Flamenco and the Don Juan stereotype often associated abroad with Spain in general are actually Andalusian in origin. To ice the cake, the Gypsy Kings version of You Got A Friend In Me is sang in this very same accent in the original and every other version.
 * In South Park Bigger Longer and Uncut, the German scat porn clip is replaced with a British one.
 * The Princess and the Frog: The Japanese dub translates Raymond's Cajun accent into an Osakan accent.
 * The Japanese dub of The Lion King replaces Scar's British accent with a thick French accent.
 * Patriot Games: In the Latin American Spanish dub, Robby Jackson (Played by Samuel L. Jackson) speaks with a exaggerated Cuban Spanish accent, to simulate his African American Vernacular English accent.
 * Damnatus provides a reverse example: Inquisitor Makkabeus from this German film speaks very formally (addressing Lechias with the polite pronoun "Sie" even though they are already well aquainted). The English subtitles rather amusingly translate this as Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe.
 * The Brazilian dub of The Incredibles turns Dash's teacher (the one that tries to prove the kid put a tack in his chair using super speed) into a Portuguese man - while in the original he's just a regular guy.
 * In fact, if you're watching a cartoon's Brazilian Dub (mostly those done by studios from Rio de Janeiro) and there's a character with a big moustache, chances are they will sport a Portuguese accent. That's because an old Brazilian stereotype says that all Portuguese men (and women) wear moustaches.

Literature

 * George Webb Dassent's translations of Scandinavian folklore give the characters a vaguely Scottish way of speaking (there's a lot of uses of lassie and such), which provides a surprisingly effective way of conveying the diction of the original peasant storyteller.
 * Lord of the Rings: Tolkien gave his Orcs a lower-class English accent via a Funetik Aksent (Phonetic Accent). In the film, Gimli was given a Scottish accent to mirror what in the text was simply gruff speech. (By John Rhys-Davies, who was raised in England by Welsh parents.)
 * Discworld: In the Polish translations of the books, the Nac Mac Feegle speak like Gorals. It works pretty well. "Literally 'Highlanders'". Bilingual Bonus Stealth Pun? In the French translation, they're given a Chtimi (also called Picard) accent.
 * In the Harry Potter series, Hagrid speaks with a West Country (Cornwall, etc.) accent. In many languages, this was adapted to give the same feel. For example, in the Japanese language edition, he speaks the Touhoku dialect.

Live Action TV

 * In the Russian dub of the Stargate SG-1 episode "1969", Daniel's German-accented English was rendered as German-accented Russian. In "Full Alert", they gave Mikhailov an English accent (probably to distinguish him from Russian-speaking Americans), which was One Shot Revisionism given how all the other Russians spoke Russian with no accent in the dub.
 * It is generally pretty rare for a Russian dub to carry over accents. Unfortunately, this also means that the Goa'uld lose their signature Evil Sounds Deep voice.
 * Fawlty Towers: An example of the Funny Foreigner getting a nationality change: Manuel is an Italian in the Spanish dub of the show.
 * In I Love Lucy, Ricky Ricardo's friends from Cuba became his friends from Italy in the Latin American dub.
 * Suddenly Susan: Nestor Carbonel's Cuban photographer character was made Russian in the Latin American dub.
 * An episode of The A-Team has the gang going to a horribly inaccurate version of Valencia, Spain. In one scene, Murdock pretends to be a local pilot in front of the bad guys by speaking broken Spanish. When this episode was later released in Spain, Murdock was given an over the top, but completely accurate Valencian accent in this scene, making it completely unexpected and jaw-droppingly hilarious.
 * Dharma and Greg: The Slovak dub of an episode which involved Greg's family relative from Texas rendered his stereotypical Texan accent as the Záhorie regional accent (think of a mixture of rural Slovak and Czech with some German bits), with elements of other western Slovak accents thrown into the mix. Surprisingly, it worked pretty well (and was pretty hilarious in itself).
 * In HBO's Game of Thrones Syrio Forel speaks with a Spaniard accent. In the Spanish dub he has an Arabic accent instead
 * In the 2001 Swedish made-for-TV adaptation of David Edgar's play Albert Speer, Adolph Hitler speaks Swedish with a heavy Smålandian accent to simulate the dictators real life Austrian German accent.

Theater

 * In several American translations of Aristophanes' Lysistrata, the Spartans who spoke a "crude" dialect of Doric Greek are given Texan accents, alluding to their place as the Eagle Land of the time. Similarly, British translations tend to give them Scottish accents to give the appearance of provincialism. (This seems to have nothing to do with the Violent Glaswegian trope, as it predates that trope by at least 150 years.)
 * One translation gave the Spartans Russian accents in order to make an allusion to the Cold War.
 * One of the Swedish translations actually had the Athenians speak Swedish while the Spartans spoke Norwegian (they're mutually intelligible).
 * The Queen's Latin employs a form of this by giving upper-class Romans plummy BBC Received Pronunciation accents and making the lower class Cockneys.
 * It used to be common in American adaptations of Moli? and other works in the Commedia Dell'Arte tradition to give the "saucy maid" character an exaggerated (read: bigoted) black accent. This very much conflicts with the original, who spoke in the same style as the upper-class characters, albeit with a less refined vocabulary.
 * Perhaps more understandably, uneducated peasant characters tend to receive Irish or Cockney accents in translation, which makes some sense, as the originals actually spoke in dialect.
 * In the London production of Les Misérables, the lower-class characters (notably the Thenardiers) were given heavy cockney accents.
 * Pretty much every other major English-speaking production has done this as well, even in the US.
 * There was a German production of My Fair Lady in which Eliza Doolittle was a Bavarian learning to speak Hochdeutsch.
 * In Swedish translations, Eliza usually spoke a heavy working-class Stockholm accent. In the most recent adaptations, she instead uses the Gothenburg accent.
 * In the English translation of Aristophanes' The Birds, Herakles speaks in the manner of a dim-witted Italian-American.

Video Games

 * Final Fantasy IX: A great big point of discussion among fans in Germany. Just try to mention the various dialects (Cinna was Bavarian!) in the game if you want to start a flame war.
 * In the Japanese version of Sonic Rush Series Adventure, Marine the Raccoon is The Idiot From Osaka. In the English version, she has a (hilariously exaggerated) Australian accent. Since Sonic Team is US-based, there's no telling which came first.
 * Dragon Quest VIII did an excellent job with this, primarily using British accents that equate very well with the Japanese accents they're replacing.
 * Instead of learning the lesson that people like good Accent Adaptation, Square Enix apparently learned the lesson that people like funny accents and they should shove as many of them in as possible. Dragon Quest IV DS is loaded with accents varying from the merely grating to the totally incomprehensible, with no real regard to what sort of accent, if any, the region used in the Japanese version. Santeem/Saintheim got hit especially hard, becoming Zamoksva, a Fantasy Counterpart Culture to Russia with everyone speaking in thick Eastern European accents that are sometimes all but completely indecipherable in text format. The response was about as good as you'd expect.
 * Fortunately, they seem to have learned the correct lesson after IV. The DS release of V has easily understandable accents on only a few of the main characters and towns.
 * Final Fantasy XII, the Archadians all have English accents. . The Dalmascans have American accents, the Bhujerbans have Indian accents, the one Rozzarian we hear has a Spanish accent, and the Viera all have...whatever accent Fran's using... Norwegian?
 * Fran has an Icelandic voice actress, and all other Viera have Nordic-ish names, so assume the accent is the same for the entire race.
 * The Oerbans were given an Australian accent in the localized release of Final Fantasy XIII solely for the throwaway gag that Gran Pulse is "down under" Cocoon.
 * Beat from The World Ends With You used informal language, considered rude when used with strangers. This was replaced with ebonics in the English version which has similar social connotations.

Western Animation

 * In the French dubs of Looney Tunes, Pepe le Pew is given an Italian accent.
 * Eduardo from Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends has an American accent in the Mexican Spanish dub. An example of the Funny Foreigner accent change, since he speaks frequent Spanish in the original version.
 * In Germany, German accents are sometimes dubbed as one of the regional varieties of German to replicate the stereotype that goes with the original version. Thus, Uter speaks Swiss dialect, whereas one-episode guest character Nanny M?r gets a Prussian accent.
 * The German-accented Homer in one Treehouse of Horror episode speaks with an Italian accent instead.
 * The Road to El Dorado: Crossing over with Translation Convention, but an odd example is where, in the Lat Am dub, Miguel and Tulio (Spanish) speak with English and American accents, and Chel (native) speaks with a Spanish accent...
 * The UK dub of Insektors gave most of the characters accents from various parts of Britain -- Fugg is Welsh, for example. The exception is General Wasabi, who has a Japanese accent.
 * Pearl has a surfer accent, and boasts about not "wiping out" in battle, rather than never having been injured before.
 * In the German dub of Transformers Animated, Professor Sumdac's Indian accent became a Chinese one.
 * Transformers. In the Italian dub, Metroplex has a French accent and Slingshot a Russian one.
 * In the Italian dub of The Simpsons, Groundskeeper Willie's Scottish accent is replaced with a Sardinian one. The problem is that in the beginning they dubbed him to refer to himself has a Sardinian, despite him being evidently Scottish, till they apparently realized how stupid it sounded.
 * Also: Wiggum has a Naples accent, Carl has a Venetian one, Otto has a Milanese one and Reverend Lovejoy has a Calabrese one.
 * Ralph's imaginary leprechaun has a Bolognese accent. And Colin from The Simpsons Movie has been given an Emilian accent.
 * The Simpsons actually has two French versions: a version dubbed in European French and one in Canadian French, one of the few shows to have two local French versions. The Canadian version tends to add local references in the dubbing to Quebec politicians and celebrities, whereas the French version tends towards a straight translation of the original dialogue.
 * In France's French version, most characters speak in a standard Parisian accent, although black characters such as Carl (who has no accent in the original) speaks with an inflected accent typical of a North African immigrant. The Van Houtens are given stereotypical Belgian accents. As an interesting sidenote, the French voiceover actors of Homer and Marge eventually became married over the course of the show, much like their on-screen counterparts.
 * In the Quebecois French version, accents are used to draw a class divide among Springfield residents. The town elite such as Principal Skinner and Rev. Lovejoy speak in proper, Parisian International French accents, which would be seen as snobby and stuffy to Quebecois ears, whereas most of the town speaks with a strong Quebecois accent. Local Quebecois swearing (known as "sacres") are used, and local references (ranging from semi-obscure Quebecois pop stars to Canadian politicians) are used in place of American pop culture references. The blue collar workers like Homer and Barney speak in a very strong "joual" drawl typical of working-class Montrealers, while Apu speaks in a creole dialect.
 * Interestingly, in the episode where the Simpsons travel to Toronto so that Bart can be with Rainier Wolfcastle's daughter, the Torontonians are given strong Canadian/American English accents (despite the Simpsons supposedly being American themselves.) In the episode where the family travels to London, the British also have the same strong English accents typical of English-speaking Canadians.
 * The episode where Bart goes to Paris is played straight in the Quebec dub by having Bart try to speak to the Parisian police officer in his Quebec accent, only to have the officer unable to understand his Canadianisms (in the original, the officer can't speak English, when suddenly Bart learns to speak French.) Bart walks away, muttering "I thought they spoke French in France", only to suddenly learn how to speak with a variety of comically stereotypical France French sayings so the officer can finally understand him.
 * Other The Simpsons-related dubs:
 * Similarly to the French version, in the Dutch dub, the Van Houtens speak with Belgian accents.
 * The Mexican Spanish dub of the show gives Apu a very thick Arabic accent.
 * On the other side, in the Japanese dubbed version Apu speaks using polite Japanese, instead of using a local accent. In fact, the Japanese dub seems to avoid this trope, since everyone, regardless their backgrounds, speaks Standard Japanese, with only different degrees of politeness between them.
 * In the French Canadian dub of King of the Hill, called "Henri pis sa gang", the Texan drawls are replaced by a variety of thick blue-collar Quebecois French accents as the setting of the show is entirely changed from Arlen, Texas to Ste-Irène, Quebec. The characters' names are also changed, with Hank becoming Henri, Bill as Boule, and Boomhauer as Papineau. (The France French version of the show retains the character names and Texas setting of the original in their dubbed version, "Les Rois du Texas".)
 * Played with in the Spanish dub of Quick-Draw McGraw. Quickdraw and Baba Looey have "dopey" and stereotypical Mexican accents, respectively in English, in Spanish Baba Looey (now known as Pepe Trueno) speaks with a heavy Northern accent, while Quickdraw (now known as Tiro Loco) is given a heavy American accent.
 * In the Norwegian dub of The Replacements, Agent K (who has a British accent in the original), is voiced by an actress with a southern accent that helps to distinguish her.
 * In the German dub of Count Duckula, the German accent of Dr. Von Goosewing is dubbed into Saxon dialect.
 * In the Mexican Spanish dub, Dr. Von Goosewing speaks with a thick German accent.
 * In the Finnish dub of Brother Bear, the two moose characters speaking with a Canadian accent in the original speak in a South-Western Finnish dialect, because that sounds equally funny to Finns as the "hoser speak" did in the original. Funny about this is that Brother Bear takes place in the north, so a Northern Finnish dialect would have been more appropriate, as that is rather funny too.
 * In the Japanese dub of Powerpuff Girls, Fuzzy Lumpkins spoke Osaka-ben.
 * In the Latin American Spanish dub of South Park, Pip speaks with a heavy Spaniard accent instead of his British one.
 * The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron: Sheen Estevez speaks with a Japanese accent in the Mexican Spanish dub, because of his name (sounds like the Japanese name "Shin") and looks.
 * In the Swedish dub of Finding Nemo, the sharks, the turtles and the lobsters are all given different Swedish accents.
 * In the Swedish dub of ''Cars, Doc Hudson gains a Finnish accent.
 * The Swedish dub of Batman the Animated Series gave Jonathan Crane, The Scarecrow, an American accent. I'd very much like to have this one explained to me.
 * When animated films and shows are dubbed into Arabic, the fact that the language has dozens of highly-recognizable dialects provides a smorgasbord of potential Accent Adaptations.
 * The "neutral" accent - the Ordinary American Midwestern that the protagonist usually has in, say, your typical Disney movie -- is most often translated as Cairene Egyptian Arabic.
 * Southern accents and roles fitting "The Idiot From Osaka" stereotype are generally translated as Saidi (Upper Egyptian).
 * British-accented villains tend either to speak "high-class" Cairene peppered with Modern Standard Arabic or just speak straight-up Modern Standard (which nobody does).
 * In a similar way like Arabic, due of the great amount of local dialects in the Spanish language, many of them are used as stand-offs for other accents from other languages:
 * Regular mid-western American accents are rendered as Mexican or polite Venezuelan Spanish
 * Southern American accents are rendered as Northern Mexican Spanish.
 * Jamaican English is normally rendered as Cuban Spanish (since Cuba is for both Mexicans and Latin Americans the cultural equivalent in the same way Jamaica is for Americans and British)
 * The Idiot From Osaka accent is normally rendered in many ways: sometimes as Argentinian Spanish, sometimes as Southern Mexican Spanish, sometimes like a very vulgar version of Mexico City accent (used mainly in some Mexico City's neighborhoods) and a few times, Cuban Spanish.
 * American Ebonics normally are rendered as a rougher version of the Mexico City dialect used there.
 * Canadian English sometimes (in a very stereotypical way) is rendered as Spanish with a French accent (for obvious reasons, due to Quebec) or sometimes as regular Spanish.
 * British English is sometimes rendered as a exagerated polite Mexican Spanish or European Spanish (Like Pip.)
 * In the Dutch dub of Ka Blam!, June speaks with somewhat of a Japanese accent for no apparent reason, considering she doesn't have any kind of accent in the original version.
 * In Kick Buttowski, Gunther's family are supposed to be Norwegian. So to distinguish Gunther's parents from the rest of the cast, they speak a rural northeastern dialect in the Norwegian dub.
 * Aladdin, the animated series, had one or two episodes featuring Vikings. The Norwegian dub lumps their dialects right into New Norwegian.
 * This repeats itself in Recess, where a Norwegian student was visiting the school. He too was given New Norwegian dialogue.
 * In the Venezuelan Spanish dub of Teen Titans, Cyborg's African-American accent is replaced with a very thick Venezuelan accent. (Something unusual in Venezuelan dubs, since they normally use neutral accents and avoid using any kind of local accents in their dubs)
 * In the Russian dub of Atlantis: The Lost Empire Vinni's accent was changed from Italian to Georgian.
 * The same with some minor Italian character from Monsters, Inc.. Probably that is done to make an accent more recognisable. You don't meet Russian speaking Italians often, and most of Russian audience has no idea how Italian accented Russian should sound like.
 * Applejack uses Northern Mexican Spanish in the official Mexican Spanish dub. The pilot dub used a neutral accent instead in her voice.
 * In the Norwegian dub of Stoked, almost the entire regular cast speak southwestern dialects. This might be to reflect the show taking place in southwestern Canada, but it might also refer to Monstertorsdag, Norway's only surfing-themed feature film ever, taking place in Stavanger, southwestern Norway.