Blind Idiot Translation/Anime and Manga/Fan Subs

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Ventilator and scanlations of UBS (Fansubs and Scanslations)

• There is a Fullmetal Alchemist fansub where a group of characters named after the Seven Deadly Sins included the names "Rust" and "Blatnee" (Lust and Gluttony) for several episodes before the translators apparently caught on. This same phonetics issue leads to a subtitle of Wrath later screaming "CALL ME LASSIE!"
  • There was a scanlation for the Fullmetal Alchemist manga that has Winry's name as "Willy" and Riza's name as "Lisa."
    • Let's not bring the Riza/Lisa Glacier/Gracia debates here...
  • One subbed version would, for several episodes at a time, refer to Ed as "The Square Enix".
  • That same subbed version refers to Ed as "Edowado Erurixtuku", Winry as "Wuxinnrexi" (which thankfully later changed to the better-but-still-wrong "Wendy"), Roy Mustang as "Roi Masutanngu" and many other mistakes besides. It also uses the wrong pronoun ("he" instead of "I" comes up many times), making it really confusing to follow conversations.
    • Those names are a particular brand of word processor romaji (ie, the specific buttons you push on the keyboard to make the Japanese characters appear). In this system, straight nihon-shiki romanizations are used for every separate character, the n character is written as "nn", and the x button is used to indicate that the following character is small.
      • Of course, these spellings serve no purpose outside of direct explanations of how to use type Japanese on a computer, using them in a fansub is insane.
  • And "Xerxes" as "Celecsess", or something like that. Granted, "Xerxes" was translated from old Persian into Greek and then English, so the orthography is a bit weird.
• One Elfen Lied fansub has the line, this is the police! come out with your pants down!. This is made even stranger by the fact that the rest of the episode was near-flawlessly translated.
  • The same fansub features a university professor blurting the line "Take it all off!" apropos of nothing.
• Often happens with Fansubs and Scanlations, considering that they are often put out weekly with a deadline. (Popular series such as Bleach, Naruto, and One Piece are often either not proofread at all or proofread in a rush due to the rush for releases. )
• The original fan-made translations of Parts 4 and 5 of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure are notorious for this, as it was done by someone who's first language was definitely not English. The most infamous is a page from Part 4 that shows the main villain exclaiming "What a beautiful DUWANG."
  • Double translations from Japanese to Chinese and then from Chinese to English often have name changes like this because Chinese people may refer to Japanese names by using the Chinese pronunciation of the characters.
• The AnimeJunkies fansub group made a laughingstock of themselves when they released a flawed translation of a line from the anime Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. The line was supposed to be a question about numerous kidnappings by foreign mafia agents, but was translated as, "Are you aware of the frequent occurences of the mass naked child events within the country?" The "mass naked child events" line became a Memetic Mutation referring to terrible translations. (A screenshot of various translations here.)
  • That was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back, but AnimeJunkies had been consistently putting out crap subs for a while at that point. Their GetBackers subs are almost as bad. What turned everyone against them was their reaction to criticism and other fansubbers.
• There was a Bleach fansub that translated a Japanese slang term for uvula (のどちんこ) literally, as "throat penis".
• One of the scanlations that used to be on One Manga for Love Hina has a chapter in which Keitaro has a fever and Naru is taking his temperature. However, Keitaro's body temperature was apparently 39.7 degrees Fahrenheit - And yet Naru says to get the ice bag?!? That would mean Keitaro's DEAD!! That goes beyond Blind Idiot Translation. Most Americans at least know of the Celsius system, even if they can't convert, so if the subber couldn't convert, why not just leave it in Celsius? (For the record, 39.7 degrees Celsius is roughly 103.5 degrees Fahrenheit.)
  • Said scanlation also jumps around a little in quality - there are some mild grammar mistakes or parts where the the japanese text is left untranslated and not given a reference (possibly because it doesn't really mean anything and is just added for comedic effect) on top of it being a scan.
  • "Ha ha ha! Sara, don't you actually made that joke!"
  • The official translation from Tokyo Pop has several instances throughout the first 9 volumes of really bad grammatical structure. The translation itself seems reasonably decent; it just needed a better editor.
• When One Manga was still up: "So you have came, Uahara Kisuke".
  • Earlier on had Yammy referring to Ulquiorra as "Uluqiorra".
  • In addition, for a large portion of the early chapters, at least three different spellings of "Zaraki Kenpachi" were used, none of which were correct.
• Also in the department of fansubbers--"Image Hosted at MangaFox.com. Please Don't Hotlinking. Thanks."
• This translation from Code Geass.
  • This is actually an example of a Gag Sub rather than Blind Idiot Translation, since the character pictured didn't actually say anything in that scene.
  • That first one might be a Gag Sub, but there was a Blind Idiot Translation of episode 5 of R2 done by a group called We Win. It includes such hilarity as Suzaku as My Lord Jesus, Lelouch is a lot of abandoned homes, Area 11 being in a bun, and Lelouch's strange little brother named Lolo. Read it here.
• Spot the problem with the dialogue on this page. Center panel, center bubble.
  • The best guess explanation seems to be that the Japanese say Taisa to refer to anyone of O-6 rank, colonel or naval captain.
• There are some pretty bad subtitles on episodes of Ginga: Nagareboshi Gin. Examples include the characters' tendency to yell "You son of a bitches!", and in one case "I will revenge!", or the way "The clever Akakakabuto (One too many ka's) layed in ambush and hurted Takeda." and "Three puppies has been born at Daisuke."
  • • "And now did Riki died too."
    • "Humans had been forced to give after for the bears power."
    • "Gin are like his father."
    • "Got damit!"
  • One of the most annoying examples is how every use of the word "man" is replaced with "male". The reason this is annoying is because half the series is the dogs running around Japan to find "males".
  • Also funny is the way the subbers always used the word "bitch" for referring to female characters. This is accurate because a bitch is a female dog, but anyone watching it will be thinking or the other definition when Gin yells "Cross is a bitch!"
  • When Moss sends Lloyd and Jaguar to see Ben's pack, he is supposed to tell them to deliver a message. For who knows what reason, in the fansubs he tells the two to rape them instead.
• One fansub script for Dirty Pair TV episode 10 rendered one of Kei's lines of dialog as "Kei says something here". (The subtitles on the Nozomi Entertainment DVD release render that line as "Good job, guys!")
• Some One Piece scanslations had characters declaring that they would swear Royalty (sic) to their king.
  • This is not even getting into the Kaizoku-Fansubs "translations" for that show, which only occasionally fall into this trope, preferring instead to consistently occupy this one.
• The first 20th Century Boys film hit the Internet with English subtitles that were pretty good. Which made it pretty baffling when the subtitles on the second film were for the most part complete gibberish, featuring what seemed like random collections of letters half the time, and also tending to translate character's names as regular words, like "Kanna" being subtitled as "sad." The only way to have any hope of following the film using those subtitles is to have read the manga at least twice.
• The final battle in Rave Master is an epic clash between the forces of darkness and light, or would be if you could focus on it instead of all the improper conjugation.
• In an episode of Rozen Maiden where Shinku is appreciating some Assam Tea, one fansub rendered it as something along the lines of "the asamti is in finance".
• There is a pretty terrible Hong Kong bootleg of the Tales of Eternia anime that runs on the trope. One of the funnier screw-ups was rendering the two worlds of "Infernia" and "Celestia" as "Yugoslavia" and "Czechoslovakia."
• Several scanlations of Great Teacher Onizuka have sloppy grammar and overlay the original Japanese speech/thought bubbles with translucent colored boxes containing the text.
• TDX's translations of Liar Game chapters 114 and onward. Translating "Isutori Game" literally as "Steal-A-Chair Game" rather than "Musical Chairs" is a mistake on the level of referring to a character's "Handheld" (cellphone) which he's left charging in the "Concent" (electrical outlet) back at his "Mansion" (apartment).
• The Russian adaptation of Sherlock Holmes is available on YouTube translated by two different people. One person translated the series properly, the other translated it hilariously badly. There are Many strange translations or..well.. lack thereof
• You may need some advil after reading this translated chapter of Zettai Karen Children. "You still have your fist other than your psychic..."
• One fansub group for Black Butler consistently translated what was being clearly pronounced in English Cinematic Record into Magic Play.
• The scanlation for Untill Death Do Us Part manages to do this with English in an editor's note: "ED Note: Freighter is a cargo ship".
• Some of the "dishwasher" fansubs of Dragon Ball Z were notorious for bizarre name spellings and gratuitous overuse of profanity.
• One fansub of Magic Knight Rayearth insisted that Escudo weapons "glow" the more you use them. Anyone who's read the introduction to a self-instruction Japanese primer can tell you what went wrong here.
• While TV-Nihon's Tokusatsu fansubs are generally of exceedingly low quality, there are occasionally issues with name spellings. Less than three weeks into its run, most of the Sentai fandom knew that the (current) Big Bad of Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger is named Oiles Gil. TV-N is STILL, as of episode 13, calling him Waruzu Giru. They also had consistency issues with the names of the Pollution Ministers in Engine Sentai Go-onger.
  • In the end, both groups were wrong about the spelling of his name, which was actually Warz Gil. Although, to be fair, it is a rather strange name to translate and the name was not printed until the character's death.
• "Damn Nagato, as I feared, he lacked mobilit."

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